Get well soon, SuperDylan!

Your friends and teachers miss you so much! You said you were coming on Tuesday, please keep your word next time! We have post-its to spare and we made something that you need to pick up yourself! See you tomorrow then?

Get well soon, Dylan! You are our inspiration!

Back-to-School Night

Back-to-School Night at Pali was held on Thursday, August 30th. It was a short week as Friday was unassigned day and Monday is Labor Day. It is the last weekend that ushers in Fall. This year, the upper grades start early at 6pm; it's Pali tradition to alternate the schedule between the lower and upper grades.

All five families were represented and it was an informative night for both parents and myself. The parents got to see some of the works that their child has done the past couple of weeks. They were also given information on the curriculum, assessment, field trips, and other activities for the year.

The students wrote their parents an "apple" note and their parents responded to it. The theme of the night was that of parents being their child's first teacher, so they are equally deserving of receiving an "apple," which is customarily a symbol associated with teachers.

Apples and Teachers
Why are apples associated with teachers? People commonly see the fruit as a symbol of variety, change and growth. It symbolizes change and variety because it comes in different colors such as green yellow and red. Additionally, the fruit has various tastes like sweet, sour as well as tangy. Moreover, apple symbolizes growth since the strongest branch and grove of the plant sprout from the seeds of the fruit. However, people should know that without love or support, the fruit could become undesirable and bitter.
Why are apples associated with teachers? Another reason why people associate apples with teachers is the tradition from the 16th century until 18th century in various countries including Denmark and America, in which parents pay educators with foods like fruits. During this time, teachers do not receive enough salary to sustain the cost of living in their places. To help them with their basic needs, parents give the teachers of their children potatoes and apples. During these centuries, apples are considered special and expensive because these fruits are difficult to plant, cultivate and harvest. To compensate the efforts of educators and to make them feel special, parents pay them with different varieties of the fruit.
http://www.whyguides.com/why-are-apples-associated-with-teachers.html

It was also a night to ask support from parents to sign up as volunteers and to fulfill some of the items on the wish list. Room 20 has volunteer sign up and items for its wish list.

Volunteer Sign Up

Wishing Upon a Star!

Thank you again Room 20 parents for coming to our back-to-school night! I look forward to more productive discussions and conversations with you!

Here's a link to the prezi I showed that night:

http://prezi.com/3iugcbccfs_0/back-to-school-night-pali/?auth_key=66fd036b600e9aae0285fba8b2368e374efa2f6a

First Week of School

School year 2012-2013 officially started on August 14th, 3 weeks earlier than the previous years. This will definitely get the students much more prepared for the state tests. Pali took no exception to this early start, our students joined more than 600,000 students across the district that went back to school on this day.

Room 20 welcomed back three of it's students: Tristen and Shahin (4th Grade) and Tyler (5th Grade). They will be joined this year by a new student in 3rd Grade, Diana. Two more are expected to return in a couple of days, Dylan (3rd) and Tom (5th).

Room 20 

Welcome Card from Mr. Ramos

The class is very fortunate to have Mrs.B on board as Instructional Assistant. She has a lot to offer in ensuring the continuity of the highly successful academic program that Mrs. Sidman had started.

It is our pleasure to open our classroom and we can't wait to tell many success stories of the kids this year as they move up to a new grade and have new experiences that their grade levels have to offer.

Student desks

Our classroom will soon be the main hub for reading, math, inquiry projects, and assessments. It is slowly getting filled with books, manipulatives, anchor charts, and supplies. More importantly, it is getting filled with ideas, questions, wonderings, and thoughts.

"Scholarliness"

Our Tribes folder has also been used a lot. Team 20 has been really very good with identifying their trible and complying to the Four Tribes Community Agreements. We are focusing on Honesty as core value of the month.

Tribes Wall

We had a mixing class with Ms. Choi's 5th Grade class to "Save Fred." This is an activity that reinforces the skills necessary for problem-solving in science. We all got to save Fred and got free sugar-free gummy worms afterwards.

Save Fred

Science Wall

We use EnVision Math and all grade levels start with lesson on numeration. Fifth grade takes it a step further learning about decimals.

Math Concept Wall

Our Reading Concept/Question Wall is probably the busiest as we use Treasures, Triumphs, and Core Literature books for 3rd, 4th, and 5th. We started reading The Trumpet of the Swan for our Novel Studies and we are also reading historical and realistic fiction selections from Treasures. We have also started learning vocabulary strategies and "playing" with words- learning about idioms, word etymology, toponyms, eponyms, etc.

Reading Concept/Question Wall

We are in the process of getting more books for our classroom library. We also hope to update our board games.

Classroom Library

We got started with Writer's Workshop right away. The students have done their "heart" and are in the process of writing their seed stories.

Writing Wall

This is proving to be a very promising year with the students all ready to learn and starting on a good note.