From the Engineer’s Desk

Dear Parents, Happy New Year~ I hope that each of you enjoyed special time with your families over the holidays and feel renewed in the New Year, 2015! We are extremely fortunate to have such a wonderful refuge, Bainbridge, for our students and community to learn and grow. Our students, staff, families and business community are outstanding and look out for each other. We all work together to keep our children safe and make sure they are getting the finest education. In the spirit of business partnership, it is my privilege to officially announce a new business partner, SubWorks, located in Perryville. If you have not already noticed, a sign stating our partnership is located on Manor Drive, under our Bainbridge Elementary Sign. Please show your appreciation by supporting SubWorks!

During January, students will be taking the winter assessments: Dibels and Scantron. The data collected from these assessments will be analyzed by our teachers to make informed instructional decisions in the classroom. We will close the second marking period on January 23rd. It’s hard to believe that half of the school year has already past us by! Also, this is the first year that students in grades, 3, 4 & 5 will be taking the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career (PARCC), in the spring. Please look for more information to follow.

As always, January is National Reading Month. Bainbridge will once again support reading by playing Name

That Book. Each morning, beginning on Wednesday, January 7, 2015 students will listen to a short passage from a book on the morning news. Each child will try to identify the title of the book passage read and author. Students will then write their answer on a piece of paper and place it in the “drawing box” located in the cafeteria. At the end of the day, three students name’s will be drawn (with the correct answer) and win a prize. Good luck and keep reading!

Finally, nominations are being accepted for Cecil County’s Teacher of the Year award. This award represents a quality educator who exemplifies the heart and soul of teaching. Please see the back page for specific eligibility and requirements necessary for this honor. The deadline to submit the nomination packet is February 18th.

Welcome back! We are on the right track…

Happy 2015! We are approaching the ½ way point in our 2014-2015 school year. I am very impressed with our students and the growth they are showing; both academically and socially. I know that we will begin the second half of the year energized and motivated to meet goals and challenges we’ve set for ourselves and one another. Take the time to help your students set and maintain goals both in and out of school. Start with manageable and attainable goals, so students can experience success. Charles R. Swindoll said, “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” Our students can choose to make today a great day. Teachers and parents are in a unique position to model and guide our students. We look forward to having the opportunity to shape so many young lives. I hope you and your family have a wonderful start to the New Year. Let’s keep growing!

Bainbridge Express News

Regina Roberts Principal

Kimberly Sands

Assistant Principal

January 2015

Justice & Fairness are the character traits

for January. Fairness is living by the golden

rule: treat others the way you want to be

treated. Practice fairness by cooperating

with peers, following the same rules everyone

else has to follow, considering other people’s

feelings and ideas, and solving problems in

ways that benefit everyone.

A Parent Meeting to review the Personal

Safety Curriculum will be held on Tuesday,

January 6th at 9:15am in the cafeteria. The

School Counselor will be teaching classroom

guidance lessons about personal safety during

the months of January and February. Parents

of children in pre-kindergarten through fifth

grade are invited to attend this meeting. A

letter was sent home prior to winter break to

give you the opportunity to let Mrs. Gough

know if you are planning to attend this

meeting. Please contact Mrs. Gough if you

have any questions regarding the curriculum.

Thank you for your donations to both the

Turkey Trot and Coats For Kids. Your

generosity has helped many local families over

the holiday season.

Congratulations to our Students of the Month

for the December character trait of Caring. Mrs. Romberger/PKam Hailey Blackburn Mrs. Romberger/PKpm Brady Ashford Miss Luckman Aleah Simpkins Miss Murphy Kayden Hogan Mrs. Rovine Hunter Martin Mrs. Strong Denitri Gibbs Miss Howard Cassidy Jackson Mrs. Juno Alex Moroz Mrs. LaRue Yazmeen Casteneda Miss Parry Makenzi Pugh Mrs. Bright Phoenix Macomber Mrs. Kmecz Josh Hicks Mrs. Moran JD Jacobs

Mrs. Obenchain Kaleb Lucas

Mr. Ayers Grace Myers

Mrs. Holmes Kaiden Patrick

Mrs. Mazza La'Raine Anderson

Miss York Andrew Merchant Miss Fleischer Kylee Mitchell Mrs. Edgecomb Joshua Watkins

Mrs. Marousek Jacob Rebman

Mrs. Mullins Sage Phillips

Mrs. Sickels Morgan Pierce

Mrs. Dyson Charisa Kraus

Mrs. Nickle Owen Schwacke

Mrs. Triantafillos Delany Downey

Mrs. Wirtanen Katie Derrickson

Preventing the spread of flu in schools is critical to keeping everyone as healthy as possible.

