Newsletter News from the Executive Director

ALBANIAN
INTERNATIONAL
SCHOOL
Newsletter
N O V E M B E R
News from the Executive Director
INSIDE THIS
ISSUE:
Greetings from AIS
Executive Director
News
1
Preschool,
Kindergarten, and
1st and 2nd Grade
2
3rd and 4th Grades 3
5th and 6th Grade
Albanian
2 0 1 4
4
Art, French, and
P.E.
5
Music
6
October was a magical month for us here at AIS, with
much time spent preparing for our Halloween Open
House Party. Thank you to Ms. Ida for her inspired
haunted house decorations, and to all of you for your
enthusiastic participation in the fun and frightful Friday night. The next big dates will be November 26,
when we will celebrate the 70th anniversary of Albania’s independence, and December 19,
when we will perform Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol as the featured performance at
our Winter Festival.
I am pleased to report that our preparations for international accreditation from the
Western Association of Schools and Colleges are coming along nicely. Thank you, Mr.
Hulse and Miss Tahiri, for your meticulous preparations for this important application.
The WASC accreditation will be quite a feather in our school’s cap, once we get it.
The first Parent Council meeting went well in October, and all are welcome to attend our
next meeting, November 11, at 6 p.m. The Parent Council will meet every second Tuesday of the month until further notice. At our next meeting, Mrs. Ellen Fyraj will discuss
organizing the Scholastic Book Club for our students. Our K-6 homeroom teachers have
each ordered five books for their classrooms. With this sample order we now know that
the process from order to delivery will take approximately 10 days, depending on the size
of the order. During the parent council meetings, any of your ideas and concerns that
have not been previously addressed may be discussed as well.
Parent participation is encouraged for the Winter Bake Sale December 7, proceeds will
benefit OSAAB, an orphanage in Tirana. We will need plenty of yummy baked goods to
sell. More information will be available soon.
We all enjoy having your wonderful children with us. Thank you for your support.
Sincerely,
Dr. Margaret Fitzpatrick
PAGE
2
Preschool
October was a fun month
for Preschool! The children
were involved in 3 mini
skits for their classmates.
The first week we acted out
"The Gingerbread Boy"
story, by singing a song and
then made a cookie boy.
The second week we acted
out "Goldilocks & the
Three Bears" with our
stuffy toys. The third week
we read two new books
"Come to the Circus!" and
Mrs. Meinel, Lori & Jonida
"Swimming with Dolphins". We became clowns,
jugglers and dancers during
our story time. We watched
a Sea World performance
on YouTube. The children
had a lot of fun.
We changed our rooms,
added a Writing Station
table, a Science Corner,
Number Express Train, My
Body, and the newest addition is the big blue Circle
Kindergarten
October was a great month
for us here at the AIS Kindergarten. My students have
been working hard on their
beginner reading skills.
We are focusing on letter
recognition, and letter sound
relationships. I am happy to
report that all of my kids are
making good progress. Kindergarten students will be
using a combination of
phonics using the
1st and 2nd
Halloween season has come and
past, and Spiderman has left the
building. The kids had a great
time in their Art and Music
classes doing all of the preparations for the show. I want to give
a big thanks to Ida and Veisla for
all their hard work.
November will have a new event
with Albanian Independence Day
and new projects for them to
focus on.
AIS
NEWSLETTER
Time Monthly Calendar set.
Every afternoon we are
having special English Conversation with the whole
day children. We have been
working together on harder
puzzles, doing special art
projects, painting, playing
games, singing songs, setting up a restaurant, making
chocolate chip cookies, and
playing with trains and
blocks.
Mrs. Fyraj, MBA
“Hooked on Phonics” program, and whole word recognition.
This last month was also an
emotional one. The students
lost a friend in Henry, when
he moved back to the
United States, but a new
student Erdem, will be joining us starting in November. My students and I are
really looking forward to
getting to know him.We all
had a wonderful experience
with Halloween! Ms.
Veisla and Ms. Ida should
be congratulated on their
work!
In coordination with the
Parent Council, in the coming weeks we will be sending out order forms to parents for Scholastic’s Book
Club. Keep an eye out for a
detailed letter explaining
our first order!
Mr. Scott, M.S.Ed
In my class we will be further
differentiating our language arts
to keep your students appropriately challenged. With the help
of Kelly, our substitute teacher,
I will be putting together a new
intense English Language Learning program for our beginner
level English speakers. We will
try to start implementing this as
part of our Language Arts Program in the near future.
