Tigers Study Their Way To The Top for CAO

Superquiz team member Jenna reacts with LM CAO Champ Haley when they find out they’ve won the event.

Scroll down to view photo gallery.

Haley is the first girl in seventeen years to win gold in Science. Go girl!

It was a banner year for La Mariposa and the Camarillo Academic Olympics.  For the first time ever, our Superquiz team, The Tiger Tribe, won the Superquiz.  La Mariposa also snagged 14 individual medals, the most of all the elementary schools.  This medal count includes winning gold in five of the ten individual categories.  Looks like our tigers jumped into their smarty pants with both feet for this one!

Alex is the first student in CAO history to win gold in both creative writing and art.

The Camarillo Academic Olympics culminated with the Superquiz Finals and Awards Ceremony held at Monte Vista last Friday night.  Students marched in and received their medals on the podium in front of a cheering crowd of parents and Camarillo VIPs.  A huge Tiger congratulations goes out to:

• The Tiger Tribe Superquiz Team: Manas Khatore, Jenna Chui, Evelyn Li, Matt Kim, Karolina Dzieciol.
• Haley Jeffers: 1st Place Science, 1st Place English Grammar, 2nd Place Math
• Manas Khatore: 1st Place Geography, 2nd Place Math, 3rd Place Science
• Alex Masci:  1st Place Art, 1st Place Creative Writing
• Jenna Chui:  2nd Place Creative Writing
• Sophia Pantoja: 2nd Place Speech
• Tanvi Patil: 3rd Place Speech
• Andrew Chan: 4th Place Current Events
• Matthew Yang: 5th Place Art
• Nicholas Truitt: 6th Place Current Events

The Tiger Tribe–2014 Division II Superquiz Champs–blowing off a little steam before the final stage of the competition Friday night.

Big Tiger hugs go out to Speech Coach, Dorothy Hanchey, and Superquiz Coaches Nilay and Nidhi Khatore.  Special thanks to Kathryn Masci for the perfect data entry and all of our judges, proctors, drivers, and tabulators:  Barbara Velji, Erica Williams, Nicole Sadowsky, Christy Pantoja, Ann Hudacko, Cathy Schafer, Jeff Miller, Jill Heybl, Kelly Long, Cindy Laudato-Wong, Yanzhen Xu, Kari Wetter, Lily Li, Natalie Swarts, Mickey Hirsch, Melissa Short, Jennifer Kwast, Alexis Chavez, Catherine Pedrosa, Michelle Fisher, Maria Redekopp, Madhuri Patil, & Linda Fitzgerald.  Programs like CAO do not happen without volunteers like you!

The Tiger Tribe

Manas & Haley receiving silver medals for math.

Manas & Haley receiving silver medals for math.

Hailey receiving her gold medal in English Grammar.

Manas receiving his gold medal in geography.

Alan receiving his medals in Current Events.

Principal Williams and Superintendent Michael giving medals to Alex and Jenna.

Alex and Jenna receiving their medals in creative writing.

Tanvi and her bronze medal in Speech. “I – WANT – MY – APPLE JUICE!”

Sophia and her silver medal is Speech.

Waiting on pins and needles.

On the podium.

My that’s a big trophy!

Spelling Bee Champ Buzzes To The Top

LM Tiger, Makayla. awaits her word in the second round of the La Mariposa Annual Spelling Bee.

Landon “writes” his word on the podium before spelling it out loud.

La Mariposa’s Annual Spelling Bee was held last Wednesday afternoon.  After only six rounds we had our school Champion: 5th Grader, Brandon Dinh.  Three students represented each 4th and 5th grade class with a total of twenty-one students beginning the first round.  The words proved to be a bit challenging this year as the field was cut nearly in half by Round 2.

Throughout the bee students were challenged with words like:  assertive, glitz, incredulous, bayou, ferocious, misspell, recipient, defiant, diverge, primitive, and debt.  They utilized a number of techniques including “writing” the words with their fingers, rolling their eyes to the top of their sockets to see the word in their brains, and asking for definitions, sentence usage, and word origin.

