About Us
Things to Know about
Team Infinity
Personnel:
Mrs. Rita Clark – Math and Science Teacher
Ms. Cate Lamb – Language Arts and Social Studies Teacher
Mr. Kevin Hamilton – Assistant Principal BRMS an 5/6 principal
Mr. Greg Martin – Guidance Counselor
Mrs. Tina Gallagher – Nurse
Ms. Holly Nicolle and Mr. Andy Aube – Special Educators
Mr. Jerry T - Classroom Assistant
This makes up our “Team.”
Glossary:
Exp: Exploratories
CMP: Connected Math Program
Math Investigations: Another Math Program
LA: Language Arts
CPR: Circle of Power and Respect, our morning meeting
Developmental Designs or DD: A middle school program that addresses social and differing academic needs of adolescents. The younger grades know this as “Responsive Classrooms.”
ATM: All Team Meeting
Policy:
Team Community is very important on the Infinity team. We believe that the social curriculum is as important as the academic curriculum it highly influences. Because of this belief, we work very hard to establish routines and rituals that build student to student/ student to teacher familiarity and trust. Some of these activities include: Morning Meeting, All Team Meeting, , specific academic-social planning for the first five weeks of school, lunch buddies and team social events.
CPR (Circle of Power and Respect) is our daily morning meeting where we practice many social skills such as: greeting each other, eye contact, speaking to a group. We have four components of morning meeting: Greet, Share, Activity, and the News and Announcements chart. Because CPR starts at 7:55 a.m. each morning it is really important for your child to be on time in the morning.
All Team Meeting is a problem solving or planning meeting. We will meet at least twice per month. We follow rules of order, which we establish, and generally function like a Town Meeting. This meeting functions as party of social studies and the social curriculum.
Phone calls home are not a habit we wish to encourage during the school day unless there is an emergency. Going to friends’ houses, missing lunches and homework do not count as emergencies. The cafeteria will allow students who do not make a habit of arrive without a lunch with a peanut butter or cheese sandwich and a milk. If homework is forgotten, we expect to see it the next day and it is one day late. Please arrange after school activities ahead of time if you can. Students need to bring a note if they are riding another student’s bus. We will allow a call if the plans were made ahead of time and the note is lost or forgotten: but please help us with this by remembering to send the note. Students are not allowed to use the phone without adult permission.
Groupings:
We have 41 students. We share the responsibility for all students. We have flexible groupings dependent on the units and the needs in reading, math and word study.
Rita sees all students for math and science
Cate sees all students for language arts and social studies.
Students are grouped in Clark/Lamb groups for classes out of our area . (For Exp’s , music and PE, Health, and Foreign Language.)
Exp’s:
Exp’s is short for Exploratories. At Browns River, Exploratories include Family and Consumer Science, Technology Education, Computer Science, Guidance and Art. Students will rotate every nine weeks through the 4 choices. These choices may be slightly different next year.
Music Class and Health Class typically alternate at midpoint of the year to enable all students to do both during the same time slot. Students meet for Music and Health two times per week if using the half year model, or once per week if using the whole year model.
Additional things to do here at BRMS:
Students and parents will need to check the BRMS web site for updates about after school activities and other school-wide announcements.
Check the library often for various wonderful additional activities to enjoy. Examples include Geo- Bee, DCF Reading, Pounding the pages, Rock and Read, Comedy Club, Geography club, and writing club.
Teachers may offer many fun clubs which pop up often. These may include Math Counts, Math club, chess club, rocket club, and others.
We will try to keep you updated with a weekly newsletter that we will post on the web page and send to you vie email. If you additional questions, Mr. Hamilton, is the grade 5 and 6 principal who will assist you. You also need to look for the River Raider on the BRMS web page.
Lunch and snacks:
We encourage students to bring a mug to school to keep here for the year. We use this for snack and celebrations. This helps keep the earth "green."
We provide a daily snack time sometime between 9 am and 10 am, which may vary from day to day depending on the schedule,
Students need to bring a snack from home or purchase a snack from the cafeteria. Students who need to purchase a snack need to do so before school or during snack time which will shorten their time to eat it.
Students will need to add money to their lunch accounts whenever necessary. There is no need to have cash here that may get misplaced. We encourage students to stop by the café and make any deposits before going to the classrooms as they arrive in the AM.
