Archive - ES News

Interim Upper ES Principal | Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

🏫  Supporting our Community through Transitions

The news of the previous few weeks, both regionally and within our school community, has inevitably impacted families in a range of ways.

Thank you for appreciating that, for some, thoughts are being balanced between managing day to day responsibilities, while also planning for potential short or long term transitions.  If someone in your family is struggling with potential decisions or current challenges, please reach out to ES Leadership or our ES Counselors to schedule a time where we can listen and potentially provide needed support.

PreK to Grade 2 Counselor:
Sharon Ronan - sharon.ronan@aas.ru

PreK to Grade 2 Principal:
Julie Villers - julie.villers@aas.ru

Grade 3-5 Counselor:
Elizabeth Souba - elizabeth.souba@aas.ru

Grade 3-5 Principal:
Eric Burnett - eric.burnett@aas.ru
 

⭐️  Student Led Conferences

 Friday, April 1 

On Friday, April 1, 2022, students in the Elementary School will have conferences.

In early calendars, it was initially noted that Thursday would also be a conference day. Please note that we are able to complete all the conferences in one day, so we will have full learning tomorrow, March 31st.

This year again there will be two parts to the conference. The first part is a Student-Led Conference that each child will have with their families independently at home. Please plan with your family when this reserved time will be scheduled at your home, and where you’ll be conducting the conference. The second part is a Student, Parent and Teacher conversation that will take place through Webex, and is optional as some families might have conditions which make reserving a conference time difficult. Please protect this time for you to engage in conversations related to your child’s growth, and if you have any questions related to division or schoolwide topics, please share those with ES leadership or at the Friday Q&A Session. 

For those of you able and interested, please reserve your conversation appointment by tomorrow at 12:00 PM:

Y Client Appointment App

Video Instruction
 

📝  Update on ES Distance Learning and Planning for Next Year

This week you have received schoolwide messages regarding the course of learning for the rest of the year - PreK to Grade 2 will continue to offer on-campus learning for those in Moscow and Distance Learning for those outside of Moscow.

Distance Learning will continue for Grades 3-5. Our ES Student Council, classroom teachers, and division leadership are discussing different opportunities we can provide in the coming weeks so that students can have additional connection points with students across classrooms.

As families continue to share more information about their intentions for next year and we determine which faculty are able to return, we will continue determining, for next year, the number of sections for each grade level so that we can then build the schedule.  As was shared in earlier messages, our priority next year is to provide on-campus instruction by those instructors able to deliver learning in-person.  Although in rare instances it might be necessary to utilize a teacher’s services remotely, our plan is for classes to be taught in-person to help us fully utilize campus resources and allow for further opportunities for interpersonal relationships.
 

☕️  Friday Parent Q&A

 Friday, April 1, 11:30-12:00 MSK 

On Friday, ES Leadership will be hosting a 11:30-12:00 Question and Answer session regarding topics related to this year and planning for next year.

To protect your conference time with your child/teacher, please bring any division-wide questions to that meeting. In advance, please share any questions you have on this document.

Join the Meeting Here

Please do not hesitate to contact us at es.office@aas.ru if you have any questions.
 

Interim Upper ES Principal | Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

🖼  Check Out our AAS Webex Backgrounds

Thanks to our Community Relations team, we now have several backgrounds from across the AAS campus that can be used by students during their Webex meetings.

We have pre-uploaded some of these backgrounds on Webex. You can also download these backgrounds with your children and see which one they’d like to use in their Webex. It’s a great way to bring our campus into our DL world. 

Download Backgrounds Here
 

💻  Last Week’s ES Division Parent Q&A Session

Thanks again to all the parents that shared their queries through last week’s survey and who were also able to attend our Thursday parent meeting.

Primary topics discussed included Penguin Life opportunities, considerations around bringing students back on-campus, student-led conferences, asynchronous Distance Learning options, assessing student work, and discussing difficult topics.  During the Q&A session at the end of the meeting (starting at 41:30) we also discussed transferring to different schools, receiving credit for grade completion, availability with the library, next year’s staffing, MAP testing, and what school might look like next year. For these final three questions, we shared that we’ll know more in early April after the Board shares their decisions about how our school will be moving forward.

Watch the Video

See the Slideshow
 

🏫  Bringing Students located in Moscow Back on Campus

This week, some of our Moscow-based PreK and Kindergarten students came back on-campus for a modified learning experience.

In each grade level, the two on-campus classes were combined and taught by our on-campus teacher, while the two Distance Learning classes were combined to be taught by a Distance Learning teacher. Due to the small numbers of students (8 and 12), we were able to allocate resources from around the school to make this possible. While we recognize that this opportunity can only last as long as faculty and student numbers remain at their current levels and only if additional external limitations don’t emerge, we did want to have our youngest learners back on campus.  

In looking at expanding an on-campus opportunity for Moscow-based students in other grade levels, we have unfortunately determined we will not be able to bring Grades 3-5 on campus. The logistical realities prevent us from considering this further as an option.

However, we are still looking at the possibility of Grades 1 and/or 2 returning to on-campus learning. In the coming days, based on our confirmation of the logistical solutions, we will share with Moscow families whether or not Grades 1 and/or 2 learning will be available from campus. Because of the evolving uncertainty of the situation, we do not recommend families making permanent decisions based on the potential offering of this on-campus option. At this point, Distance Learning continues to be the learning pathway we have most confidence in being able to deliver for the foreseeable future.
 

⭐️  Student Led Conferences

 Friday, April 1 

On Friday, April 1, 2022, students in the Elementary School will have conferences.

This year there will be two parts to the conference. The first part is a Student-Led Conference that each child will have with their families independently at home. The second part is a Student, Parent and Teacher conversation that will take place through Webex, and is optional as some families might have conditions which make reserving a conference time difficult.

How do I make an appointment?
Appointment deadline is 12:00 on March 31st.

Y Client Appointment App

Video Instruction
 

Part One: Student Led Conference @ Home 

For the independent portion of conferences, families will need to set aside a dedicated time for their child to have their Student Led Conference. Through this important process of sharing successes and growth with an audience, students develop self-confidence, recognize the importance of reflection, and gain a better understanding of their learning.
 

What is a Student-Led Conference?

The student is in charge of the conference and shares work selected from his/her learning journey. Evidence of student work has been compiled to demonstrate each student’s growth. The students will share the skills and knowledge they have developed throughout the year. Evidence selected by students might include pieces that have been previously shared, as this conference is to show learning growth over time, which these pieces help to demonstrate.
 

Why Student-Led Conferences?

• Students are given the opportunity to take responsibility for their work, goals and their success throughout the year in developing their portfolio, which they share at the conference. 
• Students take ownership over the conference; this active involvement promotes student responsibility and accountability. 
• Students are able to reflect upon their learning when leading conferences.
• Conferences allow students to share their perspectives on their own learning and development with their parents.
• Conferences allow students to showcase their knowledge, skills, and understanding.
• Parents gain a better understanding of their child’s learning journey and experiences.
   

The Student’s Role

• To collect, select, organize and reflect on the items for their portfolio/conference and to share learning experiences.
• To lead the conference.
   

The Teacher’s Role

• To ensure students (and parents) are prepared for the conference.
   

The Parent’s Role

• To set aside time to have the conference with their child.
• To provide a quiet area in their home for the conference to take place.
• To ask supportive and inquiring questions. Examples of questions will be provided for the conference for you to use.
   

Part Two: Student, Parent and Teacher Conversation @ Webex: Optional

In looking at our current situation and potential need for families to have conversations on topics beyond classroom learning, we are repurposing how the 15-minute protected time period between families and teachers can be used.  Because of challenges due to location and a range of family commitments, we recognize that some families might be unable to schedule a conversation time.  Thus, we are making these conversations optional.

For those families able to schedule a conversation, you can schedule a Webex meeting with the relevant teacher (classroom, Single Subject, EAL/Learning Support). In these conversations, a range of topics could be covered, including 1) the student and family sharing highlights of their at-home conference, 2) the student sharing achievement towards reaching a goal, or 3) families sharing elements of their current situation and information that will be helpful to be successful moving forward.
 

How Do I Sign Up Online

• Conference times can be scheduled from 08:00 to 16:00 (some teachers in the USA might have different timing options) and are approximately 15 minutes in length
• Select each of your child’s teachers you would like to meet with and schedule a time. 
• Use the yClient App
  Y Client Appointment App
  Video Instruction

Please do not hesitate to contact us at es.office@aas.ru if you have any questions.
 

Interim Upper ES Principal | Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

🏫  ES Parent Meeting

 March 17, 11:00-12:00 MSK 

Families, originally we had planned to have our monthly Elementary School parent conversation next week, but due to the current situation, we want to be able to check in with you earlier.

We will be meeting tomorrow (March 17) from 11:00-12:00 Moscow time.

Click here to join the meeting

Here are some of the topics that have recently arisen that we will be addressing on Thursday:

1. expanding Penguin Life opportunities
2. current considerations around expanding on-campus learning to students in Moscow
3. role of Student Led Conferences
4. asynchronous learning opportunities
5. philosophy around assessing student work for progress reports
6. our philosophy around discussing difficult topics with children
    

For those unable to attend, we will be sharing a recording of the meeting through next week's newsletter. In addition, we'll be answering questions brought up by the ES community.

If you have any additional questions, could you please provide them below:

Questions for ES Discussion - Survey

🐧  Penguin Life Opportunities during DL period - from Ms. Plyuta

Penguin Life team is working to provide students in all three divisions with opportunities to engage in meaningful and structured experiences during after school hours.

We are looking to open AAS facilities for those students who are able to attend. For students outside of Moscow, we hope to offer online CEESA Activities. Parents are responsible for organizing their children’s transportation to and from campus. 

Information on the start of registration will be provided within the next couple of days.

Please continue to look at the AAS ES Penguin Life page for potential opportunities that could emerge in the nearer future.

Interim Upper ES Principal | Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

🏫  Evolving Distance Learning

After a couple days back at school, our teachers and students have been able to pick up where they left off and move forward with their engagement.

Our Enhanced Distance Learning schedule provides the opportunity for students to both have whole class learning experiences, but also have protected times for small group and individual instruction.  

For more information about our ES Distance Learning philosophy, please check out our DL Presentation.

See the presentation here
 

We are currently in the process of determining where our community will be residing for our time during Distance Learning. A majority of families have been able to share their locations via our DL Parent Location Survey, and we’re currently reaching out to those who have not yet completed it so that we can best determine how our learning pathway could evolve. Some of the areas we’ll be considering based on locations are: shifting the start/stop time for our DL Schedule; looking at to what extent we could provide Penguin Life activities; determining if we could safely and effectively support learning on-campus for any cohort of students; and considering possible cross-grade level optional learning and social opportunities.

In addition, after you’ve had a week to settle into this Distance Learning period, we will reach out for your feedback around potential additional considerations.

Once we have location numbers and community feedback, we will spend the remainder of the week working with our teams to determine any potential alteration or addition. We don’t anticipate any whole-division alterations going into place before March 21st.  However, please continue to look at the AAS ES Penguin Life page for potential opportunities that could emerge in the nearer future.
 

🐧  Penguin Life opportunities during DL

Penguin Life team is working to provide students in all three divisions with opportunities to engage in meaningful and structured experiences during after school hours.

