From the Principal

Grade 3

February 2013

ISB Lower School Specialists’ Newsletter

Inside this issue:

French/Spanish 2

Art 3

Serbian/EAL 4

PE

5

EAL/SMT/Music 6

and holistic primary school education. The content of these subjects is transdiscipli-nary in nature, meaning that the skills and concepts developed by specialist teachers have relevance throughout the Lower School curriculum and our students’ lives be-yond 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 inter-esting, engaging, and connected to the classroom Units of Inquiry. 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 always, if you have any questions about your child’s education, feel free to contact us. Enjoy the Spring sea-son of learning! I look forward to seeing you all here on the Lower School campus during our Student-Led conferences, Brian H. Lettinga

Welcome to the fabulous fifth edition of our Special-ist Newsletters! Our specialists teachers (also referred as single-subject teachers) play an integral and important role in the Primary Years Pro-gram. The arts, physical education, and language study are essential ele-ments to a comprehensive

French

Page 2

Newsletter Title

Dubravka Kostanjsek

French Teacher

Milica Rkulovic

Spanish Language Teacher

Spanish

Dear third grade parents,

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

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

Since you have last heard from us, we started working on our unit about different

professions and places of work, as well as tools used in different jobs. We are sys-

tematically practicing describing various professions through activities that include

listening, reading, writing and speaking. We are about to introduce vocabulary and

structures (imperative mood, prepositions, action verbs) that we need for orientation

in place and will work on maps, understanding and giving directions and describing

an itinerary. It is also planned that we add vocabulary linked to transportation.

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

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

As we bring our Food unit to a close, we are currently learning how to describe what

we’re eating. We’re talking about what different foods taste like and practicing us-

ing appropriate vocabulary to describe the taste, color, and texture of food. Apart

from mastering unit related vocabulary and expressions that can typically be heard

in a restaurant, in this unit the students immensely enjoyed participating in a taste

test, which included sampling different food with their eyes closed, and they are

really looking forward to a baking lesson in the teacher’s workroom.

In our next unit we’ll be looking at different professions and practice describing the

responsibilities usually associated with different jobs.

Page 3

Art

Svetlana Spasic-

Glid

Art

During the past few weeks the students spent time learning how to work with clay, mak-

ing collages, and drawing. As a connection to the unit of inquiry entitled How the World

Works – Dynamic Earth, we started exploring the different ways we can use clay to cre-

ate art. We mainly focused on thinking about and incorporating layers in our pieces. The

students made sculptures by adding one layer of the material after another in order to

better learn how to connect pieces of clay. In this short period we also took some time

to make Valentine’s Day cards in collage technique and do observational drawing.

Grade 3A students have classes on Tuesdays. Grade 3B students have classes on Fridays.

Serbian as a Foreign Language

Page 4

Newsletter Title

Ivana Jovanovic

Serbian Language Teacher

During February Grade 3 students learned about the city. They reviewed the vocab-

ulary they’ve learned in the past and learned some new words. The focus of the

unit is to develop and practice speaking and to improve understanding. Students

covered instructional language through helping a tourist to get around the city.

They used a simple map and the tourist had various starting and ending points. This

activity offered numerous possibilities and answers. Students learned sequencing

words prvo/first, onda/then, pre/before and posle/after. These words were used in

directions that students followed to draw and organize a map. At this point, the

expectation is to understand the sequencing and not necessarily use it in speaking/

writing. Students became confident writing in Cyrillic and from the middle of Febru-

ary we use it for daily writing. I have to point out that the students did an excellent

work preparing a snake made of 100 Cyrillic letters. This project was their own idea

and they presented the snake at our 100th Day of school assembly. They even

named the snake –Vuk (wolf,) and they deserved a special praise as they thought of

this name in recognition of Vuk Karadžić, the reformer of the Serbian language,

thanks to whom we can read and write with ease.

EAL 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 sequencing words, and writing complete sentences, paying close attention to basic punctuation and capitalization. In addition, we learned how to describe various weather conditions, 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 information to write sentences in the past, present and future tense. Low Intermediate Group We began supporting the trans-disciplinary theme How the World Works - Dynamic Earth, and its central idea: “The world is full of amazing features whose forms are constantly changing.” We’ve started reading and analyzing a compilation of texts from the book “True Tales of Shifting Ground”, in order to help students under-stand specific vocabulary in context. We’ll continue developing comprehension skills, finding the main idea, providing synonyms and word definitions. In addition, working with a partner, students practiced researching skills using iPads as they prepared posters for their oral presentations. We used Two Stars and a Wish peer assessment strategy to celebrate their work.

Divna Stakic

EAL Teacher

Page 5

Newsletter Title

We have introduced the wonderful game of volleyball to our third graders over the last

couple of weeks.

During our Volleyball Unit we used oversized soft volleyballs to practice basic volleyball

techniques and movement patterns. Third graders worked on underhand and overhand

passes, as well as underhand serves. We practiced mostly in pairs, trying to correct each

other in order to make better passes, but we realized that a wall could also be of a great

help to us to improve our techniques.

Through different variations of modified games, students were introduced to the basic

rules of volleyball. We are learning how points are scored in the game, the positions

players take on the court, and how players change roles in the game. This will prepare

us better for upcoming, more serious volleyball matches.

Marija Dimitrov

PE Teacher

Physical Education

Music

Ljudmila Janicijevic

Music Teacher

Grade 3 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 focused on reading music scores. Using recorders, they read notes of different value and pitch. Using small percussion instruments, they read rhythmic patterns.

EAL

Visnja Plecas

EAL Teacher

Serbian Mother Tongue

Treći razred je započeo novu nastavnu jedinicu posvećenu poeziji za decu. Trenutno čitamo pesme Ljubivoja Ršumovića. Podsetili smo se i zapevali uz omiljene pesme “Išli smo u Af-riku”,” Lako je prutu da se sokoli”,” Deset ljutih guara” itd. Čitali smo i pesmu “Dete” i složili se sa pesnikom da “dete nije dete, igračka za strine i tete” već “dete je dete, da ga volite i razumete”. Trenutno čitamo pesme iz zbirke ”Još nam samo ale fale”, koje su sve do jedne posvećene alama, aždajama, akrepima i zmajevima. Podsetili smo se onoga što znamo o pesmama, a to je da imaju stihove i strofe i najčeće rimu. Nadogradili smo to time što smo naučili da pesme imaju ritam i kako se taj ritam postiže i da u sklopu pesme možemo da prepoznamo više pesničkih slika. Iz gramatike i pravopisa smo naučili najčešće skraćenice, podsetili se glagola i sadašnjeg, budućeg i prošlog vremena, zatim proučavali pravo i preneseno značenje reči. Takođe smo naučili šta su subjekat i predikat, kao i kako pravilno pisati rečce li i ne.

Milena Jovanovic

Serbian Language

Teacher

3rd Grade students and I continued to engage in all areas of accelerated language learn-ing. Oral language activities involved retelling events from the student’s life, retelling sto-ries we had read and playing games that reinforce particular language structures. Other language games we played reinforced spelling patterns and generalizations. The student continued to read stories from Twin Sets – a particularly well selected set of books that pairs up a fictional and non-fictional story on the same topic, giving the student a chance to learn and use topic related vocabulary in different areas – both in the world of reality and the world of make-believe. We continued with our structured writing activities.