isb lower school specialists’ newsletter september gr.5.pdf · music page 4 isb lower school...

From the Principal

ISB Lower School Specialists’ Newsletter

Inside this issue:

Serbian as a Foreign Lan-guage / EAL

2

Art 3

Music/SMT

4

PE 5

French 6

Spanish 7

Grade 5

September 2011

Dear Lower School families and welcome to the first Specialist Newsletter of the 2010-11 School Year!

Our specialists teachers (also referred as single-subject teachers) play an integral and important role in

the Primary Years Program. The arts, physical education, and language 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 through-

out the Lower School curriculum and our students’ lives beyond school.

For this reason, we believe it is important that we keep our parents informed about the teaching and

learning taking place in our specialists classrooms. You will receive our specialist newsletters seven times

during the school year. As always, if you have any questions about your child’s education, feel free to

contact us. Teachers and administrators are available each and every school day before and after school

to address any questions or concerns you may have regarding any of our programs.

Looking forward to an exciting school year filled with learning and fun,

Mr. Lettinga

Lower School Principal

Serbian as a Foreign Language


Welcome to Serbian Foreign Language! Grade 5 started the year off by reviewing introductions and

greetings, colours, number, calendar and weather. We focused on being able to count to 100 and recog-

nize numbers using flashcards and other games. We paid extra attention to expressing ourselves in full

sentences when describing the weather and saying the date. Grade five consistently expresses key ques-

tions such as, Izvinite da li mogu da idem u toalet - May I go to the bathroom, Izvinite da li mogu da idem da

pijem vode - May I please get a drink, Molim te mi dodaj … - May you please pass me…, I Kako se kaze…-

How do you say…, in Serbian. In September we started connecting with the homeroom unit on “How

We Organize Ourselves.” We started a project called the “Global Simulation”, where the students

create a whole new world, choosing a place that they have to describe, imagining new identities, making

rules for that new community and interacting throughout the whole project. In our case, it was decided

that we would be neighbours in an apartment building. We will have to start a new community, build

the building, organize ourselves and live together. This is a technique which will help us develop all the

competences necessary for quality communication (reading and listening comprehension, speaking and

writing.) While learning the vocabulary and the structures needed to accomplish our tasks, the students

will need to maintain a high level of creativity since they are the authors of the whole story. For now,

the students have written their new ID cards, described their individual apartments and as a whole, and

their apartment building. We will be starting to work on climate vocabulary, as well as the plants and

animals that can be encountered in the surrounding area. Throughout all of these activities, the children

are getting used to understanding instructions given in Serbian and are permanently encouraged to use

that language themselves and practice the structures we have been learning. I would also like to remind

you that some of the activities will begin to include explicit grammar rules in order to enable the stu-

dents to use correctly some of the basic structures; however sensitization is still the primary focus.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or for more information.

Sonja Stanisic

Serbian language Teacher

EAL

Grade 5 students were engaged in reading and writing activities linked to their Unit of

Inquiry. We discussed various systems of government introduced vocabulary relevant

to the topic. We read stories about different issues and made connections to the dif-

ferent systems of government. On returning from their hiking trip to Vrnjacka Banja,

we discussed what they had experienced and the students reflected on the different

kinds of learning they had engaged in while away from school. Our focus is now turning

to studying about language and we will inquire into how language works and how we

make meaning.

Visnja Plecas

EAL Teacher

In the previous weeks, students used a variety of materials to draw and have started to paint with wa-

tercolors. While working on their unit of inquiry How We Express Ourselves, the students focused on

the artistic concepts of line, balance and value.

In this unit, students will continue to learn about the difference between representational and non-

representational art and create artwork inspired by an artist of their choice. Children drew their self-

portraits and still life compositions while learning observational drawing and responding to Degas’ draw-

ings and Rembrandt’s drawings. Their next assignment is to pick an artist of their choice to learn about

his artistic style.

I am looking forward to seeing where their choices will lead them.

Art

Svetlana Spasic-Glid

Art Teacher

Grade 5A students have classes on Tuesdays.

Grade 5B students have classes on Mondays.

Music


Welcome to a new school year! I'm very pleased to be here and working at ISB. This month, the fifth graders have been reviewing their basic recorder skills and begun work-ing on the fifth grade Recorder Karate belts. Their repertoire focuses on folk songs from around the world. They have already learned "Sleep Baby Sleep" and are now working on "Fais Do Do." They have also learned the elements of an Orffestration and we are beginning to incorporate the Orff instruments (xylophones, metallophones,and glocken-spiels) with their recorder playing.

