The Alderwood PTA Pinnacle Parents and Teachers Working Together to Achieve the Heights of Success for Our Children! Issue #6, April 1, 2015 Upcoming Events! April 1 Kindergarten Registration by Appts April 3 Minimum Day! April 6-‐10 NO SCHOOL! Spring Break! April 14 Fitness Challenge K-‐6 April 21 PTA Meeting 830a Hotel Irvine’s Backyard Block Party Benefiting IPSF
Sunday, April 26 from 3 – 6 p.m. Advance tickets now on sale at https://ipsf.net. Prices increase April 4.
A fun afternoon with friends and family at the first annual Backyard Block Party hosted by Hotel Irvine. EATS Kitchen & Bar and Red Bar and Lounge will be teaming up with some of Irvine’s top restaurants like Shirley Chung’s Twenty Eight, Mizu Sushi Bar and STAX Cookie Bar. Sip on craft beers and wines as you enjoy live m usic from local bands The Brevet, Yellow Red Sparks and Armors. Fun and games will be provided for the entire family!
The PTA Pinnacle Issue No. 6, April 1, 2015 Parent Spotlight Meet our Reflections Chair, our Drama Club Chair, and our School Site Council Representative – Yvonne Mansouri! Bonjour! Salut! My name is Yvonne Mansouri and my story starts on the small Caribbean Island of Dominica where I grew up and later moved to Montreal, Canada in my late teens. I got married and moved to California about 17 years ago. I graduated from the University of California Irvine, with a Masters of Arts in Teaching and a Multiple Subject Credential. I was a Montessori teacher and an elementary school teacher here in the U.S for many years. Quail Hill has been home since before the Alderwood building was built! It’s been quit a transformation from dirt on a hill to the vibrant community I now call home! Life in Quail Hill revolves around my family of 6! My husband, Sepand is an Anesthesiologist at Kaiser and he is an avid hockey player. Isabella, is a second grader and loves to swim and play with her neighborhood friends. Penelope is excited to start Kindergarten this fall. Athena and Aphrodite are our two Maine Coon Cats who enjoy the outdoors but are wary of our coyote population! We enjoy traveling as a family but most of all we enjoy serving the community that we have grown to love. Here at Alderwood, I enjoy volunteering the most! This year I have served on the School Site Council, and the Reflections Committee. The most exciting program that I am thrilled to be a part of is our new Drama Club. I am so EXCITED that this year our kids at Alderwood will have the opportunity to perform for three nights in June in the spectacular SEUSSICAL. Thanks to our Principal, the PTA, IPSF and Ingrid Green for all their support in helping us attain this program! Lights, Cameras, Sound! Students from grades 1-‐6 spent 3 days in March auditioning for roles in the musical. Students were even more ecstatic when they had “call backs”. Both students and parents have enjoyed the experience. Don’t be surprise if you see students huddled in groups or walking around campus with Orange & Yellow Seussical booklets, reciting lines and singing their hearts out the for the next 8 weeks! It’s because they are getting ready to put on a phenomenal performance for the Alderwood and Quail Hill Community. Rehearsals for Suessical will start the week after Spring Break and run through June 3 rd. Mark y ou calendars for the three shows at night on June 4th, 5th and 6th. Tickets will go on sale online! Imagine, it’s like Broadway coming to Alderwood and I am so honored to be a part of it! 2 The PTA Pinnacle Issue No. 6, April 1, 2015 Teacher Spotlight Phenomenal Fifth! Meet our awesome Fifth Grade Teachers! From L to R, Ms. Shannon Mulvaney, Mrs. Alissa Machesky, Mrs. Jill Gavin, and Mrs. Julie Gillespie! Miss Mulvany is thrilled to be teaching 5th grade at Alderwood this year! She has had the opportunity to be at Alderwood for the past three years in 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade. Miss Mulvany feels blessed to work at a wonderful school with incredible students, parents, and colleagues. The joy and excitement students bring to the classroom each day is contagious! Outside of school, Miss Mulvany enjoys coaching club volleyball at SVVC where she has the privilege to teach, train, and motivate athletes during practice and competition. In her free time, she enjoys traveling, hiking, running, or participating in anything active. Most importantly, Miss Mulvany loves spending time laughing, chatting, and having fun with her family and friends. Mrs. Machesky has b een teaching at Alderwood for 8 years. Before that, she taught at N orthwood Elementary. It is hard for her to believe that she has been a teacher for 17 years! Prior to teaching fifth grade, she taught 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades. She also