5SH Class Blog

Congratulations to the following students who wrote 25 blog or journal entries during the summer holiday:

Candice
Jason
Calvin
Josh
Andrew
Michelle
Louise
Cecilia
Justin

They are all invited to a pizza lunch in their 5SH classroom on Thursday, September 2nd during their lunch time. 11:30-12:15. Congratulations Sixth Graders!

On Monday students will be visiting their teachers’ classrooms.  It will be a day of excitement.  Students will be seeing their friends from last year, meeting new friends and (Gasp!)meeting their new teachers.

The teachers at Shanghai American School have been busily preparing for this day.  Classrooms are organized, lesson plans are completed, all we need to start a great school year are fantastic students to make the classrooms complete.

How old is the United States?

Here is a short slideshow from today’s Reading Olympics. I hope you enjoy it.

Today was a day of eating for the students in 5SH. The mothers of the students prepared a wonderful end of year party with a lot of delicious food. Here are some photos from the morning.

After Chinese class, we went to Zhudi Park for Subs in the Shade. We ate Subway sandwiches while in the shade of the trees. Then the students played for the rest of afternoon.

Tony Wright, a storyboard artist for the Harry Potter, Star Wars and Golden Compass movies spoke with the fifth graders this morning. He shared some of his art with the students. He even shared some hints about what is we will see in the new Harry Potter film coming out later this year. You can see Mr Wright standing in the back row of this photo of the class.

Dear Elementary Parents,

As we close yet another successful school year in the SAS Elementary we just wanted to notify our families of a change in computing platforms for the 2010-2011 academic year. This past year was our final year operating in the Windows XP environment for our student platform. 2010-2011 will see all divisions at SAS on the MAC platform. The transition is consistent with the SAS vision and mission and our technology goals for 2012. Moving the entire SAS computing platform to Mac OS was adopted in 2008 for school-wide implementation.

This year all teachers were given MacBooks in August so that they would gain familiarity with the Mac OS and the different applications at their disposal for technology integration into your child’s curriculum. Having two platforms this year has proved a challenge and teachers and students alike are excited to all be working on one platform next year (not to mention our IT staff is also breathing a sigh of relief).

For the 2010-2011 Academic Year all Dell laptops-4 in every classroom k-3 will be replaced by Mac Minis running the latest version of Mac’s OS, Snow Leopard. These machines will be complete with all the iLife and iWork applications as well as a myriad of other applications including Microsoft Office that the tech integrators have selected to make your child’s experience with technology as educational and engaging as possible.

In grades 3,4, and 5 all the Windows XP laptop carts will be replaced with MacBooks. These machines will have the same applications installed as the desktop machines. Both computer labs in the ES Library as well as the computers around the ES Library will also be switched over to Mac Minis or MacBooks. This will complete the full transition to a consistent, adopted educational computing platform for SAS PK-12.

As is our current practice, the technology resource facilitators will be working with your child’s class to ensure that they receive the proper instruction on using these machines and the installed software.

If you have questions or concerns regarding the move to the Mac platform in the elementary school please feel free to email Kris Sheehan (kris.sheehan@saschina.org) or Jeff Dungan (jeff.dungan@saschina.org).

Yours in technology,

Jeff and Kris

What do Lady Gaga, Harry Potter, and Barrack Obama all have in common? They all graced the 5th grade with their presence at the 4th Annual 5th Grade Project Runway. After our celebrity guests strutted down the runway, it was the 5th graders’ turn. In their literature circle groups, students had to design a costume for one of the characters in their books. Each group chose one student who had to model the costume on the runway. Good times were had by all! Check out the Project Runway video on the blog. You cannot hear the music, but more importantly you can hear the clapping, laughing, and cheering! Thanks to Mrs. Hughson who spent several hours editing this video.

Last week the students had two concerts. On Monday,  Puxi hosted the Band Bonanza with Pudong while the orchestra went to Pudong. On Thursday, the students performed their Spring Concert. Here are samples from both concerts.