Greenbriar West Elementary Panda-Gram

Message from the Principal

Dear Parents and Guardians,

I hope you take a moment next week to recognize our very special staff members at Greenbriar West during Teacher Appreciation Week, May 7-11. I am so thankful each and every day for their hard work and dedication on behalf of the GBW students and community. Please take a moment to send your favorite classroom teachers, specialists, or other staff members a card or note of appreciation. You will make their day!

During the month of May, we will be hosting two student orientations. Our AAP orientation will be held on Monday, May 7 for all eligible AAP students and their families. On Monday, May 21, we will hold our Kindergarten orientation. If you know of any rising kindergarteners who will be attending Greenbriar West ES, please remind them to call our office to set up a registration date and to attend this special orientation event.

In next week’s Thursday folder, please look for a special “light blue” colored survey letter to parents. This survey letter gives you the opportunity to share information with us about your child that will assist us in the class placement process for next year. However, we do not accept requests for a particular teacher and we reserve the right to determine the final placement. If you would like to complete this form, please send it back to me no later than Friday, May 25.

Finally, we look forward to our students performing very well on their upcoming SOL tests later this month. Please make sure your children are well-rested during these important weeks. A hearty breakfast on SOL testing days would also benefit the students. Thank you for your continued support and partnership! 

Sincerely,
Mrs. Cleveland

Message from the PTA President

May starts off with our opportunity to let our fabulous teachers know how much we appreciate what they do on a daily basis for our children. Teacher Appreciation Week is May 7through May 11. As a quick reminder to parents, the PTA had each teacher fill out a classroom wish list at the beginning of the year. Feel free to use these forms if you’d like during Teacher Appreciation week or any time you’d like to show our teachers how much you appreciate them. The wish list forms are in the PTA room in a green binder and they are also available online at www.gbwpta.org.

Read more: Message from the PTA President

Principal for a Day

SOL Testing Schedule

Looking for Future Kindergarteners!

We need your help in projecting the Kindergarten enrollment for the 2012-13 school year, so we are searching for next years students! Any child who lives within our school boundaries and will be five years old on or before September 30, 2012 is eligible to attend GBW. If you know of a neighbor (within our boundaries) who has a child eligible for Kindergarten, please share this information with them. Please contact us at 703-633-6700.    

The Superintendent Visits

Advanced Academic News

It’s not too early be thinking about summer activities for your child.  The Fairfax area has a wealth of opportunities for children of all ages.  Places to check out include: 

• Fairfax County Public School website: www.fcps.edu 
• Fairfax County Libraries:  www.fairfaxcounty.gov/library
• Smithsonian Institution “Youth Classes” www.smithsonianinstitution.gov
• Mad Science: www.madscience.com 
• Sports Camps through Fairfax County: www.fairfaxcounty.gov/parks/rec  
• William and Mary: www.cfge.wm.edu   click pre-collegiate learner
• George Mason University:  www.gmu.edu

Parents receiving AAP Level 4 placement letters may appeal decisions by submitting new and different information directly to the AAP office.  Please follow the directions in the letter as GBW is not a part of this process.

—Judy Gartlan

Shuttle Close Up

Students got a great view of the shuttle Discover as it circled our area in its approach to Dulles Airport. 

Students watching the shuttle fly by GBW!

Art News

The opening reception for the 10^th annual Chantilly Pyramid Art Show took place on March 22 at Chantilly High School. Besides showcasing student art, CHS art students were drawing caricatures and painting faces while music students provided entertainment. Congratulations to the following students whose work was on display: Hudson Acocella, Isabel Alarcón, Shelby Ale, Steven Barrera-Villanueva, Lucy Blazquez, Alex Bowman, Yifan Chen, Seon Woo Cho, Ben Choi, Amanda Chong, Nicholas Clement, Uttara Das, Conor Daugherty, Madina Ea, Sydney Fish,  Allina Gallanosa, Anirudh Goodala, Janice Guo,  Mandy He, Glenn Hogan, Lianna Hong, Tae Hyoung Jo, Olivia Johann, Conor Keane, Chris Kim, Ga Eun Kim, Julia Lee,  Abby Lombard, T.J. Maher, Magdalyn Mathew, Bharathi Mathivanan, Katie Moncure, Sailee Naik, Moriah Obnial, Cecilia Ohanian, Leo Ouyang, Sara Park,  Nivitha Periyapatna, Anwitha Sanivarapu, Ye Ji Seo, Zulekha Tasneem, Hosaena Tilahun, Chloe Tran, Megan Van Rafelghem,  Andrew Wang, Richard Wang, Tianna Wang, Albert Xu, and Jasmin Yoon.

