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Dear Parents, Friends and Families,
Thank you very much for the support that you have given your child over the last few weeks. With our student-led Science Day, we had 193 students want to share their passion for the subject and with limited teacher guidance, the students chose to share many different examples of how science works. These events cannot happen with the organisation of teaching and non-teaching staff, which I would also like to thank. I can safely say, we have a lot of teachers who care for our students and want them to be learning things that they are passionate about with a balance of teacher support, facilitation and/or guidance. Our organisation of SLCs changed slightly due to some parent feedback from last year. This year, we had the grade 4 and 5 students choose the single subject teachers and show work that the students wanted to see, we had to encourage the students to be really proud of the work they were sharing with parents and not just sharing work that parents wanted to see or work that they thought parents would like. We are striving to empower our students and for them to be accountable for their own learning. This was a challenge for some of our students and an area for us to continue to develop. Parents also commented that they would like a longer amount of time for SLCs, which we can easily implement next year, we would also like to give all students the opportunity next year, not just Grade 4 and 5, to visit the single subject spaces, if the students choose to do so. SLCs are not an opportunity to for the teacher and parent to meet and it is for the individual child to share, not perform or work with in a group. It is a time when, as a parent, you listen to your child and what they know, what they understand and what they are able to do. We are rounding of this break, with our Early Years Spring Concert, and a Holi party for our staff. I would like to take this opportunity to wish all the teachers, students and parents a happy and restful break. Dates for Diaries: March 15th: Language acquisition presentation for Grade 5. 8:05-9:30 March 15th: EY Concert for parents. 8:30-9:30 March 28th: Grade 2 Student Sharing swimming to Grade 5 students April 11th: Grade 5 MYP Parent Presentation. 8:00-9:00 April 22nd: Earth Day - Digital Detox Day. A day without devices! April 26th: Transition Day for Grade 5 May 2nd: Maths in the PYP Workshop II for JKG, SKG and Grade 1. May 4th: Swim @ JVLR for selected swimmers in Primary May 17th: ECA Drama Production for Grades 3 -5 May 31st: Grade 5 Ceremony June 5th: Primary Concert Grades 1-5
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Dear Parents, Friends and Families, On Thursday, March 7th, OIS JVLR will host Student-Led Conferences (SLC’s). This will be a non-student day. “Student-led conferences involve the student and the parents. The students are responsible for leading the conference, and also take responsibility for their learning by sharing the process with their parents. The conference involves the student discussing and reflecting upon samples of work that they have previously chosen to share with their parents. These samples have been previously selected with guidance and support from the teacher.” (Making the PYP happen: A curriculum framework for international primary education, 2009). Parents will be asked to sign up for a 20 minute slot via an appointment scheduler which will be shared just before the conferences. Students are expected to do all the talking and leading and the conference can be in a language of a child’s choice. Parents are encouraged to play the role of a listener and be led by their child. Throughout the session, parents are also encouraged to ask questions that will help the child be empowered and successful. Some guiding questions that can help could be:
Notice there are no specific questions about correcting spelling or grammar, as tempting as it is to correct a child’s piece of work this is not the purpose of SLC’s. Such conventions are noted by the homeroom teachers and are kept as a separate assessment record. At the end of the SLC, you will be asked to complete a reflection of what you understood from your child’s conference. The reflection may be designed by the student or given to you by the homeroom teacher. The homeroom teacher’s role is evident in the planning and preparation of the conference, a great deal of work has been done in preparing the students for this conference, however, on the day, the teacher is not available for an individual meeting with you. If you wish to create a time to meet with the teacher to discuss your reflections, this can be done at another time. The purpose of the conference is to empower the student. Miss Lisa Hughes Head of Primary @OISJVLR
Reading is power and power is reading. This year, reading has been happening: in groups, with teachers, individually. As we celebrate Read Aloud Month at JVLR, parents have been in to classrooms reading; there have been reading workshops for parents; students are carrying on with their guided reading sessions; different grades are reading to each other; students are dropping everything and reading at a certain time every day (DEAR time).
Our focus has been on reading comprehension or what students understand by their reading. With practice, students gain fluency, and with some guidance from teachers, they learn to decode, but what we really want from reading is the ability to think and learn and discuss. In our guided reading groups happening, students are learning the power of pausing as they read. As one student said to me the other day, "I love going slowly with books, and I like our discussions." Coming from a student who loves to race through books, it was wonderful to hear. We are focusing on slowing down and enjoying books. With parents, over the last two weeks, we have discussed read alouds and the research behind it. Thank you to all the parents who took the time to come in for the discussions. There is research behind the power of reading aloud. It opens up worlds for our children who can understand so much more when being read to. It gives us time to pause and bond with our children. Reading aloud is a chance to read and discuss different lives and emotions. Overall, reading with understanding allows us to experience empathy. I've uploaded presentations from the two read aloud sessions: one for early years and the other aimed toward primary parents. Take some time to look through the presentations. Come to the book exhibition happening on student-led conference day. And read to your children every day. 
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 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 |
Lisa Hughes
Primary Head
KRISTEN BLUM
PYP CO-ORDINATOR
Archives
March 2019
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