It looked like everyone had fun during Spirit Week. It was a wonderful way for you to connect with your students. Please don’t forget to upload your photos here.
Upcoming Week at a Glance:
ES Faculty Meeting - Wed., September 16th
We will come together as a faculty for about 15 minutes. You will have the majority of Wednesday afternoon to:
Discuss and think about the current status and needs of your students
Work on any professional work that you need to complete
We will provide more details to team leads on Monday.
Conferring Online Workshop Follow-up
Jennifer Serrevallo’s entire video from her Facebook live page (about 18 min long)
Carl Anderson’s 10 Tips for Remote Writing Conferences
Matt Glover’s website
Lynn’s and Dave’s Office Hours
Dave and I are finding it hard to keep regular office hours so we will no longer hold regular office hours. We are both available on Google Chat and Whats App throughout the day and can hop on to a “live” meeting with you as needed.
Progress Reports/Growth Conferences
We will not be writing progress reports for the upcoming Growth Conferences during the week of October 12th. Knowing that the focus of the progress reports is on students’ personal, social, and emotional growth, and that we are virtual, reporting on PSE is not going to be the same as when we are on campus face to face. At this point in time, parents are likely to have a better understanding of their child’s PSE than teachers.
Talk Like a Pirate Day, (September 19th)
Avast ye, landlubbers! The ES Library and Design teams invite you to celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day next week by visiting our bilge-sucking website to listen to tales of pirates, seadogs, and poop decks! But, ahoy mateys, there's more! Scallywags can also partake in salty design challenges that will shiver your timbers! Click here or WALK THE PLANK!
From the Counselors
Here are some apps for taking care of yourself (or having a little fun) while working from home:
Morning Meeting/RC Corner
Amazingly, next week will be the 6th full week of school! It’s certain that there has never been a more unique first six weeks of school as this one. We continue to see so many strong planning and execution moves in Morning Meeting including keeping momentum, using interactive greetings and activities and incorporating content. Keep up the hard work of making Morning Meeting socially, emotionally and academically engaging.
Reflection time: In our classrooms, this would be the time that we would be reinforcing all those routines and procedures that we had been teaching for 6 weeks. Now, in virtual mode, what routines and procedures would you want students to be practicing? Which procedures for virtual learning and being a strong virtual classmate do you want to teach and reinforce now at the outset of the year? Look to your grade team leaders to initiate a conversation in the coming weeks around what skills or procedures still need to be taught to your students to help them succeed in our virtual environment.
Quick Tip: Reminder - When screen sharing, remember to stop sharing if students would benefit seeing their peers during the greeting, share or activity. Just the difference of seeing all their classmates versus seeing a slide can make or break the experience for our students. Feel free to toggle back and forth between screen sharing and stopping to give students classmate “facetime”. :-)
Coaching Corner
Mystery Science
Are any of your students or families looking for extra activities? Mystery Science to the rescue…
Mystery Science has added many new features for distance learning. Mini-lessons are short, engaging videos narrated by a science expert. Lessons include discussion questions and extension activities. It is a great family learning activity. Share mini-lessons with a link. New mini-lessons, related to current news, are added almost every week.
As you begin to think about teaching science in the next quarter, Mystery Science has added new features. The new digital assessments collect student responses and digital handouts can be filled in by students without printing. Make sure to check out new lessons on scientific thinking and engineering.
American International School Chennai has a membership to Mystery Science! Mystery Science lessons are open-and-go, simply gather a few materials and start teaching right away!
Click here to join your school's membership:
https://mysteryscience.com/start?school_id=13254
AISC x UN75 Discussion on ‘Inequality in the time of COVID-19’
(3:45-4:30pm IST on Monday, September 21)
Students, Parents and Faculty are Welcome to participate
‘In January, the start of the UN’s 75th anniversary, Secretary-General António Guterres launched the world’s biggest conversation on building a better future for all. The vision was to spark conversations (“UN75 dialogues”) in all settings on priorities for the future, obstacles to achieving them, and the role of international cooperation in making progress. Over 330 dialogues in 87 countries were held in the first three months of year – physically and virtually. It is vital that peoples’ voices are heard at this crucial time for the world.’
The UN has created a global survey to help guide them on global priorities. Please take a moment to share your opinion: https://un75.online/
AISC’s MUN Impact Chennai club thoroughly believes in the vision of the UN and the message of the Secretary-General. We believe that international cooperation is pertinent in the times of COVID, and that starts with greater global engagement, through discussions like these. Please join us. Here is the Zoom Link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88568496425
Meeting ID: 885 6849 6425
Have a wonderful weekend!
Lynn, Dave, and Elliot
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