From the Director’s Desk This week we will bring in the month of May with our International Day event on Tuesday, May 1 from 12 – 1 p.m. There are currently 14 countries signed up to represent their heritage with food and national items. Students are encouraged to dress in national clothing if possible. There will be a short flag parade to open the ceremonies. We hope you can join us. If you would like to volunteer to host a table for your country, please contact me as soon as possible. MAP testing continues this week with MS and Secondary students as well as makeup tests. Our three Week Without Walls groups will be presenting about their activities on Friday, May 11 from 3:45 – 5:00 p.m. Come hear and see all about these awesome experiences! All families will be receiving a letter from us this week regarding our new Child Safety Handbook, which will be available on our school website. This letter is an introduction to the handbook and our Code of Conduct document. Beginning in the 2018-2019 school year, all people who interact with our students – teachers, staff, and volunteers – will be asked to sign the Code of Conduct. Please read the letter carefully. It is important that you understand our commitment to keeping children safe at QSI Dushanbe. Please save the date for next Saturday, May 5th, for a PSG (Parent Support Group) Charitable Fun Run in the Botanical Gardens. Registration will happen sometime this week. This is a fundraiser to bring awareness and support to the Animal Shelter of Dushanbe. Please see the flyer in this week’s newsletter for more information. This week will be the first of our student transitions meetings. Mrs. Horton and I will be meeting with those students who are moving away from Dushanbe. At the same time, teachers will be discussing with the remaining students what it is like to be the ones who stay behind and how we can prepare for the arrival of new students next year. Please see Mrs. Horton’s article on Transitions later in this newsletter. I will also be offering a couple of parent sessions on “The Impact of Transitions” during the month of May. See the information in this newsletter. As a gentle reminder, if you are planning to take your children from school for any period of time or if you are planning on leaving Dushanbe prior to the last day of school (June 15), it is very important that you let the teachers and office staff know. Timely information allows the teachers to help your children maintain their responsibilities. Thank you for your understanding. We wish you a wonderful weekend QSI Dushanbe community. Kim Black and QSID Staff As we draw closer to the end of the school year, the minds and hearts of many families are pulled in different directions. Those who are leaving Tajikistan are trying to finish up all that needs to be done here while thinking about settling in to a new environment and all the stress associated with it. Those who remain worry about what the future here will be like without friends they have come to know and enjoy. These transitions are an inevitable part of this international life, but that does not make moving any easier. During the first week of May the school will begin a “Transitions” program for all of our students: those leaving and those remaining. Both groups will meet to talk about what is happening, their feelings and fears about the future, and each group will be given some suggestions for activities that will help them look at this transition time in a more positive light. Those remaining may also come home with a permission slip to be a New Student Buddy. This is an opportunity for our students to meet and become a buddy to an incoming student In August. Please read the information and return to Ms. Horton if your son/daughter would like to part of this program. While acknowledging that the grief that comes with saying good-bye is an unavoidable part of all transitions, we hope to help students happily anticipate new beginnings that transitions signal: times of hellos, of growth and change. QSI DUSHANBE CELEBRATES SCIENCE DAYS 2018QSI Dushanbe students from ages 4 through secondary celebrated our Second Annual Science Days on Thursday April 19 and Friday April 20 with plenty of fun activities and friendly competitions. On a chilly Thursday morning, we kicked off our activities with some of the younger classes giving short Science Showcase presentations about something interesting that they did in their Science classes this year. Then everyone went sent off to their respective work areas to work on solving their individual Science Day Challenges. On Friday we heard the Science Showcase presentations from the older classes and then began our competitions to see which students in each class were the most successful with their Science Day Challenges Ms Parvina’s 4 year old class did a great job building a tall tower out of paper cups. Ms Spear’s 5 year old class tried their hand at joining recycled plastic water bottles into towers, with Khizar, Loius and Amalia cooperating to build the most successful tower. Ms Mahina helped the 6 year old class build boats out of aluminum foil to hold the most weight and Bea’s boat proved to be the best in their competition. Ms Do’s 7 year old class worked on paper airplane designs. Pourya, Annika and Greta created the paper airplanes that flew the farthest distance. Annette, Pourya and Isaac were able to make the airplanes that were the most accurate when thrown. Ms Johnson’s 8 year olds built towers out of drinking straws which could hold the most weight. The team of Delilah, Tamiris and Roksana built the tower that held the most weight compared to its height. Ms Johnson’s 9 year old class worked on constructing towers made out of paper file folder strips which could support the most weight. Lance, Alapan and Brady cooperated to produce the tower which held the most weight compared to its height. Mr Black’s 10 year old class worked on having a toy car move the farthest along a wooden runway, using only air from a balloon and after a close competition, Gesu and Khushi’s car achieved the longest run. Mr Smith’s 11 year old class created packages to protect an egg from breaking when dropped from different heights. Luke’s was the only one egg that survived being dropped from the third floor, while those of Sara/Kira and Anika/Daniel also made it to the final rounds. Ms Smith worked with the 12 and 13 year old classes to construct and refine their mousetrap cars designs to make them travel the most distance on the wooden runway. The car created by Jessica and Karolina proved to be the most successful, with those from Leo/Behzod and Dina/Kartikeya finished as runners up. The secondary students chose between building bridges out of balsawood strips that would hold the most weight or building a catapult from a kit that would throw a ball the greatest distance. These challenges required many design adjustments before the final testing/competition. Kadir and Attila constructed the strongest bridge, followed by Roland/Heloise and Sam. Kurbon and Zhang prevailed in the catapult competition with Daniel and Evan’s catapult earning them second place.
Password: QSI123!HOUSE ACTIVITY
The word “Makerspace” has become a buzzword in schools over the past few years, and QSID is jumping on the bandwagon. A makerspace is exactly what it sounds like it should be: a workspace set aside specifically for creating, inventing and exploring tools and ideas. At our school we hope it will be a place for students to solve problems, tinker, and use their imaginations either as part of class challenges or as part of individual or small group activities. These can be high tech, low tech or no tech. As you do your spring cleaning, or just because you might have items that could be recycled, we would be happy to take them off your hands. From cloth to containers, plastic to play doh, wire to wood, we are looking for clean odds and ends that may be used to create a new toy or added to a sculpture or as part of a student invention we haven’t even thought of yet. Send these things in with your student, and it will be added to our supplies. At the moment, besides these miscellaneous items, we are hoping for a donation of a sewing machine or two. Thanks for your support as we continue to help our students become 21st century thinkers and problem-solvers. |