Good Evening Peasley Pride Families,
We hope everyone has enjoyed the beautiful Virginia weather this weekend! Rested and ready for another amazing week at Peasley Middle School!
This week, our 8th graders will venture into their first SOL tests of the school year. On Tuesday, March 21st our 8th graders will engage in the Short Paper portion of the test. On Wednesday, March 22nd, our 8th graders will take the Multiple Choice portion of the test. All testing will begin promptly at 8am. Please be sure your students are well rested and have had a balanced breakfast prior to testing. The remainder of the week will be used for make-up testing. However, if your student engages in the tests alongside their peers, the typical testing scenario, this is ideal versus a make-up session. Thank you for your support during this initial testing window at Peasley Middle School. We will engage in other content area testing in grades 6-8 this coming May, dates to come.
We are very proud of our band and choir students that have been participating in various assessments within and outside of our school division. Mr. Perry, Choir Director and Mrs. Talbot, Band Director have worked closely with our students to result in superior ratings thus far. Good luck to some of our band students that will join another assessment round this Wednesday, March 22nd. We are also very proud of our team that attended the National Ship Repair Digital Innovation Competition with Mrs. Newsome last week. These students were exposed to an incredible level of competition and they did an amazing job representing Peasley.
We’re excited to make you aware of a free program, ENGAGE Virginia, that will provide students with an extra layer of academic support this school year. The Virginia Department of Education has partnered with Graduation Alliance to provide support for students and their families to boost school engagement and academic success during the school year, and GCPS has elected to take advantage of this partnership opportunity.
Students who choose to participate in the program will be assigned an Academic Success Coach who will answer questions, connect them with resources, and develop a plan to help them stay on track and engaged with their schooling. The coach will reach out by telephone, email, text message, and more to provide support such as: Encouragement and motivation to help them stay on track with their studies, Organization and study tips, Technical support or assistance connecting with teachers, Educational resources and exercises to help strengthen reading and math skills, Referrals to local agencies and organizations that can provide social-emotional support. For some students, their school attendance and/or academic performance may indicate a potential need for more urgent intervention. These students may be contacted directly by a representative from Graduation Alliance. Look for more information our school's or division's website.
Some other helpful reminders/dates about Peasley Middle School:
1. Our tardy bell rings at 7:40am. Students are asked to be seated in their homerooms at this time. If your student is a car rider, we ask that he or she be dropped off in time to report and be seated in homeroom by 7:40.
2. In an effort to maintain security and supervision of our staff and students, we ask that when you approach the intercom at our front door, that you announce who you are and the purpose of your visit. If you have a VA License, we ask that you share that with the person responding to your call. This is not a requirement at this time, but please plan to begin sharing your identification in the weeks to come.
3. Our students in grades 6-7 will participate on Tuesday, March 21st in our annual, "Stop, Drop and Write" assessment for writing, as their peers in 8th grade are taking the SOL Writing Assessment.
4. Peasley Middle School will be hosting a fundraising event at Tropical Smoothie, the evening of March 29th from 5-8pm. Please come out and support your Peasley Pride!
5. Our PTA will host a General Meeting, on March 30th. Thank you to those who participated in the February fundraiser and the March Luck of the Irish raffle! Our PTA does a fantastic job keeping their Facebook page up to date - please reference their posts for all updates.
6. Spring Break will take place, Monday, April 3rd - Friday, April 7th. Students will report back to school on Monday, April 10th.
We have an exciting and busy 4th quarter approaching us. Our third quarter of instruction ends on Friday, March 31st. Please conference with your student, through the use of PowerSchool, to see if your student has missing assignments or late work to complete before grades close for the 3rd quarter. We encourage that your student and/or yourself communicates with classroom teachers on assignments in question. We also encourage that weekly conferencing with your student occur so that a sudden rush for work completion isn't necessary at the end of the quarter. Thank you to those families that continue to have a continual, working relationship with our staff. Administration is always accessible as well to assist in this process!
We wish you each a productive and successful week ahead!
Peasley Administration,
Ms. Balderson, Principal
Ms. Merritt, Assistant Principal
Mrs. Auche, Assistant Principal