Tirana International School 12 September, 2018 Important Dates September 13-25 - MAP Testing 21 - MS parent/teacher mixer - jessica-hesprich@alb.qsi.org 28 - TIS Iron Chef at 6:00 pm October 8-12 - Fall Break - No School 18-25 - Digital Citizenship Week 23 - Picture Day 26 - Fall Festival 31 - Traditional Parent/Teacher conference TIS will provide: grills for cooking, olive oil, basic spices, ovens and clean surfaces. Parents bring: food ingredients, their own cookware and knives. Don't bring: your kids! This is an adult only event. Please contact Judith Visser (devissers@live.nl) or Robert Jackson (robert-jackson@qsi.org) with questions. Dear Parents and Friends of TIS, Cooking shows like Iron Chef, Master Chef, and Top Chef are all the rage right now on TV and our school wants to join in on the fun. On September 28 at 6:00 pm, TIS will hold our first ever Iron Chef championship for parents! In association with Era, who will provide wine and cheese for the evening, TIS is inviting parents to show off their cooking skills in a competition to see whose dish will reign supreme. The theme of the evening is "Healthy food that kids will love." Era will be around to learn about your meals and then hopefully replicate them in the kitchen during meal times at school. The rules are simple...you will have 60 minutes to prepare and present your main course food (no desserts or salads) to our panel of judges. Don't prepare anything at home...just bring ingredients and when we start the clock, you will have just one hour to make the best meal possible. Other parents will get to try a small bite of your food so plan on making a few portions. Register here to reserve your cooking spot. Please plan on coming even if you just want to see what others will prepare. Our chefs need an audience too! Of course, we will have prizes for the top dishes and you could see your special meal pop up in the cafeteria during lunch time for everyone to enjoy. Looking forward to a tasty evening, Robert S. Jackson, Director Dear Parents of TIS, This survey asks your opinions regarding the education your child receives, transportation, cafeteria, and other issues. Your feedback is very important and very helpful as we are considering our goals for the future of the school and how we can best meet the needs of a changing community, Your participation is needed. This survey, officially created by MSA, will take about ___ minutes to complete and will address several areas of the school. We ask that you let us know what we are doing well, but also to mark growth areas for the school. One important part of this planning is for our re-accreditation through the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools (MSA). Our MSA Accreditation is internationally considered the gold standard for schools that seek to have an outside body confirm that our program, facility and finances are at an exceptionally high level. In February 2019, we will have a visiting team from MSA on campus for several days as they weigh out our commitment to excellence and to what extent we are meeting the needs of students. Naturally, a large part of this process is hearing from you and creating plans that will meet your needs During MSA meetings, our TIS staff will crunch and analyze the survey data in order to reflect and plan for the next 10 years as well as conclude the results in our self study draft due in October 2019. Comments are appreciated. Make your voice heard by completing the survey today! Japanese Art The art students started the new school year full of enthusiasm and inspiration. They are studying Japanese art and culture that covers a wide range of art styles and media. Students are learning how to use a variety of techniques from ink painting to calligraphy. They recreated work from famous Japanese artists and experimented with new mediums. These young artists are so talented and the artwork produced it’s truly remarkable. Motion The Secondary I Physical Science students were active collecting data about their motion, graphing to find the slope to justifying their claims about which type of movement is the fastest. Aerodynamics The 11 yo Science students were researching to find evidence relating to aerodynamics. They will use the evidence to create and test a paper airplane that will fly the greatest distance. Retreat Experience The Spanish students used their vocabulary skills and Spanish knowledge to share their Retreat experiences with each other. They practiced using the Preterite form to discuss their past experiences. They each discussed their opinions on the Retreat and in the end created a poster to share their own personal experience. Brainstorming The students this week in some of the elementary classes rolled place value dice to receive a two-digit number. They worked in groups to show all the ways to represent that number. This group was trying to think of ways to add up to 54. How many ways can you think of? Phonemic Awareness Literacy centers offer meaningful learning experiences where students work independently or collaboratively to meet literacy goals. Our focus this week was on phonemic awareness. We want to ensure that students have a solid understanding of the sound of speech before we start phonics instruction. Crickets! The Cricket class has had an exciting week learning about our namesake - the cricket! They have been learning what a cricket looks like, how it moves, and the sound that it makes! Sensory play outside with different toy insects in the grass helped them think about the different ways that insects move. Great Albanian Start The Albanian Language course is designed to develop listening,speaking, reading and writing skills, as well as expose students to various aspects of Albanian culture. We had a great start this year. Our students were very excited to come back to class and to welcome the newcomers that joined our course. They shared some of their best memories and impressions over the summer vacations. I'm so happy to teach your wonderful children. We do look forward to have a fabulous year together! Math Fun In mathematics, the Fives are almost through with the unit of numbers 0-5. The students have worked hard writing these numbers daily in the classroom. In addition, they have participated in various fun learning math centers to practice and reinforce the already introduced math number sense skills using vocabulary words as less then, greater then, and the same. One of the centers last week consisted of students drawing a number card, writing the number they picked down, as well as writing in order three numbers that come next. Likewise, the Fives also got to write what comes before a number. During the dice center, they rolled a dice and traced the number the dice landed on, etc. In addition, In order to get the wiggly Fives moving around, each student that had a number on his shirt had to pair up with a friend whose name corresponded to that number. They really enjoyed this game. We also got to order ourselves from the least to the greatest and from the greatest to the least which has also been among other objectives we have been working on. |