used to share a 2nd grade classroom with Mrs. Gavin. Mrs. Machesky has 3 sons: Jackson (14), Aidan (11), and Ethan (9) who she loves to be with. She also loves to spend time with her husband, Stan, who is also in education and is the Director of Elementary Education for the Irvine Unified School District. The Macheskys have 2 fat cats named Bowser and Leo, and a lovable dog named Shawnee. Mrs. Machesky occupies her free time traveling, going to the beach, reading about history, and watching Little League baseball and El Toro High School track in the lovely city of Lake Forest. Mrs. Gavin has b een teaching for 21 years, 18 of those years have been at Alderwood. She has taught Special Education, 2nd grade, and currently 5th grade. She was born and raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and attended both LSU and Southeastern Louisiana University. She lives in San Clemente with her husband Todd, and 2 sons, Jack and Will. Besides teaching, Mrs. Gavin enjoys going to the beach, vacationing with friends and family, cooking, and home improvement projects. Mrs. Gavin loves b eing a part of the Alderwood family! Mrs. Gillespie grew up in Irvine! She attended College Park Elementary School, Venado Junior High School, and Woodbridge High School. After getting her teaching credential at California State University, Fullerton, Mrs. Gillespie was excited to start a career in the district she loved. She has been teaching in IUSD for the last ten years. She spent one year teaching third grade, five years teaching second grade, and has been teaching fifth grade for the last four years. When she is not teaching, Mrs. Gillespie loves spending time with her three children (Caden –age 9, Callie and Reagan –age 6), playing with her dog (Bailey), visiting with friends, reading, or enjoying time at the beach. 3 The PTA Pinnacle Issue No. 6, April 1, 2015 Students Discover Possibilities in Science at Alderwood Elementary By Dr. Sudha Krishnan The World Economic Forum ranks the U.S. 52nd worldwide for its quality of Math & Science education. (http://www.lpfi.org/how-‐
does-‐us-‐compare-‐other-‐countries-‐stem-‐education). So if we want to improve and compete against other countries, it is essential to support STEM education at the earliest – elementary school. It provides a foundation for advanced Math and Science education at the upper grades allowing us to compete with other countries in the long run. It requires elementary schools to fund the subjects, expose students to the possibilities and show them the potential of the future innovations and inventions. In this article, I want to focus on science education at our school -‐-‐ Alderwood Elementary. In the last six years my child has been at this school, I am so glad to say that she had phenomenal exposure to science. In November 2014, first to fifth students were given the opportunity to participate in Astounding Inventions. They learnt the basics of identifying a problem, figure out a potential invention that would solve that problem, do research to see if that invention had already been invented/patented, and if so, tweak the invention to specifically solve that unique problem and during this process maintain a research journal. This is innovation and creative thinking at its finest and what makes it great is that elementary students learn how to do it. The following students made it to the next level – Irvine Valley College with over 400 such astounding inventions from Irvine and Tustin Unified School Districts and won the following awards. ..(see next page) January 14 was Astronomy Night at Alderwood. This is such a popular program at elementary schools that we have to book the date a year in advance. The association “Orange County Astronomers” sent volunteers with telescopes to our school to show students and their parents such far off sites such as Andromeda Galaxy, stars in various constellations, and planets such as Jupiter and Saturn. The program was from 6 pm to 8:30 and also included games and playthings such as Astronomy Jeopardy, stickers and planetary play dough. Students got to draw, stick and create their version of solar system, stars and the sky. A dome in the multipurpose room recreated a planetarium with volunteer parents telling stories about the stars and constellations up in the sky. Astrophysicist and science popularizer Neil deGrasse Tyson in his interview on 60 minutes on March 22, 2015 said that he wanted to become an astrophysicist after he went to the planetarium in New York. We brought the planetarium to our students at Alderwood. In the first trimester of 2014-‐2015, the sixth graders had to participate in Science Fair as a class requirement. Students got to choose between experiments and Rube Goldberg machines. I saw varied experiments such as bacteria growth on food, charging an IPhone with lemons, impact of music and sports on humans. I saw a Rube Goldberg machine on how to put a coin in a piggy bank and dog food on feeder bowls. Students learnt to think creatively to create a Rube Goldberg machine or identified a scientific question, do a literature review, create hypotheses, do experiments to see if the hypotheses are supported and conclude identifying their results and what else could have been done to improve the study. This is exactly what I had to do for my PhD. dissertation th