Thank you all for your support
and attendance at our Halloween Festival. It was great to see
you all.
PAGE
3rd and 4th
The Grade Four Boys had an awful lot of
fun scaring one another with ghost stories as
we prepared for our big Halloween Open
House Party the night of October 31. They
also worked very hard learning their parts
for the Halloween presentation, and then
they had a wonderful time at the fun-filled
party. Thank you very much to Ms. Ida and
to all the other grownups who made this a
magical evening!
The Grade Four Boys continue to make astonishing progress in math, and they will
soon reach Lesson 40 out of a total of 120
lessons in the Saxon Math 4 textbook.
Please continue supervising their nightly
math homework, and quiz them on square
roots, how to add and subtract money, how
to figure out elapsed time, and how to write
numbers higher than one million in words or
numbers.
Nightly homework in English also continues
to be extremely important for the Grade
Four Boys. Please be sure your child is
reading a quality book in English for at least
half an hour each school night; and then
writing a half-page response to it. This,
combined with the math worksheets, is re-
3
Dr. Fitzpatrick
quired every single school night. This
regular practice reading and writing English will make a big difference in the progress your child makes in English.
We all know what a challenge it can be to
procure sufficient high quality English
reading materials in English, and I have
three suggestions to help you with that: 1.
Participate in the Scholastic Book Orders
we hope to send home sometime in November. 2. Try ordering from Amazon UK,
something that has been working well for
me and my family. 3. Try downloading and
reading books online using such apps as
the Kindle Cloud, which is free from Amazon. Some books can also be downloaded
for free, but many of the most desirable
ones come at a price. Some students will
do better with a device such as an Ipad or a
Kindle Paperwhite for this kind of
downloaded reading.
It is true that obtaining good books for
your child can quickly get expensive, but
to quote former Harvard University President Derek Bok, “If you think education is
expensive, try ignorance!” In other words,
the money we spend on our children’s
books and other educational supports is
not so much spent as invested in their
much brighter futures. If you are able to
provide a book-rich home for your
child, the benefits will be tangible and
lasting.
In other subject, the Grade Four Boys
have continued to learn about Roman
History, and are learning more about
how scientists collect data and conduct
research. Note-taking, a skill we emphasize in every core subject, is highlighted these days in our science lessons. They are also making great progress in their keyboarding skills, and
we plan to begin cursive handwriting
practice very soon.
We look forward to an action packed
Albanian National Day celebration at
our school Wednesday, November 26;
and we will soon begin rehearsing A
Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens,
as the centerpiece of our Winter Festival. Thank you, parents and guardians,
for sharing your wonderful students
with me each day!
PAGE
4
5th and 6th Grade
STUDENT OF THE MONTH: Neri
October has been another great month for
our class. We finished reading Charlie and
the Chocolate Factory and enjoyed watching
the original movie; comparing the two and
finding key differences. The students are
also busy working on their character analysis packet for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We are also finishing our discussion of figurative language used in the book and vocabulary.
Along the way, we worked on our reading strategies and our reading of context clues. We are now
reading a new book called Kensuke’s Kingdom.
In History/Geography we continued our studies
on world deserts. We are now on Patagonia and
after our unit test, we will be moving on to Mesoamerican Civilizations.
In Writing and Grammar we are working hard on
Mr. Hulse, M.S. Ed M.S.
writing complete sentences and learning how
to diagram our sentences, break them down
and each part of the sentence using our grammar vocabulary.
For Halloween, the students wrote their very
own scary story, following the guidelines and
structure for character, setting and plot creation and organization.
In Math,
we tackled order of operations, more
Caption
describing
exponents
and are now working on factors,
picture
or graphic.
prime and composite numbers and multiples.
In History/Geography we continued our studies on world deserts. We are now on Patagonia and after our unit test, we will be moving
on to Mesoamerican Civilizations.
In Science, we finished with animal classification and are now currently studying cells and
traits.
Albanian
5th Grade:
During this month the students have
obtained knowledge in the Albanian
language such are: using punctuations
in the right lecture, the usage of period
(.) ?!;, different phrase expressions,
synonymous and antonymous, dictionary knowledge, compound words usage,
derivative words, etc.
