News from our Elementary Principal, Ben Voborsky
Hello GAA Community,
It has been a quite a challenging week for our kindergarten program. As a community you never want to experience a loss, however, we really pulled together to support the family, our students, our parents, and our teachers. I am proud to be a member of this supportive GAA community and know we are all here for the same reason, the children.
Our focus, as always, will continue to be on our children as we wind down our school year. Planning for promotion ceremonies is well underway. As our Grade 5 students are looking forward to their transition to middle school. They have already begun the transition process. I would like to thank all the Grade 5 and Grade 6 students and teachers involved in this.
As we move forward, a friendly reminder, that if you will be leaving early to please contact your classroom teacher and Elementary Secretary Felicity Harding at [email protected].
As we reflect on this school year and plan for next year, one of the many successes that rise to the surface is the successful G5 bring your own device pilot program, which supported the inaugural PYP exhibition. Please be on the look out for a letter regarding technology in the 2015-2016 elementary program.
I hope you are able to join the elementary musical performances next week.
Have a relaxing weekend with you families,
Ben Voborsky
Elementary Principal
It has been a quite a challenging week for our kindergarten program. As a community you never want to experience a loss, however, we really pulled together to support the family, our students, our parents, and our teachers. I am proud to be a member of this supportive GAA community and know we are all here for the same reason, the children.
Our focus, as always, will continue to be on our children as we wind down our school year. Planning for promotion ceremonies is well underway. As our Grade 5 students are looking forward to their transition to middle school. They have already begun the transition process. I would like to thank all the Grade 5 and Grade 6 students and teachers involved in this.
As we move forward, a friendly reminder, that if you will be leaving early to please contact your classroom teacher and Elementary Secretary Felicity Harding at [email protected].
As we reflect on this school year and plan for next year, one of the many successes that rise to the surface is the successful G5 bring your own device pilot program, which supported the inaugural PYP exhibition. Please be on the look out for a letter regarding technology in the 2015-2016 elementary program.
I hope you are able to join the elementary musical performances next week.
Have a relaxing weekend with you families,
Ben Voborsky
Elementary Principal
Dear Parents,
Thanks for attending the presentation on understanding & using MAP test data, which I hope you found helpful. As promised, the power-point presentation is below, together with the NWEA ‘parent toolkit’.
Best regards,
Dr. Tim Fryer
Secondary Vice Principal
Thanks for attending the presentation on understanding & using MAP test data, which I hope you found helpful. As promised, the power-point presentation is below, together with the NWEA ‘parent toolkit’.
Best regards,
Dr. Tim Fryer
Secondary Vice Principal
may_19_map_testing_for_parents.pptx | |
File Size: | 1218 kb |
File Type: | pptx |
map_parent_toolkit_booklet.pdf | |
File Size: | 194 kb |
File Type: |
Tuesday, 19th May onwards GAA saw its first Grade 5 PYP cohort share the IB PYP Exhibition with their parents and the wider school community.
The Central idea "Communities Can Be Changed Through Our Actions "enabled the students to consider how they were going to present their Œissue¹ in the most powerful way. Some students opted to write rap songs on texting and driving, and seat belt songs for encouraging road safety while others collected charity, old clothes and animal food items, whilst some planted vegetables and some got the booster club to change what is being sold on the stands after school. There were 31 groups all working to bring a positive change in the community around them.
The Exhibition was such a powerful experience for students, the GAA staff and myself as a parent. They had independent projects that were supported by teachers and mentors. Students had to not only carry out research about an issue that they were interested in learning about, but they had to organise their time to communicate their new understandings to a wider audience. The approaches to learning skills communication, research, thinking, social and self management underpinned how they set about their
project.
The contribution of their home room teachers helped students make connections between the various subject disciplines throughout the 8
weeks.
As I walked around the Exhibition displays there were a number of things that struck me and made me immensely proud of our children/ students. I loved the fact that our Grade 5 students were considering the age of their audience to whom they were presenting. They spoke confidently and knowledgeably about their project and the process they went through differently to Early Years students ,High Schoolers and their family/friends. Whilst this seems obvious, to be able to simplify their presentation "off the cuff" was impressive.
The visual displays were thoughtful, considering colour pallette, visual impact, the message and the aesthetics of their display. It all looked
very professional.