Prices for complete lunch is $2.50, additional milk is 50 cents
Entrée only costs $2.00, ice cream is sold on Tuesday and Friday. Ala carte prices vary from $. 50 to $1.25.
Snack packs are $1.50 each, and include milk, bagel and a fruit. Again, please purchase this before school as you arrive.
I encourage students to ask for the price paid each day as well as how much is left in their account. Let’s teach some money management skills.
Use of before school time (7:30 to 7:55) (aka morning duty time):
All students will report to the duty teacher who will be either outside or in the cafeteria during inclement weather. It is a great time to try our outstanding breakfast choices. Students who eat our breakfast here can report directly to the cafeteria as they arrive. Students should plan to be outside and dress appropriately. They may ask the duty teacher for a pass to the library or computer lab, but these passes are limited.
Music and band Lessons:
Students may choose to participate in band or chorus. Lessons usually rotate throughout the week. Band and Chorus meet two times per week. If a student chooses to be involved with both, they meet one time per week for each activity. Students will be given a lesson schedule. Look on their schedule to find out what days they will have music or lessons. Students who do not choose to participate in music will work in our classrooms on school -work, read or be scheduled for additional tutorials. It will be a period for teachers to meet individually with students.
Visiting the nurse:
Whenever students are not feeling well, we will send them to the nurse, Ms. Gallagher, with a pass. She will determine what happens next. Sometimes just talking witha parent makes them feel better. All health concerns need to be addressed directly with Ms. Gallagher. Students are not allowed to call home to be picked up without going through the nurse. This is very important and we ask that you help see that this procedure is followed.
Homework:
Homework is written by the student in the assignment book provide by the school. We do assignments every day at the end of the day and we post them on our team web page.
Homework should always be independent practice. We ask that parents provide a place that allows students with quiet time to focus on the task at hand. Never should it take more than 50 minutes of home time. Please let us know by responding in the assignment book if that is not the case.
Math facts practice should happen nightly for about 10 minutes to encourage fluency. Students can use either the computer or flash cards, regular cards, or any game to practice. There will be times when they will need to finish class-work. Most CMP practice should happen in school, but please ask about it. It is my goal to improve students’ confidence in their math abilities and show them how to make progress that makes them proud of their accomplishments.
Our science program is hands-on, so that work should be done here as we discuss the process as we develop the concepts. My plan is to develop a curiosity and love for exploring science topics.
Social Studies is mostly a very social event. We work in cooperative groups (which we spend a lot of time learning how to do effectively), we discuss, we work together, we watch videos, we use multiple sources from the library and computers. This is almost exclusively done at school with a very few exceptions. Student s may be asked to write in their reflection journal at home about social studies.
Ms. Lamb’s homework includes required nightly reading. This can be a novel or another form, but students must meet the state requirement of reading 25 novels per year. Part of the reading grade is reading on your own. We keep track of this with reading records and reading journals. Students will be expected to write in a reflection journal four nights per week.
We have an assignment book that we update daily. Remember to check the assignment books regularly. We’d like you to sign and give feedback to your child each night about the quality of their work. Ask to see some of their completed work to celebrate their progress and encourage them to take pride in their work. Of course, we appreciate any help with penmanship as well.
Report Cards:
Browns River has a trimester format, meaning report cards are sent home three times per year. We have a standards based report card, which means that students are graded by if they meet a standard or not. The grades are 1-shows no evidences of standard, 2-is approaching the standard, 3-meets the standard, 4-exceeds the standard. Evidence is gathered for each standard and is kept in a binder. We can review this evidence with parents and students when the first report cards come out.
Field Trips:
Field trips are usually a day long educational sojourn. In the past we have been allowed one field trip per teacher and one per team per year. This may change next year. We like to plan these trips after the year has begun, but we would like to have one very early on to build are team cohesion and include as many parents as are able. Check our newsletters for more information.
Parent volunteers:
Please contact us if you would like to volunteer to help in our classrooms or on field trips. We like to run communication through a parent leader who will send along information to all parents. Of course, we want to invite you into our classrooms to celebrate learning and see student work. Let us know how you would like to be involved. We will offer two opportunities to sign up for classroom volunteering, at our first breakfast and at Open House on September 22nd .