Dear Parents,

This has been a sad week for us all, and we would like to thank the support that the community has been giving to the family of Hugo Jamieson. This has touched of our younger ISD family members too, who may have known him through siblings. 

In our schooling over the last few weeks, teachers have been completing report cards, and students are preparing to share their progress through the student-led conferences. We look forward to seeing you next week on Thursday and Friday. I have inserted a video of what some of the conferences will look like in Gr 2, 4 & 5 below. I have also mentioned a little more about the 6-day rotation we will be adopting in the Elementary School next year.

Other Notes:

1.  ES Parent Coffee: Thank you if you made it to the meeting yesterday. For those who could not come, the presentation centered around two changes that we are making. One relating to our piloting a different format of Student Led Conferences in some grades this year, and the other to introduce the 6-day rotation that the Elementary School will be adopting next year (not MS or HS): 

- Student-Led Conferences: We would like our students at ISD to be self-directed and responsible learners. To facilitate this we are looking at how we use goal-setting, ongoing reflection, and the sharing of portfolios showing academic growth at student-led conferences. This year, teachers in Grades 2, 4 & 5 are piloting 40-minute student-led conferences. These will allow their class parents to spend more time discussing the work with them, and the sessions are already outlined for the children and being refined in class. 

We also watched a two-minute movie of a student-led conference in progress, you can view it HERE

There will be 4 conferences running in in parallel, and the teacher will be managing the time in the room. We would like to adopt this model K-5 next year, and appreciate feedback. Parents having this form of conference will be receiving a flier today. Finally, whether you are having a 20 minute teacher/student/parent or 40 minute student/parent conference here are some valuable questions that will always open a conversation with your child about their work:

·       Can you tell me more about…?

·       How did you learn that?

·       Can you show me an example?

·       What are you most proud of?

·       How do you feel about…?

·       What did you learn from this work?

·       If you had to do this work again, what would you do differently?

·       How do you think you have improved in…?

·       What are you working on now?

·       What are some things you would like to work on before the end of the year?

·       Which goals did you already meet?

·       What are some ways that I could help you with your work and your learning goals?

- 6-Day Rotation: Many larger international schools use a 6-day rotation, and this is the model that the Elementary School will be adopting in the 2012-13 school year. It is a 6-day version of the 2-day rotation used in the MS and HS. It will overcome the problem we have when there are occasional one-day holidays, which often fall on Fridays and Mondays - this greatly disrupts the specials schedules. 

A 6-day rotation is a schedule whereby instead of having a Monday-Friday daily timetable, there are 6 days numbered 1-6, and these days run through the year. Thus August 21 will be Day 1, 22nd Day 2, and so on. Once Day 6 is reached, we begin again on Day 1. Confusing initially, (and more explanation below!), but we will have the following benefit:

·       We will be adding a second Art session (we currently only have one Art per week)

·       We will no longer miss a day's PE, Art, Music, Library or Computers when there is a one-day holiday

·       We will still have French every day

·       We will be able to have more PD afternoons on Fridays

·       We add 15 minutes a week to homeroom class contact time

To illustrate further, below is an example of what the 4th Grade schedule could look like next year:

…and looking at August next year, the sessions from the beginning of school would go as follows:

Tuesday 21st: Day 1, Wednesday 22nd: Day 2, Thursday 23rd: Day 3, Friday 24th: Day 4, Monday 27th: Day 5, Tuesday 28th: Day 6, Wednesday 29th, Day 1, Thursday 30th: Day 2, Friday 31st: Day 3, Monday 3rd: Day 4, and so on. A public holiday would be skipped in the same way as a weekend. Therefore no specials will be missed. 

This would be printed on a calendar, and we have will the day numbers labeled clearly around the Elementary School- changing each day. While this may lead to some confusion about PE days, we will accommodate forgotten trainers as best we can. I will also hold another information session on this later in the year.