Tirana International School 16 January 2018 Important Dates January 14-18 - Winter MAP testing 15 - Advisory Board Meeting (6:00 pm) 23 - PSG Meeting (8:00 AM) 25 - Iron Chef - Parent vs Student (6:00 pm) 28 - Violin/ Piano/ Guitar concert (6:00 pm - 7:00 pm) 30 Jan - 3 Feb - CEESA MS Choir/Moscow 31 Jan - 3 Feb - CEESA HS Knowledge Bowl/Skopje 31 Jan - 4 Feb - CEESA MS Mathcounts/Belgrade 31 - Narratives February 7-10 - CEESA HS Tech Robotics/Bucharest 7-10 - HOSTING - CEESA HS Speech&Debate/Tirana 11 - 100 Days of School 11-15 - Math Week 11-14 - Middle States Accreditation Team in Tirana 18-22 - Mid/Winter Break, No School Director's Desk Dear Parents, Students, and Friends of TIS, Although we just put up new calendars for the year, it is time to already start thinking about the next academic year. Over the past couple of months, we have worked on securing teachers for key spots of the coming 2019-2020 school year. I'm in regular contact with these new teachers and I'm sure that you will be thrilled with their professionalism and excitement for working with students. To help us better plan for the year, we will be sending out our annual re-enrollment form at the end of the month. On that form, there will be just three choices - returning, not returning and too early to tell. We count on this information to help us as we complete our book/supply orders and make sure that we have the right amount of furniture for each class. This year, you will notice that we are using a program called OpenApply. It is an encrypted site that will help you to keep control of your data and allow for you to add additional documents as they become available. When you get the invitation sent to you to regarding next year, please open the site and indicate whether or not you will be returning. Thank you for your help! Looking Forward, Robert S. Jackson, Director As part of our comprehensive approach to keeping your children safe, TIS had adopted the Keeping Safe: Child Protection Curriculum. We are piloting the program with our middle school and secondary students during their Wednesday advisory time starting January 23rd. All students 4-years-old and up will engage in the curriculum for 45 minutes per week staring in the 2019-20 school year. Please read the following letter for more information about the middle and high school plan for this year. Additional Resources for all parents can be found on the KS:CPC website: We have a new website where you can look through the items and see if you find anything that belongs to you. Get Ready for Iron Chef II: Kids vs. Parents! Registration here. Advisory Board Meeting Notes The TIS Advisory Board meets several times a year to provide guidance for the school and decide on issues of importance. The latest meeting was held on January 15 and you can find notes from the meeting here. MSA Accreditation In just four weeks, the MSA accreditation team will be at TIS. During their time here, the group will visit classrooms, talk about the school's objectives, and discuss our standards. An important part of their visit is speaking with all of our stakeholders, not just administration and teachers. To that end, we will schedule time for students and parents to meet with this team to talk about your experience at TIS. In the next couple of weeks, we will post the full agenda for the visiting team in the newsletter so that you can see times and dates on when these meetings will happen. Parents, TIS is excited to announce our winter Saturday Sports Program. TIS will offer a six-week gymnastics and basketball program for our students from ages 5-13. Dates: January 12, 19, 26 February 2, 16 March 2 Gymnastics for ages 5-7 will run from 9:00 until 10:00 Gymnastics for ages 8-13 will run from 10:00 until 11:00 Basketball for ages 8-10 will run from 9:00 until 10:00 Basketball for ages 5-7 will run from 10:00 until 11:00 Basketball for ages 11-13 will run from 11:00 until 12:00 The cost for the gymnastics is 6000 Leke for the six-week session. Payment will be made directly to the coaches at the first session. The gymnastics training will be conducted by 3 coaches with extensive experience in the United States and Albania. There is no cost for the basketball program. Both programs are open to boys and girls. The schedule has been organized so that children may participate in both activities. Registration for the Saturday Sports program can be completed by filling out the Google form HERE Traveling to France Of all the beautiful castles throughout Europe, France has the most amazing castles. They are so romantic and dreamy! If you are planning a trip to France. You will definitely want to hit up on of these castles. You might even be able to spend the night in a castle, as many castle owners convert the castles into hotels. Here is a suggestion from the French IV students, of the coolest, most famous castles in all of France as well as a bit of history behind each. Russian II.IV and Elementary students celebrated Russian Christmas and Old New Year. Russian Elementary Class "were building" the Moscow Kremlin. Personal Finance and Budgeting To wrap up their studies in Economics, students are taking a look at personal finance and budgeting. These important life skills will help guide graduating students as they enter the world outside the walls of TIS. In one lesson, students looked up mid-career salary possibilities and created a mock-budget to gain a better understanding of where all the money goes in adulthood. Growth Mindset and Mathematics In the 8 year-old-classroom, we are fostering a culture of error and a growth mindset. What does this mean? It means that we focus on challenging students and recognizing that failures are a learning opportunity, not a sign of low intelligence. How many times have you heard, “I’m not smart in math.” “I am not good in math.” “I don’t have a math brain.” I said this many times as a child! Brain research shows that making mistakes actually helps the brain make connections in math; praising efforts instead of intelligence increases a child’s ability to persevere through a task; and positive math talk improves self-esteem and mathematics performance. What does this look like in our classroom? Just the other day, I asked my students to show “thumbs up”, “thumbs sideways”, or “thumbs down” to let me know how well they understood my mini-lesson. They were all very honest about their answers. When encouraged further to meet with me at the back of the room if they felt that they needed a bit more one-on-one in order to grasp the lesson, several children took me up on the offer without hesitation. In our classroom, children are not afraid to admit they need a bit more help. It’s often a different group of children each time. What can you do at home to improve your child’s feelings about math? Check out the link below. Post the inspirational chart found on page 8 near your child’s homework space. There is a lot of other fabulous information in this link on how to work with your child in mathematics. If you would like more information on Growth Mindset, please let me know. What your child believes about himself or herself absolutely impacts performance! The Ladybugs are working on fine motor skills by cutting straight, curved, and zig zag lines. Our theme for this week is "Big and Little" and we have been sorting big and Little frogs on big and little ponds. Becoming better learners While exploring ancient Greece in 12 YO Cultural Studies, students reflected on the way they process and express information. Each student created an annotated visual representation of ancient Greece's social hierarchy. We discovered that we all have unique ways of processing and communicating knowledge. No two diagrams were alike, yet they all conveyed the same information. Though understanding our personal learning and communication styles, we can become better learners. The six-year-old classes have been studying "light" in Science class. This week we conducted an experiment to see how light travels. (in rays,in a straight line) The major system of the earth The 10 Year Old Students are investigating how the major systems of the earth, the geosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and biosphere, all interact. We're investigating how an action in one system can have effects in each other system, because, we're all connected! In this photo, Miles is showing his rock collection to his friends, as we review how the rock cycle works. Learning through Games IE students have been practicing their sight words(important words that they need to know but have no logical spelling) for all this time. What better way is there to learn new words than by playing games with them? Race to the Pond, Dominoes, Go Fish, and Uno have been some of their favorite! "Recorder Karate" The 8 and 9 yo music classes have begun playing the recorder. They are very excited to be participating in a program called “Recorder Karate” where they will earn “belts” for each level they pass. Children will be practicing at home 5-10 minutes a day and recorders and books should always go back into their backpack. Later in the year we will present a concert so parent can see what we have learned! |