· NCCPTA Volunteer Opportunities Abound! Please check it out on the…
· NCCPTA Membership Form
· Advertise your Business in this year’s NCC Source (Student Directory)
· Online Resources for North Chevy Chase Students and Families
· Walk F.A.R. for NAAR (Family & Friends for Autism Research) – coordinated by NCC teachers Ms. Taylor & Mr. Ehlman
Monday, September 10
ï Parent Information Mtg. for 4th-6th Grade Instrumental Music, 7:00 pm
Thursday, September 13
ï Teachers and Parents as Readers, NCC Book Club, 12:35 p.m.
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Tuesday, September 18
ï NO SCHOOL – Rosh Hashanah
Thursday, September 20
ï Back to School Night at NCC, 7:00 p.m.
We’re off to a great start to the new school year and I am very excited to see students actively engaged with the instructional programs throughout the school. No matter the subject, from art to social studies and everything in between, our students and teachers are striving to make every minute count toward increasing student achievement.
The staff and I are pleased to have you working with us as we strive to provide the highest quality educational program for your child. We are confident that with your assistance, your child will have a very rewarding and successful school year.
As indicated in the paragraph above, we feel very strongly about parent involvement at our school. Simply put, it’s a requirement! National research and an informal sampling of our school have confirmed that most students whose parents are involved in their children’s education get higher grades and have better school attendance records. Of course, there are many ways of doing this, but here is a brief list you may wish to consider:
· Set the Stage - Begin now and continue throughout the year to talk about school as a place of business for children. Highlight for your child your expectation that he/she will always make their best effort in school.
· Stress Teamwork - Continue an attitude toward school that indicates you and the school are there to help them achieve. Students should have a clear vision that we’re all the same team, working toward the same goal, improved student achievement.
· Stay Informed - To do this takes much effort of parents, teachers and students.
Parents and teachers should work toward developing and maintaining a friendly and mutually respectful relationship. None of us has enough time to communicate as much as we’d like, but we can all make a concentrated effort to inform and be informed. The better-informed parents are, the more they’re able to support the efforts of the child and teacher.
To our many new families, we welcome you to North Chevy Chase and invite you to become involved in the many activities we have here. We are excited to have you here and look forward to a year filled with rich, diverse and meaningful learning opportunities.
We opened this year with an enrollment that exceeds 340 students. WOW! We also increased our staff allocation with the addition of another classroom teacher, a full-time special education classroom teacher and a full-time reading specialist. We welcome to the NCC family the following new faces:
· Nicole Ard - Special Education Resource Teacher
· Shawn Ackley - Fifth Grade Reading, Language Arts, Social Studies Teacher
· Susan Gent - Sixth Grade Mathematics Teacher
· Edward MacDonald - Technology Teacher
Unfortunatly for us, a new staff member to NCC, Heather Lyons - special education classroom teacher, has moved to New York. I am in the process of interviewing candidates for this position. In the interim, we are fortunate to have Judith Northrop, a former teacher and currently a staff development substitute, assist in implementing the instructional program to students.
Many thanks and appreciation to our parents for providing the very delicious and delightful "Welcome Back" breakfast and lunch for the staff’s first days back to work. We continue to be in awe of your thoughtfulness and generosity. It was a great way to start this year.
In addition to this communication, your child should be bringing home several documents for your review. We appreciate your prompt attention to the items that need to be returned to school.
Please mark your calendar, Thursday, September 20, 2001 - Back To School Night program, starting at 7:00 p.m.
Here’s to a great 2001-2002 school year!
Dear Parents and NCC Staff,
The NCC PTA is looking forward to seeing old friends and new faces as we begin another school year. We have a wonderful, energetic new Executive Board and we encourage all of you to join our enthusiastic and committed organization. Studies have shown that a child’s academic performance increases if their parents are involved in their education. We have many opportunities for you to become actively involved here at NCC! Whether you are new to our NCC family or returning to a new grade, we hope that you will consider volunteering some of your time to our team.
The NCC PTA strives to make your child’s year a successful and rewarding one. PTA support of our school provides not only money to bolster academic and cultural programs but also a resource for teachers and staff. For the 2001-2002 school year, we are dedicated to providing you with a forum to become involved in all aspects of school life. This year we will be focusing on a stronger partnership between all the PTAs in our cluster. This enables us to share ideas and best practices to increase and promote both academic and social success among our students from the elementary school years through high school. We will continue to strengthen communication among parents, teachers and administrators. This includes the implementation of our after-school tutoring program, our work implementing the county’s School Improvement Plan (SIP), and our commitment to the principles of our Community of Caring program.
