Category Archives: Technology

Welcome to our Elementary Library

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My name is Kimbra Power and this is my 17th year at SAS. Ms Joji, Ms Stella and I are your library team, and this is our 10th year together. My husband Simon and I have two daughters, Hannah and Mimi, and they both started PreK at SAS. My older daughter Hannah is now in her 2nd year of university in Melbourne, and my younger daughter Mimi starts High School this year.

  • Joji Kimbra Stella
  • Kimbra Joji Stella
  • Joji Kimbra Stella
  • Mimi Kimbra Hannah
  • Kimbra Simon Mimi Hannah
  • Kimbra Mimi Hannah

Library Catalog To access your school library account, follow these instructions and before you begin, know your school ID number.

For students, this will be a 7-digit number, beginning with 235 following the letter P (for patron) You do NOT need to put the letter P in. That 7-digit number is your username AND password to access our school library catalog.

For parents, this will be a 6-digit number, following the letter P (for patron) You do NOT need to put the letter P in. That 6-digit number is your username AND password to access our school library catalog.

*Go to https://destiny.saschina.org/

*Under Elementary Libraries on the left of the screen, click on Shanghai American School Pudong Elementary. You MUST do this before you click on ‘login’, otherwise the site won’t recognize your ID number.

You are now looking at the PD ES catalog, and can search for books from here, in any of our 4 libraries, just by typing their name in to the search bar, where it says ‘Find’  

*Click on Log in at the top right of the screen. Once you are logged in, you can put books on hold, renew books as long as you have nothing overdue, click on ‘My Info’, see your check out history and more.

Overdrive/Sora We use the Sora App to access our digital library, Overdrive.

*Download the Sora App.

*Open it and find your school by searching for Shanghai American School (even though it says the Puxi campus address, click on that, it is correct)

*Every student from grade 3-12 has their own Sora Account (with their school ID) If your child is 2nd grade or below, use YOUR ID number as a parent.

*Your ID number is your username and password, type those in, and you are good to go.

Elementary Databases Linked is a wonderful resource for you to bookmark regarding the huge amount of incredible digital resources you have access to. Details on how to log in to them can be found linked in the LibGuide. https://libguides.saschina.org/c.php?g=930560

While you’re looking at our LibGuides, check out this one showing some of our wonderful staff, volunteers, parents and students. https://libguides.saschina.org/c.php?g=922977

If you have any questions, you can reach me by e mail kimbra.power@saschina.org

Be well and have a terrific school year.

Ipods, Ipads and Kindles oh my!

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Hey there

We rolled out our e readers and audio-books in the library last week, much to the excitement of our 3rd, 4th and 5th graders.

We are very fortunate at SAS to have a multitude of options to get books into our students’ hands. In our collection, we have over

*27,000 books, including a terrific selection of non-fiction and fiction, some of the most beautiful and newly released picture books and a growing assortment of graphic novels.

sept 3

*11 Ipad’s with over 60 books on each of them. The beauty of reading on the Ipad is that the interface and graphics are incredible, graphic novels and non-fiction come up a treat. I am able to get new books in kids hands straight away, a huge bonus when it takes so long to ship new books to Shanghai from the States, which we only do ONCE  year! We currently check out 1 Ipad per session to each 4th and 5th grade class.

ipad

*58 Ipod nano’s with 20 more arriving next week. These Ipod’s have audio-books on them, I am able to upload the newest releases for my students, the DAY they come out. Currently we have over 60 books on each Ipod.

ipod

*60 kindles – With 20 new kindles this year, it is possible for us to check out 3-4 kindles per class to the 14 classes in 3rd, 4th and 5th grade. As the demand for kindles for these grades steadily decreases throughout the school year, our plan is to allow 2nd grade to also check out kindles after Chinese New Year.

kindle

Current Check-out guidelines per class for these tech tools.

Grade 5: 1 Ipad, 2 Kindles, 3 Ipods

Grade 4: 1 Ipad, 2 Kindles, 3 Ipods

Grade 3: 2 Kindles, 3 Ipods

1:1 Laptop Program

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Hi Parents
As I sit with all of the 5th grade teachers and students today listening and participating in a session run by Robyn Treyvaud about Cyber Safety, I can’t help realize that it is only six months ’til my own daughter will have her own laptop in our Middle School’s 1:1 Laptop Program. My daughter is growing up way too fast.

Considering my 5 year old cried in the car on the way to school today because I wouldn’t let her use the ipad… maybe she is the daughter who should be going 1:1!

During Robyn’s Presentation, I had time to check through my google reader and saw a relevant post by a former colleague, Jeff Utecht. I think in this post Jeff sums up nicely the concerns we may have as our children move into the program. I found this paragraph particularly timely if you don’t have time to read his post:

Remember That You Are The Parent

When it comes to technology, many parents feel that they do not know enough to create limits and boundaries. Because of this they do not feel right taking the technology away. You are still the parent and in your house you make the rules. You have every right to take the computer away from your child if you feel they are not having enough “down time”. I know one family that the whole family felt out of balance so they unplug the Internet in their house. So everyone has to be disconnected at the same time. They use this time to reconnect as a family and just have some ‘down’ time.

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News of the Moment

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Hi 5KP families

Welcome back after the October Holiday, I hope you had a restful time with your family wherever you were.