5th Grade Teacher, Mrs. Evans, called the words.

By the end of the third round only four students remained:  Brandon, Lucas, Manas, and Max.

Lucas also spells his 4th Round word correctly.

Manas spells his 4th round word correctly.

Runner Up, Max, takes a moment to visualize his word.

Champion, Brandon, smiles confidently when he hears his final word.

Fourth and fifth grade teachers looked up definitions and sentences in record time by using their iPad.

All four boys spelled their words correctly in the fourth round.  After the fifth round only two boys were left.  Brandon spelled his sixth round word correctly, then Max stepped up to receive his word. Mrs. Evans called it out “succumb”.  The irony was tangible when Max misspelled the word.  It wasn’t over, yet, though.  Brandon still had to spell another word correctly to become the champion.  The Championship word was “caravan”.

Congratulations to all our Tiger Spellers for a great effort at this year’s Spelling Bee: Jason Widofsky, Amanda Ashley, Taylor Pak, Brandon Celmeta, Hans Bachnguyen, Lucas Chomiller, Maureen Chowdhury, Tanvi Patil, Ayeta Kochi, Manas Khatore, Matthew Guglielmo, Dharma Iyer, Shahbano Raza, Brandon Dinh, Alex Masci, Serena Bolish, Haley Jeffers, Landon Stouch, Madeline Sheller, Max MacCallum, & Makayla Johnson

Spelling Bee Champion (left) with our runner-up (right).

Good luck to Brandon as he represents La Mariposa in the county Spelling Bee held at CSU Channel Islands on March 8th.  The Spelling Bee is a National Competition administered by The E.W. Scripps Corporation that culminates with a the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington DC.  Learn more…

LM Gets $1950 From Target REDCard Program

La Mariposa Gets $$$ When You Spend with Your Target REDcard

The Target “Take Charge of Education” Program allows you to earn money for La Mariposa while doing your typical household shopping with your Target REDcard.  Target donates 1% of every dollar back to our school.  1% doesn’t seem like a lot, but when you add up what you spend per year at Target and multiply it by the number of families at La Mariposa, it adds up fast.  

Back To School Night Cliff Notes & Photos

Here’s a little summary for all of you that missed the General Assembly during Back-to-School Night.

From Principal Williams

Common Core

• Mrs. Williams showed a quick three minute video “What are USA Education Standards?”.  You can view it here:  [youtube:http://youtu.be/g5ktLyHDjL4%5D
• The teacher learning focus last year was Language Arts.  You’ll see evidence of that this year with new classroom learning structures like Daily 5 and also in a shift to more nonfiction reading.  You’ll also start to see less worksheets coming home and more creative and collaborative classroom assignments.  Learning will be more inquiry based with a focus on writing to demonstrate proficiency.  In fourth and fifth grade you’ll be hearing more and more about academic language.   You’ll also notice these changes don’t stop at language arts, rather they weave together science, history, and other content areas.
• This year the teacher learning focus is math.  We look forward to seeing all the changes in action toward the end of this year and starting out next year in the area of math.
• At the heart of the Common Core State Standards is an educational paradigm shift away from knowing facts to thinking about how to find answers.  As a parent you might feel a little lost.  This year the district will be offering Parent Education so you can guide your child using the same Common Core principles at home.

To get the big picture of the aim of Common Core, check out this four and a half minute video:

[youtube:http://youtu.be/7KMM387HNQk%5D

Daily 5

Daily 5 is a way of structuring the language arts block that allows students to work at their own level, while challenging them and providing structure within the classroom.  Teachers talked about things like building reading and writing stamina, differentiation, and allowing students to chose their own reading material and activities.  To learn more about what Daily 5 looks like in your child’s classroom just ask your child’s teacher.

Technology

Mrs. Williams updated us on our technology status:

• Kindergarten and 1st grade students will be included in instruction by our tech teacher.
• Every classroom has six computers; desk tops for lower grades and laptops for upper grades.
• SMART boards in every classroom.
• We are working toward the addition of a Chromebook Cart with the long range goal of 1:1 device:student.