Healthcare professionals recommend that sick children stay home until they're recovered enough to go back to school, typically about 24 hours after symptoms improve. This helps not only to protect the child's health, but also to prevent the spread of the virus to other children.

Fever

We are pieces of the puzzle!

If your child has a temperature of 100 degrees, it's best to keep him/her home. A fever is a sign that the body is fighting off infection, which means your child is vulnerable, and can also spread the virus to others. Wait at least 24 hours after last fever without the use of Tylenol or Motrin to send your child back to school. Vomiting/Diarrhea

If your child is vomiting and/or diarrhea please keep them home. Wait 24 hours after the last episode before returning to school.

Nurse, Jen Day

Congratulations to Jasmine Lowery, Sarah Murrell, Tayson Johnson, Michael Phillips and Madeline Cox who have art work exhibited in the Winter Art Show at the Cecil County Arts Counsel. The Cecil County Arts Council is located at 135 E. Main Street, in Elkton. The exhibit starts on January 8th and the last day will be January 29, 2015. An artist reception will be

held on January 17, 2015 from 2-4pm. The snow date will be on January 24, 2015.

Pre-K Pre-K News! Happy New Year! We are beginning our new unit on Clothes! We will be discussing what clothes to wear in specific weather, how clothes are made, and how to take care of clothes etc. We are continuing to recognize all upper and lower case letters of the alphabet and numbers 0-30. We are working on identifying letter sounds individually and in words. Other skills we are practicing are counting by rote and one to one correspondence, identifying 2D and 3D shapes, greater than and less than, as well as rhyming and syllabication. We have so much fun learning! We hope you enjoyed the pictures of your child in our class-made teepee! Thanks for your continued support of our Pre-K program! I will be assessing later this month on the various skills we have been working on.

Kindergarten Happy New Year! Time has simply flown by in kindergarten! We have watched your kindergarteners learn and grow so much already, can't wait to see what is in store for the rest of the school year! We appreciate all of your help at home, including helping with homework and sight word practice. At home you can continue to practice how to tie shoes, put on jackets and gloves, and zip up coats. Please make sure that your student has a weather appropriate change of clothes to keep in their lockers, and please make sure to send your student in a warm winter jacket every day. Now is a good time of year to replenish your student's stock of school supplies, especially glue sticks and crayons. Thank you all so much for all of your help this year! 1st Grade

Happy New Year to our first grade families!! We hope you all enjoyed the holiday break…we definitely did!!

We have noticed a lot of our first graders have lost or are running low on materials. Keep this in mind. A new supply of glue sticks or pencils may be needed!! We are fortunate to have such friendly and kind first graders that share their materials with others.

There are many exciting new things coming up!! Our new science unit is living things. Students will be learning about parts of a plant and their purposes, all types of organisms, and animal life cycles. This is a very fun unit for them!!

In math, we are diving deep into story problems. We will be “dissecting” them to look for key words that tell us if we are adding or subtracting. Please be ready to practice these at home with our fabulous first graders!!

As always, continue to read daily! Practice our sight words and point them out in everyday things such as recipes, television shows, and newspapers or magazines! A great way to become more involved with their reading is to ask comprehension questions during and after a story!

Thank you for your continued support. We appreciate our first grade families!

2nd Grade

Happy New Year! Through the few months students were in 2nd grade for 2014 they made great friendships, worked extremely hard and persevered through some tough content! We are so proud of all of our hard working students! We are hoping that 2015 continues the same way!

In Language Arts we will continue to read and work with both literary and informational texts. Please continue to read with your child every night. It is important to ask them questions that inquire about characters, settings, problems, solutions as well as details about what they read. In Writing students will continue studying the parts of a sentence. They will learn that sentences have subjects, verbs and sometimes more than one of each! In Science we will begin studying clouds and different types of weather certain clouds might bring!

