Welcome to Our Class Page
To all Tiger families, welcome to Chelsea! I am excited to start the 2024-2025 school year with "Adventure Awaits" as our school theme.
At Chelsea School, we want each and every student to know they are valued and that they hold tremendous worth. Our school is built on the foundation of our three core values~ Respect, Responsibility, and Caring. Both students and teachers work towards these values daily. We also believe in fresh-starts and new beginnings. Let's make this school year special by believing in a growth mindset and by unlocking your child's true potential. We can accomplish this by working together. This school year will be a success on their educational journey!
Use this class page as an extension of our classroom to stay informed. It contains important dates, reminders, homework, the quarterly curriculum standards, links, and other essential information about what's happening in our classroom, school, and district.
Please check back often! Each school day's activities and homework assignments will be featured in the "Week at a Glance." The standard ELA homework is to read for a minimum of 20 minutes per day at home. Please encourage reading! We will also have occasional reading response homework.
We have many events, testing, and activities for the months of March and April!
Ramadan Mubarek- Those students that are fasting have the opportunity to meet and participate in alternate activities during the lunch/recess period. Please email me if your child is fasting and you would like to have them meet for the alternate activity.
IAR Spring 2025-Illinois Assessment for Readiness is the state assessment and accountability measure for Illinois students. The ELA summative assessment has students read and analyze passages from authentic texts that can be both fiction and nonfiction as well as multimedia. Then they use the knowledge from these passages and multimedia to respond to different types of questions that include a writing piece. Students have been given practice questions to help them become familiar with the digital format used on the TestNav testing platform. Students will know how to use the TestNav tools and features that will appear on their assessments.
Math IAR Testing is March 25, 26, 27 and will be completed during their Math Block time.
ISA-Illinois Science Assessment: 5th Grade students will also be taking part in the state science testing. The assessment will be administered online during their Math/Science/Social Studies block on April 8, 9, and 10.
Testing Preparation: Thank you for your partnership is ensuring your child has a good night's rest, complete breakfast, healthy snack, and water bottle. Please check-in about your child's headphones, as we only have one spare set in class. Students may also chew gum or bring mints for the testing period to possibly improve focus, concentration, and reduce stress or anxiety which can indirectly improve performance.
Lincolnway Special Recreation Association-Go Hawks!
It's basketball season and the 11th year of the wheelchair basketball game with our friends from the Lincolnway Special Recreation Association. Each year, we have been truly blown away by the support from everyone in the district and community, and we can't wait for this year's popsicle sale fundraiser and basketball games to once again support the LWSRA.
Wheelchair Basketball Fundraiser: FSD-157C Students/Staff vs. LWSRA Hawks will be held on Thursday, March 27th. Doors open at 6 PM, and the game starts at 6:30 PM at Hickory Creek Middle School. Donations will be accepted at the door. Thank you in advance for your donations.
April Field Trip- A yellow field trip notice went home for our next field trip to Graue Mill and Museum on Thursday, April 24th. The fee for this field trip is $12. Please sign up by 4/11 via MySchoolBucks.com, at www.fsd157c.org (under Links select Online Payments) or by check payable to Frankfort School District 157C. Please include your child's full name in the memo section of the check.
Family Shout Outs
We are offering parents the opportunity to complete a "Shout Out" form to celebrate students' accomplishments outside of the school day that can include events such as team competitions, recitals, etc.
This form is linked to the Chelsea e-newsletter. It is also posted on our Chelsea page. Depending on the number of "shout outs" we receive, we will recognize students either on the morning announcements or on the monitors throughout the school.
We are looking forward to acknowledging achievements by our students!
E-Learning Plan
The purpose of an emergency E-Learning plan is to provide for a continuation of learning and engagement for all students when conditions require that school cannot be in the building. Students will receive instruction through digital resources, and it would count as attendance days without the need to add emergency days to the end of our school year.
If an E-Learning Day is necessary, we will be utilizing the fifth-grade schedule.
See E-Learning attachment at the bottom of this page.
