Dear Parents,
We are getting quite a lot of feedback from teachers, parents and this week we look forward to collecting feedback from the students. As you can see on the right- hand side of the blog is a link to any testimonials that we have collected over the last week. As parents, we feel it now that routines are disrupted, schools are shut, families are acting differently from normal, playdates are cancelled, playgrounds are closed, your children are most likely showing energy in a different way and probably for some of the children they are 'bouncing off the walls.' Just remember a moving child is a learning child! Let 'creativity run in your family for a while, my daughter woke up, dressed herself and decided she wanted to wear her swimming costume and make sure parents that you give yourself a break. I highly recommend the App, 'Calm.' There are so many fun and free resources going around at the moment, probably too much. I recently discovered: Google 3D animals. Go to Google, type in the name of an animal and it should pop up on your phone in 3D and your child can pretend to be scared/hold/pet/feed or ride the animal. The photo above is Elsie with an Alligator. I know for some of you you probably feel as though your children are following you around and wanting to remain very close to you, this is quite normal for children to exhibit this behaviour. They are experiencing a very different life right now and this is becoming the new norm. Just make sure to make time for cuddles and love and time for yourself. The teachers are working tirelessly, planning for your children, so please be sure to say thank you, if you haven't already. Thank you to the parents who have been in touch and given us some helpful feedback. Take Care, Miss Lisa There are a wealth of resources out there and I have highlighted some below. Other Resources: References: American Academy of Pediatrics. (2020, March 22). Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19). Retrieved March 24, 2020, from https://www.healthychildren.org/English/health-issues/conditions/chest-lungs/Pages/2019-Novel-Coronavirus.aspx Mhonde, R. D. (2020, March 16). Talking to children about COVID-19: Reducing hysteria during a global emergency. Retrieved March 24, 2020, from https://psychcentral.com/blog/talking-to-children-about-covid-19-reducing-hysteria-during-a-global-emergency/ Unicef. (n.d.). Covid-19 parenting tips. Retrieved March 24, 2020, from https://www.unicef.org/media/66146/file/COVID-19%20parenting%20tips.pdf Weinstein, E. (2020, March 14). We're all in this together: Facing the coronavirus crisis. Retrieved March 24, 2020, from https://psychcentral.com/blog/were-all-in-this-together-facing-the-coronavirus-crisis/ World Health Organization. (2020, March 12). Mental health and psychosocial considerations during COVID-19 outbreak. Retrieved March 24, 2020, from https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/mental-health-considerations.pdf Take care
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Dear Parents,
My hearts and thoughts are with you. One of the biggest issues in this new way of learning for parents seems to be, ‘how do I fit in the home learning and everything else I have to do during the day?’ Or 'How can I be sure that my child is doing enough?' Organising the routine of the day together as a family is a great opportunity to collaborate with your child and empower them as IB learners, IB learners of any age. 1. Make a space for learning Many adults have a specific area of the home in which they work, and it’s important that a similar space is created for your child. If you are all working in the same space, find a place in the space that is your child’s place to learn. If possible, this space should be a different set-up than where they normally play games or watch television. 2. Build a daily routine Children like routine and believe it or not, boundaries. These help to provide a sense of safety and security for them. A schedule, for your work and your child’s work, is extremely important. It is also important to keep the normal daily patterns of getting up, changing for work/school (not staying in their pj’s for the day which is very tempting), snack and meal times, a time to play and have fun and keep to the normal sleeping patterns. 3. Remember to have some fun It is important to have some fun with your children while they are at home. It’s rare that you have this much time with your children, it can also be the hardest thing to be all home together in close confines, so see this as an opportunity to bond. Some families have said they are organising a family tournament, family card games, board games, puzzles, charades, or chess. Some families are enjoying preparing the meals and cooking together, listening to music together and having a daily family yoga session. 4. Its okay to be bored As a parent myself, I feel at times that my children have to be constantly entertained and kept busy and that they always have to be doing something. It is okay for children to say they are bored Please be patient when waiting for feedback from the teacher to be posted. Teachers are aiming to give feedback to every child in a timely fashion however this will not be immediate as their day is not only spent reading work uploaded but they are also in daily meetings with the other members of their team. Next week, we will launch into week 2, having met with some key teachers, administration, and received feedback from parents and teachers, we have considered how we can make changes to the planning to best fit into everyone's lives at the moment. Your teachers will be contacting you to ket you know exactly what this means. Remember it doesn’t all have to be done! Stay well, stay safe, Lisa Hughes Head of Primary Schools Are Closing for Coronavirus. Now What?