Parents, if you are interested in keeping informed regarding some of the changes educational literacy is going through then I suggest you attend the evening with Dr. Jason Ohler. I had two workshops with him last week, your child will be hearing him present at school this Thursday and you are invited to hear him speak about “New kids, New Media and New Literacies” next Wednesday the 20th of October. Check out the Elementary Pudong Blog for details. I found him to be an enthusiastic, interesting and entertaining presenter with plenty of relevant things to say.

Math

The class has started unit three in math which is primarily focused on Geometry Explorations. I have added a couple of useful sites to my blogroll for them to work through but I wanted to draw your attention to this one as it may also help you understand some geometrical terms that will enable you to help your child in this unit (scroll down to the geometry, B, section. This one is also very popular with the kids as they work to beat their best time connecting geometry terms with their geometrical shapes. I like it too, however I have not beaten the kids yet! They LOVE to win!

Writer’s Workshop

We begin our second personal narrative this week as we start the Second Unit of Study with, “Raising the Quality of Narrative Writing.”
The students will use the feedback they received from their first narrative to help them craft their next piece. Areas for improvement include
:focusing more on one small seed topic rather than a giant watermelon topic,
:remembering to keep your writing in either the past or present tense (past is the easiest, especially as it is a personal narrative) and :making sure to read over your work many many times to see how it sounds as you make your editing changes.

Reader’s Workshop

We continue to work through our reading with our partners paying attention to they say we can make predictions and ask questions of our texts. The students must either be reading, writing about their reading or talking about their reading during these lessons. We began listening to Madeleine L’Engle read her Newbery Honor book, A Wrinkle in Time today as our second read-a-loud. The students are encouraged to bring in blankets/cushions as we snuggle up for 3 x 30 minute sessions each week of this mysterious story.

Social Studies

This week we move on from our Science Unit on Mixtures and Solutions and begin our Social Studies Cultural Studies Unit. I love teaching and learning with the class during this unit as it raises so many questions about what culture is, what we can learn from our own culture and how we see ourselves as American/Chinese/Korean/Canadian or a mixture of several different cultures. As all of your kids are considered third culture kids, you may want to attend Laura Cowan’s session this Wednesday at 10 am at Malones in Pudong, check here for more details.

Homework

Students, don’t forget, this week you will have a study link to complete each night as well as your regular reader’s notebook entries. You should also try and spend some time two or three times a week on one of the math sites we looked at today in class to help you with your geometry skills, don’t wait until just before a test to revise on things like this. I’d also like you to read Daniel’s story as he has worked so hard on it. Daniel was one of my best writers last year and he has sadly moved to Korea now, please add a comment to his story after you have read it telling him your favorite part of his story. By Wednesday, I expect you to have added to your blog your completed Fun Fiction with Story Spine piece. I have added it below to refresh your memory. On Wednesday and Thursday nights you will have the opportunity to check out your classmates’ work on their blogs.

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Thank You to our 5th grade room mother, Lisa Coe, for helping us keep up to date with the many things going on here at S.A.S.

Have a great week 5KP

Missing You 5KP

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http://portal.saschina.org/video/flv_player/Main.swf

Hi Students, I hope you enjoyed your two days with Mr Bromley and are keeping yourselves well behaved and impressing him with your strong skills and good manners. I have had a great two day conference and have learned a lot of fun and helpful new applications that I look forward to sharing with you soon, we are going to have such a great year. The mac computers offer us many new learning opportunities.
If you are still having trouble with your comments “DON’T DESPAIR” but be patient, it is a school-wide problem and Mr Power is doing everything he can to fix it. Keep posting blog entries and as soon as we can we will fix the issue.
Good Luck with Ash this weekend Mike, look after your little hamster.
Monday is a day 2 so don’t forget you have music last period and that Monday Reader’s need to hand in their Reader’s Notebook.
Have a great weekend 5KP.

Math Mania

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With only 98 hours to go the excitement is certainly mounting at SAS in regard to World Maths Day which begins for us on March 2nd at 7 pm (midnight of the 3rd in New Zealand) and ends 48 hours later… who can tell me the last place to see the 23rd of March arrive???

The class had a great deal of fun today and we ended up with SAS in 7th place overall and Nick Ni in 6th place out of all the students playing at the time…how exciting if something similar were to happen next week. You never know until you give it a go so parents, this weekend, you may have some excited kids on your hands trying to practice and clocking up some points getting ready for the official competition to start.

http://portal.saschina.org/video/flv_player/Main.swf

Perhaps the extra practice will help them to prepare for their math test on Monday too, don’t forget to do some study over the weekend 5KP and stay focused…oh, and get some sleep!

Enjoy the Lantern Festival

Study Hard 5KP…

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But not too hard…I think you will all do quite well tomorrow on this, our Unit 1 Math test. So don’t forget to get a good nights sleep and I will see you all recharged and fresh tomorrow.

Skills covered on the unit one test include:
*find the prime factorization of numbers
*rename numbers written in exponential notation
*use a divisibility test to determine if a number is divisible by another number
*identify prime and composite numbers
*understand how square numbers and their square roots are related
*draw arrays to model multiplication
*know multiplication facts
*identify even and odd numbers
*find the factors of numbers