Powell and Schmidt's News

End of School

We have made it! Tomorrow is the last day of school! Please remember not to bring anything with you to school. Your child will bring everything home today. Tomorrow we will celebrate with an ice cream party. We'll also have a program in the morning and even get to watch the Talent Show on TV. It will be a fun day and a nice way to end the year.

We have had a wonderful year with your children. We thank you for sharing them with us and for your continued support all year.

The Media Center will be open during the summer on the following dates:

June 2 & 4 - 10:00AM-noon

June 9 & 11 - 10:00AM-noon

June 16 & 18 - 10:00AM-noon

Students will be able to check out books and take AR tests.

Look for your large envelope to come home in the next week or so. This envelope will include many important items such as report cards, test scores, Six Flags tickets, supply lists for next year and other important things. If you do not receive your envelops within the next two weeks, please contact the school. There may be a reason it is being held in the office.

Thank you again for a wonderful year and have a fabulous summer!!!

Last Week of School

Can you believe the last week of school is finally here?! What a wonderful year we have had. We are so incredibly proud of how much each of our students have learned and grown this year. We have loved teaching together and we have loved teaching this class. We will miss them.

This week, we are going to celebrate our accomplishments by doing something special each day. Please refer to your yellow letter as to what your child should bring to school each day. Ask your child if he/she has at least 5 letters left on his/her "Celebration Ticket". If not, your child will need to chose which days he/she would like to celebrate. Sorry, if that sounds confusing, just ask your child about it. He/She should be able to explain. We are looking forward to a really fun week. Remember, if you have anything you want to donate to our Treasure Box, please feel free to send it in this week.

We would like to send out a very special THANK YOU to the wonderful parents who provided our Teacher Appreciation Dinner. It was absolutely delicious and such a wonderful treat to not have to cook this weekend! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

We are really looking forward to bringing this wonderful year to a successful close this week. Thank you for your support all year long and thank you for sharing your precious children with us.

Field Day and More...

Field Day is tomorrow! Please remember the following things:

• Wear your yellow class t-shirt.
• Wear cool clothes and good running shoes.
• Wear sunscreen.
• Bring a water bottle.

We are looking forward to a really fun day. Lunch will be in our classroom from 11:15-12:15. We will have sack lunches from the cafeteria. Please refer to Robin Singer's email if you would like to help with Field Day.

Next week we will be celebrating our last week of 2nd grade in various ways. A letter on yellow paper will come home this week explaining what we are doing and what your child needs to bring to school each day. Please read it carefully. In class, we have tickets that will be our admission to each special day. Ask your child how he/she is doing on his/her "Celebration Ticket". Remind your child to monitor his/her behavior so we all get to enjoy "Celebration Week" together.

We will also have a "Treasure Box Clearance Sale" next week. If you have any items at home that you are looking to get rid of, we welcome all donations. If it is something your child likes, chances are someone else in our class will like it too!

It's hard to believe next week is our last week of school. We have had a wonderful year and looking forward to ending with a bang!

Writer's Tea Reminder!

Don't forget our Writer's Tea is this Friday, May 2nd. You may come early and join us for lunch at 12:15 if you like. Otherwise, come to our classroom right after lunch, between 12:45 and 1:00. The Writer's Tea will end at 1:25, when we have specials.

If you received a food donation notice for the Writer's Tea, please send in your donation by Friday morning. Thank you!

We can't wait to show you all the work we've done this year!

Garage Sale

If you need to schedule a large item pick-up to be donated to the Foundation Garage Sale,

Please call Patti Lavender:  770-552-1162

We are planning to schedule pick-ups for Sunday afternoon, April 27^th, but we may be able to make other arrangements.

It's CRCT Time!!!

We have been working hard and learning all year. We have been practicing for the last few weeks, and now it's time to show what we know. We will take the big CRCT test this week. We will take the Reading Test on Wednesday, English/Language Arts on Thursday, and Math on Friday. Please remember to do the following things at home to help your child do his/her best on this important test:

• Go to bed on time each night and get plenty of rest.
• Eat a good breakfast each morning and bring a good snack to school.
• Come to school ON TIME and in a good mood, ready to show what you know.

