Elementary News

Please click on the link below to view our 1st Edition of the 'Elementary News'

http://voicethread.com/share/1590175/

Winter Holiday Poetry Competition!

Don't forget that Mr. Lorenzini has set a competition for winter poems! All that white glistening beauty outside, silencing the cars and footsteps into a hushed world. Transforming even the dreariest winter’s scene into magical possibilities for the imagination. Surely the snow alone is enough inspiration to enter into the creative art of writing.......or maybe you spent your winter break somewhere hot? What's that like? Maybe you are with close family once again after a long time separated.....how does that feel?

There is no question that winter is an inspirational time of year. Stare out the window, soak up the atmosphere, feel the warm fire, the hot sun, the freezing cold, the frost on the car and explore the words that come to mind.....

A reminder of the rules:

• Only students from the school can enter (maybe we should set up an adult one too....what do you think?)
• It must be written/typed independently by you without anyone's help
• All poems must have the student's name and grade level on them
• The deadline is Friday January 14th

The prizes:

• Top entries from every grade level will receive a special prize.
• There will be a prize for the best poem that is not in English
• As many entries as possible will appear in the February edition of the Elementary News on school blogs!

Good luck poets. I leave you with some very interesting quotes from some famous writers and poets. Have a guess to what they might mean...ask your parents what they think!

Mr. Driver :-)

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language. W. H. Auden

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood. T. S. Eliot

A poet can survive everything but a misprint. Oscar Wilde

A poem is never finished, only abandoned. Paul Valery

Fanni's fantastic presentation about Hungary

Fanni has been working really hard with her mentor to prepare a presentaion for the whole class about her home country Hungary. Watch, listen and learn about this wonderful country!



Christmas Market highlights

German News from the Intermediate group

Students are using the Antolin reading program independently during free reading and have read a total of 120 books!  Other students have been hard at work developing mini-books, comics and short stories.

Here are some results from mind mapping about Sammeln (collecting), the current topic in the Tamburin textbook.

Thanks for reading. 

Please allow me to wish you and your families relaxing, enjoyable holidays.

Parent Letter

December 17, 2010

Dear Parents,

Thank you for all your support this year. Here are some final messages before we break up for Winter. This letter can also be found on the classroom blogs.

Frauenhaus: Thank you for your generous support. On Thursday, a representative from this organization received all our gifts. She again expressed her appreciation to the ISD community for caring. This year we will build on this initiative with the help of one of our parents, Antje Laqua. At regular intervals, we will send all our lost property to Frauenhaus and collect women's clothing too. More information about this will be provided in due course.

Bike Stands: When we return from the Winter Break, we will have a new place to park our bicycles. All the bike stands will be moved so that they stand under the cover of the front of the school building. Apart from the fact that this will keep everything dry, it is a necessary change in preparation for all the upcoming work on the Elementary School Extension. This project will commence on the March 7^th, during Ski Week.

Report Card Changes: Thank you to everyone who was able to join Mrs. Coffey earlier this month. She provided a snapshot of the professional development the teachers recently received as well as an overview and explanation of the newly formatted report card. The feedback we received was extremely positive.

Conference Reminder: Finally, please remember that our next day of scheduled conferences is on February, Thursday 3^rd. These are different to the Student Led Conferences that were held in November. These are adult to adult conferences to discuss student progress, and they are scheduled a week after you receive the report cards.

Thank you again for all your support during this semester. May I also take a moment to thank everyone for all the personal words of kindness I have received in the past few weeks since my family's upcoming move was announced. I wish you all an enjoyable and peaceful Winter Break.

Warm regards,

Alan Lorenzini

Elementary Principal

Goodbye Thiago!

Today Thiago returned to Brazil. Everyone completed a special booklet for him with pictures and messages about their favourite memories and wishes for Thiago.

Have a great time in Brazil Thiago and keep checking the blog so you can still be part of what we are doing.

Thiago writing his goodbye messages to each member of the class.

Grade 3 Chistmas Market invitation to parents

On Wednesday the 15th December Grade Three will host their Christmas Market and the parents are invited between 9am and 9:30am to visit (but not purchase)

Central Idea:

'Customers and producers determine the

goods that are available to buy'.