We will, of course, continue our popular fund-raisers such as International and Bingo Nights, Spring Fling and Sally Foster. Wonderful additions to such events include our new Harvest dinners, the NCC Coffeehouse, a new and revised book fair along with a Barnes and Noble Night and a delicious winter fund-raiser, Lisa’s Favorites. In addition, we will continue to support our varied enrichment programs such as Cultural Arts, FLES and after school clubs.
Many committees are already at work! The publication of our NCC Source, which is part directory and part treasure trove of useful information, is already underway. The Sally Foster wrapping paper fund-raiser will start this week, and our staff appreciation team has already hosted both a breakfast and lunch for our staff. There are immediate opportunities to help! Please look over the list attached to this issue and give either of us a call or an email if you would like to contribute your time and effort. We have an active tutoring program that badly needs parents to help coordinate its staff (see related article below). We would like to find a new editor/publisher for this publication who could be trained to take over from our tireless Sam Hoxie. The Fall Harvest Dinners will need a few planning coordinators, and we have many other committees that still have spaces for interested parents.
We encourage ALL of our parents to contribute their talent and expertise to the PTA. Be an active participant!!! Our meetings are on the first Tuesday of each month. We have structured these meetings to include topics of interest to parents. Our October meeting will focus on effective homework strategies. Each child at NCC has individual needs and we hope to help define those needs and educate all parents so they may become a positive and successful advocate for their child. We welcome your input and your involvement!!
Your Co-presidents,
Diana Ditto Amanda Manheim
(301-949-3446) (301-907-0177)
DittoGDJTB@aol.com babhr@aol.com
******************************************************
2001-2002 NCC PTA Executive Board Members
President.......
Diana Ditto
President-elect. Amanda Manheim
6th Grade VP
Peggy Iraola
5th Grade VP
Margaret McBurney
4th Grade VP..........
Margaret Go
3rd Grade VP...
Meg Ferris
Secretary..
Wilsonia Cherry
Treasurer Suzi
& Jeff Walsh
B-CC Cluster Representatives.
Charlotte Fremaux & Sam Hoxie
MCCPTA Delegate.................. Needed
Diversity Representative
Susy Hansen
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Celebrate America's stories at the National Book Festival this Saturday, September 8, 2001 at the Library of Congress on the east lawn of the U.S. Capitol. There will be readings throughout the day by more that 50 award-winning authors of books for children and adults. The festival will also feature storytelling, international foods, music, and much, much more. It will be from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm. Hope to see you there.
Reminder! Parents
and students if you have any items, music, or art to share for Hispanic American
Month (September 15th - October 15th) please contact Ms. Brown in the media
center or Mrs. Hansen at 301-933-5264.
This year fourth through sixth graders in Intelligent Gatherers of Information (IGI) will focus on current events and aeronautics. It is an exciting exploration across the curriculum focusing on the history and current developments of the space program. Third graders will also learn more about mankind's journey to space. Students will be given in class assignments that will be graded and incorporated into their science, math, or reading language art grades. Ms. Brown is working with all content area teachers. Parents will be informed about IGI assignments via FAOU. If you have any questions, please contact Ms. Brown.
Please consider becoming one of the NCC Tutoring Program Co-coordinator with Nancy Sommers; WE ARE SERIOUSLY AT RISK OF LOSING THIS GREAT PROGRAM, WHICH PROVIDES TUTORING ASSISTANCE TO ALMOST 10% OF OUR STUDENTS, IF WE DON'T GET A PARENT WILLING TO HELP RECRUIT VOLUNTEERS AND COORDINATE THE PROGRAM!!!
This job is too big for one person, but very manageable for 2 or 3 people, and it's important to start now or the program won't get off the ground this year.
For those who don't know about the program: it's a once-a-week, after school program where NCC students who need some extra help with basic skills or homework are tutored by adults or 8th-12th graders after school. Usually about 25-30 NCC students, recommended for the program by their teachers, participate at any given time.
Mrs. Greene, with the NCC staff, handles the identification of students who would benefit from the program and contacts their parents. She provides space for the tutoring, training for the volunteers, back up academic support when we have questions, and identifies relevant grants. The parent Co-coordinators of the program share the following responsibilities:
· Recruiting volunteers (last year's coordinators, Jenny Elliot and Carol Henry, have already started this process rolling, so initial contacts have been made with both BCC & Westland)
· Contacting and confirming participation of all volunteers arranging training (to be conducted by NCC staff) being present for each session, or an assigned group of sessions to handle any problems that arise and supervise the program
· Identifying and purchasing supplies
· Purchasing weekly snacks for both tutees & tutors
· Matching tutors with tutees based on who will be attending the session each week (each week, some tutors can't come, and some tutees can come or are added in)
· Arranging a winter and spring party for tutors & tutees in lieu of the tutoring sessions
· Sending weekly reminders to tutors (via email, usually)
Once the program is up & running (probably some time in late October), it takes about 2-3 hours per week of your time, including the tutoring session itself. One thought has been to rotate the coordinators among the dates of the program, but we need several coordinators to do that.
