Mid Valley News - April 18, 2018 - Vol 55 No 8

Page 1

Sports

Education Chalk Talk, page 2 - 3

MLS page 4

The Community Paper of Record

Vol. 55, No. 08

Serving the San Gabriel Valley Since 1966

April 18, 2018

Payne School 5th Graders Showcase their Robotics Skills by Staff Writer El Monte

Fifth graders at Mountain View School District’s Payne Elementary School eagerly displayed their STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, Mathematics) skills during the school’s 5th Grade Robotics Showcase. The students in Ms. Avina’s class and Mr. Campa’s class learned the fundamentals of robotics over the course of 5 weeks as staff from Windtree Robotics visited their classrooms twice a week teaching hands-on techniques. Practicing teamwork, students worked in teams to build self-driving robot cars using high-quality hardware and Raspberry Pi single board computers. Taking the roles of Project Manager, Engineer, Programmer and Quality Control, the student teams learned the fundamentals of circuitry, as well as computer programming as they nurtured their curiosity and creativity, built logical thinking, engineering and design skills, and had a ton of fun in the process. They also enjoyed an educational field trip to the Columbia Memorial Space Center in Downey. “This is a great program for our students and they absolutely love it,” said Campa. “The hands-on projects have allowed my students to build confidence and demonstrate strengths in different areas which is fantastic.” The Robotics Showcase pitted student teams against each other as they programmed their robot cars to complete the Geometric Circuit and The

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Dance competitions. The friendly competition, coordinated by Windtree Robotics, is designed not only to measure the effectiveness of each robot car, but to showcase teamwork and determination.

“I love robotics!” said 5th grader, Will Wang. “My team put a lot of extra details into our robot car like super suspension and a large shell for aeroRobotics continued on page 8

Cleminson Earns Distinguished School Award by Staff Writer El Monte

El Monte City School District’s Cleminson School was one of only 287 schools in the state that was honored as a California Distinguished School. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson made the announcement earlier this week. “These schools implement outstanding educational programs and practices that help California students realize their potential, and put them on the path to achieve their dreams,” Torlakson said. “Every day at these schools, teachers, administrators and classified employees, working with parents, apply their dedication, creativity, and talents toward providing a great education for all their students.” Sponsored by California Casualty, the 2018 California Distinguished Schools Program recognizes California elementary schools that have

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made exceptional gains in implementing academic content and per-

formance standards adopted by the State Board of Education.

Cleminson continued on page 8


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