The students have been working in collaborative teams to research, survey, and interview people who work at German Christmas Markets. They have also interviewed the 4th Grade who are the target audience for their own Christmas Market. Starting with the knowledge of the Marketing Mix (4 P's) that the students have been exploring since the wonderful parent presentations at the beginning of the unit. The students have worked as a team to design, develop and create products to sell at their Christmas Market. Each group has had ups and downs, frustrations and excitement! Students have been continuously reflecting with their group and as an individual. They have been drawing conclusions in regards to costing and production time, goal setting, organizing and separating jobs to be completed, pricing strategies, promotional techniques, the importance of knowing what your competitors are sellinand at what price.

We will be asking the 3rd Grade parents to complete a short assessment for the students. This will not be done for your own child's group but for another group. This will help the students reflect on their overall success on the big day!

We look forward to having you come visit :-)

German Update from the Beginners

German Beginners

This is an overview of what we have covered during October and November in German Beginners.

In October we completed a unit about school supplies. Some of following activities were part of our learning:

• Made labels for things in the classroom
• Learned all of the words for school supplies (der Bleistift, das Lineal und die Schere
• Role-played situations (Ich möchte schrieben. Gib mir bitte den Bleistift.)
• Played games with flash cards
• Read dialogues
• Worked in our workbooks
• Had free reading time
• Used the appropriate verbs such as: malen, schreiben, turnen, hören, lesen

In November St. Martin was an important part of our learning. We finished our sun lanterns, sang the special songs and some of us even participated in the local parades. The children thoroughly enjoyed the activities that were part of this celebration.  We shared what we had learned with the other students in the school assembly.

Recently we have been learning the body parts in class and have had lots of aches and pains! O je, o je, mein Bein tut so weh!  This topic was reinforced with short dialogues, action games and body parts memory game. The Tamburin textbook provides songs to go along with every chapter. Your child should sing these songs for you and read the dialogues. The books will be coming home on Friday, so you will also want to have a look at the workbook and see what your child has accomplished during the past months.

Ich wünsche Ihnen ein frohes Fest und ein Glückliches neues Jahr!

Sincerely, Frau Scherpel

Christmas markets!

The students of Grade 3 have been busy with their team preparations for the Christmas Market. There has been a lot of genuine collaboration. I don't just mean cooperation and delegation, I mean true collaboration!  Working together to reach a clearer and improved understanding and agreement. Each group has been setting themselves goals during the inquiry. Effective goal setting is an interesting process to learn. Here are some of the students reflections at the end of the day concerning their team goals for that day:

http://voicethread.com/share/1575843/

Please click on the link to listen to some excellent thoughts and reflections.

German News Grade 3 Advanced, Frau Thielmann

German News

Grade 3 Advanced / Frau Thielmann

November 2010

I would like to give you an overview of the work in the German class.         

We finished the fourth unit in "Tamburin 2, Deutsch für Kinder". Every student created a book about things he or she collects or would like to collect. The students then presented their books in class.

We talked about the EURO and made our own money. The students eagerly practiced in a play in class how to buy and sell something.

After the autumn break students wrote and drew something about an important incident happening during the break in order to practice their writing skills in German. They presented their work to the class which gave them the opportunity to practice their language skills.

During the St. Martin time we reflected a lot about the St. Martin story and learned various St. Martin songs. All students had a lot of fun making the lanterns in class and we were very proud to show them in the St. Martin Assembly.

Together with all grade 3 classes we went to the Weihnachtsmarkt in Düsseldorf. Students prepared lot of questions in their core classes which they asked at the market. Beforehand, we translated the interview questions into German and practiced the interviews in class. All students had a lot of fun at the market and did a very good job. As a reflection we created our own self assessment criteria about the group work. All students took the assessment seriously and learned a lot about the importance of successful group work. In addition we wrote a recall about the Weihnachtsmarkt.

We continue to use the German books in class. Whenever a student finishes a task he/she can choose a book and read. In addition we sometimes do reading lessons. In order to further support your child's reading skills, please encourage your him/her to take a German book home from the library for his / her reading pleasure.

If you have questions please contact me (thielmann@isdedu.de ).

Birke Thielmann