We are looking to open AAS facilities for those students who are able to attend.

Parents are responsible for organizing their children’s transportation to and from campus. 

Information on the start of registration will be provided within the next couple of days.

💧  ES Learn2Swim program and Penguin Clubs

Students in Kindergarten through Grade 5 will be invited to participate in Learn2Swim sessions and a range of Penguin Clubs offered from 15:30 to 16:30 Monday through Thursday.

Students may be registered for up to four sessions during the week if they are able to attend.

However, please continue to look at the AAS ES Penguin Life page for potential opportunities that could emerge in the nearer future.  

⭐️  ES Parent Meeting

 Thursday, March 17, 11:00 MSK 

For March, we will be hosting our ES Parent Q&A session earlier than previously scheduled.

We will be meeting next Thursday, March 17th at 11:00 AM Moscow Time.

Join the Meeting Here
 

Interim Upper ES Principal | Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

⭐️  Meeting our Needs

We left for break extremely hopeful for possibilities.

Possibilities for students making new cross-classroom connections on playgrounds and in Penguin Clubs, possibilities that we’d turned the corner on Covid’s impact on our community, and possibilities for what we could accomplish with all of our faculty, staff and students on campus for an extended period of time.  We had planned for the varying ways we would proactively address students’ needs arising from new relationships and touch points, but also how we might be able to meet students’ academic needs by creatively utilizing cross-classroom support networks.  

But within a few days, how we defined “needs” changed dramatically.  For those of you not familiar with Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, imagine a pyramid of five levels, each with different needs a person needs to have met in order to flourish - physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem and self-actualization.

Maslow’s theory postulates that the more basic needs (like physical health and safety) must be met in order to move up to the highest level, self-actualization, where we aim for personal growth and peak achievement.  Due to the majority of our community’s social economic status, the base needs are usually met, allowing us to focus on satisfying the higher levels.

This all changed in the last week.  Everyone has been impacted in some way.  For some, they personally or people close to them have had to view health and safety through an entirely different lens.  For others, the change is merely internal, a conversation in their minds around the threat of what possibly could happen.  But even for these internal needs struggles, this adjustment can be extremely unsettling.  

On Monday, we asked our teachers to find out the needs of our students.  For some, they needed to have a chance to talk about their thoughts on the situation.  For some, they needed to laugh and talk to their classmates.  And for others, they just wanted a routine with some predictability, a way to take a break from the stuff in the adult world that they might not fully understand.  

In the coming weeks, for ourselves and for our children, we need to model how we are empathetic and respectful of the range of needs that exist and will arise.  Please understand that while some might be managing issues of esteem and feeling of belonging, others might be feeling scared and unsafe.  All are needs that need to be met, and the first step we all will NEED to take is to recognize where people are.  We might not always be able to meet people’s needs, but I encourage us all to understand and respect them.
 

🏫  What will Distance Learning look like?

Distance Learning at our Elementary School has evolved significantly since it was first utilized back in the spring of 2020.

From our own experiences, feedback from our community, and from the experiences of schools around the world, we have found the Enhanced Distance Learning schedule provides the most instructional benefits with the least amount of negative impact.  Five of the key philosophies that drive this schedule are:

1) students learn best with short, focused, live instruction
2) different grade levels have different developmental needs
3) asynchronous instruction has value, but for many learning experiences, live instruction is preferred
4) we want to protect students from extended screen time
5) protected time for individual and small group targeted instruction and personal check-ins have great value

In the coming weeks we’ll be determining where all of our educators and families are located and discussing to what extent we can evolve our offerings to potentially better meet the academic and social emotional needs of our community.  

We look forward to seeing every student live, 8:30 Moscow time, next Wednesday, March 9th in their classrooms.
 

💻  Thursday Parent Session

"What do our students need for their futures?"

On Thursday, February 17, our ES Leadership team met to discuss theories around what our students need for their futures (in their schooling, in their careers, and in their personal lives). We shared both what researchers and industry leaders project, but also how our school is adjusting its priorities to ensure the range of 21st Century Skills (also known as “soft skills”) are both explicitly taught and practiced. For those interested in learning more, please check out our Parent Meeting Video and Slideshow.

Watch the Video Here

See the Slides Here

Numerous resources are included in the slideshow for you to further pursue different perspectives around this topic.
 

Interim Upper ES Principal | Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

⭐️  Parent Session: "What do our students need for their futures?”

 Thursday, February 17, 10:00–11:00 

This Thursday, from 10:00 - 11:00, our ES Leadership Team will be hosting a conversation around "What do our students need for their futures?"

This topic surfaced from last spring's community survey as a high area of interest for our families.  After first looking at different theories and perspectives about what will be expected of adults in the future (in their schooling, in their careers, and in their personal lives), we will then look to how our school is addressing these needs.  We also will provide some research-based suggestions for what families can be doing to support these changing expectations.  Should we have time at the end of this conversation, we will open the meeting up to a general Q&A.

We look forward to seeing you Thursday on our Webex.
 

❄️  Winter Field Day

Much appreciation to Jenny Collins and Todd Wohlberg for their extensive planning and implementation of last Friday’s Winter Field Day.

Students tested out their “snowball” throwing accuracy, built snow forts and tunnels, ran around in a few games of snow tag and dodgeball and sledded down our monster hill.

Check out a video and the photos of the day below.

🐧  Expanding Connections for Students

Based on the recent regional laws which allowed us to alter our Close Contact policies, we’re now able to begin expanding some of our connection opportunities for students.

First, after February break, during recess time, we will begin having two classes play together on the playground, and, second, Penguin Life is currently building Spring season after school clubs that can combine classes across up to two grade levels.  We are very pleased that we are now able to move to a phase where students will have the opportunity to meet new friends in different classes, and also explore their interests even further beyond the school day.  Please keep an eye out for Penguin Life announcements around the upcoming after school possibilities.
 

💻  Preparing for Different Pathways - iPad Access

As shared in an earlier message through the Director’s Office, our school is currently planning to return to Modified On-Campus learning after the February break.

However, as has been shared throughout the year, there is always the possibility for us to need to switch to Distance Learning.  Please ensure your family has considered how your children could engage in DL, regardless of where they are located. In considering location and resources for any potential move to DL, please also be aware that the school’s iPads are not allowed to be taken out of Russia, as that would void our insurance policy.
 

🌐  WebAccess into the Classroom

Covid, Temporary Relocation, Illness, Travel

Our experiences with the Hybrid model confirm that the best method for learning is to be on-campus, where teachers and students can take full advantage of the available resources - the people, the materials and the environments.  To have students and educators engage with students outside of the classroom diminishes the effectiveness of the on-campus instruction.  In addition, should students be home ill, we want them to focus on rest and recovery.  Should families have outside commitments that bring them away from campus, we want them to be able to focus on those commitments.  

Here are the situations where students WILL have Web Access into the classroom:

• Covid-Positive, Covid Close Contact: Students can receive access for the duration of their AAS Health Office-determined quarantine period.
   
• Covid Testing Situations: Students who have flu-like systems and are required by the health office to be at home. They can have access on the first day of their illness and second day as they await Covid test results. This two-day period also applies to siblings of potential Covid situations. However, we would prefer students rest and take care of themselves if ill.
   
• Temporary Relocation due to Recent Geopolitical Situation: If a family is required by their company/embassy to leave Moscow, they will receive temporary Webex access to the classroom.  Families receiving this support need to recognize that 1) this support is temporary, and 2) equitable engagement of online students is not possible as we are asking teachers to prioritize utilizing the classroom resources to support on-campus students.

Except for the above three situations, we will not be opening up video access into the classroom, nor will we be providing individualized learning opportunities to students.  Should one of these at-home Covid-related learning situations occur, teachers will coordinate with at-home students about when lessons will start online, and which learning experiences can occur offscreen or asynchronously.  These schedules can change as we are asking teachers to utilize teachable moments to most effectively instruct on-campus students.

For more information on how we support students during their absences, please refer to the ES Handbook.
 

Interim Upper ES Principal | Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

⭐️  Meta-Analysis

Have you ever wondered how students learn? Or more specifically... have you ever wondered what choices we - families, schools, students - make that have the greatest impact on student learning? Both for better and for worse?

What if there was someone who had spent a career in pursuit of the answer to this very question? Well, there is. Since the 1990s, John Hattie has done just that. In these 2+ decades, he has compiled  more than 1,700 meta-analyses of other 100,000 studies around the world, analyzing the academic success of over 300 million students.

And here’s what he and his Visible Learning Research found.

Some interventions matter more than others. Some interventions that we think mean the most, actually have a negligible impact. In his recent 2018 analysis, he used these meta-analyses to determine the growth impact of 256 variables.

A score of  +0.40 equaled one year of growth. Anything above  +0.40 demonstrated a positive impact, anything below - a negative impact.  The further away from that  +0.40, the greater the impact. 

So test yourself.
Where do you think the following factors fall? What order would you put the following interventions from greatest impact to least impact?
Homework.  Boredom.  After school programs.  Feedback.  Individualized Instruction. Reducing class size.  Socioeconomic Status.

Did you guess?

Feedback =  +0.70

Socioeconomic Status =  +0.52

After school programs =  +0.40

Homework =  +0.29

Individualized Instruction =  +0.21

Reducing class size =  +0.21

Boredom =  –0.49
 

So those are just seven.  What about number one?  What has the greatest positive impact on student learning?

According to Hattie…

Collective Teacher Efficacy, far and away the leader, with a score of  +1.57.

Collective Teacher Efficacy is “the collective belief of teachers in their ability to positively affect students.”

Basically, when teachers work together in teams and when they collectively believe that they together can improve student learning and they together work to improve student learning… students learn. This position has been reinforced for years, and one of the reasons our school protects time in the school day for collaborative teacher planning; builds in Professional Development Wednesday mornings; and uses tools like Toddle to discuss, develop and share learning experiences across grade levels and subject areas. We believe that when teacher teams have the skills and the will to help students, students benefit the most. And the data bears that out.

And the greatest negative impact? More than television, corporal punishment at home, lack of sleep, and depression.

ADHD with a  –0.90 effect.

To look at the ranking of all 252 influences (as well as some definitions and examples), check out his effect size list at Visible Learning.

See the Ranking Here

Not all educators subscribe to Hattie’s research techniques, some say it is misused, others say it is just wrong.

What do you think?  Do his rankings match some of your own thoughts about impact?  Do you think he’s left some critical factors out?  And more than that, what are the factors that we can control?  In a world of infinite wants and finite resources, knowing that we can’t have it all, where should we put our time and efforts?  Where are we?
 

❄️  Winter Field Day

 Friday, February 11 

Our winter field will be this Friday, February 11th.

Students will be outside moving through a series of snow stations to fill them with winter frolicky fun.
 

🔬  PYP Exhibition

The Primary Years Programme Exhibition, also known as PYPX, is a culminating, collaborative experience in the final year of elementary school in which students explore, document and share their understanding of an issue of personal significance, under the umbrella of the UN Sustainable Goals.

Fifth graders at AAS will begin this process after the February break, and fifth grade parents will shortly be receiving details around a March 1 introductory meeting.
 

🎽  Penguinlympics

 Friday, February 11 
 Wednesday, February 16 

Upcoming Thematic Dress Up Days!

