News from our Elementary Principal, Ben Voborsky
Hello GAA Community,
GAA has once again been a buzz of activity. From the KG Arts Festival to the Grade 5 PYP Exhibition Provocation, we have engaged our youngest to our oldest learners. Faculty and staff have also been busy not only developing professionally but collaborating on the GAA Council of International Schools (CIS) and New England Association of Schools and Colleges Preparatory (NEASC) Visit Report.
Our standing school improvement committees have been reviewing, self-assessing, and providing evidence for all CIS and NEASC standards. The goal of accreditation is continuous school improvement. GAA is always focused on how we can improve our learning environment so our students have the best experience. We look forward to partnering with parents throughout the CIS/NEASC/IB re-accreditation process.
Please mark your calendar for March 15th and 16th for Student Led Conferences. I know your children are excited to share their learning with you.
I look forward to seeing you at the International Food Festival tomorrow!
Regards,
Ben Voborsky
GAA has once again been a buzz of activity. From the KG Arts Festival to the Grade 5 PYP Exhibition Provocation, we have engaged our youngest to our oldest learners. Faculty and staff have also been busy not only developing professionally but collaborating on the GAA Council of International Schools (CIS) and New England Association of Schools and Colleges Preparatory (NEASC) Visit Report.
Our standing school improvement committees have been reviewing, self-assessing, and providing evidence for all CIS and NEASC standards. The goal of accreditation is continuous school improvement. GAA is always focused on how we can improve our learning environment so our students have the best experience. We look forward to partnering with parents throughout the CIS/NEASC/IB re-accreditation process.
Please mark your calendar for March 15th and 16th for Student Led Conferences. I know your children are excited to share their learning with you.
I look forward to seeing you at the International Food Festival tomorrow!
Regards,
Ben Voborsky
News from our PYP Coordinator, Mike Hopaluk
Launch of the Grade 5 PYP Exhibition!
This week there was a buzz in Grade 5 as every day marked one day closer to the beginning of the 3rd Annual Grade 5 PYP Exhibition. The PYP Exhibition (PYPX for short) represents a significant event in the life of a PYP school and students, synthesizing the essential elements of the PYP and sharing them with the whole school community. As a culminating experience, it is an opportunity for students to exhibit the attributes of the IB Learner Profile that have been developing throughout their engagement with the PYP.
This year’s PYP Exhibition will take place under the transdisciplinary theme of “How we organize ourselves” and the central idea is “Communities can be changed through our actions". Students will engage in a collaborative inquiry across all subjects as they identify, investigate and offer solutions to real-life issues or problems.
The PYP exhibition has a number of key purposes including:
While the official beginning of the unit is not until this coming Sunday, some of the excitement with getting ready included a competition for students to create the official GAA PYP Exhibition 2016-2017 logo. You can see the winning design here, by 5C student Mattia. And you can view the entirety of the submitted designs in this gallery.
This week there was a buzz in Grade 5 as every day marked one day closer to the beginning of the 3rd Annual Grade 5 PYP Exhibition. The PYP Exhibition (PYPX for short) represents a significant event in the life of a PYP school and students, synthesizing the essential elements of the PYP and sharing them with the whole school community. As a culminating experience, it is an opportunity for students to exhibit the attributes of the IB Learner Profile that have been developing throughout their engagement with the PYP.
This year’s PYP Exhibition will take place under the transdisciplinary theme of “How we organize ourselves” and the central idea is “Communities can be changed through our actions". Students will engage in a collaborative inquiry across all subjects as they identify, investigate and offer solutions to real-life issues or problems.
The PYP exhibition has a number of key purposes including:
- for students to engage in an in-depth, collaborative inquiry
- to provide students with an opportunity to demonstrate independence and responsibility for their own learning
- to provide students with an opportunity to explore multiple perspectives
- for students to synthesize and apply their learning of previous years and to reflect upon their journey through the PYP
- to provide an authentic process for assessing student understanding
- to demonstrate how students can take action as a result of their learning
- to unite the students, teachers, parents and other members of the school community in a collaborative experience that incorporates the essential elements of the PYP
- to celebrate the transition of learners from primary to middle/secondary education
While the official beginning of the unit is not until this coming Sunday, some of the excitement with getting ready included a competition for students to create the official GAA PYP Exhibition 2016-2017 logo. You can see the winning design here, by 5C student Mattia. And you can view the entirety of the submitted designs in this gallery.
PYPX Logo Submissions 2016-2017
Another great experience this week was the students creating a human design of GAA PYPX. The students were informed of the goal and asked to solve the problem of creating the design by being effective communicators. You can see the results of the 125 student design here.
Another great experience this week was the students creating a human design of GAA PYPX. The students were informed of the goal and asked to solve the problem of creating the design by being effective communicators. You can see the results of the 125 student design here.
