Weekly Family Update

September 3, 2019

Greetings CLA-EAST Families!

I hope everyone enjoyed the three-day weekend. Labor Day was a day all about us. The laborers. No matter where we come from and what type of work we do, we all deserve the time and opportunity to reflect and be thankful for the opportunity to do labor. I thank each and every family for the opportunity to work with your child(ren). The work I do is a blessing and I feel honored to spend the time I do with your child(ren).

Now that all beginning of the year assessments is complete, our instructional coaches and teachers have begun analyzing the data to determine proper next steps for each scholar. There are four main areas that we use beginning of the year (BOY) assessment data to enhance our instructional practices; (1) classroom instruction and better differentiation, (2) after school tutoring, (3) personal pathways, (4) and in-school interventions. Over the next two weeks, your scholar will see changes, some greater than others, in the way their teachers will approach their daily instructional practices.

September is a tone-setting month in terms of student attendance. Studies show that the more time a child spends in school, the more likely they are to grow academically and a trend towards stronger grades. For those reasons and many more, your scholars must attend school EVERY DAY! Strong attendance habits at the start of the school year translate to strong attendance throughout the entire year.

This week be on the lookout for your parent access letter to your scholars PowerSchool account. This is your access to check your scholar’s grades and overall performance. Although progress reports are sent home every two weeks, I encourage all families to periodically check their child’s grades and make a commitment to communicating with our teachers with questions and concerns. All staff can be reached by email (firstname.lastname@citizensleadership.org), by phone (216-532-5900) or by appointment.

8th Grade Families! We have already begun the process of high school transition. A few families have already signed-up for their HS-transition meetings. It is required that all 8^th grade families do so. Here is the link for signing-up for your high school transition meeting (8^th grade families only)

Lastly, after careful consideration, we have decided to discontinue posting homework on Facebook. We do understand the convenience it provided our families, however, we felt it was best for our scholars and school at this time. For questions about your scholar homework, please reach out directly to your scholar’s classroom teachers by email.

I’m looking forward to another great week…let’s go TIGERS!

Yours in Education,

Ricardo Franklin, Sr.

Founding Principal

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Academic Updates
	6^TH GRADE	7^TH GRADE	8^TH GRADE
MATH	Scholars will continue their work on finding the area of 2-D shapes. They will transition to finding the area of 3-D shapes later in the week.	Scholars will continue working with scale factor and using it to create drawings. They will work on completing a scaled drawing model.	Scholars will be continuing their unit on Rigid Transformations and Congruence. They will also learn the properties shared by congruent figures and be able to prove congruence of figures.
SCIENCE	Scholars will be diving in to their first unit of the year. Scholars will be learning about the connections between rocks and the origins of life on Earth.	Scholars will be starting the first unit of the year! They will be learning bout matter, what it’s made of and what it is.	Scholars will be learning about the significance and difference between distance vs displacement.
ENGLISH	Scholars will continue reading the novel, My Name is Parvana while also making inferences about literacy text using specific evidence. Also scholars will be learning how authors develop charters in a story	Scholars will continue reading their current short story from Flying Lessons & other Stories as well as examining the various writing techniques of characterization	Scholars will continue their study of the novel All American Boys, focusing on character perspectives and how authors reveal character traits through dialogue
SOCIAL STUDIES	Scholars will continue their exploration of geography and how it influences our everyday lives. This week they will also dive into landforms and helpful geographical tools to that help us better understand the world.	Scholars will be looking at the Ancient Greek Legacy of theatre by acting out portions of the “Odyssey”. They will also be diving further into the structure of fables. The end of the week will see the scholars looking at the history of the Olympics.	Scholars will be finishing the timeline project. There is a quiz on Thursday and they will be watching the movie Glory to close out the week.