Friday, November 30, 2018

Dear Parents,

We hope you are enjoying this cooler weather as we head into our last three weeks before the winter break. Classes will soon get into the holiday spirit with upcoming winter performances and other class celebrations. Look for more information from your class parent.

Elementary Christmas Carols

Next Friday 7 December, from 5:00 - 6:00 p.m, our Elementary Choir will be performing in the unity courtyard.  Please come along to join in the sing-a-long fun and hear our wonderful choir.

Missoula Children’s Theatre Video Recording

For those parents who were unable to make the Missoula Children’s Theatre performance of Treasure Island, we are so happy to share this YouTube video with you and your families.  Enjoy!

LINK TO TREASURE ISLAND

Early Release Pick up

A reminder to parents that on several Wednesdays every year we have early release. School finishes at 2:00 p.m. The next early release will be on Wednesday 12 December. This means we will close the playgrounds and football fields at this time too. We ask all children and parents leave campus promptly so that faculty can begin their professional learning to enhance teaching and learning.

Student Protection Curriculum

As part of our annual school counseling program, we school counselors wanted to let you know that we would be delivering lessons pertaining to personal safety. These lessons are designed to help our students recognize and understand what our bodies perceive as a threat. Our hope is that through our lessons, students become better prepared to respond to unsafe situations. We thank you for your continued support of our elementary school counseling program. If you have questions or concerns, please reach out to your child’s grade level counselor, either Ms. Linda Gerberich or Ms. Vanessa Kim. Detailed information shared here.

STEM Holiday Family Challenge

Can you design and create an object to represent something related to your family holidays or traditions using only recycled materials?

Design Constraints (Rules)

• Size - no more than 25 cm tall and no more than 30 cm wide (for display purposes)
• Use only materials you find around your house - Do not buy anything for the challenge!
• No food or candy!
• Please mark with your name and homeroom on the bottom.
• Bring completed projects to the Discovery & Design Studio anytime before December 5.

Some examples:

       

      

December Lunch Menu & Order Links   

To order a school lunch for your child, please use this Payonline link.  

Elementary Lunch Menus: (Grades EY- 3 Pre-order) and (Grades 4 & 5 - No Preorder)

Reminder - Community Summit: Exploring the Horizons of Wellbeing (repeat announcement)

Over the course of three early release days, we will be holding this Community Summit to explore the horizons of wellbeing. To make this a truly community driven endeavour we need parents and students to join faculty and administrative staff to envision the future of wellbeing at AISC. Together we will:

• Discover what we are doing best to nurture wellbeing at AISC - November 28
• Envision bold new possibilities for the future - December 12
• Design for excellence and construct the future of wellbeing at AISC - January 23

The sessions will run from 2:30-5:00 pm in the Gym. Parents and Students are asked to RSVP for this event here.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Keryn Dowling, Dave Allen and Calley Connelly

Friday, November 22, 2018

Dear Parents,

Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Long weekend to everyone. Enjoy this extra time together with family and friends, and think of all the wonderful opportunities and people in our lives that we can be thankful for.

 

Our Parent coffee presentation on MAP and Elementary Report Cards earlier this week had a great turn out with many parents from all grade levels. Thank you to all those parents to learn more about this focus area. If you would like to access the presentation, it can be found here.

Vision of a Learner

Congratulations to the following students who are receiving the Vision of a Learner awards for the first quarter of our year. Students were selected for the following traits:

Yair Fijman, MW - Explorer

Joonyeob Kim, 2DJ - Reflective

Clara Jouin, 3JM  - Resilient

Daisuke Kurabayashi, 3TG - Resilient

Ha Young Yang, 4JN  - Resilient

Teagan Weller, 3MR  - Empathetic

Mathurin Le Beaudour, 5JD - Leader

Victor Pechold, 3TG  -  Versatile

Yeonwoo Lee, 1KC - Thinker

Fumiya Nakamura, 5VL - Innovative

Margaux Verany, 5BT - Collaborative

Daphne Guerin, 4JN - Ethical

NESA Virtual Science and Engineering Fair Announcement

The NESA Virtual Science and Engineering Fair is a unique opportunity for students in 5th grade to conduct scientific investigations or design models to solve real-world problems.