Congratulations Grade 5 students! We hope that you use the skills and techniques you have learned in the Exhibition to other projects you
embark on for the remainder of this year and the years to follow.
Regards,
Shafaq
Grade 5 Education Assistant
The Central idea "Communities Can Be Changed Through Our Actions "enabled the students to consider how they were going to present their Œissue¹ in the most powerful way. Some students opted to write rap songs on texting and driving, and seat belt songs for encouraging road safety while others collected charity, old clothes and animal food items, whilst some planted vegetables and some got the booster club to change what is being sold on the stands after school. There were 31 groups all working to bring a positive change in the community around them.
The Exhibition was such a powerful experience for students, the GAA staff and myself as a parent. They had independent projects that were supported by teachers and mentors. Students had to not only carry out research about an issue that they were interested in learning about, but they had to organise their time to communicate their new understandings to a wider audience. The approaches to learning skills communication, research, thinking, social and self management underpinned how they set about their
project.
The contribution of their home room teachers helped students make connections between the various subject disciplines throughout the 8
weeks.
As I walked around the Exhibition displays there were a number of things that struck me and made me immensely proud of our children/ students. I loved the fact that our Grade 5 students were considering the age of their audience to whom they were presenting. They spoke confidently and knowledgeably about their project and the process they went through differently to Early Years students ,High Schoolers and their family/friends. Whilst this seems obvious, to be able to simplify their presentation "off the cuff" was impressive.
The visual displays were thoughtful, considering colour pallette, visual impact, the message and the aesthetics of their display. It all looked
very professional.
Congratulations Grade 5 students! We hope that you use the skills and techniques you have learned in the Exhibition to other projects you
embark on for the remainder of this year and the years to follow.
Regards,
Shafaq
Grade 5 Education Assistant
Grade 4's Celebrating UAE Heritage in Social Studies
Elementary Music
Kindergarten Corner
Planning for Summer = a Positive Beginning to School
By Meredith Bruce
Summer is almost here! Family, fun, trips, and NO SCHOOL. Boredom (unimaginable now) usually sets in somewhere around the last part of July/beginning of August. Research also shows that children entering/returning to kindergarten experience a smoother transition back to school in the fall if their parents give them two things over the summer months - confidence and practice. Parents and care-givers working with children, can give their children confidence on the first day of school by becoming actively involved in the process of continuing and encouraging learning over the summer.
Reading Is Fundamental has a 10-week Summertime Reading Adventure Guide. Each week has six or seven fun and easy ideas for practicing skills that you may be able to do over during the summer adventures. Parents can speak with their child's teacher about activities to do at home to keep skills sharp.
If you would like to learn more about summer learning activities, the Michigan Department of Education has developed a guide called, "Family Fundamentals for Summer Learning." The Harvard Family Research Project (HFRP)'s research brief, "Family Involvement Makes a Difference in School Success" links family involvement with success in school.
Activities that promote literacy and numeracy skills should be fun, interactive, and engaging. Continue to build you’re the confidence that your child has acquired in learning and to practice and ingrain those new skills that they learned this year. Enjoy your summer and make learning life-long and FUNdamental!
By Meredith Bruce
Summer is almost here! Family, fun, trips, and NO SCHOOL. Boredom (unimaginable now) usually sets in somewhere around the last part of July/beginning of August. Research also shows that children entering/returning to kindergarten experience a smoother transition back to school in the fall if their parents give them two things over the summer months - confidence and practice. Parents and care-givers working with children, can give their children confidence on the first day of school by becoming actively involved in the process of continuing and encouraging learning over the summer.
Reading Is Fundamental has a 10-week Summertime Reading Adventure Guide. Each week has six or seven fun and easy ideas for practicing skills that you may be able to do over during the summer adventures. Parents can speak with their child's teacher about activities to do at home to keep skills sharp.
If you would like to learn more about summer learning activities, the Michigan Department of Education has developed a guide called, "Family Fundamentals for Summer Learning." The Harvard Family Research Project (HFRP)'s research brief, "Family Involvement Makes a Difference in School Success" links family involvement with success in school.
Activities that promote literacy and numeracy skills should be fun, interactive, and engaging. Continue to build you’re the confidence that your child has acquired in learning and to practice and ingrain those new skills that they learned this year. Enjoy your summer and make learning life-long and FUNdamental!
