Dear Parents,
Today we
had our final Learning Celebration of the year with culminating year end
performances from across the school, starting with Ms Jane’s Acro Dance Troupe.
Ms Megha’s class shared with us how to do book clubs, Ms Tiffany’s how to give
a good apology, Ms Wilson’s class the reading strategy of inferring, and Mr
Elliott's class shared a fantasy genre play. We closed off with a
composition class by our visiting Ghanaian drummer, Dr Kofi with third
graders!
This has
been our first year hosting regular learning celebrations with a parent
audience. We are incredibly pleased with the level of confidence, compassion,
creativity and courage our Elementary students have shown through preparing,
presenting and performing in these. We hope you enjoyed being part of these as
much as we did, and invite you to give any specific feedback here of how we could enhance these even further next
year. Thank you in advance for completing this, and thank you for being such a
wonderful audience throughout this year.
Raptor
Swimmers
The
following students will represent AISC at a swim meet at Stonehill
International School in Bangalore next weekend. We wish all our swimmers a
wonderful meet, and cannot wait to hear all the results when they return
home.
Agnete
Clausen
|
Leena Anderson
|
Maddie Cozart
|
Magdalena Runeckles
|
Minami Ashihara
|
Nanami Goda
|
Ronja Wohltmann
|
Katie Pratt
|
Norah Jacobson
|
Pénélope Couto
|
Summer Dowling
|
Niagara Hainaut
|
Donggyun
Kang
|
Gaspard Faivre
d'Arcier
|
Merlin Hainaut
|
Minjoon Kim
|
Seongyun Heo
|
Seunggi Choi
|
Titouan Réthoré
|
Henry
Heron
|
Jayden Seo
|
Jeyun Heo
|
Reda Oumina
|
Seungwon Kwak
|
Chihiro Bamba
|
Jasim Mukthar
|
Koshiro Fujiwara
|
Minjun
Kang
|
Morgan Simian
|
Noa Ravon
|
Thomas Bardoux Valla
|
Eishun Watanabe
|
Harris Cozart
|
Juseop Lee
|
Marco
Weick
|
Nassim Berrahmoun
|
Go Raptors! I am sure you will do AISC proud.
NESA Virtual Science Fair
The Near
East South Asia Council of International Schools (NESA) Virtual Science Fair
(NVSF) is an international competitive group science project. This year, it is
celebrating its thirteenth year in action. This acclaimed project is supported
by the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Overseas Schools and crosses
geopolitical borders in order to enable upper elementary (and middle) school
students from over 75 countries to participate in scientific research,
multicultural conversations, and exchange of science investigation and
problem-solving ideas.
This year, AISC had
thirteen Grade 5 students participate in the event. The top teams from across
the globe have been selected to advance to the Champions League, during which a
small number of finalists’ projects will be judged by a team of U.S. based
university scientists. The results will be announced in May.
I would like to
congratulate seven AISC Grade 5 students (working on two different research
projects) whose projects have been chosen for review in the finalist Champions
League.
Project
Title: Seawater to Drinking Water
AISC
Grade 5 Scientists: Melchi Michael, Nassim Berrahmoun, Eishun Watanabe and Nils
Guillon
Project
Description: Our experiment is about converting seawater into drinking water
through evaporation and condensation. We are finding out how the rate of
evaporation affects the salinity of water after condensing. We predicted that
for a higher rate of evaporation, the salinity in the condensed water would be
decreased. We decided to conduct the experiment with seawater in a glass tub
kept directly under sunlight. We tested that in three different models designed
and created by us.
Project
Title: Energy Generators
AISC
Grade 5 Scientists: Merina Mujahid Ashraf, Saachin Ramasami and Jayla Reina
Rostant
Project
Description: We wanted to produce our own wind energy in the future and use
clean renewable energy. A larger version could be used on top of AISC to
generate energy throughout the night when the solar panels stop producing
energy. Our experiment is understanding the process of producing electrical
energy using a dynamometer. We expect the amount of energy produced to be
proportional to the speed of rotating the dynamometer. We want to vary the
speed of rotating the dynamometer and understand the relationship between the
speed of rotating the dynamometer and the voltage output. Some of the
challenges to our experiment was that both the speed of the rotating the
dynamometer and the voltage output kept changing. We had to design the
experiment to ensure we got a rough measurement of the number of rotations per
minute of the dynamometer and the ratio of the large wheel to the dynamometer
wheel.
Note too that in science, our elementary
students outperform on average their international peers by grade level on
the MAP science assessment.
English
Language Instruction through our Literacy Programmes
Our school
is to building English language development during literacy instruction. The
interconnectedness between listening and speaking to reading and writing are
foundational to the language and literacy development of all students. In the
elementary school students develop their literacy skills through an approach
called balanced literacy. This approach to literacy consists of several
instructional practices that primarily include: reading and writing workshop, word
study, read aloud, shared and guided reading. All of these instructional
components are taught, practiced and assessed in English. Reading and writing
workshop consists of the teacher delivering a brief mini-lesson focused on a
specific teaching point that students are encouraged to apply when working
independently.
In
addition to literacy being taught in different instructional modalities,
students receive instruction in a variety of instructional settings.
Instructional settings primarily consist of whole class, small group and
one-on-one instruction. The choice of instructional delivery and setting is
intentionally made based on teacher anecdotal notes, student assessment data
and progress along the reading and writing continuums. Teachers routinely meet
to ensure grade level consistency and a deeper understanding of effective
teaching practices.
Have a
great weekend!
Warmly,
Keryn Dowling and Lori
Newman