The end of the school year is rapidly approaching; it’s time to think about summer activities.  Due to the many requests we get about art camps and additional lessons outside of school, we’ve updated the information on our Art course on Blackboard titled: Art Lessons Outside of School.  Here you will find a list of Northern Virginia art centers and studios that are recommended by FCPS art teachers.  Check out their web sites as many of these offer summer art camps.

Picnic Lunch

ESOL News

The end of the year is approaching and a lot of evaluations will be taking place in all grade levels. One of the best ways to help your child do better is to show how valuable their education is and take an active interest in their learning. When parents value education, their children often perform better in school. There are several ways parents can show they value education and homework.

Read more: ESOL News

General Music

The second Sixth Grade Music Assessment will take place May 8 – 11 during General Music classes. All Fairfax County Sixth grade students participate in 2 music assessments during the year, the first assessment being done in November this school year. For the first assessment, students chose an audio clip to accompany a silent movie and wrote an essay to defend their choice. For the second assessment, students will create their own song to advertize a pizza restaurant. The scores from the assessments are sent to the county’s fine arts office and are used to evaluate the county’s general music curriculum.

Also in May, our Fourth grade students will be participating in a Recorder Karate Unit. The unit is designed to foster good tone quality in recorder playing with an emphasis on note reading. Students play a series of songs that get progressively more difficult. For each song that they master, they are awarded a “recorder belt” just like they would receive in a regular Karate class. The final “black belt” song is Beethoven’s Ode to Joy!

—Laurie Barber and Bene’ Dodd

Third Grade Performance

Third graders perform in “Science Matters”

¡Hablemos español!

In the Spanish FLES classrooms at Greenbriar West, we continue to work on creating connections between the vocabulary students are learning in their regular classrooms and the Spanish vocabulary they are learning in FLES classes. This month, we worked on using the vocabulary they have learned in writing using Spanish. Each grade is expected to write at a higher level of complexity, from first graders writing individual words to fifth graders writing multiple, connected sentences in a book format.

Read more: ¡Hablemos español!

Library Link: Virginia Readers Choice

Our Virginia Readers Choice program for 2011-12 has now been completed, with many GBW students participating in this reading program sponsored by the Virginia State Reading Association. More than 400 of our students read 4 or more titles from the offered book selections. Several students even read all 20 of the books from both the Primary and Elementary groups. Students were required to complete Reading Review Cards after reading each of the books. Voting Day was celebrated with an ice cream party in the library!

GBW voted for the following books as their favorite selections in the Virginia Readers Choice program: Primary – We Are In a Book! by Mo Willems; and Elementary –11 Birthdays by Wendy Mass.

GBW’s votes have been sent to Richmond to be tabulated along with other schools in the state of Virginia. In early May, the winners of the state’s Virginia Readers Choice favorite books will be announced.

The reading lists for the 2012-2013 school year’s VRC program has just been released. You can find the lists at: http://vsra.org/virginia-readers-choice/nominate-vote/ 

So why not get reading over the summer and get ahead of the game!

—Barbara Schifflin, GBW School Librarian

Success Night at GBW

Families stroll the halls of GBW enjoying student accomplishments.

This year we added a phone reader code feature with student voice overlay describing each of the grade level areas of the school!

The Reading Corner

Our Success Night was a HUGE success!  The hard work and creativity from our students and teachers filled the hallways.  Thank you parents for attending!

Reading during the summer will put a “feather in your cap”, so be on

the look-out for GBW’s Summer Reading Incentive!           

—Kate DeSantis

RC Corner: Reflective Thinking about Learning

Reflection is a crucial part of learning. Taking time to think about how things are going helps people keep track of their progress, and, if needed, make adjustments and improvements. Teachers help students develop the habit of reflection by building in opportunities for them to practice this skill throughout the day.

