A huge thank you goes to everyone who participated in the grades 3-5 Vision Day Projects this past week. Hours of time went into organizing, collaborating, and planning to make the day a success. A special thank you goes to Mary Kelly, Jen, and Jack for coordinating Vision Day. 

We’ve now added an icon for any possible action items. 

 

Upcoming Week at a Glance:

Date	Time	Event	Details
November 23
November 24	3:30-4:30	Erma’s Math PD Session 3	Zoom Link
November 25	3:45 p.m.	Raptor Safe Return to Campus Training - All Faculty	Zoom Link
November 26
November 27		Thanksgiving Break (No School)

 

Erma Anderson’s Math Workshop (Session 3)

Please join Erma for the third math PD session on Tuesday, November 24th. Feel free to join even if you missed the other sessions. This opportunity is open to all teachers and TAs.  

Holiday Read Aloud

As a way of showing our appreciation at this time of year, please sign up for a guest reader to come during a morning meeting or closing circle for a holiday themed read aloud! You can feel free to stay or leave the meeting. All you need to do is login in first then make the guest reader the host. Please only sign up for one block to make sure everyone can benefit. (Please put your name in the row in white underneath the time in green that works with your schedule.)

Report Cards - No Surprises

As you start to prepare for report card writing, this is just a friendly reminder that there should be no surprises to parents. If you plan to write a comment that there is not enough evidence to assess a student for a particular subject area, please make sure you reach out to parents now to let them know their child isn’t completing independent work and/or attending synchronous sessions. 

If you do not have enough evidence to mark a standard, please leave the standard blank (do not mark NA). Not being able to check a standard should be reflected in the narrative. Again, no surprises. Parents need to be informed. 

Talk with either Dave or Lynn if you need support or have any questions.    

 

Report Cards - New Students

The latest date for new student arrivals to receive a full report card is Friday, October 30th. If you have students who started after this date, please write a personal, social, emotional comment and a narrative comment for any subjects that you can. Many of you may be able to write about areas of success for reading, writing, and math. These comments do not have to be as long as the comments for the other students. You do not need to mark any of the standards. 

Specialists do not need to fill out a report card for students starting after Oct. 30th. Homeroom teachers please communicate the names of these students directly with specialist teachers.

Parent Coffee Take Aways

We held a parent coffee for ES Korean families today. The coffee was translated enabling all 50 parents who attended to participate, be engaged, and feel included. Parents expressed their gratitude to all of you for the work you are doing with their children. 

Based on the conversation today in the coffee, we’d like to ask that you try to give as much advance notice to families if they need additional supplies for projects. We did mention that you are all flexible at this time and families can substitute items for projects as needed. 

We’d also like to ask homeroom teachers to reschedule any Friday 1:1 meetings for November 27th. Two Fridays are holidays this month, and we want to make sure students are getting the needed 1:1 conferences each week. 

 

Vision Day

Thank you again for making Vision Day memorable for our students! Take a look at projects and highlights from the day here.

Also, please share your feedback by Wednesday, Nov. 25th if you haven't done so already.  

 

RISE Event

Our virtual RISE event is happening on Friday, Dec. 4th. Please note the times below for your particular grade level. 

 

 

Heads Round Table

Reminder!

Greetings from Alex Ray, Julia Davis, and Jen Cypra. We are your representatives for the elementary section on the Head's Round Table this year. HRT is an opportunity for voicing ideas or concerns. We meet every few weeks but we are available to help process issues at any time. Please feel free to reach out to any of us through email as questions or concerns arise. 

 

Coaching Corner

 

Subscribe to this incredible blog:  www.theliteracynest.com

Recent posts include:

• How to Keep Active Students Engaged During Distance Learning Sessions

• 6 Picture Book Suggestions During a Pandemic

• 8 Tips if You’re Feeling Overwhelmed by Teaching Online

• 10 Tips for Using Poetry with Challenged Readers

Also, check out the free Wordlist Builder tab.  This is a great resource for creating a variety of word related activities and games.

Feel free to reach out to Alex if you have any questions or want to explore more together. 

 

From the Counselors

 

 

 

1. Find the number for the day of the month. 

2. Enjoy the "treat" of the day. Did you forget to use the calendar one day? No problem. Just do two another day, or skip one all together.

3. Did you not like one of the "treats"? No problem either. Just pick another treat you like a lot and have it again! 

4. With this advent calendar, it's all about filling you up, and guilt is not allowed, no matter how it goes. 

 

Have a wonderful weekend!

Lynn, Dave, and Elliot

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friday, November 12, 2020

 Upcoming Week at a Glance:

Date	Time	Event	Details
November 16
November 17
November 18	All day 3:45 p.m.	Vision Day Projects (Grades 3-5) Faculty Meeting (more details to come next week)
November 19
November 20

 

Wednesday’s Faculty Meeting

We will use Wednesday’s faculty meeting time for a couple of different grade level band meetings. We will send out a detailed schedule with Zoom links next week. 

 

Informal Running Records

The window for completing the second informal running records begins Monday, November 16th and ends on Friday, December 4th. Add the student data to the BAME spreadsheet. Please reach out to Alex if you have any questions. 