Education may be disrupted, but that doesn’t mean our kids have to lose out. (New York Times) Dear Parents, Hopefully you are all keeping well and remaining highly vigilant during this pandemic. You would have all received the message from school that OIS will remain closed for the foreseeable future and that on-line learning or ‘school from school’ learning will take place from Monday 23rd March. This is the first time I have been involved in leading anything like this in a school and I hope that we do the best we can to make sure that your children are still learning even though they are not in school. From our home survey for access to technology, 458 parents completed the survey; most responded positively to the question about access to devices. Whilst having access is important for distant learning to happen, we are insisting that teachers share a balance of both on-line and offline learning engagements; we don’t want teachers to become parents, we don’t want to cause family stress and we don’t want our Primary children spending too long in front of a screen. Please remember that this type of learning will look very different from a typical school day. From Sunday evening, teachers will be contacting you about next steps, we are expected to launch our distant learning on Monday 23rd March, if you do not receive an email, don’t understand the tasks on instructions, please contact your child’s homeroom teacher in the first instance. Teachers have worked incredibly hard over the last two weeks to ensure that we are ready to go on Monday. Please forgive us if we make mistakes or that balancing the set tasks is proving to be an issue for your child, we are there to support you first and foremost. As a working parent, I even experimented with using Seesaw at home with my six year old, and even for a teacher and a student who knew what they were to do, two learning engagements took us some time to complete. So please do not feel any pressure to complete tasks but make sure your child is involved in doing the task. I am sure you are reading many different types of advice available on the web and I hope you have found sources that are trusted, reliable and accurate. My advice with your Primary children over the next few weeks would be:
Please take care, Miss Lisa Hughes Head of Primary Oberoi International School; JVLR campus
Dear Parents,
A huge thank you to all the parents who showed up for SLCs. The aim of SLCs, is to encourage student agency and empower students to take charge of their own learning. Quite often, parents and teachers are in discussions about children but IB schools believe that the more the student is involved in their own learning the more it makes sense to them and gives them an opportunity to take responsibility for their own learning. It is quite amazing to see our youngest learners show and discuss, with confidence, about what they know and understand. Thank you for your feedback, Miss Lisa Head of Primary OIS;JVLR campus  It's Read Aloud month, and JVLR has been celebrating. Reading is an important part of every child's education, and we have been trying to support this at OISJVLR. We have guided reading in place in the primary school and are focusing on reading comprehension and fluency. This month, we've initiated DEAR time or Drop Everything and Read. Students are encouraged to bring in books from home of their choice to read, and everyone in the entire school (teachers too), Drop Everything and Read at 2:15 each day. We had a character parade and day on Friday, February 14th, to celebrate the love of books with some creative characters. Wednesday and Thursday this week, Feb. 19 and 20, we have authors coming to visit to read their books, talk about their books and share the love of reading. Parent workshops for Early Years and Primary focused on reading. If you missed the workshops, please see the Parent Workshops on this blog. We had a lot of eager parents ready to learn more about reading to their children and getting some book tips on selection and reading. Did you know that while many parents read to their young children, the percentage drops as they get older, even when children still benefit from listening to a read aloud? A child's reading level doesn't catch up to his listening level until 8th grade, so we need to continue our reading with our children. Finally, this Friday, February 21st, it's International Family Language Day. Support your family language by joining us to read to your child's class. We want to celebrate your family language and its importance to your children. India is such a wonderful place with a multitude of languages, and we want to tap into that. On a parting note, I leave you these words about reading from Debbie Milman, a designer, artist and educator from the book: A Velocity of Being, Letters to a Young Reader: I want to tell you that everything will be okay. I want to tell you that it will get better. I want to tell you that it all works out in the end. But sometimes it doesn't. Most times it is hard and we usually end up getting used to it. But there is something you can do in response: read. Read until your heart breaks and you can't stand it anymore... Books--like dogs--are among a handful of things on this planet that just want to be loved. And they will love you back, generously and selflessly, requiring very little in return--until they are complete, their light and their wisdom and their hearts sputtering to an inevitable, lonely end.
Dear Parents,
Establishing a Professional Learning Community is part of what we value as a PYP School. The IB believe that students, parents and teachers are all life-long learners and that learning from one another never stops. On Monday 27th January, we had our 4th Professional Development Day. During this day, we have valuable time as colleagues to ensure that we are meeting the requirements of the programme. On this particular day, we first celebrated our PYP Authorisation. We then had experts come in to teach our teachers about First Aid and Child Safeguarding. The afternoon was open for our colleagues to share their own professional learning with each other. Teachers actively contribute to the learning of students and colleagues through collaborative practice. They take time to plan, assess and learn together—inquiring into the effectiveness of their teaching, and reflecting on its impact on learning. They ensure their professional dialogue is open and honest so that learning and teaching becomes the best it can be. As a PYP school we have a range of professional learning opportunities for our staff, some of which include:
Some teachers recently attended Ron Richard's workshop on Cultures of thinking and are making sure the school community benefits from his expertise. We also have teachers taking the Havard course on Making thinking Visible. One session on Monday was all about creating Cultures of Thinking:
Another afternoon session, run by teachers was regarding the PYP Exhibition. As an authorised school we are expected to run an Exhibition for our Grade 5 students - this ideally is a culmination in all they have learnt during their time at OIS. The date for our PYP Exhibition is May 27th.
