Dear Parents,
This post is regarding an invitation to the parents from (Nursery to grade 8) for the OIS JVLR Science fair, which will be held in the lobby area ground floor. OIS JVLR students (Skg-Grade 5) have been researching for the last few weeks on experiments and science models which will be showcased for parent viewing on Friday,28th Feb 2019. Doors will be open from 9:30 to 11:30. Students as well as parents are welcome to come dressed up in scientist costumes to support our budding scientists. OIS Events Team
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Before the holidays, OIS JVLR had a consultant from the IB come through the school as part of our authorisation process for the IB. Throughout this past year, the primary school has been working toward authorisation for the IB Primary Years Programme. The process is an arduous one, designed to prepare the school, staff, community and student to practice and live the IB values and mission.
The consultant, Monita Sen, who came before the holidays, spent several days at the school observing, meeting with teams of parents, teachers, admin and students and trying to get an understanding of everyone's comfort with the IB. She looked through evidence of learning as well. We received feedback from Monita and she had a lot of good things to say about the direction of the school:
To help us improve, the report also mentioned that we need to do the following:
Over the next year, the school will be working on the assessment policy. We are analyzing assessment data, working in committees on understanding different types of assessment and helping the community to understand assessment at OIS JVLR. We look forward to rolling this out to you! Dear Parents, Friends and Families, Recently we have been discussing and questioning; what is learning at OIS? As a leadership team, we met with coordinators and had input from out teachers to collect different perspectives. We are still working on reviewing our definition and making sure that we all have 'buy-in.' Recently, I went through my personal collection of school photos. Every day I do a walkabout of the school to touch base with teachers, observe some lessons or even better, talk to the students. What I realised during my walks and following the discussion about learning, was that learning can take many different forms but at the centre is student engagement and interest, built around this is the role of the adults and how they facilitate or activate learning, build around the teacher, is the environment. How are the learners using their environment to learn? Here are some of the photos I think shows how we learn at OIS: As you can see, there are many different forms of teaching and learning.
At OIS we make sure to make learning:
I am guessing it was very different! Thank you for all your support, Miss Lisa Hughes Head of Primary @OISJVLR, #ois_primary Happy New Year! Throughout the year, the PE team has been hosting end of unit celebrations for the primary school and getting parents involved. During the first week back in 2019, the PE team hosted a Striking and Fielding celebrations on the turf, inviting parents in to participate. Students have been working hard on their ball handling skills and enjoying the game of kickball and cricket ball. Grades 3-5 had a great time with their parents this week--parents sometimes getting more excited and involved than their kids. Everyone had a great time. These celebrations are just one way we involve the parents at OIS JVLR. Next week, we begin with some technology workshops for parents. See below for some upcoming events. Thank you for your support as we head into the latter half of the school year. Kids are growing, changing, inquiring and super excited to be back in school. Jan. 15: Technology and wellbeing for early years parents (Nursery, JKG, SKG) Jan. 23: Happiness workshop with Ms. Tiffany (OIS school counselor) Feb. 5: Technology and wellbeing for primary parents (Grades 1-5) Feb. 21: International Family Tongue Day February/March: Reading workshops for parents ~Kristen, PYP Coordinator  Dear Parents, Friends and Families, We have enjoyed an extremely fun-filled and packed semester. So much has happened.... In our second year we have consolidated some practices and hopefully made it clear to parents about who we are. We have a held a large number of parent workshops covering a range of topics such as maths, inquiry, child development, learner profile, play, curriculum and what is PYP? We will continue with these workshops in semester 2 and place a focus on reading and how we integrate technology. We held our first book clubs. The first of which looked at the whole-brain child and our more recent discussion on child behaviour. We look forward to hosting more of these in the new year. Our children have experienced many events, some of which they were responsible for making happen and we have welcomed visitors from CIS/NEASC and the IB to our campus. Students are working hard to collect evidence in their digital portfolios, guided reading sessions have begun in all Primary classes. We have shared our understandings of PSPE and invited parents in to watch us take part in a unit of learning. The students have experienced many field trips and one most recent noteworthy field trip was taken by Grade 5. The students visited a local Government school and learnt so much about the similarities and differences between the types of education that these groups of children were experience. Our caring students felt the need to help out and after some questions to the teaching staff found out that the toy library in the school is in need of resources. So with the help of our students they led a toy drive. But the most amazing thing also happened, some of our parents took it upon themselves to continue with resourcing the school, outside school hours. Parents taking action! The teachers have worked incredibly hard over the last semester and need a big thank you from all our parents and students alike. Without them, we wouldn't be able to do the marvellous things that we do! I would like to wish you all a happy holiday and I am looking forward to seeing you in the new year! Miss Lisa Hughes  Friday parents came in for a learner profile workshop and visit to the primary classrooms for grades 1-4. Thank you parents! We flipped the schedule for this workshop, and parents first experienced the morning meetings (7:45-8:10) and then followed with information about the learner profile. In the morning meetings, parents had a chance to observe the learner profile in action. Students were reflecting, playing games with each other and being caring. Morning meetings are a time to build social relationships and to establish a climate of caring and respect for the day. Then parents came back to the auditorium for a workshop about the heart of the IBPYP: the learner profile. The learner profile is a set of attributes valued by the IB that help develop internationally minded learners. They go beyond academic success and incorporate important values for an individual. We want learners to strive to be:
Learner Profile Questions For more reading, the IB has published a guide to the learner profile. If you missed the workshop, please see the Parent Workshops link on the right side of this page.  Dear Parents, Friends and Families,
Today, we held our first maths workshop for parents at JVLR. Some of our 4th and 5th Grade students helped with teaching parents how maths has changed and what it looks like in our school. The students showed the parents how they solve critical problems using an app called 'Cuethink.' We learnt today that most of us when it comes to maths, want to find out the answer, the correct, the good, the right, and few of us want to explore what we wonder, what we think, how can we solve? We also learnt that out of our group of 35, only 1 parent had experienced learning maths through games. Most of our parents had learnt maths through tests, exams or worksheets. So we made the parents do worksheets and then following that we gave parents an experience of what it was like to learn maths in the 21st Century. Please find a link to our maths workshop, in the Parent Workshop tab. Parents have often said that they are unsure about how their child is doing in school. We strongly recommend that you make a time with your child's homeroom teacher and not just when things go wrong, but to 'touch base' and find out how your child is doing. We are working on empowering the students to be aware of their own strengths and goals in all subjects. Please find below, dates for your diaries, more information will follow. Thank you for your continued support, Lisa Hughes Head of Primary Dates for Diaries (more dates to be added):November 20th: International Children's Day celebration November 21st: Parent Workshop SKG Childhood Development, followed by class visits (1:30-2:30) (All SKG parents) November 28th: Parent Workshop Nursery Childhood Development, followed by class visits (11-12:00) (All Nursery parents) December 5th: Parent Workshop Extended day JKG, followed by class visits (11-12:00) (All JKG parents) November 14th: Children's Day in India (8:45-9:30 Auditorium) November 23rd-25th: IB regional Workshops. November 23rd: PD Day at school - non-student day. November 6th: Session with Dr. Patricia Rocha about siblings December 6th: Managebac Help session for Parents December 3rd-7th: Hour of Code week for students December 11th: Learner Profile workshop for parents. Limited to 30. December 13th: Festival of Choirs for students December 17th: Book Club for parents led by Deepika December 19th: Reports available on MB Winter Carnival Plans in discussion In an effort to keep Primary parents fully informed of their children's progress, we are now putting our Unit of Inquiry summative comments on Managebac. Managebac is our school platform that is used throughout primary through secondary at both campuses of OIS. Managebac is your place to check your child's attendance, to look at the reports (which come out twice a year) and now comments about the summative assessment of the unit of inquiry. As your child grows through the grades, they will begin to use Managebac themselves, uploading assignments as they move into Middle School and checking their own progress. For now, we want you to access Managebac and to get to know the platform. For unit 2 in primary (grades 1-5), teachers have put their feedback about the unit of inquiry on Managebac. See if you can check it out. Here is a help page for some advice: Managebac Help Page. You will need your username and password to get on to Managebac. Further into the year, we will have a session to help with Managebac. For now, primary parents can check out the teacher's feedback about your child for unit 2 on Managebac. ~Kristen Blum, PYP Coordinator  Students at JVLR celebrated Diwali and Dia de los Muertos, fulling embracing our core value of celebration and our spirit of international mindedness. In grades 3-5, students created beautiful rangoli in the lobby. The younger ones painted diyas on Friday and celebrated with festivities. There was food, fun and celebration. For grades 4 and 5, there also was a celebration of Dia de los Muertos or the "Day of the Dead" celebration from Mexico. Students created masks, learned the significance of the holiday in South America and watched the fun movie, Coco, all about the celebration.
Over the last several weeks, parents came to school as students. About 120 parents from Early Years and Primary came through the four days of Inquiry Cafés.
Through the Inquiry Cafés, parents inquired into technology: why it's so important in 21st century learning, what important ICT skills students need today and how parents can embrace and yet take charge of technology with their kids at home. At the same time, parents learned what's it's like to be a student at OIS JVLR through collaboration, inquiry and critical thinking. Parents took away an understanding of inquiry and were challenged to think. Parents tuned in to their thoughts on how students learn at OIS, mapping out their thoughts and adding to their understandings throughout the workshop. They inquired into technology and what skills the IB stresses. They discussed ideas with peers, shared thoughts visually and sorted out understanding. At the end, parents tried out posting reflections on Seesaw, just like their kids would do. Parents left with an understanding about how their kids learn at OIS and also left with more questions about technology, which will be the focus of future workshops. The parent slideshow is in the Parent Workshops link on the right. Below find some photos and some parting reflections from parents. |
Lisa Hughes
Primary Head
KRISTEN BLUM
PYP CO-ORDINATOR
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January 2019
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