From the Principal

February 2013

ISB Lower School Specialists’ Newsletter

Inside this issue:

French/Spanish 2

Art 3

Serbian/Serbian MT 4

PE/EAL 5

EAL/Music 6

study are essential elements to a comprehensive and holistic primary school education. The content of these subjects is transdisciplinary in nature, meaning that the skills and concepts developed by specialist teachers have relevance throughout the Lower School curriculum and our students’ lives beyond school. A great example of this is when your children ‘connect’ their school learning with something that happens when they are at home or out and about with the family, and especially on designed field trips. Our specialists teachers work alongside our classroom teachers to develop lessons and learning opportunities that are interesting, engaging, and connected to the classroom Units of In-quiry. Our specialist teachers are regularly seeking these natural connections between subjects. For this reason, we think it is important that we keep our parents informed about the teaching and learning taking place in our specialists’ classrooms. You will receive the specialist newsletter six times during the school year. As al-ways, if you have any questions about your child’s education, feel free to con-tact us. Enjoy the Spring season of learning! I look forward to seeing you all here on the Lower School campus during our Student-Led conferences, Brian H. Lettinga

Gr. 2

Welcome to the fabu-lous fifth edition of our Specialist Newsletters! Our specialists teachers (also referred as single-subject teachers) play an integral and im-portant role in the Pri-mary Years Program. The arts, physical edu-cation, and language

French

Page 2

Newsletter Title

Dubravka Kostanjsek

French Teacher

Milica Rkulovic

Spanish Teacher

Spanish

Dear second grade parents,

Here is our fifth newsletter for the French class which is aimed at keeping you

informed about the things we have been learning during the last period.

Since you’ve last heard from us, we have started working on our unit about ani-

mals. As we announced in the previous newsletter, the students have worked on

establishing relationship between animals and their habitat and have learned

how to say what different animals eat. We also introduced different animal body

parts in conjunction with the verb to have (a bird has wings - un oiseau a des

ailes) and have been practicing to describe various animals. Right now, we are

about to start making posters about different animals (each student will choose

five animals, write short texts about them, illustrate their work and present it to

the class).

It will be my pleasure to see you all soon and discuss your child’s work and pro-

gress.

Thank you for your time and please feel free to contact me if you have any ques-

tions.

As a wrap up activity to the unit in which we looked at family vocabulary and

practiced describing the physical appearance of first ourselves and then of our

family and friends, the grade two Spanish students are currently working on their

family mobiles. It’s wonderful seeing how much they enjoy sharing information

about their parents, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, and grandparents, all in

Spanish. In this unit, apart from learning/reviewing family vocabulary and experi-

menting with adjectives used to describe people, we devoted time to under-

standing the importance of using appropriate forms of adjectives (masculine or

feminine, singular or plural). The students demonstrated a good understanding

of both vocabulary and concepts taught in class.

Page 3

Art

Svetlana Spasic-

Glid

Art

During the past few weeks the students spent time drawing with various materials, making

sculptures and painting. We continued our inquiry into the works of the Impressionist artists

and enjoyed experimenting with the use of color and space while doing observational draw-

ing and painting based on the photographs taken in the schoolyard and the Senjak area. The

students explored the possibilities of sculpting with clay as they created objects that interest

them and tried their hand at observational sculpting. We also took the time to reflect on our

learning in the second trimester.

Grade 2A students have classes on Thursdays.

Grade 2B students have classes on Wednesdays.

Serbian as a Foreign Language

Page 4

Newsletter Title

Ivana Jovanovic

Serbian Language Teacher

During February Grade 2 students were learning through a variety of activities in

order to learn clothing vocabulary. They read and translated a set of paragraphs

that described members of one family – porodica Petrović. Students followed in-

structions given orally and in writing to draw a person. Also, they wrote descriptions

of people they could see on the pictures. This was a comprehensive unit and stu-

dents practiced reading, writing, understanding and listening skills. Currently, we

are making a small connection to the PYP unit Weather. Stating the current weather

conditions is now part of our regular class routine. However, we are also taking it

further by reading more detailed weather reports. As Grade 2 students are making a

public announcement every morning about the weather forecast for that day, we

are going to be real risk-takers and try to do it in Serbian as well.

