AIAN will be a widely respected school providing a model US based educational program with an internationally minded community. September 29, 2011 Dear Community, Week seven of the school year has ended. The Terry Fox run and cancer awareness work undertaken over the last week was very successful and well supported by the school. Thank you to every one who participated in some way to help make Wednesday's run effective and pleasant. Several parents came out to school and participated in the run which was great to see. In particular, everyone make sure that you thank Mr. Carpinisan and Mr. Carroll for their work in organizing the day. The early finish on Wednesday proved most useful to the faculty for PD and WASC work. This will continue with a PD day on Friday. The October break is upon us. We hope that everyone has a great holiday and that the students will be refreshed and ready to work when they return to school. Completion of the first quarter is just a few weeks away. Other items for you attention are, THE STUDENT COUNCIL Please find below the list students who represent the Student Council this year. The President: Emily Ahmadi The Vice President: Elliott Miles The Secretary: Thomas Wu The Treasurer: Jenny Chen The class representatives 5 grade : Ruth Davidson. 6 grade: Dina Hwang 7 grade: Paula Baigorri 8 grade: Itsuki Sakamoto 9 grade: William Ruhe 10 grade: Cara Lamug 11 grade: Evan Shortes PARENT TEACHER ASSOCIATION (PTA) The first PTA assembly for this year was held last Wednesday, Sept 21. The following are the new Officers and Board Members: President Katherine Ruhe US Vice President Lisa Shortes US Secretary To be appointed Treasurer Isabel Bessa Spain Board Member Park, Hyun Suk Korea Board Member Nan, Jihwa Korea Board Member Valerie Rampal France Board Member Miyoko Horiuchi Japan Board Member Carrie Koh Taiwan Board Member Elisabeth Pauls Germany Teacher reps Melissa Malug, Philippines Dana Carney US Elaine Jenkins US !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! FROM THE PTA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We are excited for our 2011-2012 school year! We have already met and made a few plans for events that will be here soon. ** A BIG THANK YOU to everyone that brought goodies for the first bake sale! It was a big success in large part because of involved parents ! **One of our first concerns is making sure that every class has a room parent to coordinate parties and events with the classroom teachers. We have already had some volunteers, if you are interested in being a room parent for your child's class, please contact Kathryn Ruhe (contact information below) or write a note to your child's teacher in their agenda book. ** United Nations day is October 24th . Look for a sheet coming home with your child after the October holiday for more information and a way to sign up to participate! ** Halloween (October 31) will also be a fun day for the PTA, students and staff; we will be decorating the foyer and providing treats for all of the students at the end of the parade. **The PTA is also planning on holding a holiday bazaar in November , so if you know of any vendors or individuals that would like to sell holiday gift or decorative items, we would love to start gathering names and contact information. 20% of sales would go directly to the PTA to fund our projects. We would be most grateful for any help you are willing to provide! There will be many ways to contribute and be a part of the celebrations throughout the year. We will need people through the whole school year to fill and hand out treat bags, help decorate for various events and pitch in for bake sales, popcorn Fridays and other functions. * If you have any questions, concerns, ideas or helping hands, please contact: Kathryn Ruhe at kathryn.ruhe@aian.net.cn or Lisa Shortes at slshortes@comcast.net There is a mailbox in the AIAN office that you can drop off any correspondence as well. Our next general meeting will be OCTOBER 20 AT 9:00 AM we hope to see you there!**** CROSS CULTURAL EXCHANGE For your information AIAN's 5 th graders are preparing to participate in a cross cultural exchange with a French Canadian school located on the famous Magdalen Islands (Iles de la Madeleine) in the Canadian province of Quebec . The Canadian students are all French ELL from the grade 7 ESL advanced group who initiated the project along with their ESL teacher, Mr. R¨¦mi Leduc. The school is called Polyvalente des Iles and is the former school of our new ELL teacher and coordinator, Ms. Line Bourgeois. Ms. Bourgeois will coordinate the project together with grade 5 homeroom teacher Mrs. Elizabeth Park . The project consists of sending a box filled with objects that represent the Chinese culture together with other items to represent the diverse countries of our AIAN fifth grade students. The Canadian Madelinots will also prepare a box filled with items that represent their islands and culture. They have even started to work on a video to help us discover their beautiful islands. Let's see what our fifth graders will come up with . LIBRARY NEWS The school has acquired an online book reader called ˇ°TumbleReadables.ˇ± You can access the collection anytime by going either to: Username: aianread Password: login or by going to www.aian.org.cn , then Links, then Tumble Books online reader. The collection features 8 categories containing nearly 125 Read-Along titles (and an additional 100 large print online titles): picture books, early readers, chapter books, middle school readers, YA/teen Novels, children's classics, classics and Shakespeare. Read-Alongs are great for emergent, struggling, and reluctant readers, and are an excellent tool for ELL students. With a fun, stylish new interface, Read-Alongs will also appeal to accomplished readers who are excited to follow along to the narration of their favorite books. These Read-Alongs highlight the sentences as they are being read, turn the page automatically, and offer the ability to follow along in 3 text sizes. They also include an innovative bookmarking feature, the ability to switch to manual in order to read at your own speed, and cool color options for the skin of our new Read-Along player. Importantly, please be aware of the following The AIAN Library and Art class are launching a ˇ°Movie Posterˇ± contest were students select a book (that is not yet turned into a movie) and read it. The children need to think of an awesome way to advertise the book as if it was a movie. Consideration of the characters (and actors who are going to play them) and settings and how to draw an exciting and interesting scene from the book to attract the audiences attention will be needed. The movie poster must have the author and the title of the book. Children may use any materials, paint, water colors, etc. to create their posters. The best works will be displayed around the school or in the library and awarded prizes and extra credit in