Student-Led Conferences

Dear Parents of 6A,

Please refer to the information below from Mr Twigg regarding our Student-Led Conferences.

Student Led-Conferences

The Primary School student-led conferences are scheduled for Thursday 14th April 2016.  During these conferences, the students take the lead role to share their learning and progress with their families. The conference format may vary depending on the age of the children but, throughout the school, the students will have an opportunity to demonstrate their learning in all aspects of their school life in a variety of ways.

The online link for parents to book appointments will be activated this Thursday 17th March 2016, from 12.00, and will be published on the website under www.isl.ch/studentled.

There will be no babysitting service available during the student led-conferences. Also, please note that, unless otherwise instructed by an individual club leader, all ASA clubs are cancelled on that day.

Parents are greatly encouraged to visit all the learning environments in our school. There will be year level activities in all specialist classrooms: Music, French and PE, so ask your children to take you there. Students may only go to the Sports Hall when accompanied by their parents.

Note: This is a NO-SCHOOL day, students will attend the conferences with their parents and will then go home.

We look forward to seeing all our families participating in this very special day.

Appreciations & Admirations.....

In our 'Community of Learners' meeting today, we shared and discussed how we felt and what we discovered from our discussions we had with our parents this week.   

Here is a list of characteristics and life skills our parents hope we develop for when we are adults:

Some of us were surprised that our parents didn't mention being intelligent or grades in school. This is an interesting perception that children might have of their parents' expectations and they found it interesting to learn of other traits their parents hoped for them instead.  

We discussed what these mean traits mean and then brainstormed what we could do next with our findings.

In our next Community of Learners meeting, we felt we should:

° create visuals to display in our classroom to remind us what we should try to develop

° think of things we can do to help develop those traits and skills

Part of our Community of Learners meetings' agenda includes nominating a class member and sharing with them something they admire or appreciate about them. 

This regular part of our meeting is designed to help boost the self-esteem in us and in addition helping us to learn and receive compliments which even us as adults can sometimes struggle with.

We are beginning to record these and displaying them in our classroom to help remind us of the good attributes people admire us for. The other purpose of displaying these is to help us ensure we are giving appreciations to all members of our class over time so that some of us do not feel left out. 

International Day and Sharing our Actions at Assembly

                                   International Day


A HUGE thank you to all our parents who helped out today to make our International Day at ISL such a great experience.  The amount and selection of food was INCREDIBLE!

At our assembly today, some of us shared or promoted our actions we are taking to make our world a better place.

Neha was a confident and effective communicator explaining to the audience how we have been enquiring into an action cycle:

Layane, Jules, Nadia and Sophie-Marie used some great engaging techniques with the audience to share about Pet Paws and what they are doing to help stray cats:

They also requested assistance in their action by asking for donations of cardboard boxes and old towels for the cat shelters they are building for an animal shelter and to place in neighbourhoods around Lausanne.

If you have some old towels or large cardboard boxes at home, Pet Paws would really appreciate you having your child bring them to school for them:

Lewis confidently shared his action where he is building animal shelters out of timber.  He has already built two amazing designs and placed them in his garden to help local wildlife. He then shared how he is now building more shelters to sell to raise money to support NGOs that try to stop animal testing and other industries that keep animals cruelly locked up in cages. Lewis didn't even need to read from a script whilst sharing which is very impressive in front of such a large audience!

Please email me if you are interested in buying one of Lewis' animal shelters for your garden and I will pass your email on to Lewis.  He hasn't worked out the prices for the birdhouses / animal sanctuaries just yet, but they look amazing and if you are interested I can have Lewis email you.

Ryu, Salim, Andrea, Maxi, Diego and Carl promoted their football tournament they are organising next Tuesday, 8th March after school. They explained how they are charging CHF 2 each to participate to help buy footballs for villages in some African villages through the charity called Charityball:  http://charityball.org/

JPACK (Julia, Pavi, Ayana, Chiara and Kayla) then promoted their own NGO they are created.  They were inspired by reading the book I am Malala and are designing, creating and selling bookmarks with inspiring quotes for CHF 2 each. All the money they raise is being donated to the Malala Fund which supports girls in various countries where education for girls is not deemed important. Part of what the Malala Fund does is use donations to buy school supplies for girls so they can learn better at schools they attend.

  https://www.malala.org/

Your child was given an order form this week, so perhaps you would also like to purchase some bookmarks from them for yourself or family members etc.

If you would like an additional order form, please email me and I'll pass your email to JPACK to have one sent home for you with your child.

Everyone who presented today should be really proud of their communication skills and their passion and energy they are putting in to help make our world a better place!

Unit of Inquiry: How the World Works

We are just beginning our new Unit of Inquiry under the transdisciplinary theme: How the World Works

Our central idea we will be enquiring into is:

Scientific knowledge is always expanding and impacting our lives.

In our unit we will be exploring scientific theories, laws and discoveries-those with both positive and negative impacts on our lives.

We will be exploring how scientific evidence is accepted in the scientific community and instead of being given the tired 'scientific method' which many scientists today now perceive to harper great scientific discoveries from happening, we will creating our own methods of creating scientific methods. 

Our unit also explores the different branches of science and the hows and whys of scientific knowledge.

Towards the end of our unit, the children will take even more ownership of their learning by choosing a branch of science to enquire into that connects with our central idea.  For example, last year a group of children tweaked our central idea to enquire into:  'The study of astronomy is always expanding and impacting our lives'.