except that 6 graders were learning how to do a preliminary version of it. Continued on the next page.. The PTA Pinnacle Issue No. 6, April 1, 2015 Results of Alderwood Students at District Level Science Competitions! Table 1 – Results of Astounding Inventions, January 2015 Name Grade Invention Amy Chen Sam Gharavi Alexander Hackett Elena Higuchi Rustin Jafarkhani M. Qanith Kamal Taylor Kazan Benjamin Lew Nolan Lew Isabella Mansouri 5 5 3 4 2 3 4 3 5 2 Award ribbon Blue Blue White White Blue Red Blue Red Red Blue HFSS Umbrella Autolad Tracker 3000 Boogers No More Water Fountain Kit Marker Saver Leaf Holder Viola Trainer No Broke Grand Slam Tennis Ball Collector Arohi Shah 2 System for Less Traffic White Ayushi Shah 5 Sensor to Drive Safely White Blue: Division Winner; Red: Astounding Invention; White: Honorable Mention Table 2 – Science Fair Participants who made it to IUSD 2014-‐2015 Individuals Yoomin Choi Patrick Zhang Ben Farnam Group Melodie Pugar & Courtney Maeda Shishir Ravipati & Hugh Kang Rube Goldberg Arhana Singhania Meghana Krishnan Pranathi Killolli Natalie Zane Sydney Spencer & Olga Barbashova Ria Shrivastava & Emily Edgett Kion Pardis Dani Zand Solmi Park & Holly Jeong Sebastian Ebbert Tristan Ngo While musing over the exposure to science to Alderwood students, I wonder who is going to be the one to discover the cure to cancer, maybe be the person designing the spacecraft to Titan (after all it has an atmosphere) or be the researcher who inherits the mantle of Jacques Cousteau and study the depth of the oceans of the planet Earth. It may be all because of science education at elementary level at Alderwood Elementary! 5 The PTA Pinnacle Issue No. 6, April 1, 2015 PTA PROGRAM HIGHLIGHT… Box Tops For Education By Committee Chair Lena Wonder Thank you for your continued support of our Alderwood Box Tops for Education Program. My name is Lena Wonder and I am the Alderwood Box Top Coordinator. Box tops can be found on hundreds of commonly purchased items at the grocery store. By helping us collect the box tops on the items you normally purchase, you are playing a vital role in raising money for new physical education equipment that is used by all of our students. For each box top we collect, the PTA receives ten cents.
Last year we raised $1,200 dollars, which was used to buy soccer nets and other sports items. This year we raised our goal to $1,500 and have earmarked the money to again support our physical education program.
Collection dates and other updates are regularly sent out via email and through flyer that are sent home with your student. A list of participating Box Tops products can be found at http://www.boxtops4education.com/participating-‐
products. If you would like additional information or have any questions, please feel free to email me [email protected].
So far this year, we have collected about $650 worth of Box Tops. Please join us in making a big collection push through the rest of the year and help us reach our goal!
6 The PTA Pinnacle Issue No. 6, April 1, 2015 Your PTA dollars at work…enabling our kids to supplement their learning with educational experiences Alderwood 3rd Graders Visit the Heritage Museum of Orange County By Kim Chavez On March 2, the entire third grade went on a field trip to the Heritage Museum in Santa Ana. The museum consists of a plaza of several historical buildings from the 1890s, including the Kellogg House. The students learned much about life during this time period and specifically about the California native Kellogg family. Docents led small groups of students through the rooms of the home, through the gardens and citrus groves, and to a working blacksmith shop. It was a very hands on experience. The children made and sampled their own butter, dressed up in clothes of the era, washed clothes on a wash board, played with toys of the time, made their own quilt square out of paper, played piano in the parlor and “called” each other on the old time phone, and watched a blacksmith craft a nail. Despite the rainy day, the students had fun and learned a great deal about the Victorian era and life in Orange County at that time. Thank you, PTA, for money well spent! 7