KG1
These pictures are of the KG1A kiddos making Oobleck! Ooey, gooey, Oobleck! We mixed corn flour and water together, then we added some blue food color. It's very cool – try to grab it, if you can!!
These pictures are of the KG1A kiddos making Oobleck! Ooey, gooey, Oobleck! We mixed corn flour and water together, then we added some blue food color. It's very cool – try to grab it, if you can!!
The KG1A "scientists", as part of our "Sharing the planet" inquiry, are exploring and investigating nature. They enjoyed examining dates that I gathered from a date palm tree and almonds that a parent shared with us. Those almonds sure are tough nuts to crack!
KG 2
Play based learning in KG2F.
Here’s a photo of KG2E enjoying our most recent color day. Students wore green that day and enjoyed some fun hands on learning centers. Here, students are exercising their creativity by making silly faces!
Let the Kids Learn Through Play
TWENTY years ago, kids in preschool, kindergarten and even first and second grade spent much of their time playing: building with blocks, drawing or creating imaginary worlds, in their own heads or with classmates. But increasingly, these activities are being abandoned for the teacher-led, didactic instruction typically used in higher grades. In many schools, formal education now starts at age 4 or 5. Without this early start, the thinking goes, kids risk falling behind in crucial subjects such as reading and math, and may never catch up.
The idea seems obvious: Starting sooner means learning more; the early bird catches the worm.
But a growing group of scientists, education researchers and educators say there is little evidence that this approach improves long-term achievement; in fact, it may have the opposite effect, potentially slowing emotional and cognitive development, causing unnecessary stress and perhaps even souring kids’ desire to learn.
One expert I talked to recently, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, a professor emerita of education at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass., describes this trend as a “profound misunderstanding of how children learn.” She regularly tours schools, and sees younger students floundering to comprehend instruction: “I’ve seen it many, many times in many, many classrooms — kids being told to sit at a table and just copy letters. They don’t know what they’re doing. It’s heartbreaking.”
The stakes in this debate are considerable. As the skeptics of teacher-led early learning see it, that kind of education will fail to produce people who can discover and innovate, and will merely produce people who are likely to be passive consumers of information, followers rather than inventors. Which kind of citizen do we want for the 21st century?
In the United States, more academic early education has spread rapidly in the past decade. Programs like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top have contributed to more testing and more teacher-directed instruction.
Another reason: the Common Core State Standards, a detailed set of educational guidelines meant to ensure that students reach certain benchmarks between kindergarten and 12th grade. Currently, 43 states and the District of Columbia have adopted both the math and language standards.
The shift toward didactic approaches is an attempt to solve two pressing problems.
By many measures, American educational achievement lags behind that of other countries; at the same time, millions of American students, many of them poor and from minority backgrounds, remain far below national norms. Advocates say that starting formal education earlier will help close these dual gaps.
But these moves, while well intentioned, are misguided. Several countries, including Finland and Estonia, don’t start compulsory education until the age of 7. In the most recent comparison of national educational levels, the Program for International Student Assessment, both countries ranked significantly higher than the United States on math, science and reading.
Other research has found that early didactic instruction might actually worsen academic performance. Rebecca A. Marcon, a psychology professor at the University of North Florida, studied 343 children who had attended a preschool class that was “academically oriented,” one that encouraged “child initiated” learning, or one in between. She looked at the students’ performance several years later, in third and fourth grade, and found that by the end of the fourth grade those who had received more didactic instruction earned significantly lower grades than those who had been allowed more opportunities to learn through play. Children’s progress “may have been slowed by overly academic preschool experiences that introduced formalized learning experiences too early for most children’s developmental status,” Dr. Marcon wrote.
Nevertheless, many educators want to curtail play during school. “Play is often perceived as immature behavior that doesn’t achieve anything,” says David Whitebread, a psychologist at Cambridge University who has studied the topic for decades. “But it’s essential to their development. They need to learn to persevere, to control attention, to control emotions. Kids learn these things through playing.”
Over the past 20 years, scientists have come to understand much more about how children learn. Jay Giedd, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, has spent his career studying how the human brain develops from birth through adolescence; he says most kids younger than 7 or 8 are better suited for active exploration than didactic explanation. “The trouble with over-structuring is that it discourages exploration,” he says.
