Friday, May 29, 2020

Friday, May 29, 2020

Dear Parents,

We did it! We have completed 10 weeks of virtual learning since Spring Break! On behalf of our Elementary team, we want to thank you for being extraordinary partners this year, especially during this time. It was wonderful to see so many of you at the end of year celebrations, and we thank you for all that you all that you have taken on as parents this past quarter. We hope you all find time to rest, recharge and relax over the upcoming summer break.  
We also would like to celebrate all our students, who during this extraordinary time, have gone the extra mile, finding unique ways to connect with each other and their teachers, creating fun projects at home and sharing their learning via Seesaw, photos and videos!
Today we farewell our departing students and their families who are moving on from Chennai and AISC this year, and we wish them all the best with their new adventures in new schools and places.
We also celebrate and farewell our 5th Graders from Elementary School as they rise up to become Middle Schoolers next year.  

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you for all your support of me, and of the Elementary section over my past four years at AISC. I will miss you all as I begin my transition to Luxembourg this summer, and will be taking many precious memories with me as I go. As you know, Calley is also leaving AISC this year to transition to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and we know that you will support Lynn, Dave and Elliot as they begin together in the ES Principal office next year too.

Elementary Report Cards
Next Tuesday, 2nd June, Elementary Report cards will be available to view in Powerschool. These end of year report cards will reflect the learning that has been completed virtually since Spring Break and will have comments from your child’s homeroom, EAL and specialist teachers. You will need to login to Powerschool, and from there can download and/or print your child’s report card.

This tutorial will walk parents through how to view report cards in Powerschool.

Celebrating our Virtual Learning - from the IT office
And as we celebrate week 10, and the completion of virtual school for this academic year, it is an opportunity to gain insight into the incredible collaboration and creative capacity in our school and community.That we have all moved our lives into the online space, means we can look into our productivity in new ways. Some things stand out: since the 23rd of May our students and teachers have received over 1.2 million emails, made 130,000 new files, and spent nearly 1.5 million minutes in Google Video meetings together, learning, thinking and sharing.

Our Elementary students have made an unprecedented shift to online learning. Having made and shared over 23,000 items of learning already in the year before virtual learning, they have now exceeded 80,000 items in just 10 weeks.We have seen our young learners log into our reading platforms 12,000 times, and read for over 110,000 minutes through that platform.

In an outpouring of community engagement, we have seen a reciprocal sense of connection to parents, over 60,000 visits to see your students learning and progress, and over 80,000 comments and likes, showing your support and connection. 

But as ever, it is not just the quantity, but the quality and commitment bestowed into these figures that we may celebrate.The new learning opportunities, the connectedness we find, and the meaning we make. This can be seen in the Learning Celebrations, Assemblies, Video clips and student-parent meetings, and the descriptions of virtual learning each of our students tell. 

We would like to extend that virtual support into the summer for our returning students. As such,  the RAZ Kids, Sora, and Epic reading platforms, will be usable through to mid-July.We will also be allowing students and families to access all of the amazing activities and learning content on SeeSaw, through again to mid-July. If you didn’t get a chance to do a Design Challenge, or really liked an activity, they will be there for you. 

From the School-Wide Counseling Team - Looking Ahead to the Summer Holiday
Your children have just finished the 2019-20 school year! This year has had many high points and, more recently, its share of challenges. One thing to appreciate is that we all found ways to tap into some important strengths during this final quarter of the year - strengths such as determination, patience, gratitude, caring, self-management, creativity, kindness, humor and flexibility, just to name a few. While some of these came more easily to each of us than others, through this experience we have surely grown in ways that we might not yet realize. Through our hardship, our worry and our ability to  develop a “new normal” for ourselves and our families, we have sown the seeds of perseverance, personal growth and optimism that will benefit us in the future. 

And as we look back and reflect on the year, we may also find ourselves looking ahead to the summer holiday. Long stretches of time will unfold before us. For some, both adults and children, this will be a welcome prospect and for others a daunting thing to consider. With that in mind, we have put together some suggestions for you and your children to consider as you go about making your summer plans. 

Try to find a family rhythm for the days. Some may prefer to have structured times of day for certain activities posted in a common space; others may prefer looser and more general blocks of time for the day. This will likely depend on the ages, temperaments and work-from-home constraints of each of your family members. Some things to consider fitting in to your days: family time, alone time, help around the house time, outdoor time (if possible), physical activity time, meal times, bed times. 

Work with your child ahead of time to create a list of wide-ranging options for family time and/or alone time. It can be challenging to try to think up ideas in the moment but if you’ve brainstormed some ideas ahead of time and have them ready to go, everyone is more likely to happily join in. Click HERE to hear more about this idea, see some examples and even purchase a set of family connection cards, if you aren’t feeling very creative right now. Click HERE for a list of 101 strength-based actions that might give you some additional ideas. And for even more suggestions, take a look at these:

Investigate alternatives to summer camps. If you had planned for your child to attend a summer camp this summer and it seems like those plans may not happen now, below are some ideas for you and your child to consider. Most of these options serve a wide range of age groups so investigate the sights well. 

