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Upcoming Events:
MON. (12/2) Happy Hanukkah Through December 5th!!!
GOOGLE SHOWCASE, Room 153/154 @ 3:30pm
Enter The World Of Google Through Interactive Presentations By
Teachers Brandon Hart, Mossy Kennedy, Keely Hafer, Joel Rubio,
Lauren Helm, Trisha Callella, and Dan Bennett
TUES. (12/3) State Volleyball Championship Semifinals!!!
Rematch of the CIF Finals v. Mater Dei @ 7pm
***Game Will Be Televised On Time Warner Cable***
WED. (12/4) STAFF MEETING / LATE START DAY
Click Here For Schedule
Don't Miss This Important Staff Meeting At 7:30am In Room 500
There'll Be Holiday Presents & Marshmallows For Everyone :)
THUR. (12/5) SHOW CHOIR'S "Home For The Holidays" Begins @ 7pm!
Don't Miss The Year's Most Souhgt-After Performance...
***Show Runs Until Saturday, December 7th***
FRI. (12/6) TEACHING & LEARNING ABOUND!
SAT. (12/7) SAT @ LAHS, Student Should Be There By 7:30am
ATHLETICS: As an historic season comes to a close, congratulations should be extended to all our Fall Sports and Performing Arts teams for incredible success
 this year. In Fresno, the marching band had a great championship weekend last week, taking 2nd place out of 18 groups in the 3A division, winning top percussion honors, and taking the combined grand championship bronze medal with a phenomenal score of 92.75, their best to date! Girls Volleyball will finish their season this week, and then we'll turn our attention to Winter Sports and continue to cheer on our athletes with what has now become the #1 Student Section In High School Sports! & On The Horizon...
12/10 --- Leadership Council, 7am in Room 500
12/10 --- Common Core ELA Committee Meeting @ District Office
12/11 --- Instrumental Jazz Show, 7pm In PAC
12/12 --- Common Core Math Committee Meeting @ District Office
12/13 --- LosAl4Life Lunchtime Celebration!
12/13 --- District College Day
12/17 --- Scores Back Night, 7pm In PAC
12/17-18 GWAM!
12/18 --- Staff Breakfast @ 7:30am :)
12/20 --- 28th Annual Chemistry Magic Show... Room 153/154 ALL DAY!
Unlimited Possibilities...
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The GOOGLE SHOWCASE Is This Monday @ 3:30pm:
With Over 400 Chromebooks On Campus, It's Time To Enter The Googlesphere!
Dan Bennett and the EdTech Team are inviting ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE to attend the Google Showcase tomorrow afternoon from 3:30pm - 4:45pm!
Please RSVP HERE to help determine the number of extra chromebooks the EdTech team should have. If you won't know if you can make until tomorrow, no problem! The event is open to everyone and everyone :)
This professional development will be divided into twenty-five-minute long sessions that you can pick and choose from. There'll be time for each participant to attend two sessions. Here are their descriptions:
- Google Forms - Lauren Helm will be showing you how to use Google forms with your students. This is a great tool for collecting information from students. You can use forms for things like surveys, exit tickets, and quizzes. The forms can include images and videos, so they are a great way to collect student responses to graphs or media. All of the data is gathered in a spreadsheet that you can sort and filter. Lauren will also demonstrate a tool called Flubaroo that turns the form into a self-grading quiz. This session is great for anyone, whether you plan on using the chomebook carts regularly or not.
- Google Drive - Keely Hafer & Joel Rubio will walk you through how to use Google Drive to store documents and materials online. Then, they will show you how to share those materials with colleagues and students. As we move towards increased collaboration and technology, Google Drive will support you by allowing you to access your materials from any device with wifi and share your documents with others. This session is great for anyone, whether you plan on using the chomebook carts regularly or not.
- Google Showcase - Brandon Hart & Mossy Kennedy will be sharing about how they have used chromebooks in their classroom. They will share about the challenges they encountered as well as how the technology has empowered their lessons. This is a great session to attend if you are interested in using chromebook carts regularly or if you are curious about how the technology can empower lessons.
- Google Docs & Research - Dan Bennett will lead this session and focus on the Google Document tool. The session will look at how it compares to Word, and how Docs can take collaboration to the next level. Dan will also demonstrate the research tool that is built into Google Apps and how it can assist teachers and students in their work. This session is great for anyone who plans on using the chromebooks for research, word processing or powerpoint-like presentations.
Here's the way I see it... a very organic movement is happening across our campus in which Chromebooks are becoming highly utilized by our teachers and students in productive, collaborative, and powerful ways. As of this week, we will have 9 teachers using Chromebooks DAILY as a part of their teaching... which equates to more than 1500 students on computers and online every day at Los Al. There's always rooms for alternate technologies... but if half our students are being educated using Google tools, it's probably a good idea to continue learning about these applications and getting better and more innovative about the way we teach our kids.
The EdTech team at Los Al is doing a phenomenal job servicing our teachers, and they look forward to sharing their experiences with everyone and introducing Google's tools to all who are interested.
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Enhance Your Thinking Maps With Popplet:
Save, Edit, And Share Your Class' Thinking With This Cool New Tool!
Head over to www.popplet.com to discover a digital kind of Thinking Map that makes sharing and saving learning easy, fun, and ongoing!