During the month of February, we will be celebrating Readaloud Book month. Kristen will be running some sessions for parents and we are welcoming parents into our library and classrooms to read to different classes. Parents can read in their family language too!! Dates for Diaries: Wednesday 5th February: International Day of Global Play - unstructured play day for all primary children Monday, 10th February: Read aloud workshop: Primary Parents Thursday, 13th February: IB PYP Maths in EY Presentation Monday, 17th February: Read aloud workshop: EY parents Monday, 17th -19th February: Yearbook photos Monday, 2nd March: EY PSPE Showcase Thursday, 5th March: SLCs - Parents will be given a time to come into school Tuesday, 10th March: Holi - Holiday Friday, 13th March: Day of Freedom and Diversity (event committee) 14th-22nd March: Spring break Wednesday 25th March: Gudi Padwa Friday 10th April: Good Friday Thursday 23rd April: World Book Day/Primary Book Club Thursday, 30th April: Musical Production Friday, 1st May: Maharastra Day - holiday Wednesday 27th May: PYP Exhibition Thursday 4th June: Moving up Ceremony for Grade 5 Many thanks for taking the time to read, Miss Lisa  Dear Parents, One of the things I look forward to everyday is talking with students. It may sound surprising to you but everyday, I often have a group of children who want to action something in the school. Ideas from the students have ranged from improving our relationships when we play football, starting an Earth Club, starting a writing club, Student Council events, making our recess time more enjoyable, clothes collection for disadvantaged children, Shoe Box Drive for a local orphanage, and many, many more. We really encourage our students to take action and to follow through with an idea they may have. So please have a chat with your child about anything they might be involved with outside the classroom. A group of students are organising a second clothing drive, this time for summer clothes and have asked me to put it on the blog. 
Dear Parents, Friends and Families,
Happy New Year!! Welcome to 2020, I hope you all had a relaxing break and enjoyed spending time with your little ones. I am hoping that most of you have read the recent school announcement sent by our Head of School, Mr Steve: Message from Head of School Dear parents, Happy New Year, and welcome back to the second half of our academic year! In my travels around the school today, it was very clear that our students are happy to be back in school with their friends and their teachers, back to the business of learning. I would like to announce, with great pleasure, that on December 30, we received word from the International Baccalaureate Organization that our application for PYP authorization was approved. Therefore, the OIS - JVLR Campus is now officially an IB World School authorized for the Primary Years Program!This is an achievement that all of us can take pride in, as we all have had a role in bringing it to fruition. In particular, the Primary School faculty, led by Lisa, Nicola and Kristen, have made all of this possible through their hard work over the last 2+ years. I am also grateful to our parents for supporting us and trusting us throughout this process. Particularly for those parents who were with us on that very first day of school back in August 2017, I hope you are feeling especially proud of your decision to join us at the very beginning of our journey. Finally, I must acknowledge our students; their eagerness to learn, their curiosity, their sense of wonder energizes us on a daily basis. Many thanks to you all for this fantastic accomplishment! Best wishes, Stephen Augeri We are very happy to finally have the stamp of approval from the IB to give us confirmation that we are doing exactly what we should be doing in terms of being in line with the IB Standards and Practices. Also many thanks to our group of parents who helped with this process. Dates for diaries: Wednesday, 22nd January: Celebrating Republic Day Monday 27th January: PD Day - non student day Wednesday, 12th February: IB PYP Maths in EY Presentation Monday, 2nd March: EY PSPE Showcase Thursday, 5th March: SLCs Tuesday, 10th March: Holi 14th-22nd March: Spring break Wednesday 25th March: Gudi Padwa Friday 10th April: Good Friday Thursday 23rd April: World Book Day/Primary Book Club 29th and 30th April: Musical Production Friday 1st May: Maharastra Day Wednesday 27th May: PYP Exhibition Thursday 4th June: Moving up Ceremony for Grade 5 Wednesday 10th June: Last half day for students  A group of primary students, grades 3-5 finished off a month of writing in November and produced some fun stories and novels. Nanowriting is an international writing event every November where young people and adults all over the world set a writing target and try to meet up. Our JVLR young writers, from grades 3-5 set word count targets anywhere from 700 words to 12,000 words and met their goals.
Every lunch time, students came in to write and plan. Students then typed up their stories at home on the Nanowrimo site. Congratulations young authors! The stories have been published and in the hands of our young writers now. Many are inspired to keep writing and there's talk of more writing clubs to come. |
Lisa Hughes
Primary Head
Nicola Holloway
Deputy Primary Head
KRISTEN BLUM
PYP CO-ORDINATOR
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