“We wanted to hold a bake sale to raise money, because the school that burned down needed to get their library back!”

They immediately began organizing and planning, figuring out who would bring what, where, and when.  They decided to hold the bake sale in Alta Plaza park and set up a table to display a massive array of goodies, even playing music to lure hungry passersby:

• Cookies (even offering a gluten-free option!)
• Cupcakes
• Chocolate truffles
• Lemon bread
• Brownies
• Cranberry bread
• Trail mix
• Individual sized bags of jelly beans…and more…

From beginning to end, the three girls worked out every detail, with support from their parents and siblings.

“We did most of the work because we wanted to!  We met the day before and spent two hours making huge signs with markers and lots of glitter!”

When asked what they learned about the experience, and if there was anything they’d change if they did it again, they said, “Yes!  We need to offer more healthy options, because there are a lot of young kids that play in the park with their families.  Next time we’ll bring fruit!”

In just a few short hours, the girls managed to raise over $300.  $338.63, to be exact.  They were thrilled to walk the funds down to Ms. Otero’s office, carrying three ziploc bags full of bills and coins. When asked how it felt, the girls burst out:

“Proud!”
“Exciting!”
“Amazing!”

Creative Arts Charter school is still rebuilding their library, and with the support of their local community and students like Lucinda, Catherine, and Sophie, it shouldn’t be long to fill those shelves.  For more information and and to learn how you can help, please visit: http://creativeartscharter.org/.

Thank you to our wonderful students for caring and showing us how easy it is to make a difference.  You rock!

Technology education meetings at SFDS

The SFDS technology department recently hosted two meetings to address parental concerns surrounding children and their consumption of technology.  These meetings were designed to create a safe environment in which families could share anecdotes, ask questions, and debunk student-driven myths, such as “everyone else in my class has an iPhone!”  Another goal of these meetings is to help families gain consistency in terms of expectations and guidelines regarding technology use for children.

We covered a wide range of topics in both meetings, touching on the following:

The first graders are currently learning how to write persuasive letters.  After noticing some graffiti on the outside of the school building, the class worked with their teachers to craft the letter below.  The very persuasive firsties made a strong case for closer police supervision, as they had already tried to asked the perpetrator to kindly stop painting the window, with little success.  After receiving their letter, SF Chief of Police, Heather Fong, decided to visit the first graders at SFDS in person and thank them for their concern. This provided a great example to children that initiative and care for your community can really make a difference.  As a result of their time and efforts, Chief Fong promised to increase the amount of patrol in our neighborhood, to keep a closer eye on the School.  Thanks, 1st Grade!!

“Exciting!”

“The most intense game ever played…”

No – we’re not talking about the 49ers playoff game – but this one was just as tense and even closer to home.  Our JV girls basketball team recently advanced to playoffs, after an emotional and physically demanding double overtime nail-biter.

“We were neck and neck the entire game!  We took a shot with one minute left on the clock and beat FAIS.”

It’s been a challenging season for girls basketball, but our students persevered, improving game after game.  Their secret?  “We never give up!  Sometimes it looks like we are going to lose, but we manage to bounce back.” The girls asked to thank their amazing coach, Susan Sonnemaker, and to give a “shout-out” to Coach Tognetti for his support as well.

You can cheer on this awesome team at their first playoff game, where they will face MCDS next Wednesday, 2/8 at 3:45pm (at MCDS).  Good luck to the following girls:  Mayme, Leila, Claire, Emily, Nina, Chloe, Bebe, Tomicia, Jane, and Isabel.  GO PHINS!

Yearbook recognition ads are a great way for parents, families and friends to commemorate student achievements and important milestones.  To purchase your ad online, go to www.YearbookAdService.com and choose your ad size, template and upload your pictures. If you prefer to upload a custom ad, you can save it as a JPEG and upload as one image.

Questions? Call 925-376-9527 or email www.yearbookadservice.com.

Details*:
Full Page $180.00
1/2 Page $95.00

*Please contact Michelle Phillips (mphillips@sfds.net) or Annette Allen (aallen@sfds.net), 2011-12 Yearbook Advisors, with any concerns or questions regarding pricing.

All ad orders must be placed online by Sunday, January 15!