 

VL Faculty Wellness Survey

Back in September, we shared a few of the data points from the VL faculty survey. Here are all of the results. 

 

Coaches Corner

Make every lesson interactive with Nearpod

                              

 

AISC has an account. Contact Hilary for details and/or a tutorial overview.

 

Got 2 minutes? Watch how Nearpod works!

 

Nearpod is one of the most interactive educational tools available to teachers. Students access lessons using a link and then type in their name. Responses are recorded and can be printed out and viewed by teachers at their convenience. Students can use Nearpod with any device. Lessons can be taught synchronously or asynchronously. Use lessons as is or customize to meet your students' needs. 

 

Here are some of the best features: 

• Pre-made lessons on every topic, subject, and theme you can possibly imagine: meditation, social-emotional learning, covid, history, world languages, phonics, reading books, coding, grammar, writing instruction, teaching points from reading/writing workshop, and many more.

• A variety of lesson formats: Virtual Reality, Polls, Collaborate Boards, Simulations, Interactive videos with pause and respond feature, Immersive reader with audio recording, and game-based quizzes. 

• Multiple ways for students to enter their responses: audio, drawing, integrated Google search, collaboration, text, matching pairs, fill-in-the-blank, etc. 

• Partnerships with: Learnzillion, Common Sense Media, Phet Simulations, Teaching Tolerance, Desmos, Science Kids, BBC, and many more…

 

Try out a lesson: 

• Fact and Option, Time to Climb, game-based quiz, 3-5

• Me gusta ir al mercado, Novice

• Celebrating Diwali, 3-5 (other grade levels available)

• Asking Questions, PBS Kids, Ellenor Wonders Why, KG

• Intro to Mediation, K-2

• Skateboard Lab, Phet Simulations, K-2

• VR field trip, VR Ignite with persuasive writing

 

There is so much to explore!

 

From the Counselors

Here are Linda’s and Michele’s virtual calm down spaces. Use any or all of the slides as you like for a virtual calm space.  

Have a wonderful and safe holiday weekend!

Lynn, Dave, and Elliot

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friday, November 6, 2020

India Week was fantastic with presenters, spirit week fun, classroom and specialist integration activities, read alouds, two melas, and a virtual art and design gallery. As I’m sure you can imagine, a tremendous amount of work went into the planning, organizing, and executing of the week’s events. Thank you to everyone who volunteered their time to help make this virtual India week a success. And a special thank you goes to Bindu for dreaming all of this up and making it a reality for our students. 

 Upcoming Week at a Glance:

Date	Time	Event	Details
November 9
November 10	3:30 p.m.	EY Parent Coffee	Zoom link
November 11	3:45 p.m.	Vertical Team Meetings
November 12
November 13		Happy Diwali (No School)

 

Report Card Expectations

Here you will find some VL report card guidelines and samples. Please refer to the Style Guide for more detailed report card writing guidelines. You will also find the partners for proofreading at the end of the Style Guide. 

 

Coaches Corner

Bridges is at it AGAIN! The Math Learning Center released virtual support materials for their intervention sets volumes 1, 2, 5 & 6. It is a fabulous resource to use to help students get that extra practice you identified they need from a screener or the “just in time” support Erma Anderson likes to reference. These can be used in small groups or one-on-one sessions. You can find them on the Bridges Website on the Resources and Support for 2020-2021 page. Click on the Int (linked here) at the top of the page to get to the intervention materials. If you have any wonderings or questions about utilizing these materials, please reach out to Elliot. 

 

From the Counselors

Author and psychologist, Michael Thompson, spoke at last week’s NESA Parents as Partners meeting about the social lives of children.

A question on our minds now is how this pandemic might affect children socially. They, and we, are missing the thousands of acts of generosity and kindness that go on in a classroom each day. Fortunately,  Michael, who knows both children and international schools well, said that kids are not regressing socially during these times and will recover from whatever social deprivation they have experienced once we are back together at school.  When we as adults worry about kids being deprived of social contact we can check in with them …. Can you tell me what you are doing to stay in touch with friends?  Do you feel connected? What do you miss? Giving children a chance to talk about how they feel right now will help.  

Michael explained that friendship making is the unseen curriculum in schools. Friends and peers teach things that parents cannot teach such as communicating with other children and how to win or lose a game. Friends give a sense of self worth that children can’t get from adults. There is no special/critical age to learn friendship skills. Some children will make best friends and others may not and instead might have a group of friends. Teachers may also serve as important friends for children during times, for whatever reason, a child is without friends. Popularity shouldn’t be emphasized. We, as adults, should place emphasis on children’s positive friendships.

Further resources:

Best friends, Worst enemies

Why does no one want to play with me?

 

Library Logo Contest Winners

Thank you to the 116 elementary, middle, and high school students who created a design for the library logo contest. Our 15 judges (teachers, librarians, students, administrators, and parents) had a difficult time choosing between so many creative options, but in the end, the following logo was chosen as AISC's new library logo. Congratulations to fourth grader, Rizlene Velasco, for creating the winning design!

 

 

The other two finalists from middle and high school can be seen below. Congratulations to Jiyun Yang in grade seven and Hera Kwak in grade eleven!

 

 

Have a wonderful weekend!

Lynn, Dave, and Elliot