Good evening, Holmes Families!  

I hope that you had a wonderful holiday weekend!  Tomorrow is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and the first of 15 religious and cultural observance days that have been designated in the 2021-22 school year calendar.  For more about religious and cultural observance days, take a look at this announcement from back in March 2021. 

ER Rotations Begin This Week

For the first two weeks of school, we doubled up the SOAR class for students to have a strong orientation to the school year.  Beginning Wednesday, September 8th, students will begin their regular ER (Enrichment & Remediation) rotations.  On every Blue Day, students will go to SOAR for 40 minutes and then return back to one class period for 40 minutes for Sustained Silent Reading, reteaching, intervention, and enrichment in that content area.  The blue/white schedule in their agendas also shows the ER rotation for the year (see image below). 

NOTE: We caught a mistake in the ER rotation calendar after the agendas were printed.  Note the corrections in red below.  

Here are today's newsletter topics:

Holmes Updates

• Student Services - Important Information
• 2021-22 Blue-White Calendar
• 2021-22 Bell Schedule
• This Week's Schedule
• Upcoming Assessments (Updated)
• Schoology
• How to Stay Connected to Holmes MS

FCPS Updates

• Stay Connected with FCPS

Please feel free to reach out and let us know what questions you have.  Thank you, and have a great week!

Sincerely,

Margaret Barnes

Proud Principal, Holmes MS

@email

HOLMES UPDATES

This Week's Schedule - 9/7-9/10

To help families and students keep track of the Blue-White Day calendar, I will also have a section in the Sunday update with the week's schedule.  The Blue-White Calendar will also be on the inside cover of student agendas and can be found HERE on our school website. 

• Tuesday, 9/7 - WHITE DAY
• Wednesday, 9/8 - BLUE DAY (SOAR & ER 1)
• Thursday, 9/9 - WHITE DAY
• Friday, 9/10 - BLUE DAY (SOAR & ER 2)

Upcoming Assessments

Beginning this week, students will take a series of assessments to help us to determine their instructional needs moving forward.  See the chart below for details.  This week, we will start with the Reading Inventory (RI), and the week of 9/6, we will start the Math inventory.  While these assessments are not graded, we ask students to take them seriously and do their best so that we have the most accurate information possible that will inform our instructional planning. 

• Reading Inventory & Math Inventory - (Fall Window) Required as a beginning-of-year screening assessment for all middle school students.
• Virginia Growth Assessments - Required reading and mathematics assessment for all students to address new General Assembly legislation. Fall 2021 growth tests will assess students on the curriculum they received during SY2020-21. Tests are only available for grade level content; no assessments are available for high school credit-bearing courses (Algebra 1 and Geometry).
• SEL Screener - (Fall Window) Beginning of year screener of social-emotional learning needs to inform student supports.
• No Red Ink Writing Diagnostic - (First Assessment Window) Required as a beginning of year diagnostic for all grade 7-8 students, measuring grammar, usage, and mechanics aligned to grade-level writing standards.
• CogAT - Required for any students in grades 6-7 who do not have a CogAT score on file and are not already centrally eligible for Level IV services. Parents/guardians may request a one-time retake to be administered during this window.

Make Sure You Sign Up for Schoology!

Students, families, and staff throughout FCPS and in our school community will use Schoology (pronounced /SKOO-luh-jee/) as our learning management system. 

Here is what you need to know now:

• You need a SIS/ParentVUE account to login to Schoology: http://bit.ly/FCPSSIS
• Use your SIS/ParentVUE login information to login to Schoology: https://lms.fcps.edu. Look for the FCPS logo to make sure you are on the right login page. 
• Learn more about Schoology: https://www.fcps.edu/schoology
• Schoology Snippets (short videos on how to navigate Schoology): https://www.fcps.edu/schoology/support/videos
• The Schoology Parent Resource Kit: https://www.fcps.edu/schoology/parents/welcome
• More information for families, including resetting passwords and to request technical support: https://www.fcps.edu/schoology/parents
• Students use their regular FCPS login information to login. Student resources for Schoology: https://www.fcps.edu/schoology/students

How to Stay Connected to Holmes MS

Please stay in touch with us throughout the year by:

• keeping your contact information up-to-date throughout the year
• visiting the Holmes MS website
• signing up for News You Choose
• following us on Twitter  
• monitoring your student's progress with SIS Parent Account
• join the Holmes MS PTA and attend meetings
  • PTA Facebook
  • Online PTA Membership Form
  • MemberHub

FCPS UPDATES

Stay Connected with FCPS

Being connected to your school and division is important every year, and even more so now as we navigate our return to school. The best way to stay informed is to sign up for newsletters through News You Chose. 

Your school and FCPS have a variety of topics you can choose from, including:

• School Newsletters- featuring everything you need to know about your child’s school
• FCPS This Week- a weekly newsletter featuring news and happenings from across the division, published Wednesday mornings
• School Board Meeting Update- a recap of important news coming out of school board meetings, published the Friday morning after the meeting
• FCPS Employee News- weekly updates just for staff, published Tuesday mornings