Serbian Mother Tongue

Milena Jovanovic

Serbian Language

Teacher

Drugi razred je započeo novu nastavnu jedinicu o narodnim umotvorinama. Naučili

smo da su to izreke koje potiču iz naroda i da se ne zna tačno ko ih je smislio, kao i

da u narodne umotvorine ubrajamo poslovice, zagonetke, brzalice, razbrajalice,

pitalice, pesme i priče. Naučili smo svaku od ovih vrsta ponaosob, a čak smo se

oprobali i u smišljanju sopstvenih umotvorina. Rešavali smo i zadavali zagonetke i

pitalice, tumačili poslovice, delili se u timove uz pomoć razbrajalica i vežbali da što

brže izgovorimo brzalice. Naučili smo i kako da koristimo pitanja koja su nam data

prilikom pisanja priča. Odgovarajući punim rečenicama na ta pitanja sastavljali smo

svoje priče i opisivali članove porodice, kuću ili stan u kome živimo, omiljene biljke,

životinje i igračke. U februaru smo takođe radili testove iz čitanja, slušanja i pisanja.

Na narednim časovima ćemo pričati o Vuku Stefanoviću Karadžiću i njegovoj ulozi u

stvaranju azbuke i prikupljanju narodnih umotvorina.

Page 5

Ivana Nedeljkov

EAL Teacher

Second graders spent the last couple of weeks handling scoops and practicing floor hockey sticks, safely. Through different individual and pair activities, students worked on improving their eye-hand and body coordination, along with their agility. Before taking part in games such as ‘Scoop-ball’ and ‘Floor Hockey’, students were in-troduced to basic game rules, and had a good discussion about the importance of coop-eration in team games. The discussion brought up the question “What makes a good team?” We identified what we should look for in players when choosing a team for a certain game. This helped us to make fair teams, as well as to communicate and cooperate better with each other throughout the unit. Students worked on developing appropriate attitudes and sports-like behavior while enjoying matches we played.

EAL

Grade 2 students continue to work hard in their EAL class! We continued developing

reading comprehension as we read EAL leveled books. We focused on answering

Who, Why, Where, When and How questions. Students read the story Goldilocks

and the Three Bears. We have been looking at different verbs and practicing how to

read, say and write them in the present and past tense. Also a strong focus is kept

on developing vocabulary. Students have been writing their own stories using word

banks.

Physical Education

Marija Dimitrov

PE Teacher

Page 6

Beginners’ Group We continued developing oral language and literacy skills. We focused on learning new words, and identifying words that rhyme, as we practiced listening and reading skills. The students particularly enjoyed reading, learning new vocabulary, and role-playing “The Princess and a Pea”. As a follow-up, the students practiced retelling the story using se-quencing words, and writing complete sentences, paying close attention to basic punctu-ation and capitalization. In addition, we learned how to describe various weather condi-tions, and provide weather forecast using future tense. We used the Weather Channel iPad application to get information for a 7 day weather forecast. We used the infor-mation to write sentences in the past, present and future tense. High Beginners We started supporting the trans-disciplinary theme How the World Works – the Weather unit, and its central idea: People use science and technology to explore, understand and predict the weather. The lines of inquiry led us into looking more deeply into weather, and how it affects us. We named different weather conditions, and practiced describing pictures in present tense. Supporting the Unit of Inquiry, we continued reading leveled books. The students showed particular interest in reading the book titled: “Weather”. We focused on devel-oping reading fluency and comprehension. In addition, we enhanced contextual under-standing by reading illustrated fiction stories with more sophisticated vocabulary, provid-ing word explanations and developing dictionary skills. We continued our focus on sim-ple/compound sentences, and writing conventions: capital letters and basic punctuation. In addition, working with a partner we researched various weather conditions using iPad apps, and presented it to our peers, using Two Stars and a Wish peer assessment strate-gy.

EAL

Divna Stakic

EAL Teacher

Grade 2 students were hard at work these past weeks. With my absence they were

lucky enough to have two lovely Milicas stepping in and stepping up to help them

wrap up the second trimester and prepare for the student led conferences. Students

played recorders and learned to appreciate music. Focusing on tones BAG, they

played simple patterns practicing their fingering and blowing techniques. Looking at

the work of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, students engaged in discussions about tech-

nical and artistic value of his work. Meanwhile, they learned a number of new music

terms.

Music

Ljudmila Janicijevic

Music Teacher