We invite parents of all interested 5th graders to a meeting in the BBT on Monday, November 26th from 3:45-4:30. The purpose of this meeting is to share information about the NESA Virtual Science and Engineering Fair and enroll participants.

Coming this week - Early ES Celebration of Learning - Nov 30, 2:45 - 3:15 PM in ES Cafeteria

Parents are invited to join us next Friday for a Celebration of Learning for Early Elementary. First and second grade students will be hosting, with 1KJ and 1MW as well as 2BW and 2DJ presenting, and some special Music participation. As usual, we welcome parents to join us and see our students shine!  

Early Years 5 Math Morning Follow-up

Thank you to the many parents who participated in our last Family Math Morning. What a wonderful shared learning experience for kids, parents, and teachers. In order to support your understanding of the math curriculum, please find below a few links with the presentation, major work of the grade, and fun home learning options for you and your child to continue learning math together.  

Google Slides Presentation from Math Morning - best viewed in “present mode”

Common Core Major Work of Kindergarten (EY5)

New Digital Home Learning Resources Posted for ALL ES Parents and Students

Please have a fresh look at our Home Learning Resources for Parents, which includes updated links to more conceptual-based, fun and fascinating digital math resources. If you have a budding gamer in your household, we think you will find something here to engage your child in math learning alongside the fun of gaming. There are options that include coding, fantasy worlds, and word problem practice.  

 

Fog Stone Isle Math Game, https://cignition.com/

Missoula Children's Theater

Photos from Treasure Island are now up on our photo gallery on the website.  Password raptors18

NO Saturday Swimming Classes this weekend

This is a reminder for our Saturday swimming classes

No swimming classes this Saturday, November 24th, 2018 due to the long weekend.

STEM Holiday Family Challenge

Can you design and create an object to represent something related to your family holidays or traditions using only recycled materials?

Design Constraints (Rules)

• Size - no more than 25 cm tall and no more than 30 cm wide (for display purposes)
• Use only materials you find around your house - Do not buy anything for the challenge!
• No food or candy!
• Please mark with your name and homeroom on the bottom.
• Bring completed projects to the Discovery & Design Studio anytime before December 5.

Some examples: 

December Lunch Menu & Order Links   

To order a school lunch for your child, please use this Payonline link.  

Elementary Lunch Menus: (Grades EY- 3 Pre-order) and (Grades 4 & 5 - No Preorder)

Reminder - Community Summit: Exploring the Horizons of Wellbeing (repeat announcement)

Over the course of three early release days, we will be holding this Community Summit to explore the horizons of wellbeing. To make this a truly community driven endeavour we need parents and students to join faculty and administrative staff to envision the future of wellbeing at AISC. Together we will:

• Discover what we are doing best to nurture wellbeing at AISC - November 28
• Envision bold new possibilities for the future - December 12
• Design for excellence and construct the future of wellbeing at AISC - January 23

The sessions will run from 2:30-5:00 pm in the Gym. Parents and Students are asked to RSVP for this event here.

Have a wonderful weekend!
Keryn Dowling, Dave Allen and Calley Connelly

Friday, November 16, 2018

Dear Parents,

Congratulations to our cast of 60 and our 4 assistant directors for their outstanding performance of Treasure island today. We are so glad the rain kept away so the show definitely could go on! Photos from this will be available on our Raptors Gallery next week.

 

Elementary Parent Coffee - Tuesday 20 November, 8:45 am Madras Hall

Next Tuesday 20 November, from 8:45-9:45 in the Madras Hall we will host a parent coffee on understanding our elementary report cards as well as MAP testing and results. The session will assist parents in understanding how our academic reports look and function at AISC. Sherriden Masters, Director of Technologies and Innovation, will join me to explain the new ES report card format, as well as MAP score feedback from the latest assessment.

Early Years 5 Family Math Morning - Wednesday 21, November, 8:45 am Madras Hall

Join our ES math coach, Calley Connelly, on Wednesday morning from 8:45 to 10:15 a.m. in the Madras Hall, to learn more about your EY5 child’s math learning experiences. You will spend some time learning about the curriculum, then join the class to participate in a lesson, and finally debrief with teachers. We look forward to a great math conversation.

