ISY Elementary Blog

Elementary School Blog – August 23

Sandy Sheppard, Elementary School Principal

23 August 2019

Dear all,

This has been a wonderful first full week at ISY. The students have settled into their classrooms an are enjoying school life. In particular the new playground is proving to be very popular.

We look forward to seeing you all at the Back to School Night next week.

Sandy Sheppard

Announcements 

The turnstiles will be closed from the 3rd of September, this will require you and your child to have your passes to enter.

After School Activities

After School Activities start on Monday. They run until 3:45 pm. The students can be collected from the steps at the front of the school. Students not participating in an ASA should not be unsupervised on campus during this time.

After School Spanish Language Classes at ISY

It is important that we celebrate and support the languages of all of our students. One way that ISY can do this is by supporting our community’s nationality and language groups to set up their own mother tongue language instruction classes as part of our After-School Activity (ASA) program. If a minimum number of ISY students are participating in the classes, ISY will provide a classroom free of charge. The program itself, including the cost of the instructor, instructional materials, and program planning, would be the responsibility of the parents of the students involved.

This year, we are pleased to announce that Yangon Spanish School will be facilitating Spanish language classes at ISY as part of our ASA program.

Native Spanish speaking teachers will be offering classes for students of all ages (four years old and older) and all language backgrounds (from beginning Spanish learners to fluent native speakers). To meet the needs and interests of all students, students will be organized into small specialized groups according to their ages and Spanish language background.

If you are interested in this opportunity for your child(ren), please contact Oriol Mayol, the coordinator at Yangon Spanish School at info@yangonspanishschool.com.

Some of you may have registered your interest last year via a survey that was sent out to our community. We have passed this information onto Yangon Spanish School but we still encourage you to contact Oriol to share your child(ren)’s interests and needs in learning Spanish.

Back To School – Wednesday 28th August

The purpose of the event is for you to find out more information about teaching and learning at ISY. It is not a time for teachers to make comment on individual student progress.

This is also an adult only event.

5:30 – 6:00 – First session of classroom presentations

6:00 – 6:10 – movement/going over time allowance

6:10 – 6:40 – Second session of classroom presentations

You only need to attend one of the above sessions. Two identical sessions are provided for those of you who have more than 1 child at our school. Location of sessions will be shared by your classroom teachers.

Specialist teachers (PE, Art, World Languages, Cultural Studies) will be available in the Gym from 5:30 to 6:50 pm, we encourage you to visit them. The music teachers will be in the music classroom A304

Also in the Gym will be our technology team, they can support you with Seesaw logins and also chat with you about technology integration at ISY.

We hope to see you all there.

MAP

Next week, we will start MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) testing in the Elementary School. MAP assessments are online adaptive assessments that provide useful data in developing a fair and accurate assessment of a student’s academic achievement and growth.

To ensure a fair and accurate assessment of a student’s academic growth and achievement, teachers combine MAP assessment data with all other student data that they have collected in the classroom. This combination of data informs teacher instruction in meeting the needs of each child.

This testing session, the following grades will be assessed in the following subjects:

  • Grade 1: Reading and Mathematics
  • Grades 2 & 3: Reading, Mathematics, and Language Usage
  • Grades 4 & 5: Reading, Mathematics, Language Usage, and Science.

Teachers will prepare the students prior to the assessments so they are comfortable with the testing procedures.

As part of developing a fair and accurate assessment, MAP Student Reports will be shared with all other student data during Parent Teacher Conferences in November. If you would like to see your child’s MAP Student Report before Parent Teacher Conferences, please email your child’s name and class to Mr. Mike Simpson, our Director of Curriculum and Learning, at msimpson@isyedu.org. You are also very welcome to contact Mr. Simpson if you have any questions about MAP testing in general.

We enjoyed a fun welcome back assembly last Friday. The Chinthe made an appearance.

DATES TO REMEMBER

26th August – Session 1 of After School Activities begins

28th August – Back to School evening

28th August – PTA General Meeting (8:00-9:00 AM in the Cafeteria)

2nd September – No School

2nd September – ISY Nay Pyi Taw Open House

20th September – Half day of school (11:30 finish Prek/KG and 11:45 finish Grade 1-5)

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