Every month, we aim to have a schoolwide Thematic Dress Up Day.  This month, we have TWO.  On these days, our students, faculty and staff come together to share a bit of their individual and/or common identity.  This allows for our students to laugh with each other, it provides a new topic to strike up a conversation, and it helps each of us connect with something bigger than ourselves.  Sometimes these dress day themes are decided by individual classes or by our Student Council, and at other times these themes coincide with a holiday.  

This Friday, February 11, in honor of the Olympics, we’ll be having Sports Day. Everyone in the ES is invited to dress up in their favorite sports outfit or wear their favorite sports accessory.

Next Wednesday, February 16, in keeping with our Olympics theme, we’ll be dressing up to support a nation. Dress up to honor our host nation, or a nation you once visited, or a nation where you were born, or any nation you want to celebrate!

These two weeks, the ES Office will be sponsoring daily competitions, and some classes around the school will be celebrating the achievements at the 2022 Beijing Olympics or maybe even hosting some classroom competitions of their own.  If you’re a family that enjoys the Olympics, we wish your favorite athlete or team all the best in their efforts!
 

🏫  ES Parent Forum - Discussion Topic - What do our students need for the future? 

 Thursday, February 17, 10:00 

Next Thursday, on February 17th, at 10:00 AM, our monthly divisional discussion topic will be “What do our students need for our future?”

This event will be in Mr. Burnett's Webex at https://aas.webex.com/meet/eric.burnett

Every other month this year, we’re exploring a single topic interest area shared with us through last year’s school wide survey.  Our first two topics were ES Goals and Implications for Staff AND What is the PYP Program?  This month we’ll be looking at what different experts and consultants believe are the key traits needed for this current generation of students.  We’ll be sharing what different potential futures will need, but also how the educational system (and AAS) is shifting to meet these needs.
 

💻  Supporting Students Away from Campus

With the recent surge in Covid cases do in large part to the Omicron variant, we recognize that many students were affected by positive case and close contact situations where they needed to continue their learning from home.

Moving forward, we want to reiterate our school’s policy around attendance.  

Except for situations related to Covid (positive case, close contact), we will not be opening up video access into the classroom, nor will we be providing individualized learning opportunities to students.  Should this at-home Covid-related learning situation occur, teachers will coordinate with at-home students about when lessons will start online, and which learning experiences can occur offscreen or asynchronously.

Our experiences with the Hybrid model confirm that the best method for learning is to be on-campus, where teachers and students can take full advantage of the available resources - the people, the materials and the environments.  To have students and educators engage with students outside of the classroom diminishes the effectiveness of the on-campus instruction.  In addition, should students be home ill, we want them to focus on rest and recovery.  Should families have outside commitments that bring them away from campus, we want them to be able to focus on those commitments.

For more information on how we support students during their absences, please refer to the ES Handbook.
 

Interim Upper ES Principal | Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

⭐️  A Day in the Life of Distance Learning

Have you ever wondered what a Day in the Life during Distance Learning (A D in the L during DL) looks like? What’s going on in all those “classrooms” when the learning pivots from being on campus to enter the homes of students all over the city?

A gift of Distance Learning is the ES Leadership can bounce pretty easily in and out of classrooms and get a glimpse of what learning looks like (although we definitely don’t get the same amount of steps we would get on an average campus day). Yesterday, over the course of an hour, here’s some of what we saw:

Ms. Bartels class was using the table and merge cell feature in GoogleDocs to show how different fractions can have the same value, and also how you can use these GoogleDocs’ visuals to add fractions with different denominators.

Ms. Craig was also working on fractions, and she was showing how students can use Jamboard and Toddle to share their work so she and Ms. Ershova could provide feedback.  They also tested their students’ fire and rabbit reaction skills to check understanding.

Ms. Depoy was also, also working on fractions, but she’d shifted her classroom into breakout rooms, where all the students were sharing strategies for creating common denominators before adding fractions.  Elizaveta shared verbally how to proceed through the algorithm, while Ms. Depoy offered the visual model approach.

Ms. Yashchyna was also, also, also working on fractions, but before her students reviewed the area method and number line method, she grounded their math excitement in a bucket of blocks challenge where students had to use their knowledge of multiples to make and test their theories.

Across the city in Ms. Schnell’s class, the math topic wasn’t fractions, but geometry and how to use math vocabulary to explain learning.  Konstantinos and Evelina shared the features of a circle.  Yujin offered that angles have two rays and a vertex, Mika reflected that parallel lines come close to each other but they never connect, and Daniel summed up the entire lesson when he stated, we have to “be more precise with our words because the meaning can be different.”

Ms. Waltho’s class was in the world of factors and the associative property, talking about families and distant relatives and how factors are all related to each other.  She also gave some troubleshooting advice to a student who thought he’d lost all of his work, but alas the File->Version History button can be the savior of accidentally deleted text.

Ms. Ashour’s students were closing their eyes and visualizing the introductory paragraphs of their students’ fantasy stories.  After Ben gathered a round of thumbs up and impressed smiles from his classmates after sharing his story of a tree that came alive in the wild, Liberty offered feedback on how she liked his strategy of rhyming language to gather the audience’s attention.  Dan then followed up with a story of a beast that emerges from a sandy wasteland to give foreboding clues about a virus that would infect the land.

In Ms. Collin’s PE class, students were recording in Book Creator their recently-wrapped up bodyweight workouts - bridges, squats, running in place, and jump roping (with an imaginary jump rope).

And over in Ms. Andreyeva’s Russian class, students were exploring the features of the octopus family, expanding their vocabulary and applying it to their own lives. Georg asked, “Why is the principal here?”  Why?  “To see you all learning and maybe improve my own vocabulary a bit along the way.”

And that was just an hour of bouncing. I also came across a student buried deep under a blanket, one exploring what his uvula looks like close up on camera, another showcasing her finest bunny ears headpiece, and a few who had to be reminded to turn their videos on. Not sure what I’ll see tomorrow, but can’t wait to see what our creative teachers and our curious students have to offer in this environment that just two years ago we would have never thought possible.
 

❄️  Winter Field Day

 February 11 

Our winter field day has been postponed from this Friday and we plan on rescheduling for our February 11.

Luckily, the winter snow has been quite generous this year and these extra days look like they’ll only increase the snow mounds.
 

🏛  ES Parent Forum

 February 17, 10:00 

Discussion Topic - What do our students need for the future?

On February 17th, at 10:00 AM, our monthly divisional discussion topic will be “What do our students need for our future?” Every other month this year, we’re exploring a single topic interest area shared with us through last year’s school wide survey.

Our first two topics were ES Goals and Implications for Staff and What is the PYP Program? This month we’ll be looking at what educational experts, behavioral scientists and college and career consultants believe are the key traits needed for this current generation of students.

We’ll be sharing what different potential futures will need, but also how the educational system (and AAS) is shifting to meet these needs.
 

Interim Upper ES Principal | Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

❤️  Respect and Care During DL

Assuming good intent, asking questions, DL, going to the source.

This is hard.

Last week, I asked to fill in for a teacher who was ill off-campus, and had a chance to teach a day of Distance Learning, and…

This is hard.

Hard for parents, hard for students, and hard for teachers.

As I prepped for the morning, setting up the overhead camera and the two screens, fixing the microphone, ensuring all the resources could be shared in a two-dimensional manner, and then pondering how I might engage students in the different lessons when the gift of physical presence, communal energy and classroom resources were taken away.

And then the students came on the screen. A handful were early and ready to go. One had tech issues and her dad had to help. For another, it was her first time on DL and she didn’t know where to go.  For another, his cat didn’t want to give up the spotlight and kept walking across the computer screen.

Once we had reviewed the DL expectations (I’d like to see your head on the screen, the chat feature isn’t a chance to showcase your emoji skills, the reaction button is for sharing what you need to learn), we were ready to go…

And then I saw how hard it is.

For parents, I saw how one mother had to dash back and forth between an upper elementary and lower elementary student.  One needed a ton of help, another, not so much.  But they both had to share the same room, so everytime the eldest started to speak, I could actually hear the early years teacher in the background.  Another parent was in the corner of the room, trying to complete their own work for the day, possibly even having to take a day off from the office to be home at the last minute to support their children.  

For students, they had to manage being away from each other - they could feel connected on screen, but they also probably felt a little bit alone.  They had their ideas to share, but sometimes their screen got bounced to the end of the queue and their hands wavered for too long.  But they were amazing.  These students had really learned how to learn when on DL.  They advocated for themselves when they couldn’t see the screen or needed to have a lesson re-explained.  They were patient when the technology didn’t want to cooperate (and their speakers screeched when I clicked the wrong button).  And they were independent with their resources, completing their math algorithms and then sharing their work; creating their own lemonade stand supply and demand charts, and reading their books independently and then sharing back to their class what they could infer from their characters’ behavior.  

In between my lessons that day, some students took advantage of the optional snack read-aloud, while others went outside to enjoy some fresh air.  For the optional fitness activity, some planked and jogged, while others found their own way to recharge.  

For teachers, I felt how they must constantly feel - that their hands are always tied. They’re so used to all the ways they could use their class and their experiences to provide enriching lessons, all the ways they could maneuver around the room and create groupings to expand skills, and all the ways they could make connections with students face to face so they knew they were valued and cared for.  Some of the skills they’ve mastered are still applicable.  Some no longer apply.  And now they’ve had to build and fill a new toolbox.  And they have.  But it’s hard.

This day was a tiring and rewarding reprieve from the range of challenges Covid has been hitting our community with these last few weeks.  At one point, we had 16 out of 22 classes affected by a covid-positive case.  We had families dropping off one sibling for on-campus learning, and then rushing home to support the other.  We had five teachers test Covid-positive.  We had four teachers managing supporting their own Covid-positive children in one room of the house, while teaching their class in another.  We had almost every teacher or IA taking PCR test, after PCR test, after PCR test, each time holding their breath that the results would come back negative (I just had my 12th negative test and am wishing my clinic offered frequent member discounts).  We have visa-delayed faculty members in North America still managing teaching till they fall asleep and then waking up early to support their daughter joining the local school.  We have parents at home seeing their students’ engagement sometimes fluctuate across the day, and not knowing when to step in to offer help and when to walk away. Every morning, we visit with our HR team to find out how many subs we’re short and then game plan who will cover what, what resources need to be gathered, and what communications need to be made.

And all the while the students still smile. They skip by the office every day, they test out their snow fort building skills during recess and they get right back to work when they enter the classroom (whether in person or online).

I checked in with some colleagues over the weekend at other international schools around the world and counted myself lucky that we’re not in a place where dueling government ministers alter mandates over the weekend with no rhyme or reason, where tests and mitigations aren’t available so Covid spreads uninterrupted, where Wifi and technology access is forever interrupted, and where 50% of the staff can’t even be in the country to even consider coming on campus.  At this same meeting, one leader shared it “feels like we’re banging our heads against a brick wall and wondering if someone will ever open up the door.”  In so many ways, we’re so lucky.

But this is hard.

And it might get harder.

But I’m confident that as long as we continue to RESPECT each other in all of our communications, trust in the INTEGRITY of everyone’s choices, and always take a moment to check-in to CARE for each other’s needs, we’ll be OK.

