You Have Questions About...

Hello 4th Graders,

For today's post, I want to focus on some general areas of wonder.   I saw from your survey (see the diagram below) that you are most interested in the schedule, your lockers, lunch, and the playground.  A fair amount of you had questions in other areas, and hopefully, I answered some of those yesterday.   
 
So let me talk about some of these areas...

The Schedule
Here is an example of a 5th-grade schedule from this past year.  It will likely be fairly similar next year (assuming we are physically in school without  COVID restrictions that will force us to alter business as usual).    

7:45-8:00 Advisory Group (pretty similar to nest)
8:00-10:15 Core time (usually made up of 2 classes and a snack or break of some kind).  
10:15-11:00 Chorus/Band or X Block
11:00-11:30 - Lunch and Recess
11:30-1:00 - More Core Time (Broken into different classes or topic areas)
1:00-1:45 -  World Language or PE/Health
1:45-2:30 - AA (Specials - Art, Music, and Sustainability)
2:30 - Dismissal

Teachers always write the daily schedule on the board every day, and in the first week or so teachers help kids get to classes outside the core area so that they can learn it quickly.  After the first week, kids know where to go! 

The Lockers
Every student will get a locker in the team's common area.  The locker has two parts, a taller skinny part where kids hang their backpacks and coats, and a smaller square part at the top which fits books, binders, folders, pencil cases, and Chromebooks.  It generally takes kids a couple of days to a week to really get the opening the locker down pat! 
Kids usually get a PE locker as well.  These lockers are in the gym area and some kids choose to use them to store a spare pair of sneakers, but some kids choose not to use it, and that's okay too.  

Lunch
Lunch for 5th graders is 30 minutes long.  There are two lunch options each day:  a hot option or the main meal, and an a la carte option which usually has cold sandwiches, bagels, baked cheese sandwiches or sometimes leftover pizza, etc.  The lunch option is posted every day, and the a la carte option is usually first come first served of the other options.  Mrs. Dolan helps prepare meals for both CBMS and TBPS, so you'll likely be pretty familiar with many of the options.  There is chocolate milk available each day as well as regular and skim milk.  After the first 15 minutes of lunch, kids can choose to go outdoors to play.  On cold days you can stay inside if you wish, but if it's a nice day we encourage all kids to get outside for fresh air.  

The Playground
Though we do have a small playground at CBMS, it is not widely used.  Generally, when kids go outside for recess they play soccer, football, ga-ga ball, four-square, wall ball, or basketball.  Kids who don't prefer these games just kind of mill around and chat or play tag or chase.  Kids in middle school are generally less interested in playground equipment and don't seem to mind not having swings and slides and the like.

I hope talking about these things was helpful.  If you have any questions as you read this, please feel free to send me an email at jhempey@huusd.org and ask away!    

Have a great afternoon! 

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