As part of the literature they have read:
“The Panic”, “Pipi Longstocking”, “A
Summer Day on the Farm”, “The
Way”, “Support No Mercy”, “The
Childhood Ladybug”, etc. They have
become familiar with foreign and Albanian authors like Goethe, Shpresa
AIS
NEWSLETTER
Ms. Shyti
Vreto. The most significant students are
Elisabeta and Natali.
6th Grade:
The topics learned in the Albanian language, group of words, the meaning of
words, forms of words, the structure of a
letter, the classification and formation of
adjectives, gender and the number of the
adjectives.
The literary parts: “Smoke in the Forests
of Oaks”, “Photography”, “The Will”, “It
is not easy to forget” Aziz Nesin, Sterjo
Spase, etc. Students in general have understood the information.
PAGE
Art
Ms. Metaj
There is no words to describe the
amazing work our students did.
You all saw it yourself and I hope
you enjoyed it like we did .
With the 1st and 2nd grade we
had the opportunity to make this
combination in the best way because we was studying about the
Ancient Egypt . This helped us a
lot with our “Mummy “ And a
coffin for our mummy .
This month was full of activities
and crafts. For all the grades we
combined our lessons with the
Halloween decorations.
5
3rd and 4th grades are still learning about the lights and the shadows and they are doing great
with their drawings and sketches.
French
We are continuing the good
work in French class. All the
students are finally adjusting
pretty well, and are now taking
the class seriously. Some formal and informal group and
individual meetings concerning behavior issues undermining academic learning before
the first midterm progress report did help to solve misunderstandings. After mastering
For 5th and 6th Grade I am
hopeful that they learn how
the Ancient Roman and Greeks
made they beautiful sculptures.
Since they were the creators of
our Ghosts and scarecrows and
other scary Halloween characters we did. Of course they
were made of plastic sheets
and hay but still it was fun .
Again a big huge thanks to all my
students ! They are doing a great
job and improving significantly !
amazing work for
the Halloween
Mr. Beaugard
the necessary correct alphabet pronunciation enhancing the readingcomprehension, we are intensifying basic grammar and syntax
components to be able soon to start
using simple sentences orally and
in writing, which will add a lot
more fun and practical use to our
activities, such as acting, writing
essays, and research projects including class presentations. The
Pre-K French Immersion doesn't
celebration!
include any spelling or writing.
Nevertheless, learning French will
later enhance later their vocabulary
for a better understanding of the
best English literature, and as we
do across the curriculum in this
school, this will open the World
even more to our students.
P.E.
All physical education programs in all elementary schools
has the goal of physical, social
and emotional development of
children.
This month I have been getting
familiar with the children and
discovering their skills in physical activities and other different
sports. We have been doing lot
Your children did
Ms. Hoxha
of activities, including walking,
running, jumping, etc.
Mostly with Preschool and Kindergarten we have been doing a lot
of games, in order to make them to
love and enjoy their P.E. classes. I
have been doing some running
competitions and different games
to all the students, in each grade.
For fifth and sixth grade, my
main objective for this month
was to teach them some exercises that make possible the
training of legs, and in particular muscle training.
Next month we have to work
some difficult exercises that
help the development of coordination skills.
Music
Ms. Mucaj
I will start with some words from the great scientist Albert Einstein “Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.” In music we combine both knowledge and practice and we use our imagination to merge them together in performance. By the end of October we usually celebrate Halloween. This
month music lessons were partially dedicated to Halloween songs and music. Important facts and history
matters were included with important elements of music that we discovered among them.
A big challenge was the rhythmical pattern of “This is Halloween” from the “Night before Christmas” movie.
Crochets, quavers and semiquaver with their respective rests where involved
with dynamics such as staccato and legato. Also discovering through the song
the different voice ranges and dividing them by their individuality was an interesting task that allowed the students not only to use their imagination of
how and where to combine them but also to develop their ability of working
together as a member of an own group. It’s amazing how they realized a
common task by working together.
Preschool and kindergarten and the 1st and 2nd grades showed the
ability to move responsibly with coordination to the music with the
songs and especially to “Skeleton Dance.”
Understanding relationships between music, the other arts, and disciplines
outside the arts was another task they did during the show this time, in reaction with Language Arts with their poems. And again citing Einstein, I
want you to show how important imagination is in a child or a person’s
education. “I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited.
Imagination encircles the world.”
Halloween 2014