But it’s still gonna be hard.
 

⭐️  Last Week’s Parent Q&A Session

Thanks to all the parents able to attend our Q&A parent session last week, and to all the parents who shared questions we could discuss at the meeting.

For a recording and a recap of the major topics, please check out the ES Parent Q&A - Counter and Categories link below.

Watch the Recording Here
 

📊  Progress Reports this Week

This weekend, progress reports will be accessible through the Toddle app.

Families, please ensure you are connected to your student’s Toddle profile, so that you will have access to the report. If you are not able to view your student’s work on Toddle, please contact your teacher for next steps. On the weekend of January 28th, you will be alerted via the Toddle application when reports are live and accessible. Subsequently, please check to see if your Toddle “notification” feature has been turned on. For more information, check out last week’s Q&A recording for details and directions.
 

✅  Distance Learning Enhanced Schedule

As with any week, there is always the chance that your child might need to go to distance learning – either on their own or with their class or as an entire school.

If just an individual student or class goes to Distance Learning, we will continue with our current schedule so that our students (both on- and off-campus) can still take advantage of our single subject courses and facility resources.  However, if ever our entire division needed to move to Distance Learning, we would utilize our Enhanced Distance Learning schedule, which would “squish” the school day, providing shorter lesson engagement, and ending the day at different times based on the age of the students.

This enhanced schedule also frees up time in portions of the afternoon, for teachers to then connect directly with individual students or small groups to more individualized instructional needs.  Should we move to an Enhanced Distance Learning schedule, your teacher will share how your child is impacted, but until then, we will continue to follow our On-Campus schedule.
 

Interim Upper ES Principal | Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

💬  Communicating Through Feedback

In Ms. Loginova’s third grade class this week, teachers and students were learning how to better communicate by practicing how to give and receive feedback.

Many of us struggle to hear feedback - what’s going well, how we can improve, what we should consider for our next steps - feeling too often like this feedback is criticism not just of our behaviors or actions, but who we are as individuals.

At AAS, we work to help students and educators understand that we’re all on a learning journey.  None of us is born a writer or a reader or an athlete or a musician or even a communicator. We learn these skills. We sometimes take two steps forward and three steps back, but as long as we keep moving forward and learning from our mistakes, the modeling of others, and the suggestions of our “feedback buddies,” we can learn the skills we want or need.

Unfortunately, for so many of us, when we hear feedback, we shut down and stop listening, or we discount the giver as a non-expert (“What do you know?"), or we find reasons/excuses for why we won’t change.   

In Ms. Loginova’s class, they practiced not just how to share feedback with story stems like, “I hear you need help with____” or “You did a nice job when____” or “You may want to____” or “Could you please tell me more about,” but they also practiced how to show gratitude for the feedback and how to demonstrate active, inquisitive acceptance.

There are so many opportunities to give and receive feedback, and you too can practice these skills with your children by being explicit about how successful people react to suggestions.  And if these tricks and tools become more a part of your interactions, you’ll start to see that your children don’t just appreciate feedback, but they actually will see it as feedFORWARD.
 

🖊  Parent Q&A

 Thursday, January 19, 10:00 

Tomorrow, Thursday, January 19 at 10:00, the ES Leadership Team will be offering a Webex forum where we will discuss questions you have about our Elementary School Division.

After first sharing how we've responded to your questions and recommendations from our November meeting, we will then summarize how we are managing the current Covid situation, specifically contact tracing and supporting impacted students both on and off-campus.  We will also discuss the upcoming report cards and how the Toddle application will be utilized.

Could you please share on this Google Form any additional topics/questions you would like covered?

Join Webex Forum
 

❄️  Winter Field Day

 Friday, February 4 

Our ES PE Department - Jenny Collins and Todd Wohlberg - have been building a special winter treat for our students.

On Friday, February 4th, each ES classroom will be heading down to our snow-covered fields for some frosty festivities. They’ll be sledding and snow structure building and snowball target practicing and even hot cocoa-ing. We’ll share more with students in the coming weeks, but we’re all looking forward to taking advantage of our winter wonderland.
 

📝  Report Cards

Over the weekend of January 28th, we will be sharing our student report cards for the first semester.

This year, families will be receiving reports through our Toddle teaching and learning platform.  This platform allows us to directly connect performance indicators to the learning experiences from earlier units.  For the most part, the comments and marks will look quite similar to past reports, although for specific situations, teachers might attach evidence already on Toddle to support their assessment.

Reports will be accessible through the Toddle app. Families, please ensure you are connected to your student’s Toddle profile, so that you will have access to the report.  If you are not able to view your student’s work on Toddle, please contact your teacher for next steps.

On the weekend of January 28th, you will be alerted via the Toddle application when reports are live and accessible. Subsequently, please check to see if your Toddle “notification” feature has been turned on.
 

👕  School Uniforms

Building off of our fall newsletter postings, all of our students should now be in school uniform.

If for some reason you weren’t able to yet purchase a uniform, please use our Uniform Page to order a uniform and have it delivered to your student’s class.
 

Interim Upper ES Principal | Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

🛷  SLEDS That Weren’t Designed for the Snow

Earlier today, while students were waking up just a bit later than usual, teachers were hard at work building SLEDS.

No, not the type of sleds that allow us to enjoy the snowy hills of our Moscow, but the SLEDS that stand for Student-Led Essential Dispositions and Skills. These 8 SLEDS (Growth Mindset, Agency, Critical Thinking, Creative Thinking, Global Citizenry, Systems Thinking, Effective Communication and Empathy) empower our students with the mental, social, emotional, and behavioral capacities to put them in positions to not just succeed by traditional metrics, but to lead a balanced and healthy life.

So earlier today during our Teacher Professional Development, teachers worked in grade level and subject teams to explore when and how they would explicitly instruct these behaviors, but also, when and how they would collect the evidence.  

Is it best to assess growth mindset when students are reflecting on their percussion skills in music class?  Can students demonstrate their creative thinking when they build their prototypes for their wind-powered energy machines?  Or can we best gauge a child’s level of empathy in how they respond to their peers during morning meetings?  These conversations and many others were had this morning as teachers pulled apart their curriculum looking for natural fits, while also planning which classrooms and lessons they would visit to conduct learning lab-sites.  At these lab sites, teachers would learn from teachers, so that the successes and learnings of one class could be shared by all.

In the coming months, the language of SLEDS will increasingly become a part of your children’s lives.  So, if you’re not able to race your sleds down the hills of Kuzminki Park while the snow is still thigh high, maybe take a moment and notice one of the other SLEDS in the actions of you and your family.
 

📝  Report Cards

Over the weekend of January 28th, we will be sharing our student report cards for the first semester.

This year, families will be receiving reports through our Toddle teaching and learning platform. This platform allows us to directly connect performance indicators to the learning experiences from earlier units.  For the most part, the comments and marks will look quite similar to past reports, although for specific situations, teachers might attach evidence already on Toddle to support their assessment.

Reports will be accessible through the Toddle app. Families, please ensure you are connected to your student’s Toddle profile, so that you will have access to the report.  If you are not able to view your student’s work on Toddle, please contact your teacher for next steps.  On the weekend of January 28th, you will be alerted via the Toddle application when reports are live and accessible.  Subsequently, please check to see if your Toddle “notification” feature has been turned on.
 

💻  Off-Campus Digital Access to Classrooms

For the week of January 10-14, to facilitate families pursuing vaccines for their children, we have made video access available to classrooms.

Starting January 17th, we will shift to full on-campus learning, and video access will only be available to students who are Covid-positive or designated close contacts.

Please revisit our November 21st newsletter posting for more information on this policy.
 

⭐️  Being Prepared for Distance Learning

Unfortunately, we continue to manage the range of challenges created by the Covid pandemic.

We have been extremely fortunate to this point that on-campus learning in the ES has been minimally impacted by positive Covid cases.  However, to reiterate recommendations made earlier in the year, please always be prepared for your child’s classroom needing to move to Distance Learning.  Steps you can take include:

1. designating a learning environment in your home for instruction
2. bringing the iPad to and from school each day
3. recognizing which subjects will be taught synchronously vs. asynchronously

Ideally, we always want to be able to notify the community far in advance so they can make necessary adjustments, but we need to all be mindful of the reality that choices might not come at the most desirable time. For further information about how Covid and distance learning could affect our school, please revisit the director’s address from this week.  Also, if ever you’re having a problem with iPads or Digital Learning access, please contact distance.learning@aas.ru.
 

Interim Upper ES Principal | Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

⭐️  “What do you love about learning?”

At AAS, we “empower each student to…LOVE LEARNING!” And what does it look like to love learning? It depends on who you ask.

Earlier today, we asked students arriving to school, “What do you love about learning? What are you excited to do today?"  And their answers…

• Advay - 3KS
  “Learning different strategies in math.”
   
• Alice - PKPN
  “Going to the library to get new books.”
   
• Henry - 1HE
  “Playing the drums in music.”
   
• Francis - PKPN
  “Making gingerbread cookies.”
   
• Anna - 5DE
  “Having fun with my friends playing clarinet.”
   
• Nika - KBE
  “Open Inquiry!  Because I love it!”
   
• Xiyuan - 2GM
  “Being at school, because it’s better than online - it’s harder to learn.”
   
• Anastasiya - 5DE
  “Playing with and against my friends in badminton.”
   
• Elizaveta - 5BL
  “Learning long division in math.  It’s fun.”
   
• Ana Marija - 3LE
  “Finishing my ‘Kind Giant and the Bad Kidnapper” story in Writers Workshop”

So… next time you’re hugging your children goodbye in the morning or welcoming them home in the afternoon, consider posing to them, “What do you LOVE about learning?”

⛄️  Occupational Therapy

The Holiday Break is the ideal time to catch up with family and friends, relax into a world of calmness or take adventures to new places. It’s also a time for MOVEMENT!

Our Occupational Therapy specialists have created this vault of “Healthy Movement Winter Ideas” for you and your family. Check out the link for inspiration to build snow forts, bury snow treasures, having an indoor snowball fight, or much, much more.

Access the Vault Here
 

🎁  Community Gifts

During this season of giving and appreciation, community members have wondered how they can express their appreciation while still respecting our school’s away from gifts.

We invite families who want to express their gratitude towards a member of our school to consider making a card, a treat or a craft in lieu of a store-bought gift. These types of offerings are always appreciated and often become long-cherished memories for the giver and receiver for years to come.
 

🎄  Holiday Parties

 Friday, December 17 

On Friday, December 17, we will be having afternoon classroom holiday parties.

On December 17, we invite all students to dress in Winter Holiday Attire. After these parties, we will be sharing pictures and videos of the celebrations through our Flickr Albums.
 

Interim Upper ES Principal | Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

🐧  Curious Polar Penguins

Curiosity leaps out when the seasons change.

One of our core values, CURIOSITY, truly shined through the clouds this week once the skies started filling our school grounds with snow. A walk around the playground at recess is a laboratory for exploration as students grapple with laws of physics, chemistry, and biology, when all they think they’re doing is playing.

At the top of the dacha hill, three fourth graders experimented with gravity and friction.  

“Hey, I can slide down the hill with just my pants.”

“I can’t.  What’s wrong with my pants?”