Reading, in particular, can’t be rushed. It has been around for only about 6,000 years, so the ability to transform marks on paper into complex meaning is not pre-wired into the brain. It doesn’t develop “naturally,” as do other complex skills such as walking; it can be fostered, but not forced. Too often that’s what schools are trying to do now. This is not to suggest that we shouldn’t increase access to preschool, and improve early education for disadvantaged children. But the early education that kids get — whatever their socioeconomic background — should truly help their development. We must hope that those who make education policy will start paying attention to this science.
The idea seems obvious: Starting sooner means learning more; the early bird catches the worm.
But a growing group of scientists, education researchers and educators say there is little evidence that this approach improves long-term achievement; in fact, it may have the opposite effect, potentially slowing emotional and cognitive development, causing unnecessary stress and perhaps even souring kids’ desire to learn.
One expert I talked to recently, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, a professor emerita of education at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass., describes this trend as a “profound misunderstanding of how children learn.” She regularly tours schools, and sees younger students floundering to comprehend instruction: “I’ve seen it many, many times in many, many classrooms — kids being told to sit at a table and just copy letters. They don’t know what they’re doing. It’s heartbreaking.”
The stakes in this debate are considerable. As the skeptics of teacher-led early learning see it, that kind of education will fail to produce people who can discover and innovate, and will merely produce people who are likely to be passive consumers of information, followers rather than inventors. Which kind of citizen do we want for the 21st century?
In the United States, more academic early education has spread rapidly in the past decade. Programs like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top have contributed to more testing and more teacher-directed instruction.
Another reason: the Common Core State Standards, a detailed set of educational guidelines meant to ensure that students reach certain benchmarks between kindergarten and 12th grade. Currently, 43 states and the District of Columbia have adopted both the math and language standards.
The shift toward didactic approaches is an attempt to solve two pressing problems.
By many measures, American educational achievement lags behind that of other countries; at the same time, millions of American students, many of them poor and from minority backgrounds, remain far below national norms. Advocates say that starting formal education earlier will help close these dual gaps.
But these moves, while well intentioned, are misguided. Several countries, including Finland and Estonia, don’t start compulsory education until the age of 7. In the most recent comparison of national educational levels, the Program for International Student Assessment, both countries ranked significantly higher than the United States on math, science and reading.
Other research has found that early didactic instruction might actually worsen academic performance. Rebecca A. Marcon, a psychology professor at the University of North Florida, studied 343 children who had attended a preschool class that was “academically oriented,” one that encouraged “child initiated” learning, or one in between. She looked at the students’ performance several years later, in third and fourth grade, and found that by the end of the fourth grade those who had received more didactic instruction earned significantly lower grades than those who had been allowed more opportunities to learn through play. Children’s progress “may have been slowed by overly academic preschool experiences that introduced formalized learning experiences too early for most children’s developmental status,” Dr. Marcon wrote.
Nevertheless, many educators want to curtail play during school. “Play is often perceived as immature behavior that doesn’t achieve anything,” says David Whitebread, a psychologist at Cambridge University who has studied the topic for decades. “But it’s essential to their development. They need to learn to persevere, to control attention, to control emotions. Kids learn these things through playing.”
Over the past 20 years, scientists have come to understand much more about how children learn. Jay Giedd, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, has spent his career studying how the human brain develops from birth through adolescence; he says most kids younger than 7 or 8 are better suited for active exploration than didactic explanation. “The trouble with over-structuring is that it discourages exploration,” he says.
Reading, in particular, can’t be rushed. It has been around for only about 6,000 years, so the ability to transform marks on paper into complex meaning is not pre-wired into the brain. It doesn’t develop “naturally,” as do other complex skills such as walking; it can be fostered, but not forced. Too often that’s what schools are trying to do now. This is not to suggest that we shouldn’t increase access to preschool, and improve early education for disadvantaged children. But the early education that kids get — whatever their socioeconomic background — should truly help their development. We must hope that those who make education policy will start paying attention to this science.
*A gentle reminder that for safety and security reasons children are not allowed in the classrooms after school. We appreciate parents assistance with this and thank you for your continuous help and support.