Every teacher in our entire district has been trained in the Thinking Maps visualization methodology that teaches educators a language of eight visual patterns based on humans' fundamental thought processes. From elementary school to high school graduation, students are always representing their abstract thoughts on a page using the tools they learned in our classrooms.
 Now they can do it online! Bart Smith, English teacher and daily chromebook user, has his students use Popplet for mapping themes, motifs, Big Ideas, and conflicts in the novels they read in 9th and 10th grades. Because of the chromebooks, they can start a Thinking Map online and then continue their thought process individually at home picking up right where the class left off earlier in the day. This 24-hour access to learning materials is revolutionizing, not only the way students learn, but the sheer amount of information being absorbed by the 21st Century students' brain. Tools like Popplet and others are about making things easy and available to students and teachers. And whether you use this EdTech goodie, or otherwise, it's clear that the modern teacher and the modern student are using technology as a daily part of the learning cycle.
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Guess Who Flipped The Switch At Seal Beach's Tree Lighting This Year?
Teacher Of The Year Kathy Currie
The Seal Beach Lions, along with Miss Teen Seal Beach, celebrate the Holiday Season by prompting Science Teacher and LAUSD Teacher Of The Year, Kathy Currie to turn on the lights for Seal Beach's Holiday Tree.
In a true example of how the Los Al learning community really does extend deep into the neighborhoods our families live, work, and go to school in, the organizers of this year's Seal Beach Tree Lighting Ceremony selected Ms. Currie as their signature representative of the joy and happiness this time of year engenders.
We are fortunate that the role of teachers is highly valued in our community, and it's an honor for Los Al employees to represent at public events like this, as well as many others.
By the way, I heard the line-up for the event was: Mayor Gary Miller, Santa, and then Ms. Currie. Santa opened for Kathy! Classic!
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HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS!!!
Los Alamitos Show Choir's Next Show
Runs From December 5th - 7th!
Get your tickets now by purchasing them online HERE!
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The Famous "Egg Drop" @ LAHS...
Ms. Echerri's ROP Students Make A Mess & Learn A Ton From Atop The 700 Building
Ms. Echerri helped her Engineering students design prototypes that prevent an egg from cracking after a 2-story freefall.
It's hard to imagine going through high school without getting to drop an egg from a building to see if you can cushion its fall...
That's exactly what ROP Teacher Ms. Olga Echerri's students got to do the week before Thanksgiving Break. They spent the week before designing contraptions rooted in the science and math of gravity and physics that would brace the fall of an egg in freefall from about 30 feet in the air.
Of course, not every egg survives. But that's the point. Students not only learn from the experience of what they created and tested, but they learn from the successes and failures of others.... just like life.
And also like life, there are multiple right answers. Some students went for an aerodynamic approach --- choosing to harness the air experienced during freefall as a method of resistance to the initial fall, like a parachute. Other students went for the crash-test-dummy approach --- choosing to focus their design on the actual point of impact, and working to reduce it.
And how is it graded? Through process or results? Try both!
Students are given credit for their design, approach, and final result. This grading ethos fits nicely into the Common Core frameworks for assessment we're beginning to employ, as it's no longer important whether or not a student chose "C" on a multiple-choice exam... it's more important to understand how they got there, if there logic was sound, and whether they understand fully what their answer/result truly entails.
Whatever the case, students learn more when they get to apply their learning... just ask our Griffins with the yokey hands and eggs on their sweater :)
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Get Your Los Al GOLD CARD In The Activities Office Now!
Only $15 For Tons Of Savings!!!!
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Can You Say "Phosphorus Dihydride Monoflouride?"
Our ConChem Students Can... And They're Posting Chemistry "Selfies" To Prove It!
The picture to the left can be found on Instagram using the hashtag #chemsitryselfies...
But don't worry about citing these students for a cell phone violation of texting in class, they were just following the directions of their Conceptual Chemistry teacher Ms. Helm
See, she had this wild idea that not every student gets as razzed about covalent bonds as she does. (It's rumored that Ms. Helm has had covalent dreams and that she sports a "Down With Ionic" bumper sticker on her car.) To help get students excited about chemistry, she decided to meet them in the middle. And thus, the "Chemistry Selfie" project was born.
It works like this, students are first given roles as individual elements: Carbon, Hydrogen, Phosphorus, Oxygen, for example. Then, their attention is drawn to the compounds that are posted all over the outer edges of the classroom. "Find a compound that you belong in," says Ms. Helm, "and situate yourself properly amongst your fellow elements... Once you think you have it right, post a 'selfie' of your covalent bond, and upload it to Instagram or Twitter with the name of your compound visible behind you.... I'll check your posts tonight, and give you credit accordingly."
It worked! Students laughed, smiled, and learned the key concepts involved with forming covalent bonds in Chemistry.
Of course, social media integration like this can work across all disciplines. So the next time you're covering a piece of content that might not be the world's most inherently engaging, try something your students will absolutely eat up. With all the technology geared towards the education sector, there's a ton of choices for you to choose from!
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WE'RE THANKFUL FOR EACH OTHER!
This Thanksgiving, It Goes Without Saying That Each And Every One Of Us Is Thankful For Our Los Al Family!
From now on, if you need a picture from any of these
Monday Morning Memos, Just find us on FLICKR
The pics there are high quality, easy to access,
and always downloadable.
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Los Alamitos High School
3591 Cerritos Ave.
Los Alamitos, CA 90720
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