From there, the students engaged in a conversation about the different features of their pants - the color, the fabric, the age, the cost, the coating - and they threw at theories for what might be the cause.

“Nah, it’s because I’m bigger than you.”

“Let’s see if I can slide down if I have a running start.”

They continued to go up and down the hill, trying different strategies until another student joined them with a sled that flew way past the finishing spots of the pants-sledding boys. Across the playground, students had a wholly different debate around the consistency of snow.

“Why won’t my snowman stay together?”

“It’s the wrong kind of snow.”

“What...there are different types of snow?”

From there the newbie to Moscow received a full lesson from her classmates on the different types of snow and the benefits and challenges of each. “Powder’s good for…” and “Wet snow you can…” and “You definitely don’t want light snow if…” The tropical school alumni nodded and got back to her snowman, but wasn’t so frustrated when it inevitably started to crumble again. Because now she knew why.

So, this week, when you’re out exploring our Russian winter wonderland, take a moment to stop and enjoy the newness of the nature, and throw out a few “whys” to your children. And get ready for the curiosity to start showering forth!

Until then, please check out some recent snow photos of some of our Grade 3 students exploring their curiosity through play.

☕️  PYP Coffee

 December 9 

Tomorrow (Thursday, December 9), we’ll be having our monthly parent coffee around the question, “What does it mean to be a PYP school?”

Throughout and after our presentation, we will open up the conversation to PYP-related questions. We look forward to seeing you next week, Thursday, December 9 at 13:00.

Join PYP Coffee Here

Our next division-wide Question and Answer session will be on January 20, and if you’re interested in some of the topics we’ll be covering, please revisit our newsletter post from last week.
 

🎁  Community Gifts

During this season of giving and appreciation, community members have wondered how they can express their appreciation while still respecting our school’s away from gifts.

We invite families who want to express their gratitude towards a member of our school to consider making a card, a treat or a craft in lieu of a store-bought gift. These types of offerings are always appreciated and often become long-cherished memories for the giver and receiver for years to come.
 

🎄  Holiday Parties

 Friday, December 17 

On Friday, December 17, we will be having classroom holiday parties.

In the coming weeks, classrooms will begin conversations around characteristics of their ideal holiday party. The results of these conversations will then be shared with classroom parents who will together coordinate what supplies and activities might be needed. On December 17, we invite all students to dress in Winter Holiday Attire. After these parties, we will be sharing pictures and videos of the celebrations through our Flickr Albums.
 

Interim Upper ES Principal | Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

⭐️  December 9 Parent Coffee PYP and Q&A January 20

 Thursday, December 9, 13:00 
 Thursday, January 20  

What does it mean to be a “PYP School”? What does it mean to offer the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Program?

Yes, most in our community have heard the acronym PYP used in conversation or in publications, but do we all know what it means? Do we know the history of how and why it was started, and do we know how its philosophy today impacts a host of decisions and interactions we have across our division

Last spring in our community division survey, one of the key interest areas expressed by families was a desire to learn more about the PYP program. Next week, on December 9th at 1:00 PM, in our monthly ES Leadership-Parent meeting, our central focus will be the understanding of the scope of PYP.

Led by our Division Curriculum Leader (Maureen Carpenter), we will share how the PYP impacts:

• differentiation (reacting to different student needs)
• home learning (“homework”)
• behavioral management
• unit and lesson planning
• assessment
• integration with science and social studies
• integration with our single subject courses (Art, PE, Music, World Language)
• utilization of curriculum standards (Common Core, NGSS, Next Generation Science Standards)
• vertical alignment with the high school IB Diploma Program (and why we don’t have MYP)

Throughout and after our presentation, we will open up the conversation to PYP-related questions. We look forward to seeing you next week, Thursday, December 9 at 1:00 PM.

Join PYP Parent Coffee Here

Our next division-wide Question and Answer session will be on January 20.
 

🎄  Holiday Parties

 Friday, December 17 

On Friday, December 17, we will be having classroom holiday parties.

In the coming weeks, classrooms will begin conversations around characteristics of their ideal holiday party. The results of these conversations will then be shared with classroom parents who will together coordinate what supplies and activities might be needed. On December 17, we invite all students to dress in Winter Holiday Attire. After these parties, we will be sharing pictures and videos of the celebrations through our Flickr Albums.
 

👔  School Uniforms

We would like all students in the Elementary School to wear their school uniforms after the December break.

If you haven’t had a chance yet to understand our uniform expectations or to purchase the uniforms from our Penguin Store, please check out our Uniform Page.

Visit the Uniform Page

Interim Upper ES Principal | Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

🎨  Penguin Artists

by Helen Arnold, ES Art teacher

In recent weeks, the ES Art Studios have been a hive of excitement and Self Directed Learning, as Third and Fourth Grade artists work on their W.O.W projects (Wonderful Original Work of Art). After much opportunity to explore various art forms and media, and their wide range of capabilities, our Penguin Artists have worked either individually or collaboratively to generate ideas and create art of specific interest to them. Ideas are generated from observation, memories, feelings or imagination.

The art forms of Drawing and Cardboard construction have received the most popular vote this semester. Through this, our artists have envisioned, organised their workspace, taken care of materials and tools, and practised responsibility for safely storing their work.

Throughout their process, our artists are encouraged to select resources to assist their learning, such as books, photos, objects or video tutorials.

Four to five consecutive lessons provide students the opportunity to maintain a flow of ideas, and practise engaging and persisting with a work, to a point of completion. ‘Stop and Share Time’ during each lesson, allows students to practise verbalising their creative process to an audience, inclusive of identifying challenges and strategies to improve. Students provide and act upon peer feedback throughout.

Lesson by lesson, our artistic learners are forming the habit of using their iPads to document their process, recognising the importance of each valuable step, and providing opportunities for reflection and evaluation in the moment. The absolute beauty is witnessing our artists arrive at the studio door, full of enthusiasm and new ideas they may have generated outside of their scheduled art time. Many are clearly beginning to think like artists.

When viewing your child’s artwork with him or her, please be sure to help guide the conversation with questions such as:

• How did you come up with your idea?
• What did you want your work to express?
• What was challenging about creating this?
• What was your favourite part of the process, when creating this?

🏫  Supporting Students Away from Campus

Now that we have moved away from our post-fall break one-way video access (allowing for families to pursue vaccination options), we wanted to ensure families understood our school’s policy around attendance.

Except for situations related to Covid (positive case, close contact, vaccination connected to breaks), we will not be opening up two-way video access into the classroom, nor will we be providing individualized learning opportunities to students. Should this at-home Covid-related learning situation occur, teachers will coordinate with at-home students about when lessons will start online, and which learning experiences can occur offscreen or asynchronously.  

Our experiences with the Hybrid model confirm that the best method for learning is to be on-campus, where teachers and students can take full advantage of the available resources - the people, the materials and the environments. To have students and educators engage with students outside of the classroom diminishes the effectiveness of the on-campus instruction. In addition, should students be home ill, we want them to focus on rest and recovery. Should families have outside commitments that bring them away from campus, we want them to be able to focus on those commitments. 

For more information on how we support students during their absences, please refer to the ES Handbook.
 

🐧  School Uniforms

We would like all students in the Elementary School to wear their school uniforms after the December break.

If you haven’t had a chance yet to understand our uniform expectations or to purchase the uniforms from our Penguin Store, please check out our Uniform Page.
 

💻  Toddle

As our students and educators more familiarize themselves with the capabilities of Toddle, they will increasingly be posting student work (including photos and reflections) online for family and peer viewing.

One way that you can engage in this work is by using the “Like” and "Comment" features.

Under the Journal post you can click on the heart (to like the post) and/or the note icon (adding a comment). Students who are tagged to this post are able to see your comments and it is one easy way to show your support and pride of your children's growth for them.
 

📸  Photos, Photos and More Photos

On December 17, we will be having holiday parties in the classrooms.

Our room parents and classroom students/teachers will be coordinating these celebratory events, and we’ll be sharing photos shortly after.

If you would like to browse through some pictures (and a special video) of our Halloween celebrations, please check out our holiday Flickr photo album.

See the album here

And to share in other experiences around AAS, please follow our AAS Moscow Flickr page.
 

☝️  Campus Tours for New Families

For those families new to AAS (joining in the 2020-2021 or 2021-2022 school years), we would like to provide you the opportunity to come on campus for a tour of our classrooms, common areas and learning spaces.

For more information about this opportunity and for steps on how to sign-up, please access Ms. Norris’s message from her Director’s Message.
 

⭐️  Three-Way Conferences

This Thursday and Friday will be non-instructional days as we will be engaged in digital three-way conferences, facilitated by each student.

In these conversations, students will share the progress they have made towards the goals they have thus far set for themselves, and will also discuss areas of achievement and areas for growth across their school day. Due to the time limitations of the conference and developmental level of the student, some topics introduced (and student work compiled) might not be discussed in their entirety during the conference, and could lead to further discussions at home between students and families.
 

Interim Upper ES Principal | Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

🦁  Rasheed Leads Learning in Grade 1!

If you walk through our Grade 1 hallway and classrooms, if you listen closely, you might hear a growl - not the growl of a kitty, not the growl of a lost meerkat, but the growl of the king of the jungle, the growl of RASHEED!!!  

For any AAS student going through Grade 1, Rasheed has become a celebrity.  He’s invited into classrooms to help introduce challenging topics. And what does Rasheed help us learn? Well, Rasheed is our resident “word builder” and he shares special messages from the Super Secret Detective Agency.

When asked about Rasheed, Shanaya from 1HM told us that “he’s a toy we use to learn” while her classmate Samar observed, “We sometimes write about him in our non-fiction books.” Reo led the class in another trick shared by Rasheed - clapping along to every syllable in a word.

Across the hallway in 1EH, the students shared another part of how they learn about words - they “look for snapwords everywhere!”  Zacharias talked about them being in our math problems and Max noted you can find them in a sentence. And when the students were asked what they do once they find out a new snap word, they all pointed to the back of the room to our Snap Word Wall.

One of the first places students start to use their “secret strategies” is on their own names. There’s so much you can learn from your name and the names of your friends.  In 1KJ, Aubrey taught how you can make a “digraph by putting two consonants together to make a new sound” like the “th” in Anthony’s name!  Samir and Miles talked about the breakouts in people’s names that “separate words into syllables.”

Wow, that’s a lot - digraphs and syllables and breakouts and snap words and consonants and so much, much more to come from our Super Secret Detective Agency. Lucky we have our friendly junglehood lion Rasheed to help us explore the wonderful world of words! Are you ready to go test some of your Rasheed skills? Can you clap along to this 36-letter long word - Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia? Good lion luck!

🐧  What is a Three-Way Conference?

• A Three-Way Conference is designed for students to share, show, and reflect on their learning journey. Possible discussion points may include reviewing/updating goals, portfolios, work habits, social development, work samples, assessments, etc. The student is the centerpiece of such a conference so his or her attendance is mandatory.
• Thursday and Friday, November 24th and 25th are non-instructional days. However, we ask that students join conference times with their parent(s) since they are the centerpiece of the conversations. 
• Out of courtesy and respect to other parents, please be on time and adhere to the schedule. These meetings are valuable, thus it is important that all parents attend. You will be in a virtual Webex waiting room until your conference begins.
• Students are required to wear their ES Formal School Uniforms or other similar attire.
• Please contact the ES Office if you have any questions - es.office@aas.ru
   

💙  Movember

Over the month of November, the Elementary School is joining with the HS and MS to raise awareness for cancer research and men’s health by participating in Movember.