Some things you can work on at home to help your child become more successful are practicing basic math facts, the weekly spelling pattern and words, and reading daily. Also, make sure your child completes their homework every night. Remind your child that it is his or her responsibility to take their homework, assignment book, and mail home with them every day, as well as turn

in any papers from their folders to their teacher. We are looking forward to a very successful and eventful 2015!

3rd Grade Happy New Year! We can’t believe it is 2015

already! We hope you all had an enjoyable holiday season.

The third graders continue to work extremely hard at multiplying and dividing. They are seeing the relationship between the two operations and realizing that knowing the multiplication facts can be a huge help in solving division problems. Please continue to practice these facts at home. We will continue to solve multi-step story problems and learn more about the properties of multiplication.

We are finishing up our unit on the Amish by creating a document with facts and photographs of the Amish way of life on the computer, as well as writing an opinion paragraph on who works the hardest in the Amish community. The students have learned so much about their way of life after visiting the farm and house and reading a variety of fiction and non-fiction texts about their culture.

We have now built some background knowledge about Egypt so we can better understand the text we are reading in science. We have identified the steps in the engineering design process and are beginning to experiment with light ourselves. We will soon be solving problems by designing and improving our own lighting system.

Thanks, as always for your continued support. Stay warm as we approach the coldest days of the year.

4th Grade

Happy New Year to you and your family! The fourth grade team is excited to be wrapping up the second marking period this month. Now is a good time to check in with your student(s) to see if they need to replenish any of their school supplies. We will be decomposing, comparing and finding equivalency. The students will be drawing fractions to help them visualize and make sense of them. Colored pencils are a huge help!

In Social Studies we are studying the colonization of our great state of Maryland. We have been reading about the first settlers and how they established the first colony, St. Mary’s City.

In Science, we continue our unit on the mechanics of motion. December had the kids hopping in potato sacks to measure speed. January will have the students racing cars down a ramp and testing the friction of different surfaces.

As our language arts wraps up in the second marking period, we are looking at text structure and examining how an author interacts with a reader.

5th Grade Happy New Year! Fifth grade is continuing on with a multitude of skills. In math, we will be dividing whole numbers and decimals. Keep studying your math facts at home! In reading, we are continuing with our macro-concept of Interdependence. We will be reading a story called Out of Mind. In this story, we study interdependent relationships between students and the world around them. In social studies. we will be analyzing information about colonization, The students will be pretending that they are starting their own colony and have to develop a government, economic opportunities, and choose a location. We are excited to see what the students decide!

Family Involvement Link

First, I want to take a moment to thank the VOLUNTEERS for doing a wonderful job volunteering at Bainbridge Elementary School. You are one of the

reasons Bainbridge is such a great place to

learn! We appreciate you so much. THANK YOU!

Great events to Attend: Wednesday, January 7, 2015 8:15-8:45AM Family

Involvement Team Meeting. Parents, we would love to have you to attend and share your thoughts and

ideas about events at Bainbridge Elementary.

Important Dates:

Thursday, January 8, 2015 9:30-11:30 Toddler Time Class

A Tuesday, January 13, 2015-9:30 Induction Ceremony for

School Safety Patrol Program Thursday, January 15, 2015 9:30-11:30Toddler Time Class

B Thursday, January 22, 2015 6:00 PM Literacy Carnival for

K-2 grades and Families Thursday, January 29, 2015 6:00 PM Literacy Carnival for

3-5 grades and Families

I hope to see you soon, Helen Billiet, FIA

ahead Jan. 5 Regular Classes Resume Jan. 7 Family Involvement Team Meeting 8:15-8:45am

Jan. 8 Toddler Time-Class A / 9:30 am-11:30am Jan. 9 School closed for students and 10 month staff Jan. 13 Induction Ceremony for School Safety Patrol

Program -9:30am Jan. 14 PTO Meeting 9:30 am Jan. 19 Schools Closed-Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday Jan. 22 Pre-K – 2nd Literacy Carnival Night 6-7:15pm

Jan. 23 Good News Assembly / 9:15am – 10:00am /Gym Jan. 23 2nd Marking Period Ends Jan. 26 Schools Closed-Professional Day Jan. 28 iMom Morning Breakfast Program / 8:15am – 8:45am Jan. 29 Grades 3-5 Literacy Carnival 6-7:15pm

Please see the following attachments regarding

Nomination of Cecil County Teacher of the Year!