Age Groups: Camp SPARC is for children who are rising 1-5th graders. Youngest Children must turn 6 by June 1, 2013 and will be entering First Grade. Oldest children must not exceed age 10 as of June 1, 2013 and will have just completed 4th grade. (When entering grade on the registration page please use 0 for Kindergarten)

Themes
Week 1 – June 3-7, 2013 Pottery & Volleyball *Includes Brave’s Game on Wed!
Week 2 – June 10-14, 2013 Yarn Crafts/Weaving & Tennis
Week 3 – June 17-21, 2013 Cartooning & Basketball
Week 4 – June 24-28, 2013 Lego Arts NEW! & Flag Football
No Camp! July 1-5, 2013 No Camp In observance of the July 4th Holiday
Week 5 – July 8-12, 2013 Painting & Basketball
Week 6 – July 15-19, 2013 ** Community Action Week **
Week 7 – July 22-26, 2013 Weaving & Baseball
Week 8 – July 29-Aug 2, 2013 All Arts Review & Bike Week NEW!

**Community Action Week campers will take field trips to learn ways they can volunteer in their Communities and become strong citizens. Examples prior visits include a trip to the Emmaeus House Homeless Center, Atlanta Tool Bank, Trees Atlanta, Oakland Cemetery, & a Community Building presentation by the Atlanta Preservation Society.

Download flyer.

The time has come to close out the 2012-2013 school year. Students have spent the past several days at school focusing on our fifth Guiding Principle, “We Celebrate Our Individual and Collective Successes.” With portfolio shares, fifth grade movies, special morning meeting performances, field day, and signing yearbooks, we have been very busy. I am proud of the great work we have accomplished together and I hope each student is equally proud of his/her successes this year.

As you move into the less routine oriented summer months, please consider keeping reading and math fact fluency practice as daily occurrences for your child. We often see students slide a bit over the summer with their reading comprehension and math fact knowledge. We believe that it is simply from neglecting to keep those areas a priority for the eight weeks over summer break. Math practice can only take ten minutes a day. Maybe you could practice some facts on the way to the pool or during breakfast a couple of mornings a week?

As far as reading, I encourage you to spend some time reading aloud to your child, even if your child is an avid independent reader. When I was in my Children’s Literature class at Agnes Scott, my professor read to us for the last half of each class. I can still hear her voice and remember the books she shared with us (and that was a long time ago!). Reading aloud really brought the characters to life and allowed us to have wonderful conversations about many aspects of the books. It gave us a shared experience and a way to connect our own understandings to each other’s. You can also listen to books on CD while taking a road trip, so everyone gets the pleasure of being read to. The important part of reading, though, is following it up with conversation; that is what makes it meaningful and builds comprehension skills.

To support summer reading, students entering fourth and fifth grade in August will be required to complete a book over the summer. It is our hope that participating in this activity will provide our students with a shared summer experience. This will contribute to them having a common language and experience beginning the first day of school. Additionally, it allows teachers to plan community building opportunities for the beginning of the school year. Classes will engage in discussions, activities, and lessons surrounding these texts when they return to school. The fourth grade book is Crunch, by Leslie Connor. The fifth grade title is Lawn Boy, by Gary Paulsen. Both of these titles are available at the local library and on audio.

To get ideas about great books to read with your child, please visit Ms. Hanson’s blog. She has lists of books broken into age-appropriateness and interests.

Finally, I want to thank Coach Hall for organizing such an incredible field day for our school and all the volunteers that made it such a fun and safe day. Also, thank you to our PTCA for all the support you have given us throughout the year. You truly make our school a better place to learn!

To each of you, have a wonderful and safe summer! I look forward to seeing you again in August!

Lara

The Only Ones by Aaron Starmer

Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage

Wonder by R.J. Palacio

We have several copies of these books in our library that may be loaned out for the summer. Email me if you are interested in loaning one. In the spirit of supporting our local community, I would encourage purchasing the books from Bound to be Read in EAV. Ten percent of the sales of these books will be given back to our school at the end of the summer. Little Shop of Stories in Decatur and Barnes & Noble at the Edgewood retail district have also been asked to stock up on these items.

Students/families should choose at least one book, but reading two or all would be even better. This will allow for more flexibility when we begin our discussions in a few months. I would encourage your advisees to think about connections they have with the story as they read, and take notes in order to recall more easily when we return. Please see my blog for more detailed information on the book selections and links to reflection sheets.

http://atlncs.org/linahan/2013/05/07/summer-reading-2013/

Have a great summer!

Monday evening was our annual 8th grade celebration, an opportunity to honor the oldest group of students in our school as they prepare to head off to high school. The Maynard Jackson High School gym was overflowing with people there in support of our 8th grade students and to hear from six student speakers and two teachers–Mark Sanders and Darnell Fine–selected by the 8th grade class. While we celebrate the end of the ANCS experience for these students, we are also hard at work looking ahead to next year and how we can both build upon the successes of this school year and improve areas of need.

In my presentation to the ANCS Governing Board at its April meeting I summarized the results from our annual surveys of parents, students, and faculty/staff from early spring. These surveys–along with other data–help us to assess the school’s strengths and areas of growth, and I thank each of you who took this year’s survey. In general, the following themes emerged as strong points of the school in looking at survey responses K-8:

* High levels of satisfaction with the school: over 90% of respondents to the surveys for parents, students, and faculty/staff indicated satisfaction with the educational experience at ANCS
* Parents and students feel known well by teachers
* Parents feel students have been asked to do meaningful and worthwhile activities in classes
* Strong sense of collegiality and collaboration among faculty and staff

We also identified areas for improvement as we work through the summer and coming school year, including:

* Strengthening the effectiveness of school-home communication tools, particularly class blogs
* Further alignment of language and structures for curriculum and assessment from K-8
* Developing more consistency in the implementation of student behavior management with an emphasis on Conscious Discipline at both campuses
* Better meeting the needs of academically-advanced students
* Smoothing the transition from elementary to middle school

Our school’s K-8 leadership team has already begun efforts to address these areas, and as Executive Director, I will work closely with our new Middle Campus Principal, Cathey Goodgame, along with our returning team of Lara Zelski (Elementary Campus Principal), Maya Jenkins (Elementary Campus Assistant Principal), and Elayna Wilson (Middle Campus Assistant Principal) to facilitate a focus on these needs among our faculty/staff and parents to further improve the ANCS experience.

While we will have communication emails and letters at various points throughout the summer, this is the last official weekly Courier of the 2012-13 school year. Thanks for reading these important newsletters each week, and thanks for your support during this school year!

Sincerely,

Matt Underwood
Executive Director & Middle Campus Principal

If you would like to look over the 2012 book, here is the link:
http://www.blurb.com/b/3195216-paw-prints-2011-2012-art-book

Any questions? Please contact Michelle at michelle@bowersatl.com