Every Thursday in November, students are allowed to wear BLUE clothing instead of the regular uniform (and some of the members of our community might even be wearing or growing MUstaches).  This annual campaign means different things to different people.  So many members of our community have been directly affected by cancer, and this month we come together to both raise attention for the need to support continued research, but also to encourage families to be proactive in seeking out health screenings.

There will be times throughout the year where the different divisions coordinate efforts towards a particular cause.  For some of these coordinated efforts, families will wonder what is developmentally appropriate to share with their children - what’s an appropriate conversation topic for a high school student might not be appropriate for one of our early years students.

A good rule of thumb for discussing difficult topics is to answer the questions the children ask, and then offer the next level of details only if their curiosity continues.  For Movember, many families of early years children discuss the month in terms of “it encourages scientists to keep doing research so that people don’t get sick” or “it reminds people that it’s important to see the doctor regularly.”  This is often where the conversation ends.  Yet, other children might ask how cancer, or other illnesses have affected their families.  Your willingness to engage in these conversations should they arise will help our community better understand this awareness month, so that our Thursday Mustache and Blue Clothing day can have a greater impact.
 

Interim Upper ES Principal | Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

⭐️  Fossils Found in the ES Playground!

Just before our fall break, our second grade students were out digging delicately in our ES sandboxes when they came across a wealth of unexpected objects buried beneath the surface. 

As they carefully used their excavation tools to ensure they didn’t damage what laid beneath, they started making predictions about

1. what was this object
2. how did it get here
3. how long had it been here
4. what does this object say about us and the world around us?

While in the sand box, Jasmin from 2GM wondered, “I hope we can find a real dinosaur!" 

This sand box excavation was the provocation that launched our second graders into their Sharing the Planet Unit of Inquiry.

Across our Elementary School, our students engage in six Units of Inquiry:

• Who we are
• Where we are in place and time
• How we express ourselves
• How the world works
• How we organize ourselves
• Sharing the planet

These units are created to guide our students in developing their transdisciplinary thinking.  Instead of learning in independent silos that touch on social studies or science or reading or writing or art (or any number of other subjects), our students engage in an inquiry cycle where they learn about their past, present and future world by tuning in, finding out, sorting out, going further, reflecting and then acting.

When they were excavating fossils, they were “tuning in” to the world that came before, to those animals and plants who shared our planet long before we ever arrived.  Once their interest was peaked they could return to their classmates and classrooms to dig further into finding out, sorting out and going further. Instead of teachers telling students the meaning of their world, this excavation challenged each student to make their own meaning through predictions, research and reflections.

In 2AB, Esther learned “about dinosaurs’ habitat and where they live and how they survive there,” while Katya shared “it was exciting because none of us knew what was inside and we learned so much about dinosaurs.”

Jiwon from 2SH was energized that “during UofI time we became fossil hunters!”

Although it was the second graders this time around who went excavating, you too can excite the inner archaeologist in any of your children, by burying trinkets and then testing out the tools that will help uncover these treasures.  And from there, watch how their inner curiosity begins to uncover so much more about this world we share with others.
 

📝  MAP Testing Information G2-5

Over the next two weeks, Kirsten Welbes will be offering 3 parent sessions, with the reports going home to parents after parent conferences on the 26th of November.

We hope to see you at one of the Parent Information Sessions on MAP, which are held on her webex: https://aas.webex.com/meet/kirsten.welbes. These Parent Information Sessions cover MAP testing from a parent, teacher and school point of view. 

• Tuesday, November 16 from 6:00-7:00pm
• Thursday, November 18 from 9:00-10:00am
• Monday, November 22 from 9:00-10:00am

Learn More Here

🏫  Update on ES Principal Search

We are currently in the final stages of our ES Principal Search for the 2022-2023 school year.

This week, our four final candidates will be meeting with each of our community’s major stakeholders (students, parents, faculty, staff, and leaders). For parents, on each day (Tuesday - Thursday) there will be a 45-minute forum where one candidate will introduce himself/herself, will answer a few questions introduced by the community and will then open up to a Question and Answer session with parents present. Here is the schedule for the week:

Tuesday - 2:00-2:45

Wednesday - 4:30 to 5:15

Thursday - 4:30 to 5:15

Friday - 4:30 to 5:15

Join Here

These forums will be held via Webex. If you are unable to attend the live sessions above, please take time to view recordings of the forums that will be shared later in the week.

We will also later in the week be sharing a parent survey where you can share your thoughts on each candidate and the potential best fit for the direction of our elementary school.
 

⭐️  Three-Way Conference No School

 November 25, 26 

As you look to the coming month, please note that our Three-Way Conferences (parent-student-teacher) will be on November 25-26 (Thursday-Friday).

These are not instructional/school days. Much like our Goal-Setting conferences, students will have an opportunity to reflect on their growth so far and teachers will be sharing progress. Those meetings will be virtual through Webex.

We will be sharing the sign-up link with families on Monday.
 

Interim Upper ES Principal | Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

⭐️  Action in the Classroom

One of the primary components of the PYP program is called ACTION - the ability for our students to reflect on their world, make choices based on those reflections, and then... ACT.  

Recently, our PreK students in Ms. Popiyakova’s class engaged in action after a walk in the forest.  After seeing trash on the ground, they started wondering about how it affects the forest, and, more specifically, they wondered about how the animals felt having trash on the ground. From there came the key action question, “What should we do now that we know about the effect of...?"

They decided that what they should do was make a trash can. Zoey shared the next step, saying, “We got cardboard and glue and made a big box with tape.” They then talked about where they should put the trash can to best help the forest and the animals. The group’s decision - “under a tree.” After placing the trash can under the tree, they then made predictions on what they thought would happen next. When asked what they thought about their action, Huntley responded, “It’s good for the environment so the forest doesn’t die” and Jackson stated, “It’s so nice so the animals don’t eat trash.”

A huge thank you to the students in PKPN, and hopefully they’ve inspired some of us to look at the world around us and where we might want to take action.
 

🎃  Halloween Celebrations

We had a day of sharing fun and silly costumes and an afternoon of festivities to celebrate Halloween.

In the coming days, our community relations team will be sharing photographs on our school Facebook page and also on our website. Enjoy the images!
 

☝️  Parent Meeting Follow Up

Thank you to all those who attended last week’s Elementary School Question and Answer session.

Numerous questions emerged, including some around after school activities, the two-day conference schedule, expanding opportunities for families to see/experience the school, and considerations around hiring and staffing.

Please look at our Parent Q&A Session reflection document for:

• the video recording;
• a counter reference for each topic;
• clarifications, further information and next steps for each topic discussed.

Read the document here
 

💻  Move to Modified Distance Learning Schedule

 October 28, 29 

As shared last week after the recent Mayor’s decree, on Thursday and Friday of this week (October 28 and 29), we will be moving to our Enhanced Distance Learning schedule.  

From the spring of 2020, our approach to Distance Learning has evolved significantly due to feedback and information shared by our community (students, parents and teachers), as well as what has proven successful at other international schools.

To best incorporate our priorities of

1) maximizing student engagement,
2) reducing screen time,
3) providing for additional individualized and small group instruction,
4) mirroring the schedule routines in all pathways, and
5) adjusting time for age appropriateness,

the schedule looks different than our Modified Full on-campus schedule.

This schedule has been, and will be, our default schedule whenever our entire division moves to Distance Learning.

For detailed information around our Enhanced Distance Learning schedule, please look at our ES Distance Learning Introduction and Primary Components. Included are visuals and audio explanations to help your understanding.

Your homeroom teacher will be sharing specific details of this schedule with you and your child.

Please also check out our Distance Learning Support page for more information on logging in to different applications, utilizing Webex, and how to problem solve should tech challenges arise. Both before and during DL, please send all your technology queries to distance.learning@aas.ru.

Although many of our families already have experience with how to support their children through Distance Learning, we strongly recommend you review the parameters of this learning pathway and potentially even practice beforehand what it might look like.
 

🐧  Three-Way Conference No School

 November 25 - 26 

As you look to the coming month, please note that our Three-Way Conferences (parent-student-teacher) will be on November 25-26 (Thursday-Friday).

These are not instructional/school days. Much like our Goal-Setting Conferences, students will have an opportunity to reflect on their growth so far and teachers will be sharing progress. Those meetings will be virtual through Webex. We will be sharing the sign-up link with families soon.

Interim Upper ES Principal | Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

🔔  Curiosity - Parent Opportunity - Q&A Session

 October 21, 9:30 

One of the opportunities our parent community and ES Leadership have to demonstrate curiosity (one of our school’s five Core Values) is in our monthly meetings. In these meetings, our community comes together to show curiosity - curiosity to hear fresh perspectives, curiosity to empathize with the experiences of others, and curiosity to seek responses to questions we’ve pondered in our heads or with our peers.

On Thursday, October 21st at 9:30 AM, we will be meeting on WebEx where you will be able to pose ES-related questions to our ES Division Curriculum Leader (Maureen Carpenter) and the two division principals (Julie Villers and Eric Burnett). The format for this conversation is such that after a short greeting, we will ask the attendees to pose any questions they would like answered or topics they would like discussed. We will first respond to those questions/topics that impact a larger group of families, then we will respond to more individualized questions later in the session, allowing attendees to determine if they'd prefer to remain or leave.

Please take a moment to submit the topics/questions you’d like discussed tomorrow.

Submit your topics/questions here

We look forward to seeing you Thursday.

Join Here
 

🐧  Expansion of Extracurricular Activities

Over the last few weeks, our Penguin Life office researched multiple possibilities for ways to expand our afterschool offerings through Penguin Clubs.

We value at the highest level students’ ability to follow their interests, learn new skills, and make new friends... and Penguin Clubs are often where these possibilities are possible. We are extremely grateful that our Penguin Life swimming program for Grades 4 and 5 has been a success, and we have much appreciation for the Swimming Instructors who have managed highly engaging lessons while keeping classes from cross-class interaction.

Because of the success of this program, we will be offering swimming to Grades K and 1 for our next session. We are still finalizing other possible options, with the goal that every grade level will have extracurricular options by the end of the year.

For information on Winter Season dates and registration instructions please click here.

As we consider additional options, we look at a few criteria:

1. potential student interest
2. faculty/staff sponsorship and instruction
3. ability to maintain our Covid mitigations

As for the last criteria, unfortunately, over the last six weeks, the rising cases of Covid in Moscow (an average increase of 25-30+% each week) have created an environment where we’re not comfortable removing any mitigations currently in place. Related, whenever we think of opening new opportunities to Penguin Clubs that involve mixing grades, it creates a greater number of close contacts. With the 14-day self-isolation Russian Law mandate for close contacts, we want to prevent additional students from being away from on-campus learning.

We recognize this reality is frustrating for children in our community, and we appreciate your patience as we continue to navigate through a world with rare easy answers. Our Covid Response Team meets regularly, and as community, local and international news/policies/research arises, we will continue to revisit what’s possible.
 

🎃  Halloween Celebrations

 Friday, October 29 

On Friday, October 29th, students can come to school in Halloween dress - either wearing black- and orange-colored clothing or wearing a costume.

