Friday, April 16, 2018

Dear faculty,

Great SLCs today - what a wonderful way to end the week!

Thank you to...

• All teachers and TAs for the careful preparation and planning for SLCs
• Hilary, Amritha, Dee, Rachael and Amanda for stepping up last minute to cover for Jet (Nicole)
• Jet for unleashing his Spanish linguistic abilities these past two weeks
• Karen and Seema for welcoming in Sarah Sahr and giving ES EAL history
• Carl for covering duties for Linda and Keryn whilst in Korea
• Barbara and Leontheen for empowering Roots and Shoots members to raise awareness and funds for the Elephant Care Facility. Dr. Supraja Dharini, founder of the Tree Foundation, visited this week and was presented with over 30, 000 rupees in donations and a number of bags of grains.
• All teachers who supported the hilarious MS play

  

Meet AISC - Samantha Paiva - Elementary EAL Teacher

Samantha Paiva has a Masters degree in English Literature and a diploma in English Language teaching. She taught at a school in Pune for a year before joining AISC. Something that always makes her feel happy is when a student’s face lights up as they begin to understand a concept. Samantha was most proud about representing AISC recently at a language development conference in Vietnam.  She felt honored to present about all the wonderful work we are doing here to enhance language development.  Samantha would love to be omnilingual as it would help her to communicate with people who speak different languages.

Upcoming MAP Testing (Grades 2-5)

Spring MAP testing is later this year, and will begin on Tuesday, May 1. As always, it will run for approximately two weeks. Here is a draft MAP schedule of possible testing times. Unless it’s otherwise planned for, we assume that most teachers will want to test first thing in the morning (8:45-9:00ish) after attendance and morning meeting are completed. The draft schedule is based on this assumption, but there is a high degree of flexibility if you’d like to request any changes. The schedule is limited only by the number of school-owned laptops that can be borrowed for testing, and the availability of IT staff to help troubleshoot. Email Lori if you’d like to request any time/date changes.

Priya or other IT staff will be coming around to do the usual preparation check of student devices towards the end of the day throughout the last week of April.

More information will come out in the next couple of weeks with links to the testing site, student instructions, and the step-by-step guide.

Discovery Studio Challenges (optional)

Challenge Block times are shown on Carl’s calendar. Simply email him with the block number you’d like and let him know how many students to expect. The following challenges will run for the next 2 weeks.

EY5 to Gr 2 - Students will be given the challenge of creating a marble maze. The maze should contain different kinds of obstacles and traps. Time needed is a couple of blocks

Gr 3 to Gr 5 - Students will create a simple hydraulic crane using syringes, tubing and craft sticks. Time needed is a couple of blocks.

The Studio will remain open Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday during the grade 2/3 and 4/5 lunch recess times.

EAL WIDA Testing Grade 3-5

The 3-5 Collab room will be a venue for the WIDA testing.

Specialists, please be aware that 3-5 students may be missing from specialist classes due to testing.
The 3-5 Collab room printer and copier will be temporarily out of USE for the next 2 weeks. Please see below information for your printing requirements. 

PRINTER & COPIER IN 3-5 COLLAB ROOM

As the EAL Teachers are WIDA testing in this room for the next 2 weeks weeks, for your color prints use the ES office printer. For black and white prints use the printer in the TA workroom or the CIC. You can use the copier in the ES office for black and white photocopies.

Withdrawing Students

If any parents informed you during the conferences that they will be not be returning for the next academic year, please pass on this information to Hazel and Padma. They can check with the parents who have not submitted the Withdrawal Form.

Earth Day Spirit Week, April 16-20 (next week)

To show our continuing commitment to sustainability, we are happy to have our first Earth Day Spirit Week from April 16-20. During this week we will make an effort to positively affect our environment along the five categories of LEED: energy, water, human experience, transportation and waste.

We would like our community to join us in the Earth Day Spirit Week by participating in the daily challenges and wear Earth Day colors of green and blue for the week! Please see the Head's Notes for more details.

Meatless Monday April 16	Nothing New Tuesday April 17	Buy-A-Plant Wednesday April 18	Carpool Thursday April 19	No Waste Lunch Friday April 20	Beach Clean Up Weekend April 21-22
Energy	Water	Human Experience	Transportation	Waste	Waste

Short and sweet this week!
Have a wonderful weekend

Keryn & Lori