Rebecca Brink

Music Teacher

Grade Five has started the new school year by expanding their knowledge about nouns.

They learned that there are five types of nouns: common, proper, abstract, collective

and concrete nouns. Given that this is one of the challenging grammar units, students

were engaged in a few different activities so that they can better understand the use of

nouns. Grade Five also learned about Dositej Obradovic and why he is important for

Serbian culture. We talked about the Age of Enlightenment Dositej was the representa-

tive of, what were some of the changes he made as the first minister of education and

what was his way to teach Serbian people about proper morals in a time when most of

the population was illiterate. Students read the fables Dositej wrote himself or translat-

ed, discussed their morals and the language that was a lot different from the one we are

using today. We also discussed similarities and differences between the work of Vuk

Karadzic and Dositej Obradovic and came to the conclusion that although they were

both using the language of everyday people, they did so for very different reasons.

While Vuk was looking forward to preserving the language as it was, Dositej was more

focused on making himself understood.

Serbian Mother Tongue

Milena Jovanovic

Serbian Language

Teacher

Dear Parents,

We started the school year with a lot of excitement and joy as we were actively

involved in a number of different sporting activities.

The P.E. program in September has been challenging for our

4th and 5th graders. After an introduction to the course in the

first week of school we had a Physical Fitness Test. We have

measured student physical abilities (agility, abdominal strength,

flexibility, endurance and upper body strength) at the begin-

ning of school year and we will compare student’s results with

results at the end of school year. This will provide us with

information on student progress and development.

We also discussed how our body works and brainstormed the best ways to devel-

op and maintain our physical fitness.

Currently we are working on our soccer unit. Our focus is on improving our drib-

bling, passing and trapping skills. We are talking about the rules and regulations of

soccer and implementing those rules in a game. Our main focus of the unit is on

team work and cooperation.

After a soccer unit we will work on improv-

ing eye-hand coordination by using different

equipment such as soft balls, scoops and

Frisbees etc.

Physical Education

Ivana Grujicic

PE Teacher

French


Dear fifth grade parents,

Here is the first newsletter for the French class in order to keep you informed about

the things we have been learning since the beginning of this school year.

After revisiting some of the vocabulary and structures covered in grades 1, 2, 3 and 4

(introductions, greetings, colors, numbers, body parts, school material, professions,

descriptions, expressing preferences, singular/ plural, genders, alphabet, asking and an-

swering questions, etc), we started working on connecting with the homeroom “How

We Organize Ourselves” Unit. We started a project called “The Global Simulation”,

where the students create a whole new world, choosing a place that they have to de-

scribe, imagining new identities, making rules for that new community and interacting

throughout the whole project. In our case, it was decided that it would be an island

where our characters need to start a new community, build houses, organize them-

selves and living together. This is a technique which will help us develop all of the com-

petences necessary for quality communication (reading and listening comprehension,

speaking and writing), while learning the vocabulary and the structures needed to ac-

complish our tasks. This engagement is a way of keeping a high level of student crea-

tivity the whole time, since they are the authors of the whole story. For now, the stu-

dents have written their new ID cards and described the island. We are starting to

work on the climate vocabulary, as well as the plants and animals that can be encoun-

tered on that island.

Throughout all of these activities, the children are getting used to understanding in-

structions given in French and are regularly encouraged to use that language them-

selves and practice the structures we have been learning.

As you can see in the notebook, we are learning through drawings, listening, reading

and writing activities. I would also like to remind you that some explicit grammar will

be taught through a step by step method at this point. This is to enable the students

to correctly use some of the basic structures.

Thank you for your time and please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Dubravka Kostanjsek

French Teacher


Spanish

Currently we are in the process of preparing a new project which will provide

information about ourselves, our age, nationality, residence, preferences, as well as

about our families. We will focus on Spanish vocabulary acquisition, making

connections to our previous knowledge, practicing all language skills, explaining basic

grammatical rules, and creating multimedia presentations using Microsoft PowerPoint.

Snezana Dimitrijevic

Spanish Language Teacher

Grade five Spanish students started the year off by immersing themselves in a very

challenging “Nacionalidades” Unit in which they have been reviewing and learning the

names of various countries and nationalities from around the world. While we star-

ted the year off by working on their communicative skills, in the month of Septem-

ber we were practicing written expression. Students completed two presentations:

one poster presentation and one 3D presentation regarding nationalities.

Centro Espacial Kennedy, by Barack, Nick and Luka Mis países, by Mackenzie

isb lower school specialists’ newsletter september gr.5.pdf · music page 4 isb lower school...

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