Late Pick up from school

Understanding that at times there may be an unavoidable situation where you may be late to collect your child from school, we are noticing several children are routinely not being collected until after 3:45 p.m. We ask for your support and understanding in being prompt to collect your children at 3:30 p.m and at 2:00 on Early Release days. Thank you!

Reminder - Community Summit: Exploring the Horizons of Wellbeing

Over the course of three early release days, we will be holding this Community Summit to explore the horizons of wellbeing. To make this a truly community driven endeavour we need parents and students to join faculty and administrative staff to envision the future of wellbeing at AISC. Together we will:

• Discover what we are doing best to nurture wellbeing at AISC - November 28
• Envision bold new possibilities for the future - December 12
• Design for excellence and construct the future of wellbeing at AISC - January 23

The sessions will run from 2:30-5:00 pm in the Gym. Parents and Students are asked to RSVP for this event here.

Operation Smile

Operation Smile will be sending some of our club members on a medical mission trip to Darjeeling! Our aim is to make the children undergoing their cleft palate/lip surgeries feel as comfortable as possible. We need your help! Darjeeling is a very cold place, and the patients need blankets to stay warm. There are boxes set-up at the high school office, middle school office, elementary school office, elementary cafeteria, and the main gate, so please donate any old blankets your family might have!

Thank you,

Operation Smile Board

Hour of Code Coming the week of 26th November to 30th of November (repeat announcement)

The Hour of Code is a global movement by Computer Science Education Week and Code.org reaching tens of millions of students in 180+ countries through a one-hour introduction to computer science and computer programming. Many AISC elementary students will be participating in coding in their classrooms or with the Maker Space teachers during this week. If you would like to do more coding at home with your child, check out these excellent resources at Code.org sorted by grade level, all the way from pre-readers through high school age! Coding is a great elective home learning choice for building logic and reasoning. 

 

Have a wonderful weekend!

Keryn Dowling, Dave Allen and Calley Connelly

Friday, November 9, 2018

Dear Parents,

We have come to the end of our very short week in the Elementary. We did have a lot of unrelated-to-illness absences this week, and so please do take the time to read the absence policy which is included as a repeat announcement below.

Missoula Children’s Theatre Performance - Treasure Island - Friday 16 November 2:00 pm

Parents, please join us in the FAC theatre next Friday afternoon - seated and ready for a 2:00 p.m start. Please be on time! Grade 1-5 children will be in the audience sitting with their classes (EY students are watching an earlier dress rehearsal).  

Parents with babies and toddlers must ensure strollers are parked outside, and that toddlers remain on parents laps throughout the performance.

Parent Coffee

The next parent coffee is Tuesday 20 November, from 8:45-9:45 in the Madras Hall. The session will assist parents in understanding how our academic reports look and function at AISC. Sherriden Masters, Director of Technologies and Innovation, will join me to explain the new ES report card format, as well as MAP score feedback from the latest assessment.

Early Years 3 & 4 Parent Coffee

Thank you to all the EY3 & 4 families that were able to attend our recent parent coffee on play in the early years. Information was shared about children using open-ended materials during play particularly around the idea of Loose Parts. If you are interested in the information that was shared, please visit this link to access the presentation.

Writing Celebrations

Today a few different grade levels hosted their end of unit writing celebration - thank you to all the parents who were able to join us celebrating growth in this foundational academic area. If you were not able to make it, please invite your child to share their writing at the dinner table over the weekend. You will be so proud of what they have accomplished!

 

Grade 1 KC Learning Celebration

Reminder: Maker Saturday 17 November 9 am – 12pm

Please click HERE on this link for online sign-up.

The cost of the activity is: INR 3000 - Payment can be done at the Athletics & Activities office, Room 1304 (next to the IHUB). A reminder that each child must come with an accompanying adult, and other siblings are not welcome to join because of safety concerns in the MakerSpace.  

Lego WeDo 2.0 Robotics (grades 1 - 3)

The first challenge is to build robots using our brand new Lego WeDo 2.0 kits. After that, you will program your robot to move through an obstacle course.

