MAY 8-14, 2019
El Semanario
Edison Language Academy – Together Through Two Languages
M A R C H
(310) 828-0335 www.edison.smmusd.org
ANNOUNCEMENTS 4TH – 5TH GRADE PARENTS REMINDER: If your 4th grader is interested in being part of SMMUSD’s 2019-2020 Mariachi program for 5th graders at Edison ,or your 5th grader wants to continue Mariachi training at JAMS next year, please go to www.smmariachi.com and register before May 31, 2019. This afterschool music program is free and most instruments are provided. Don’t miss this wonderful opportunity; sign up early! MOVIE NIGHT: CARS 3 -- Thanks to our TK and Kindergarten families for a great evening – pizza, popcorn, hotdogs, glow-sticks and a movie! MUSIC PERFORMANCE MONTH AT EDISON – All students will be offering year end informances for families on either May 17, 20 or 21st. See the attached calendar for the date, time and location of your student’s performance. 5th GRADE BALLROOM DANCE PERFORMANCE All SMMUSD 5TH graders take a 10-week ballroom dance unit as part of their PE class. Why ballroom dance? Dance is a physical education standard because it helps children increase flexibility, range of motion and stamina. The repetitive movements also improve muscle tone, straighten posture, and increase balance, coordination and rhythm. The District selected ballroom dancing because this type of partner dance also helps children improve communication and social skills, learn to work with a partner, and to treat classmates respectfully -- irrespective of gender. It’s always amazing to see how many ways the students grow through this experience. Please join us for their final performances on Friday, May 31 at 8:45 am in the Edison Cafetorium. STATE TESTING FOR 3RD, 4TH, AND 5TH GRADERS -- A reminder that our upper grade students are participating in state testing between May 6 and May 17. Please avoid absences and try to make sure that children are here in time to be in their classrooms and ready to go by 8:30 am. Children often appreciate snacks during testing, and a good breakfast in the morning helps them start the day with energy. THANK YOU PTA AND EDISON FAMILIES for all the lovely signs of appreciation during Teacher Appreciation Week! The opportunity to work with such a supportive and warm community of families makes all of our jobs so much more rewarding. We feel fortunate to have a strong partnership with the families of our students and we know it takes a village working together to educate children. Thanks to our intrepid PTA for putting this week together!
FROM THE PRINCIPAL’S DESK May is our last full month of the school. Even with the gloom and fog we can get in the spring because we’re so close to the ocean, we’ve got some lovely weather for outside activities. The students in the last cycle of Garden lessons are really enjoying learning about composting, tending their plants and learning about composting. The garden benefitted from our rainy weather and the crops we’ve planted through each of our three garden cycles are thriving. The corn is growing tall, artichokes have flowered, swiss chard, lettuces and arugula, and beets are enormous. The cilantro is tall, tomatoes and some new lettuces are coming in. Thanks to Garden Educators Lucia Burke and Debbie Harding for the great work they’ve done with our students this year. We recently added some numbers to each of the beds, with painted signs using the Mayan numerals. The Mayan numerals are a base-20 system with only three symbols – the shell symbol for zero, dots for numbers 1-4 and a bar that represents 5. There’s always room to teach a little something extra! Thank you Maestra Martha for painting the signs and to parent Eric Burke for installing them. We recently hosted a bilingual trainer from Achieve 3000 Kid Biz to work with our teachers on how to make this program work even better for our students. She showed our upper grade teachers a few new tricks for frontloading the lessons and building background knowledge and some tools for extending our work on writing into science and social studies using Kid Biz. She also reinforced something we’ve been feeling too – that screen time has to be used judiciously and in shorter purposeful increments. So when you’re using Kid Biz with the students at home, helping children spend a good, focused 20 minutes reading and responding to questions us much better than letting them sit in front of the screen and click around for a longer period of time. When you’re using Kid Biz at home, remember that reading the article three times before answering questions helps build comprehension. Thank you to our PTA and especially Carolina Vila for organizing a great series of classes about using computers as a tool – conducted entirely in Spanish. The Pico Branch library has been a great partner in this endeavor and two of our teachers, Carlos Morales and Brisa Melendez have also taught some of the classes. We’ve learned a lot and hope to do more of this next year. Thanks to all the teachers and participants!