April 15, 2022   *   Edition 17

Dear PTE Families,

We have had a busy week preparing for ILEARN! Our third through fifth graders all completed their ILEARN practice tests, and they are ready to tackle the real assessments next week. Students will be testing from April 19th until May 3rd.  Please make sure that your child charges their Chromebook each night and brings it back to school each morning. It would be helpful if appointments were scheduled outside of these testing times as well. As always, we hope our students are well rested and eat healthy breakfasts, but this is especially important when they are coming in for assessments!  

I was excited to interview some of our fifth grade students for JA Biztown this week. The students were well prepared and did an excellent job sharing their leadership skills. The students will experience this real world simulation later this month. This is a great opportunity for them to explore careers and financial literacy!  

Our front office staff has been busy enrolling kindergarten students for next year. If you have neighbors or friends in the Prairie Trace area that have a future kindergarten student, remind them to start the enrollment process. We will be holding kindergarten screenings on May 3rd and 4th.  We can’t wait to meet our new Hawks! 

Our students have a lot of great activities to look forward to in the next few weeks:

• Second graders will learn fire safety tips from the Carmel Fire Department. 

• Fifth graders can explore Clay Middle School during their Open House on April 20th from 6-8pm.

• All students will participate in a program titled Snapology during STEM class sponsored by our PTO. Students will be engineering different models using Legos! 

• In conjunction with our second graders’ fairy tale unit, the students will have a guest story teller during media time to share a different version of The 3 Little Pigs! 

• Fifth graders will head to JA Biztown!  

On April 29th, we ask for all of our students to wear pink in honor of a former PTE teacher, Mrs. Pulley. Pink for Pulley will be celebrated this day to honor and remember all staff members who have battled breast cancer at Prairie Trace. In addition to this celebration, the PTO supports a scholarship for a former Prairie Trace student each year in honor of Mrs. Pulley. 

As the weather gets nicer, please make sure you follow our safety guidelines for afternoon dismissal. Students need to go straight home right after dismissal if they are walkers. If they are carpool, then they cannot come to the playground until after buses and walkers dismiss. We cannot have students running behind buses in the playground after getting dropped off from carpool. Thank you so much for helping us with this! 

As always, I’m so lucky to see your children each day!  I hope I will be able to see you at the PTE Parent’s Night Out celebration on April 22nd too! 

Mrs. Kim Piper