After the field challenge, students traveled through all six Grade 5 classrooms and completed “What I See, What I Think, What I Wonder” visible thinking routine as they viewed, read and talked about various resources that were laid out to provoke their thinking about issues in our world. Students were then asked to rank their interested in these various issues which will aid the Grade 5 teachers as they create collaborative inquiry groups for the unit.
So much has already happened and they haven’t even officially begun yet. Wow!
Please stay tuned for more information on the process of this year’s PYP Exhibition, including how you can be a part of this wonderful experience
Regards,
Mike Hopaluk
So much has already happened and they haven’t even officially begun yet. Wow!
Please stay tuned for more information on the process of this year’s PYP Exhibition, including how you can be a part of this wonderful experience
Regards,
Mike Hopaluk
Celebrations are an opportunity to reflect and appreciate other cultures and beliefs. 1E students are doing an inquiry into various celebrations around the world. We began with celebrations we are all most familiar with and gradually learned about the similarities and differences of many other celebrations. One of our first inquiries was birthday parties. 1E students discussed and compared birthdays around the world. They then decided to plan a birthday celebration for the entire 1F class!! They worked in small groups making invitations, decorations, games, a music playlist, and even party favors. 1E students shared and reflected that they definitely have a new and better appreciation for their parents and all the hard work they do to plan their celebrations!
News from our KG Vice Principal,
Arts’ Festival
“This was better than recess!” One of our students told me this when our Arts’ Festival concluded this week.
Our KG2 classes celebrated art, music and drama in the auditorium with our families and community.
They shared favorite fairy tales that they had explored through our unit, “How We Express Ourselves”.
Seeing the confidence in their eyes as they danced and sang and acted on stage was wonderful.
Our KG1 Arts Festival will be taking place in two weeks. I am looking forward to hearing the nursery rhymes they have been working on.
Language and the arts is alive and well in KG.
Sally Potts
KG Vice Principal
“This was better than recess!” One of our students told me this when our Arts’ Festival concluded this week.
Our KG2 classes celebrated art, music and drama in the auditorium with our families and community.
They shared favorite fairy tales that they had explored through our unit, “How We Express Ourselves”.
Seeing the confidence in their eyes as they danced and sang and acted on stage was wonderful.
Our KG1 Arts Festival will be taking place in two weeks. I am looking forward to hearing the nursery rhymes they have been working on.
Language and the arts is alive and well in KG.
Sally Potts
KG Vice Principal
KG Corner
This is the last week we will be learning about shapes…We have been using the stories “The Shape of Things” and “Not a Box” to inspire us and allow us to see that shapes make up the world around us. These stories led us to design our own pictures with different shapes and show how shapes can represent various objects. We are using the pattern blocks to show shapes as butterflies, snakes, etc. We also played games with shapes and tried to identify them on a shapes game board.
KG has been inquiring into how we express ourselves. We have been engaging in a variety of activities in the classroom. Our classroom has been set up in ways to ensure that there are a lot of ways to express ourselves. One of the favorite areas has been the theater where students have been performing all kinds of songs and dance.
KG Library and Makerspace
In the Library and Makerspace, our KG students have been learning to create, think critically, communicate, and collaborate through the inquiry cycle. KG1 students read a book called “Not A Box”, which led them to wonder, “What can be made with a box?” They have been sharing their creative ideas, exploring designs, and are in the process of bringing their plans to life in our box project. In KG1, students are working on collaborating with their classmates to complete a cardboard creation.
In the Library and Makerspace, our KG students have been learning to create, think critically, communicate, and collaborate through the inquiry cycle. KG1 students read a book called “Not A Box”, which led them to wonder, “What can be made with a box?” They have been sharing their creative ideas, exploring designs, and are in the process of bringing their plans to life in our box project. In KG1, students are working on collaborating with their classmates to complete a cardboard creation.
In KG2, students have explored the question “How can we tell stories using Lego?” They are learning how technology can tell stories through the use of Lego characters. They will build and program the Lego characters using code to tell a story that their class wrote together. The process is a long one, but we are very much looking forward to sharing our hard work!
KG PE
In the KG Kitchen-Lab we have been using STORIES as the inspiration for our cooking and science activities. We have learned about characters, setting and feelings through our lessons which really made these stories come to life.
Here are some of our exciting activities:
Here are some of our exciting activities:
- Making homemade butter to eat on our pancakes, (this took a lot of shaking)
- Making rolled up tea sandwiches for the Storybook tea party that B.B. Wolf (Big Bad Wolf) attended
- Conducting an experiment to inflate balloons with baking soda and vinegar and predicting if more baking soda would give us a bigger balloon.
- We put ourselves into the story Sophie’s Squash by dimming the lights, playing lullaby music and holding a “baby” then eating a healthy veggie snack
- Baking “earthworm and dirt cakes” like Max did for his Grandma in the story Bunny Cakes”.