On Tuesday, December 3, AXIS Dance Company performed for San Francisco Day School, exposing our students to a fresh and inspiring style of modern dance.  AXIS expresses dance and movement using a group of dancers with and without disabilities, creating an entirely new movement vocabulary for ‘physically integrated’ dance. AXIS introduced themselves and shared their individual capabilities and/or disabilities, and performed excerpts from several pieces.  See a short clip from their performance at SFDS:

Dance

Now entering its third decade, AXIS’ vision is to remain a leader in the emerging field of physically integrated dance by continuing to set new artistic and educational standards. Likewise, it aims to be a contender in the field of contemporary dance by commissioning renowned choreographers, composers and designers to create an exciting, innovative touring repertory. AXIS wants its work to challenge traditional definitions of ‘dance’, ‘dancer’ and ‘ability’ to expand dance to include an entire community that has been virtually left out of the performing arts. AXIS’ biggest dream is to make a lasting contribution to contemporary dance.

AXIS Dance Company’s mission is:

• to create and perform contemporary dance that is developed through the collaboration of dancers with and without disabilities
• to teach dance and educate about collaboration and disability through community education and outreach programs
• to promote and support physically integrated dance locally, nationally and internationally

For more information, please visit:  www.axisdance.org

Currently our focus in math is the introduction and early development of multiplication. By making use of realistic contexts, this unit invites students to find ways to mathematize their lived worlds with grouping structures. The unit uses many contexts: inside the grocery store; postage stamps; city buildings, windows, and buses; tiled patios; a baker’s trays, and sticker pages. Initially, formal multiplication notation is not the focus; efficient group is, as students are encouraged to make groups (and groups of groups) to find efficient ways to deal with repeated addition and determine totals.

We began the unit with the context of a grocery store. Students viewed an illustration (shown below) of fruits and vegetables arranged in bins, paper towels in stacked packages, and bottles of water in six packs, among other items in a grocery story. Although the objects shown could be counted by ones, the arrangements naturally invite students to use repeated addition, skip-counting, and doubling strategies–for example, 8 groups of 6 is equivalent to 4 groups of 12 which is equivalent to 4 groups of 6 plus 4 groups of 6. Look for such thinking in the student work below.

Next a stamp context was introduced. This context eliminates the possibility of counting by ones and pushes students towards multiplicative thinking.  The work with stamps supports repeated addition and efficient grouping employing doubling, doubling and halving, and the addition of partial products. The work below shows students  working with these important ideas.

As this unit progresses, students will explore several big mathematical ideas, including the distributive property of multiplication (over addition and over subtraction), the commutative property of multiplication, and the place value patterns that occur when multiplying by ten. We will not formally teach and name these ideas. Rather they will arise as the students develop and invent ways to deal with challenging multiplicative situations. Formal notation for multiplication will be introduced at the close of this unit.

I encourage you to talk with your third grader about things that come in groups and to share and discuss strategies for calculating totals of such things. The contexts mentioned above are a wonderful place to start.

Don’t worry, if the answer didn’t immediately spring to mind, you are not alone.  Fortunately, we have a special student at SFDS who knows that the answer is Mali.  After several challenging rounds, seventh grader Zan took the championship with this factoid and his extensive geographic knowledge.  For those less familiar with this annual tournament, the Geo Bee is a national competition initially created by National Geographic Society, and is intended to support teachers and encourage students’ interest in geography. Each year, thousands of schools in the United States participate in the National Geographic Bee and schools with students in grades four through eight are eligible for this entertaining test of geographic knowledge.  SFDS has a solid reputation in this contest, with three finalists in the past six years.

Our school has been abuzz all week, and today’s finals culminated in a close race between the following students:  Griffin, Byron, Ellie, Leo, Sarah, Kapp, and of course, Zan.  Second and third place winners, Kapp and Ellie, gave Zan a run for first and everyone was congratulated for their efforts.  Equally impressive are our students’ genuine love of geography: this year, SFDS had nearly 200 participants – our strongest turnout yet!  Zan’s next step will be to take the standardized test, which will be sent to Washington, D.C. Good luck Zan!

We owe a huge debt of gratitude to our “Queen Bee” and Geo Bee leader, Anne Paine, for pulling off another exciting Geo Bee at SFDS.  It’s become a valuable tradition we are all proud of.  Special thanks also to our volunteer bee-keepers, timers, and scorers, and to all of our teachers for rousing student interest in geography and geographic literacy.

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