In helping your children plan what to wear, please avoid violent themes (pretend “prop” weapons such as guns, knives or swords are not appropriate for school).

On that Friday, until the afternoon, students will engage in their daily learning schedules. In the afternoon, there will be Halloween parties involving festive snacks and activities, held inside their homeroom classrooms.
 

😷  Covid Close Contacts Process Of Identification And At-Home Learning

In the event that a student in our Elementary School tests positive for Covid, once the school is contacted, we begin contact tracing, where we look at the different points of contact of the Covid-positive student.

Because our ES students remain with their classmates for the majority of the day, these primary contact points are:

1. homeroom teacher
2. bus
3. World Language
4. Student Support Services

Once we have determined who would have come in contact with the Covid-positive student, we then alert, via email, all families affected by this close contact status and let them know they will need to remain at home for the mandated 14-day quarantine.  Because of the time in which we are contacted, this email could be sent during off-school hours.

During this time on quarantine, students have two-way access to the classroom, enabling teachers to engage students in the instruction. Should this at-home learning situation occur, teachers will coordinate with at-home students about when lessons will start online, and which learning experiences can occur offscreen or asynchronously. Although we hope this at-home situation never comes to fruition, please consider the steps your family needs to take to prepare for this possibility (including designating a specific area in your home for learning).
 

🔍  Principal Search

Over the last two months, we have been engaged in our ES Principal search.

We were very fortunate to have numerous quality candidates express interest from around the world, and currently we are narrowing down our search to a group of candidates who will eventually meet with different stakeholders in our community. In the coming weeks, please watch for information on how to share your interest in joining the parent stakeholder group.
 

💻  Three-Way Conference No School

 November 25 - 26 

As you look to the coming month, please note that our Three-Way Conferences (parent-student-teacher) will be on November 25-26 (Thursday-Friday).

These are not instructional/school days. Much like our Goal-Setting conferences, students will have an opportunity to reflect on their growth so far and teachers will be sharing progress. Those meetings will be virtual through Webex.
 

Interim Upper ES Principal | Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

⭐️  Academic and Holistic Success

Research on how we learn has changed a bit since we once ran through the hallways.

Once upon a time, a few months after the days of yore (basically up until the 2000s), the expected school education often revolved around the readings of chapters in a textbook, the memorization of algorithms and content, and the demonstration of knowledge on an exam. Based on where we grew up, these exams could have been regular unit tests, or they could have been high stakes end of the year exams that determined our placement and many of our futures.

Those school systems still exist in the world, and are still available to children. However, over the past few decades, the changing global marketplace, expanded brain research, and the changing needs of our younger generation has influenced some schools to reconsider not just how they teach, but what they teach. What they teach, what they assess, and what they report on.  

At the Anglo-American School of Moscow, our mission explicitly defines our direction - to empower “each student...to achieve individual academic and holistic excellence.”  Academic excellence AND holistic excellence.  We want our students to develop the mental, social, emotional, and behavioral capacities to put them in positions to not just succeed by traditional metrics, but to lead a balanced and healthy life.

In the coming Professional Development workshops, our teachers will continue their work on embedding the SLEDS (Student-Led Essential Dispositions and Skills) into the curriculum.

Although many of the SLEDS (Growth Mindset, Agency, Critical Thinking, Creative Thinking, Global Citizenry, Systems Thinking, Effective Communication and Empathy) are already woven throughout out students’ daily lives, we’re working to ensure they are even more explicitly taught, reflected upon and assessed, so that students can more consistently recognize areas of growth and areas for development. In the near future, you’ll begin to see their prevalence emerge in your students’ work and in the feedback provided to our students and their families.
 

🎙  Parent Q&A Session

 Thursday, October 21 

Next Thursday, October 21st, we will be having our next meeting with our Elementary School parents.

Unlike last month’s parent session which was a discussion about our Spring 2021 survey results and our division’s next steps, this upcoming session will be an open Question and Answer session. To ensure we’re able to best communicate with the most families, please let us know which time (morning, afternoon, evening) works best for you, and also please share the questions you would like discussed.

Time Preference and Questions

Looking forward to seeing you next week!
 

🎃  Halloween Party and Dress-Up Day

 Friday, October 29 

Every month, we aim to have a schoolwide Thematic Dress Up Day.

On these days, our students, faculty and staff come together to share a bit of their individual and/or common identity. This allows for our students to laugh with each other, it provides a new topic to strike up a conversation, and it helps each of us connect with something bigger than ourselves. Sometimes these dress day themes are decided by individual classes or by our Student Council, and at other times these themes coincide with a holiday.

On Friday, October 29th, students can come to school in Halloween dress - these can be either costumes or students can come dressed in orange or black. In helping your children plan what to wear, please avoid violent themes (pretend “prop” weapons such as guns, knives or swords are not appropriate for school). Friday afternoon will be Halloween parties involving festive food and activities.
 

💻  One-way Video After Fall Break

For students accessing the one-way video feed for the week following our Fall Break, please be mindful of the limitations of this learning pathway.

Because our priority this year is to best take full advantage of the on-campus resources to support on-campus learning, a few realites could pose challenges for students needing to access the one-way video feed.

First, our Single Subject Classes (Music, Art and PE) are not able to provide one-way access due to the materials and environment they utilize (but will instead offer online asynchronous opportunities).

Second, although the classroom schedule will be prioritized, school realities or teachable moments could arise which cause the teacher to adjust the instruction in the room to most thoughtfully move forward.

Third, due to the challenges of technology and the emphasis on supporting students in the classroom, at times at-home students could feel disconnected, and the responsibility will be on students to maintain engagement and pull learning from the classroom and the provided online resources.

Should this situation apply to your children, please have preliminary conversations with them so they have realistic expectations.
 

Interim Upper ES Principal | Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

🐧  Courage in the Minority Voice

Over the last few weeks, many 5th graders have been looking into forms of government, some even designing from scratch their own nation, one with its own unique government.

With their partners, students discuss the pros and cons of a range of leadership styles, from anarchies to democracies to dictatorships to everything in between.  One of the groups sat outside in the hallways arguing the merits of democracy, when one of the students asked, “But what happens if the majority is wrong?”  An important question for the adults of tomorrow.  

I stood by and listened to the conversation unfold, and eventually the discussion shifted to how hard it must be to speak up for yourself when it feels like everyone around you is against you.  It is hard.  It’s hard because it takes courage - courage to recognize an ethical line, courage to see multiple perspectives, and courage to speak out even when you might be ostracized by your peers.  

For children and adolescents, they’re embarking on a bumpy road of choices, where they will so often be faced with determining their own path, even when it might not conform with the journeys of others.  Please help your children recognize situations in their/your lives where what the vocal majority is doing might not actually be the right thing to do.  Situations where being courageous was needed.

We don’t know if our children will ever actually have the chance in “the real world” to design their own nation from scratch, but we can guarantee that every day they’ll be designing from scratch the people they want to be.  Let’s teach them to be courageous.
 

🔔  No School

 October 7, 8, 11 

There will be no school October 7, 8 and 11.

On October 7th and 8th, the school will be engaged in a series of Professional Development workshops, where both internal and external educators will offer sessions to improve how our faculty, and in consequence students, can further develop the skills that will transfer far beyond the classroom.  One area of focus will be around the Student-Led Essential Dispositions and Skills (SLEDS)  and the ways students will learn and practice them throughout their time at school.  These SLEDS are the “soft skills” that are desired across industries and throughout our daily interactions.  Some of these essential dispositions include being empathetic, demonstrating creativity, communicating effectively and maintaining a growth mindset.  As your children move through their AAS education, keep a look out for how these SLEDS become more a part of your child’s goals and self-reflection.
 

🎗  Pinktober

Over the month of October, the Elementary School is joining with the HS and MS to raise awareness for Breast Cancer research by participating in Pinktober.

Every Wednesday in October, students are allowed to wear  PINK  clothing instead of the regular uniform. This annual campaign means different things to different people.  So many members of our community have been directly affected by cancer, and this month we come together to both raise attention for the need to support continued research, but also to encourage families to be proactive in seeking out health screenings.  

There will be times throughout the year where the different divisions coordinate efforts towards a particular cause.  For some of these coordinated efforts, families will wonder what is developmentally appropriate to share with their children.  A good rule of thumb for discussing difficult topics is to answer the questions the children ask, and then offer the next level of details only if their curiosity continues.  For Pinktober, many families of early years children discuss the month in terms of “it encourages scientists to keep doing research so that people don’t get sick” or “it reminds people that it’s important to see the doctor regularly.”  This is often where the conversation ends.  Yet, other children might ask how cancer, or other illnesses have affected their families.  Your willingness to engage in these conversations should they arise will help our community better understand this awareness month, so that our Wednesday Pink Clothing day can have a greater impact.
 

🗓  Where can I find the School’s Curriculum?

One of the topics that arose at last week’s Elementary School Parent Coffee was around where families can find out more about the school’s curriculum.

The best place to go is our school’s website. Through our series of linked resources, you’ll be able to learn about our school’s philosophy at the different grade levels, our assessment practices, and the standards upon which our curriculum is based.

Please check out our Elementary School page and our Curriculum page for more information.

Visit Elementary School Page

Visit Curriculum Page
 

☕️  Parent Coffee

Much appreciation to those of you who, last Tuesday, were able to attend our first ES Parent Coffee.  If you were unable to attend, you can watch the linked video.

Watch the Recording

Here are some key topics discussed:

6:20
Spring Parent Survey Results and Next Steps

11:20
Areas for Growth: Communication, Russian Experiences, Learner Profile

16:48
Areas for Growth: World Language, Math Science, Gifted and Talented Program

25:00
Areas for Growth: Teacher Feedback, Extracurricular Activities

31:45
Elementary School Goals for the Year

38:58
Question #1 - Where do I find the curriculum?

40:30
Question #2 - When will it be determined if After School Activity offerings can be expanded?

48:00
Question #3 - What happens to outdoor activities when the weather gets cold?
 

To help us best respond to your queries at our next divisional leadership-parent meeting on October 21st, please respond with your time preference and questions on our Google Form.

Interim Upper ES Principal | Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

Care for our Community

Over the last 20 years, our school has been fortunate to foster a relationship with the Taganka Children’s Fund.

Founded over 30 years ago, this Moscow organization has played an enduring caring role in supporting their community. This charitable organization “works not only on the territory of Tagansky District, but supports more than 700 disadvantaged Moscow families, including single-parent families, large families and families with disabled children or parents.

The Fund has grown into a professional organization, which provides various specialized services to:

• families undergoing financial and psychological problems
• children and young people affected by disability
• teenagers and young people

For more information about the Taganka Children’s Fund, please visit their website.

Visit Taganka Website

Our relationship with Taganka has likewise evolved over the years, with us supporting holiday food and necessity drives, and facilitating cultural visits and exchanges.  This last year, many of our faculty and staff chose to donate to Taganka their individual gift from the PTO (a total in excess of 120,000 rubles). These funds were used to support the purchase of acoustic equipment, the repair of their electronic network, the rental of a classroom, and the payment of salaries for an art teacher and teenage leader. We want to thank both our AAS families and our faculty and staff for their generosity and care.