Principals Coffee

Each month our principal will host an informal discussion meeting with parents and community members.  This is an open meeting where she will share information on topical issues. Parents and community members are invited to provide positive feedback and to express questions and/or concerns. Mark your calendars for Friday, September 27 at 8:15 AM in the La Mariposa library. Click here for a schedule for 2013-2014.

From Our PTA…

Straight from the Milan’s runways, our PTA parents put on a Program and Event Fashion Show.  It was a fun way to highlight all the wonderful things your donations and service add to the La Mariposa educational experience.  We even had some PTA Paparazzi snapping photos to share with you.

Tiger Olympics

Science

Jog-a-thon

Gardening

Movie Night

The whole crew.

Box Tops

Healthy Choices

Music

Recycling

Target RedCard

Art

To learn more about how the PTA uses your donations click here.

Open House 2013: See What’s Been Growing On At La Mariposa

Like our gardens, our students are in full bloom and larger than life!  Join us this evening to see how they’ve grown.  The evening promises to be filled with music, art, smiles, & success.

This evening’s schedule:

• 5:00 – 6:30   Family Picnic Dinner in the Quad
• 5:00 – 8:00   “The Artist In Me” School-Wide Art Show
• 5:15 – 5:20   Welcome
• 5:20 – 6:30   Musical Performances by ALL students
• 6:30 – 7:30   Classrooms Open*

Don’t forget to stop by the Tech Lab to see what the kids have been learning in Tech Class!

 

Tigers On Track For Success

By Caitlin, Kailyn, and Karolina, student contributors

Coach Thompson’s 4^th and 5^th grade track team is in gear at La Mariposa. The sprints that the athletes have been trying out for are the 50 meter dash and the 75 meter dash. The jumps are long jump and high jump. To practice the long jump, we run and jump into a pit of sand.  For high jump, you run and jump over a bar and land on a big mat.  We have also tried out for the 800 which is two laps and the 400 which is one lap. There are two people that qualify for each race in each division to go to the Rotary Track Meet on June 1^st at Camarillo High School.  If you aren’t on the track team or didn’t qualify for the track meet, you can still come and cheer your school on.

When Life Gives You Ashes, Paint Blue Skies

Plumes of smoke from last week’s Springs Fire kept students inside over concerns of poor air quality.  That didn’t mean the fun had to end because students couldn’t go out for lunch or recess playtime.  One teacher took it as an opportunity to do some collaborative mural painting. Her class spent their time together painting a fabulous spring day complete with blue skies, trees, buzzing bees and butterflies.  Way to turn our Spring Wildfire into Spring Wildflowers, Mrs. Rudolph!

Congratulations to the 3rd Grade Speech Team

After weeks of hard work and rehearsing our 3rd Grade Tigers headed over to Las Colinas for the PVEF Speech Tournament.  We had forty entries in the forensic categories of Storytelling, Poetry, Expository/Demo, and Dual Interpretation.  Students participated in two rounds of competition before settling in for the participation ceremony where our own 4th graders, Edison H. and Haley J., performed their award winning speeches from last year.  At the end of the ceremony they announced the students that would compete in the final round.  Congratulations to our three finalists:

• Gabriela J., Storytelling
• Tanvi P., Storytelling
• Baylee F. & Braden T., Dual Interpretation

…and a big tiger HIGH FIVE to ALL of our 3rd grade participants that had the courage to compete…WE ARE ROARING WITH PRIDE!

Click here to view the complete results.

Special thanks to coaches Julie Hughes, Christina Culp, Dorothy Hanchey, & Natasha Scrivner!

Pictures From Flag Retirement Ceremony

Special thanks to Pack 3831 and Diana Goodson.

Tigers Socked The 100th Day of School (In a Good Way)

By Pam MacCallum, La Mariposa PTA 100^th Day Coordinator

La Mariposa’s sock drive for the 100^th day of school on February 15^th was a huge success!  With everyone’s help, we donated a total of 1458 new pairs of various sizes and colors of socks to Child Protective Services of Ventura County.  They are extremely thankful.

We have been donating socks since 2005.  With your help, we have provided socks to thousands of needy children in Ventura County.