We are sure you usually do these things anyway, but it's especially important this week. Thank you for your support. There will be no spelling test or Family Journal letter this week.

As we finish our test each day, we will be doing some fun projects to relax our brains a little. We will be reading some wonderful Tommy dePaola books and learning all about him. We are even going to try and find time to write letters to him, which he usually answers!

We will also start working on our animal projects. We will be using non-fiction books from the Media Center to research and learn about interesting animals of our choice. We will then turn the notes we take into a really cool project complete with both written information and pictures. We can't wait to show our projects off at the Writer's Tea on May 2nd!

You should have received an invitation to our Writer's Tea last week. It will be on Friday, May 2nd at 1:00 PM. We invite you to our classroom to see our animal projects as well as all the writing projects we've been working on this year. You are also welcome to come early and have lunch with us that day. Please have someone available to share this special event with your child.

As always, thank you for your support. We can't wait to see how well everyone does on the CRCT!

The CRCT is Almost Here!

2nd graders will be taking the CRCT (Criterion Referenced Competency Test) next Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday (April 23, 24, 25). This important test shows us what we've learned this year and helps our teachers for next year know what to focus on as they teach us. Please help your child do his/her best by following these guidelines:

• Go to bed early and get a good night's sleep each night.
• Eat a good breakfast and bring a good, healthy snack each day.
• Get to school on time. You may want to consider riding the bus those days if you do not. (If you are late to school, you will not be able to enter the classroom after the test has started. We will begin testing at about 8:30. You will have to go to the media center and wait until we are finished. You will then have to make up the test you missed. Please be on time.)
• Come to school in a good mood ready to listen carefully, pay attention, and do your best.

We are confident that each and every student will do a great job on this test. Please have a conversation with your child and make sure they understand the importance of this test. Remind them to pay very close attention and do the very best they can. Show us all how much they've learned and how smart they are!

We will not be doing Family Journals this week or next so that we can prepare for and take the test.

Thank you for your support. We can't wait to see how well everyone does on this year's CRCT!

GME Foundation

Garrison Mill has recently established a Foundation whose purpose is to provide resources above and beyond what the County and the Garrison Mill PTA is able to provide.  Please visit their web page to find out more about who they are, what they do, and help support their first fundraising event.  You can visit them at:  GME Foundation.

Happy Spring Break!

Spring Break has finally arrived. We hope you all have a wonderful week off of school. If you are staying in town or taking a long car or plane ride, please take some time to practice your subtraction facts. We will be taking our final subtraction time test to send to 3rd grade after the break. We all did very well on our addition test (as well as our Exemplar), but had a little more trouble with subtraction. Practice some more and we'll retake the test after we return to school.

After Spring Break we'll have about a week before the CRCT begins. We have been practicing at school and hopefully you've been practicing at home too. We expect our class to do VERY well on this test. They have learned and grown so much this year. We are so proud of each and every one of them.

2nd grade CRCT testing will be April 23-25. Please get plenty of rest those nights, eat a good breakfast each morning, and be at school on time.

As you've seen, we have started a new spelling program. We completed all the Sitton Spelling lessons so we will work on various spelling lessons for the rest of the year to get us ready for 3rd grade. This week we practiced days of the week and after Spring Break, we'll practice contractions.

In math, we've been working on geometry. This week, we made really cool geometric shapes out of gumdrops and toothpicks. This really helped us see the faces, edges, and vertices of solid shapes. After the break, we'll work on fractions and review everything we've learned this year so we're ready for the CRCT.

Remember, you can still go on line and practice for the CRCT. Try to find some time to do so over the break. Have a safe and fun Spring Break and we'll see you on April 14th.

Are We Ready for 3rd Grade?

Next week we will begin to take some end of the year assessments that will be sent on to our 3rd grade teachers. We will be writing on Monday and then taking addition and subtraction time tests later in the week. There are still several students that are having trouble finishing their time tests. Remember addition and subtraction are the foundation of just about everything we do in math, so it is very important that we master this important concept. Please practice over the weekend so we can all do well on these assessments. There are links to great web sites on our school site. Good old fashioned flash cards also work great!

Thanks for your support!