Lego Mindstorm Robotics (grades 4 - 5)

The second challenge is to build robots using our Lego Mindstorm Core & Expansion kits. Make your robot as simple or complicated as possible. After that, you will program your robot to move through an obstacle course.

Hour of Code Coming the week of 26th November to 30th of November

The Hour of Code is a global movement by Computer Science Education Week and Code.org reaching tens of millions of students in 180+ countries through a one-hour introduction to computer science and computer programming. Many AISC elementary students will be participating in coding in their classrooms or with the Maker Space teachers during this week.  If you’d like to do more coding at home with your child, check out these excellent resources at Code.org sorted by grade level, all the way from pre-readers through high school age! Coding is a great elective  home learning choice for building logic and reasoning. 

Absence Policy (repeat announcement)

As stated in our handbook, maintaining good attendance in school is extremely important in succeeding academically. Students are expected to attend school every day, unless they are suffering from sickness. We are noticing many parents choosing to take their children out of school for various other reasons. Please know that this is not encouraged and that missing class does have a negative impact on their academic performances. It is challenging for teachers to re-visit concepts and ideas covered when the rest of the class has already moved on.

Missoula Children’s Theatre - Treasure Island (repeat announcement)

Sign ups to be part of the cast have now closed - and we already have over 140 children sign up! As you are aware, the cast selected will only be for 60 children. If your child has signed up to audition, please prepare them for the reality that over half signed up will not be selected. This may be a helpful article to read - ‘Failure Is an Option”, to help prepare children for disappointment.

Have a wonderful weekend!
Keryn Dowling, Dave Allen and Calley Connelly

Friday, November 2, 2018

Dear Parents,

Happy Diwali and Happy Long weekend. Travel safe, rest well and enjoy your long weekend together with family and friends. Next week will be a short week and hopefully a chance for the germs and bugs to leave the building!

There are a lot of virus’ going around at this seasonal weather change and please do remember our policy regarding sickness. If your child has had a fever (or other contagious diseases) they must be 24 hours free of any symptoms, including fever, before they return to school.  Please help us in keeping all our children safe and healthy!

Grade 2 Identity Museum

Thank you to all the parents who attended the Grade 2 Identity Museum this week. Hearing the children’s explanations of their identity and seeing these represented through maps, cultural ideas, food, sport and family was impressive. Well done Grade 2!

Wellbeing Survey - Message for parents in Grade 4 and 5 - Consent Form
Our school is committed to understanding the needs of your child/ren and we are excited to inform you of a wellbeing initiative that we are planning for this year. We are engaging the University of Melbourne to measure the wellbeing of our students in grades 4-12, and we seek your support to allow your child/ren to participate in the survey that will be completed during PE class on the week of the 26^th of November. This will support our efforts to intentionally develop the wellbeing of our students.

Please indicate whether you consent for your child/ren to participate in the survey by responding YES or NO on the digital consent form, accessible here. An in-depth description of the survey is included in the consent form.

If you have more than one child at school, this digital consent form allows you to indicate consent for all of your children at once. The digital consent form requires you to draw a digital signature using a computer mouse or touchscreen. A hard copy form is available from section offices. For more information regarding the survey please get in contact with Nigel Holdsworth (School Psychologist).

Absence Policy

As stated in our handbook, maintaining good attendance in school is extremely important in succeeding academically. Students are expected to attend school every day, unless they are suffering from sickness. We are noticing many parents choosing to take their children out of school for various other reasons. Please know that this is not encouraged and that missing class does have a negative impact on their academic performances. It is challenging for teachers to re-visit concepts and ideas covered when the rest of the class has already moved on.

Missoula Children’s Theatre - Treasure Island

Sign ups to be part of the cast have now closed - and we already have over 140 children sign up. As you are aware, the cast selected will only be for 60 children. If your child has signed up to audition, please prepare them for the reality that over half signed up will not be selected. This may be a helpful article to read - ‘Failure Is an Option”,  to help prepare children for disappointment.

November Lunch Menu & Order Links (repeat info)  

To order a school lunch for your child, please use this Payonline link.  

Elementary Lunch Menus: (Grades EY- 3 Pre-order) and (Grades 4 & 5 - No Preorder)

Warmly,

Keryn Dowling, Dave Allen, and Calley Connelly