Important Days
Friday, March 28th: SIP Day-Early Dismissal 12:05
Thursday, April 3rd: Yearbooks need to be ordered by today!
March 31-April 4th-SPRING BREAK
April 7th, 8th, and 9th: ISA Testing
Friday, April 18th: No School
Monday, April 21st: No School
Thursday, April 24th: Field Trip
May 5th-9th: Fastbridge Testing
Thursday, May 15th: 5th Grade Step-Up Day
Friday, May 23rd: 12:05 Dismissal-School Improvement Day
Monday, May 26th: Memorial Day-No School
Tuesday, June 3rd: Last Day of School
Theme Thursdays at Chelsea
Thursday, April 10th: Character Day! Wear a shirt with your favorite movie, TV show, or cartoon character.
Thursday, April 17th: Earth Day! Let's wear green and/or blue in honor of Earth Day!
Thursday, April 24th: Adventure Awaits! Wear a shirt that represents a favorite place, or a shirt that you acquired on a vacation.
Show your Chelsea pride and wear our school colors of maroon and gold on Fridays!
Encore Schedule
Students will have P.E. class every morning. Students will also have the opportunity to enrich their learning in the following encore classes:
Quarter 1 Spanish with Mrs. Smerz
Quarter 2 STEM with Mrs. Jozaitis
Quarter 3 Music with Mrs. Zito
Quarter 4 Art with Mrs. Maney
Library on MONDAYS
My ELA classes will be going to the library on Mondays. My homeroom class will be going from 10:25-10:50 and the afternoon ELA Block 2 will be from 2:40-3:05.
Every year our school librarian, Mrs. Schubert, has the opportunity to add new books! We can always ask her for book recommendations. There are even audio books! We always look forward to this time period to grab a book and read to our heart's content! We are so fortunate to have an abundance of books to choose from in our school library.
Volunteers needed! Parents are invited to volunteer in the library this school year! If you are interested in volunteering, then please contact [email protected] to schedule a time to come in.
Erin's Law Presentations
Governor Pat Quinn signed Erin's Law in January of 2013, which requires all schools in the state of Illinois to provide age-appropriate sexual abuse and assault awareness and prevention education programs for students in grades Pre-K through 12. The Chelsea Intermediate School social workers will be teaching each lesson in the child’s classroom. The "Think First and Stay Safe" program will be the curriculum utilized for these lessons with a focus on Child Lures.
ClassLink at Home
Students can access ClassLink from their home computers! Directions for how to access the ClassLink launchpad from home are in the downloads section of this page. In order for students to not have to reenter usernames and passwords they will need to add an extension to their web browser. Directions for how to do that are also linked to this page. If the extension is not added, then login credentials will have to be entered each time.
This information can also be found on the district website under "Student/Parent Technology Tutorials."
Communicating with Students and Families
I am committed to establishing a strong parent-teacher relationship. I will be using this teacher webpage, email blasts, and the Remind app to communicate on a regular basis. You will be able to find the homework assignments in the "Week at a Glance" tab. The quarterly standards are listed in the "ELA Curriculum" tab.
If you would like to receive text notifications about your child's ELA class with information on homework and general reminders or announcements, then please select the Remind link that corresponds to your child's ELA block.
To sign up for Mrs. Smith's Homeroom and ELA Block 1 notifications, click the link below:
To sign up for Mrs. Smith's ELA Block 2 notifications, click the link below:
Please consider following us on social media to see photos and updates from our classroom, other teachers and our administrators. Follow Chelsea School on Twitter by adding @Chelsea_Tigers. We tag all of our school happenings with #WeAreChelsea.
Birthday Reminder
Birthdays are definitely a special day for students. It is a time to celebrate! That being said, per our district policy, we highly discourage the passing out of invitations at school. The only exception is if the entire class is being invited. However, you are more than welcome to send a non-food item (pen, pencil, etc.) for each student in class. We have 23 students in our homeroom (ELA Block 1) and 22 students in my afternoon ELA Block 2. Thank you in advance for your understanding and cooperation.