If you are
interested or have questions, please contact Carol Henry by email at cintnerh@erols.com
or phone (301-946-1893), or call Nancy Sommers (301-949-1726).
Please consider giving 2 hours a month to xerox NCC’s From All of Us. We need four parents to commit to one Friday morning a month. This is an easy job, a truly appreciated task and a vital part of NCC. You even get to read the scoop in relative peace before the kids come home! Please contact Margaret McBurney 301-962-6445 or mcburneycm@aol.com.
Hello, and welcome to another year at NCC! We are your representatives to the B-CC Cluster this year, and in this column will be bringing you news of events in our cluster schools as well as issues that affect all of our children as they articulate through the system. There are many exciting things happening throughout our cluster (e.g., the long-awaited move back to Bethesda for B-CC; the development of a Pre-IB program at Westland; the adoption of NCC's tutoring program as a model for cluster schools), and we want to keep you abreast of these. We will also take NCC's issues to the cluster level in monthly meetings, which are held in a different cluster school each month, for the purpose of communication and advocacy. Some of the topics discussed will be of particular interest to parents, and you will be invited to attend. We will keep you informed of those.
The first cluster-wide effort in which NCC will be participating will be the International Walk To School Day-USA, on October 2, 2001. It was originally conceived as a special day for communities to come together to demonstrate the importance of safe, walkable neighborhoods and for community members to share their concerns for pedestrian accessibility to school, work, shopping and recreation. Last year many communities and school districts all over the world participated, and it was a successful effort. This year, greater participation is planned and expected, and Montgomery County will be out in force.
Due do the unusual articulation patterns of our cluster, the majority of NCC students ride the bus to their "home" school. For that reason, in order to create a real "walking experience" for our students, we are working with Mrs. Greene and Transportation to coordinate our bus drop-off at the shopping center on Manor Road in front of Chevy Chase Market. Staff and parents will walk the bus riders to school, giving everyone an opportunity to experience the neighborhood walk, and to highlight pedestrian safety issues. Safety will be our main concern, and we will all learn by doing. We will use Walk to School Day as an opportunity to practice safe walking skills and help our children become more aware pedestrians. As everyone will have shared the experience, our subsequent discussion of pedestrian safety will be more meaningful. We will also encourage neighborhood walks to the bus stop so that particular safety issues of individual neighborhoods can be highlighted and discussed.
For further information, go to the website: http://www.walktoschool-usa.org, or call one of us. We will keep you informed of our plans as they unfold.
Your Cluster Representatives,
Charlotte Fremaux (301-589-6908/cmfremaux@aol.com) and Sam Hoxie (301-942-0743/samhoxie@megapathdsl.net)
Applications for Patrol Officers are due this Friday, September 7th. Interviews will be held on Friday, September 14th.
Welcome Back! Hope you did your summer reading! We will meet on Thursday, September 13th at 12:35 P.M. in Mrs. London's room. We will discuss BIG STONE GAP and THE EDUCATION OF LITTLE TREE. I would like to invite 3rd grade parents and anyone new to NCC to join our book club. The only prerequisite is to enjoy reading and discussing books! Contact Mrs. London if you have any questions.
Mem Fox, best selling author and literacy expert will read from and sign her new book, Reading Magic: Why Reading Aloud to Our Children Will Change Their Lives Forever on Sunday, September 16th at 3:00 P.M. at the Barnes and Noble in Bethesda. Call 301-986-1761 for more information.
Important
From All of Us Info
The deadline for each From All of Us will
be the Wednesday before the Friday publication date.
Submit articles to samhoxie@megapathdsl.net,
FirstClass to Sam Hoxie or leave in the FAOU box in the front office.
Attachments (flyers, notices, etc.) must be in the FAOU box by Friday, before
school (only one copy is needed), or given to me by the deadline.
Please let me know by Wednesday if you are planning an attachment.
Note that many attachments may require prior authorization from Mrs.
Greene. A monthly calendar will be
published each month beginning October 2001.
Please be sure you have updated important dates on the master calendar in
the office, or have contacted me to have items included.
Calendar information will also be updated on the new web calendar at http://www.localendar.com/public/nccpta
-- Sam Hoxie