5/6 Grade Center

THANK AN INVENTOR - WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH: Some debate how to pronounce "GIF" (GIF or JIF...), but we all love to use them! Lisa Gelobter was closely involved with the 1995 creation of Shockwave as a software engineer, the technology that helped to develop web animation, like GIFs! She also helped launch Hulu and served on the senior management team.

THANK AN INVENTOR - WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH: Top Hat or Racecar? Elizabeth Magie's "The Landlord's Game," was patented in 1904, 30 years before a very similar game called Monopoly was picked up by Parker Brothers.

THANK AN INVENTOR - WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH: While working as a weaver, Tabitha Babbitt watched people struggling to cut wood with a pit saw, which required two users and only cut in one direction. Determined to help, she attached a circular blade to her spinning wheel and invented the much more efficient circular saw.

THANK AN INVENTOR - WOMAN'S HISTORY MONTH: Anna Stork and Andrea Sreshta were graduate students at Columbia University's School of Architecture when the devastating earthquake hit Haiti in 2010; in one of their classes, they were assigned a project to find a way to help with disaster relief. After speaking to a relief worker, Stork and Sreshta realized that there was an often-forgotten need after disasters strike: light. The pair decided to create an inflatable, waterproof, and solar-powered light, the LuminAID Solar Light. Their design can be packed flat, charges in 6 hours to provide light for 16, and even features a handle to make it easy to carry. They used a crowdfunding campaign to make their first 1,000 lights, and after LuminAID became a favorite with outdoor enthusiasts — and in home emergency kits — they started a Give Light Project: one light is donated for every light purchased. They have since provided lights to Nepal and to Syrian refugees. Thanks to the work of these two creative innovators, more people will have access to the gift of light during the darkest of times.

To answer, or send to voice mail... that is the question. Dr. Shirley Jackson is an American physicist who received her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1973. She was the first African-American woman to earn a doctorate in nuclear physics at MIT. Her experiments with theoretical physics paved the way for numerous developments in the telecommunication space including the touch-tone telephone, the portable fax, caller ID, call waiting, and the fiber-optic cable.

THANK AN INVENTOR - BLACK HISTORY MONTH: nothing says summer like a water fight. Meet Lonnie Johnson, the man that gave us the Super Soaker. Lonnie wasn’t a toy maker, he was actually an Aerospace Engineer for NASA with a resume boasting a stint with the US Air Force, work on the Galileo Jupiter probe and Mars Observer project, and more than 40 patents.

THANK AN INVENTOR - BLACK HISTORY MONTH: Stop! Ok, go. With only an elementary school education, Black inventor (and son of an enslaved parent), Garrett Morgan came up with several significant inventions, including the improved sewing machine and the gas mask. However, one of Morgan's most regularly used inventions was the improved traffic light. Without his innovation, drivers across the nation would be directed by a two-light system.

Don't miss out on the memories! Pre-Order your 20-21 yearbook today!  Yearbooks are $30.                                    Order Online: https://wpcgo.yearbookforever.com/U9byL

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This school year, Creative Health Services, in cooperation with the 5th/6th Grade Center Student Assistance Program (SAP), will be offering interactive skill building support groups. These groups are designed to provide supportive interventions to increase students’ coping skills and are completely voluntary. Groups will meet once a week for 6 to 8 weeks during the school day. In some cases, it is possible students may have to miss class time to participate.

The groups that may be offered this year are (offerings are based on student participation/interest):

Friendship- to help students work on making and keeping friendships          Changing Families- for students dealing with their parents’ divorce/separation Coping with Stress- to help students learn to handle pressure and stress