Every day reflections can be simple and quick. For instance, at the end of writing workshop, a teacher might ask students to share how their work went by showing thumbs up or thumbs down. Or, at the end of Morning Meeting, a teacher could ask students how they’ve been doing at following classroom expectations so far that day.

PAW intervention time at Greenbriar West is another opportunity for students to reflect about their learning. We use PAW time each day to support student learning whether that be through remediation, reinforcement or enrichment opportunities. Classroom teachers, instructional assistants and other school personnel make themselves available at PAW time to support individual or small groups of students. PAW time has been very effective for students and teachers alike. Teachers appreciate having that dedicated time to ensure students have an understanding of what has been taught in class, and students enjoy having time to gain extra assistance or extend their thinking through enrichment activities.

These sorts of structured opportunities to reflect have many benefits it is very important to draw children’s attention to their accomplishments. Giving students frequent opportunities to name what’s going well, as well as to reflect on what could be better, can be affirming and motivating for children—and their teachers as well!

- Mrs. Cleveland

Maxwell Read Goes to State Geography Bee

Maxwell Read, a 6th grade student at Greenbriar West Elementary School, won the school-level competition of the National Geographic Bee on Thursday, December 15 advancing to the State Level. The school-level Bee, at which students answered oral questions on geography, was the first round in the 24^th annual National Geographic Bee, sponsored by the National Geographic Society.

The kickoff for this year’s Bee was the week of November 10, with thousands of schools around the United States and in the five U.S. territories participating. The school winners, including Max, took a written test to determine the top 100 scorers in the state. These students then participated in the State Level Bee held on March 30 at Shenandoah University in Winchester. Max answered all 8 preliminary round questions correctly and advanced with 19 other students to the tie breaker round. From there, the top 10 scoring finalists were announced.  

Science Fair 2012

Students show what they've learned in science in the 2012 Science Fair.

All A Honor Roll

AB Honor Roll

Hot Air Balloon Lesson

Mr. Wiseman’s and Mrs. Cortez’s classes investigate scale drawings, scale models, and warm columns of air with hot air balloons.

Chess Club Success at the 2012 State Scholastic Championships!!!

Chess Club Success at the 2012 State Scholastic Championships!!!

Spirits were high and competition was intense among the 35+ schools that participated in the 2012 Virginia State Scholastic Championships held at McLean, Virginia on the weekend of March 16-18. A total of 615 players from around the state participated at this event.

For the first time, the GBW chess club fielded a record 47 players for this state wide tournament.

Read more: Chess Club Success at the 2012 State Scholastic Championships!!!

2012 GBW Silent Auction and Class Basket Raffle a Success!

On March 17, in addition to the Carnival, the GBW PTA held a Silent Auction and Class Basket Raffle in the school library. We'd like to thank all of you who helped make the Silent Auction and Class Basket Raffle such a great success this year. We beat 2011’s total, which will go to funding all the wonderful things the GBW PTA does for our students.  

Read more: 2012 GBW Silent Auction and Class Basket Raffle a Success!

GBW Birthday Carnival a Success with Thanks to Local Businesses

This year’s Spring Carnival was a huge success! The weather was beautiful, the children had fun, and the community came together. Besides the numerous adult and student volunteers several local businesses also helped to make this event successful.

In the Party Room Café volunteers were serving up lunch food all day. There were several local businesses who donated money and food to help defray the costs to the PTA. Those supportive neighborhood businesses are:

DEV Technology Group, Inc: This Reston-based company donated $300 which was used to purchase chicken sandwiches and pizza for sale in the Café.

McDonalds: The Greenbriar McDonald’s contributed 2 family meals to the Silent Auction, and 100 cheeseburgers for sale in the Café.

Bloom: The Fair Lakes Bloom contributed 12 large cases of water.

Harris Teeter: The Fairfax Harris Teeter contributed $30 which was used to purchase Go-gurts and bake sale products.

Giant: The Greenbriar Giant donated $25 which was used to buy sodas.

Thanks to all these businesses which helped us stock our Café! If you happen to be in these businesses, feel free to let them know how much their support means to GBW!