  • Camp Wonderopolis is the free online summer-learning destination that's full of fun, interactive STEM and literacy-building topics boosted by Maker experiments!
  • Keep your hands active and your mind engaged with Creativebug. Experience the joy of making with thousands of video classes taught by designers and artists. 
  • DIY. org : Huge library of hands-on projects and how-to videos. Creative projects and courses ranging from “Build Your Own Machine” and “Drawing Bootcamp” to “Strange Science” and “Host a Minecraft Video Show.” 
  • Check out Outschool  - live, online summer camp options for kids. Fill their break with fun learning experiences from home. 
  • Wide Open School: A vast collection of online learning resources curated by the editors of Common Sense Media. A proposed daily schedule might give shape to the hours.
  • If you have an older child who had made plans for an academic enrichment course or summer job that have now been cancelled, consider the ideas here, here and here. 
Help your child find options for getting physical activity that appeal to them. Keeping up physical activity is vital to our overall health and research shows that exercise boosts the immune system, reduces stress and anxiety, supports better sleep and focus. If you have access to the outdoors, that will give you and your child a wide variety of options for physical activity. However, if you find yourself inside more than not, you can try some of these options:

Encourage your child to stay connected to friends and extended family. We know how vital maintaining positive relationships is for our wellbeing and it will be important for your child to have other connections beyond just the family they are living with over the summer months. While, these days, this may involve some extra screen time, consider the different options suggested for ES kids and for MS/HS kids in THIS article. In addition, apps like Houseparty,  Gather  and Netflix Party might be a fun change from skype/zoom/whatsapp. For those of you who like to connect by playing games, here are some ideas for classic board games with a touch of tech,  online games to play with friends and games (younger) kids can play virtually with friends. Remember that Commonsensemedia.org is always a great place to check out whether a game, app or movie might be appropriate for your child’s age. 

Important Information About Student Medical Forms
Student health and safety is of utmost importance to AISC. In order for us to ensure that students are able to participate in activities and for our Health Office to give proper care, we need up-to-date and accurate medical information for all students. Please be sure to return to school next year with the proper forms completed and turned in to the Health Office.  

Form
For
Completed and signed by:
All students every year
Parent
New students and those entering grades 3, 6, or 9
Physician
Any students that take medicine during the school day.
Parent with attached copy of prescription
Any students that have allergies or asthma
Parent


Email bjack@aischennai.org or dmonicka@aischennai.org with any questions. 

Summer Reading Fun!
Over the upcoming break, the library wants everyone to keep reading! Like we did over the December/January holiday, every student in grades K-5 has access to a Reading Bingo game to play over the summer break. The booky activities have changed, but the object remains the same - help your child to cross off as many boxes as they can in order to get a BINGO or two or three! These can be printed off or children can mark them digitally. 


Please feel free to send any photos of your child(ren) completing Reading Bingo to Babs at bbarbara@aischennai.org and please let her know if you have any questions.

Procedure for Returning Students
If you have Library books/classroom library books/musical instruments: 
  • Please send us a photo of the books/instrument for the music and library departments to provide an all clear (Email: pteena@aischennai.org and bbowman@aischennai.org)
  • Drop off the items labelled with your child’s name and grade at the school’s security office any time or leave the things with another returning AISC family to be handed over to us in August. Please email us the name and contact details of the person you are leaving your items with.  
*If you are currently out of the country, you can return the items when you return to campus in August.

Procedure for Withdrawing Students 
Please inform the Elementary Admin Assistants (bhazel@aischennai.org  and ppadma@aischennai.org)  if your child is not returning to AISC for the next school year. 

The following procedures need to be completed for us to issue the Transfer Certificate.
If you have Library books/classroom library books/musical instruments: 
  • Please send us a photo of the books/instrument for the music and library departments to provide an all clear (Email: bhazel@aischennai.org and ppadma@aischennai.org)
  • Drop off the items labelled with your child’s name and grade at the school’s security office any time or leave the things with another returning AISC family to be handed over to us in August. Please email us the name and contact details of the person you are leaving your items with.  
  • Please use AISC payonline to clear dues for ASAs, Lunches etc. 
  • Balance in your smart cards (any amount over Rs 500/-) will be transferred to your bank a/c. Please provide following details:

            >Name of the account holder(parent)
            >Account number
            >Name and address of the bank
            >IFSC code of the bank
              
Please correspond with Ms. Padma (ppadma@aischennai.org) and Ms. Hazel (bhazel@aischennai.org)  in the Elementary School Office if you have any questions.

Yearbook
Jostens, the Yearbook publisher, has created an online version of our annual so that we do not have to wait any longer to see it. Physical copies will be sent to AISC; however, a timeline for when it will arrive has not yet been provided to us. 
To view the yearbook, use this link and password:
· Login: raptors2020@aisc
Note: when you log in, the screen looks like the image below. Ignore the message on the left side. Add the password on the right in the box with the red text (I've added the red text so the box will be blank when you log in).
Second, a typical end-of-year activity for students is to sign others' yearbooks. Jostens has created a digital signing option this spring (this is a very new option from the publisher). 

Jostens says, "The Yearbook Digital Signing Pages solution provides students with a fun, free and interactive web-based experience that results in a printable permanent keepsake. It is now live and available to all students. As with many websites, the signing website requires users to be 13 years of age or older. This requirement is included in the terms and conditions when a new user registers. As such, for middle or junior high and elementary schools the marketing materials encourage a parent to set up and administer the site for their students." 

Please note that it is your decision as a parent if you would like to allow your child to sign into the website as they are under 13 years of age. Please look through the materials in the video and the Jostens website below for more information. 

Here is a tutorial video for signing up. If you have questions about signing up, please email Ms. Marion Whisnant, AISC HS Librarian directly. 


To create your account, go to: yearbook signing.jostens.com 

Have a restful and relaxing  summer break!

 Keryn Dowling, Dave Allen, and Calley Connelly
Elementary School Leadership Team

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