Art Class! For more details please talk to Ms. Carney (Art Teacher) or Ms. Centers (AIAN Librarian). If your child dreams of becoming a writer, we have an opportunity to publish their work. LittleStar magazine has launched a short story competition . Entries must be entirely the work of the entrant and must not have been published previously by self-publishing or being placed on any website or public online forum. There will be ONE 1st prize winner; TWO 2nd prize winners; THREE 3rd prize winners in each age group. Beside this, LittleStar Magazine offers the grand prize ¨C One Apple iPad2 for the student writer of LittleStar's choice, and the winner will also get an internship opportunity at LittleStar Magazine. For more details please talk to the librarian. LAPTOPS IN SCHOOL Over the summer work was done to make the school's computer wireless access system more robust and effective. We are now strongly encouraging students in the Middle and High School to bring their laptops to school so that they can be an important platform for learning. Ms. Daniela Silva, the school's IT coordinator, has done a great deal of work to get us ready for this important step towards the school having a stronger IT learning environment. Many of our teachers are highly computer literate and able to support students in the use of IT in their subject areas. Everyone will appreciate the importance and significance of this. The platform of the laptops may be either PC or Apple at this time. We hope to get good support for this initiative. REVISED MISSION STATEMENT Over the last few weeks we have been reporting on work taking place to revise the Mission Statement and ESLR's. At this point in time the draft published last week has morphed in to the following visions that are being considered by the faculty 1. AIAN is an accredited college preparatory institution committed to providing the best educational practices to our multicultural community. Students are encouraged to be compassionate, socially responsible and apply their knowledge and skills to strive for academic excellence. 2. AIAN is an accredited college preparatory institution committed to providing the best educational practices to our multicultural community. Students strive to acquire academic excellence with the goal of applying their knowledge and skills in a compassionate and socially responsible manner for the betterment of the world. 3. AIAN is an accredited college preparatory institution committed to providing the best educational practices to our multicultural community. Students are encouraged to become compassionate life long learners, who pursue excellence and use effective communication and collaboration skills as responsible global citizens. 4. AIAN is an accredited college preparatory institution committed to providing the best educational practices to our multicultural community. Students are empowered through differentiated instruction and technology to be global citizens, lifelong learners, collaborative workers and effective communicators, encouraging all to participate and affect the progress of the world community. We continue to work on this important exercise. When we are satisfied we have a suitable version we will ask the community for their commentary. NO CLASSES, PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT (PD) DAY There are five PD days set aside for the year, marked in blue on the school calendar. The faculty will undergo professional training and development and continue with WASC work on these days. There will not be any classes on these days. The first such day is Friday, September 30 and occurs before the October break. SCHOOL HOLIDAYS There will be a school holiday from Friday, September 30 up to and including Sunday, October 9. Classes resume on Monday, October 10. The school's playground facilities will be open during the holiday. There must be parents supervising the children that use the facility. The gate will be open between 8:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. There will not be any office staff in school over the holiday. SCHOOL SECURITY At the PTA meeting on Wednesday, September 21 the matter of maintaining security at the gate was discussed. It was agreed that the finger print system that is in place for the teachers will be adopted by the parents. This system was selected over the suggestion made in last week's newsflash of working on a picture ID system. As indicated last week the placement of the system is inside the guard house. So parents and visitors will need to go inside the guard house to place their finger on the unit. Parents and other responsible adults who collect students from school will need to record their finger print in the school system. This is done by visiting the school office and recording your print against your name. Tom from the IT department is in charge of this. He will be available in the school office from Sep 26 th to Sep 30 th and October 10 th to October 15 th , from 8:00a.m. until 4:00p.m. UPCOMING EVENTS October is a busy month for the school. Please check the school's website and the calendar of events so that you are informed and prepared. International Awareness Day AIAN is proud to announce that this year we will be celebrating International Awareness Day and it will take place at AIAN on Friday, October 24, 2011. We are combining Peace Day, United Nation's Day, and International Day for logistical reasons and to create a more wholesome and meaningful day. This is our chance to feature the different countries that represent our school. Students come dressed in the traditional clothing of their home country and participate in a parade of nations. Anthems from each country are played as each group, carrying their home flag, parades by the crowds. Afterwards there is an assembly featuring students performing various songs about unity and a video presentation about how all of our countries can get along. There are school wide activities that follow to allow students to work together across the grades learning about special cultural features of various countries. Each class chooses a country to study and then presents an activity that best represents the country such as music, games, art, or dances. Every student has a chance to participate and teach to the other students. There will also be a school-wide candle ceremony around the Peace Pole in the center courtyard. Student Council representatives will read the United Nation's Declaration of Human Rights and share with us what they mean. The day wouldn't be complete without food! An international food fair is hosted by the parents of our school (PTA). Authentic dishes from countries represented by our families will be available for everyone to try. Halloween Day Parade Please note that the PTA requested the Halloween Day parade be moved to Monday, October 31. This has been agreed and the events calendar changed. Thank you. Regards, Mark Bretherton , Head of School. |