The last couple years, our ability to directly interact with the Taganka community has been impacted due to Covid realities, but we are hopeful in the coming year to discuss possibilities for reconnecting more personally.
 

Methods of Communication

We wanted to reach out to you to ensure you were aware of the different methods in which we'll be communicating with you this year.

Here are some of the methods:

• ES Newsletter
  Our primary method of communication. Shared every Wednesday evening and archived on this website. Provides information on our division's philosophy (e.g., "homework," art integration, conferences), upcoming events (e.g., photo days, parent forums) and how our school community is embedding the school's mission, vision and core values.
   
• Parent Forums
  In these monthly online discussions, we'll offer more detailed explorations of topics parents have identified as priorities and/or provide answers to your questions.
   
• Divisional Email
  We will use whole school email rarely, usually to assist families in signing up for key events. If/when you have any questions or considerations, please reach out to es.office@aas.ru and we will either respond directly or put you in contact with the person best able to respond.
   
• Parent Phone Queries
  Throughout the year, we'll be reaching out to families to see how their child(ren) are doing and to answer questions/listen to feedback. To ensure we get a cross-section of perspectives, we'll be randomly choosing households to contact.

In addition to the above channels utilized by the Elementary School office, you'll also continue to connect with your child's learning and growth through classroom email and our Toddle platform.  Also, in the coming weeks, we'll be sharing a communication schedule where you'll see opportunities to connect with other leaders across the school.
 

Who do I contact if…?

To best ensure your queries are answered in a timely and accurate manner, please ensure your messages are sent to the appropriate recipient.

Classroom teachers are best able to respond to your child’s learning in the classroom and upcoming classroom learning experiences. Please ensure you protect your child’s learning time with their teacher, by directing your queries to the following:

• ES School Policies and Procedures
  Lower (PreK-2) - ES Principal Julie Villers | julie.villers@aas.ru
  Upper (3-5) - ES Principal Eric Burnett | eric.burnett@aas.ru
   
• Upcoming Schoolwide Events
  ES Office | esoffice@aas.ru
   
• After School Activities
  Penguin Life - Elena Plyuta | plife@aas.ru
   
• ES Curriculum and Learning
  Division Curriculum Leader - Maureen Carpenter | maureen.carpenter@aas.ru
   
• Cafeteria
  mos.cafeteria@aas.ru
   
• Health Office
  health.office@aas.ru
   

ES School Photo Days

 October 1 - 13 

From October 1-13, Elementary School students will be having their photo days.

Your child’s specific day for the school photograph is on the schedule below. The attire for school photographs is formal school uniform. All the requested formal uniform orders for ES have been delivered. 

For those of you who did not have a chance to purchase a formal uniform last week, the school can provide a tie, but you will still need to have a white formal shirt for your child to wear for the photo day.

See the Photo Days Schedule

Student Health and Participation in Learning (e.g., Swimming)

One of the benefits of our current Covid mitigations (e.g., staying at home when showing symptoms of illness, wearing a mask while indoors), is that other germs, bacteria and viruses are less likely to spread within our community.

However, there is always the chance that one of our students will fall ill and need to take time away from school. When students return from school, we understand that they are healthy enough to participate in all activities.  

In a related topic around health and participation, our school is extremely fortunate to offer swimming instruction as a regular part of our students’ required learning. As referenced in our ES Parent Handbook, “there is insufficient scientific evidence to suggest that wet hair will make you sick. Germs, bacteria and viruses cause sickness. Please note: AAS has placed powerful hair dryers in the locker rooms and the children are encouraged to use them after swimming class. Students do not go immediately outside after being in the pool.”

Please look further at our ES Family Handbook (Section 3.9 - page 11) for further details around our school’s policies around this topic, and how we would support extenuating circumstances.
 

What role does movement play at AAS?

Vera Koroleva and Veronica Ponomaryova-Stepnaya (Occupational Therapy Assistants)

Our current digital lives have us in front of screens more than ever and students today move far less than they did twenty, and even ten years ago.  It’s important to recognize that when students don’t have their physical, movement needs met, that void can sometimes impact their academic performance and interactions with their peers.  

At AAS, we’re extremely fortunate to offer Occupational Therapy services to students who have designated needs, but our Occupational Therapy team also provides teacher workshops and supports environments where all students can benefit.  

Recently, on the school playground, we commissioned the painting of an Obstacle Course, in which students can walk, hop, spin, twirl, dance, and wiggle. This different type of playing empowers students to strengthen their gross motor skills, while developing their stamina and challenging themselves and their peers. Throughout the days, we see students trying all or part of the painted Obstacle Course.  Back in the classroom, this type of active movement leads to heightened levels of focus so students can pay better attention to their learning in class.

You too can play a role with your children in modeling how to lead a healthy life. Look for ways around the house, or in the car, or out in the city parks to inspire movement. Maybe try a game of Simon Says, or Twister, or shake and shimmy along to a Cosmic Kids Dance Party video, or maybe co-design your own obstacle course in your home or at a neighborhood playground (you’ll find tons of obstacle course inspiration on Youtube). Whatever you try, just have fun - moving, moving, moving!
 

Interim Upper ES Principal | Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

🌐  Grade Level Common Planning Time Discussions

Throughout the week, our grade level and subject teams meet regularly to review their curriculum, plan learning experiences and discuss how to individualize instruction for students. It is in these meetings where our educators make the choices that “empower each student to...Love Learning and Contribute as a Globally Minded Citizen.”

In a recent Grade 4 unit unpacking meeting, the team of teachers, Instructional Assistants, Student Support Services teachers and our Art teacher gathered to discuss their upcoming unit “How We Express Ourselves.”  In this unit, students will learn about media - why it is created, its messages, and how it can be manipulated for a purpose.  Facilitated by our division Curriculum Leader (Maureen Carpenter), these meetings enable all team members to reflect on last year’s iteration, especially how students reacted to the learning, and look at ways to enhance the experiences.  Our teachers led the discussions by analyzing what we truly wanted our students to walk away understanding - what understandings would be most transferable to experiences throughout their lives.  

For this unit, this key concept was that we are responsible for knowing how and what information to believe, and that we need to make sure that what we communicate out into the world is truthful.  Instructional assistants added to the conversation by offering suggestions of what types of media could be introduced, what digital citizenship expectations would need to be considered, and how we needed to be especially mindful of how media is impacting students’ self-perception.  The conversations culminated with our art teacher (Helen Arnold) sharing how she could integrate these concepts through the 4th grade art experience, providing the environment for students to learn and then create their own media interpretations.  This year, having the students double their art contact time for one semester sets the stage for solid integration, as well as creative, polished student-created pieces.

We look forward to seeing the fruits of their insights and imaginations.
 

🎯  Goal Setting Conferences

 September 23 & 24 

This Thursday and Friday will be our student Goal Setting Conferences.

By this point, almost all conferences have been scheduled, and if by chance your family has not arranged for a time with your teacher(s), please access the sign-up emails sent over the last week, or reach out to the ES office if you have additional queries.

These days are not instructional days, so there will be no school for ES students, and all conferences will be held online via your child’s teacher’s Webex account.

Your children are looking forward to sharing their overarching goals for the quarter, and what steps they will be taking to achieve this goal. Hopefully, your family walks away knowing how to provide support for attaining this goal, both at school and at home.

Although our conversations are being conducted virtually, via Webex, we do want all of our students to wear their formal attire. Should your child not not yet have the school formal uniform, please coordinate with them on an outfit that best represents the formality of the occasion.
 

☕️ Parent Coffees and Q&A

 Tuesday, September 28, 17:00 

This year the Elementary School Leadership will be offering a series of virtual coffees and conversations, where parents can learn more about our school, and also offer queries and considerations for our ES Leadership Team.

Based on our community survey results, the topics of highest interest are: 

1. What is the Primary Years Program?
2. What do our students need for the future?
3. What does action and service look like in the classroom and beyond?

We will also be scheduling some Questions and Answer sessions, so that on a monthly basis you’ll have a scheduled time to engage with our ES school leadership.

Next Tuesday, September 28, we’ll be having our first Parent Coffee, from 17:00 to 18:00, and we’ll be discussing our spring community survey results, and also our goals and next steps for the elementary school.  Following this presentation, we will be offering a chance for parents to ask questions related to this presentation, or questions specific to other areas of interest.

We look forward to seeing you on Tuesday at 17:00.

Join Here
 

📸  School Photo Days

 October 1 - 5 

From October 1-5, Elementary School students will be having their photo days.

Your child’s specific day for the school photograph is on this schedule. The attire for school photographs is formal school uniform. If you do not yet have the formal school uniform, we will be coordinating the purchase and delivery of the Formal Shirt and Tie.  

If interested in purchasing the shirt and tie, please complete and submit the Uniform Google Form sign up sheet linked below by Monday, September 27th.

Sign Up for Uniform Here

The purchased shirt and tie will then be delivered directly to the students’ classrooms, with payment being processed in November.
 

📈  MAP Testing

 September 27 - October 1 

Next week, September 27-October 1, Elementary Students will be taking their fall MAP testing for Math, Language Usage and Reading.

Tests will be administered by teachers, and should a student miss an exam due to health reasons, we have make-up days built into the schedule. MAP tests are one of multiple data points we use to support students. Students can best prepare for the assessments by having a good night’s sleep and a healthy breakfast.

Interim Upper ES Principal | Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

💙  Respect in the Classroom

Respect is one of our Core Values consistently emphasized throughout the day - respect for how we communicate with each other, respect for how we behave, respect for spaces and materials, and respect for each other’s specific learning needs.

In the first few days of school, when classrooms established their Essential Agreements, respect popped up time and again when students brainstormed what was important to them in their classrooms.

The establishment of Essential Agreements is a key starting point for conversations, but the true growth comes once we start interacting with each other. Teachers (and often students) are on the lookout for teachable/learnable moments where the agreements could be applied. We encourage our teachers to protect and prioritize time to nurture classroom environments built on all of our Core Values - especially Respect, and these conversations can also come after a disagreement at recess, a conflict over personal space at the lockers, or a miscommunication about what each person needs when they’re working.  

Earlier this week, in an Upper Elementary classroom, students were taking a Brain Break, and a couple hesitant students stood to the side and started to roll their eyes. Others started noticing the eye-rolling and became more inhibited about their own participation. Instead of continuing, the teacher stopped the class, and some students shared what they were feeling and how they might have felt respected or disrespected. After this needed exchange, after students could better “feel” respect, the class restarted the Brain Break, and every student was able to stretch their comfort zones and recharge for the next lesson.
 

🎯  Goal Setting Conference

This week, you will receive registration information for next week’s conferences.

Please note that you need to sign up for a conference time for each of your children in the Elementary School and that, if your child receives Student Support Services, you will only need to sign up for one time slot with the SSS teacher, as both teachers will be attending.

A structural change will have these meetings look different to families, compared to prior Goal Setting Conference experience at AAS. To best ensure every student walks away truly aware and confident about their next steps as a learner, each student will be choosing one overarching holistic goal that can apply to all learning environments. In the days leading up to next week’s conferences, teachers will work with students to narrow down which PYP Learner Profile attribute (Knowledgeable, Thinkers, Communicators, Principled, Open-Minded, Caring, Risk-Takers, Balanced, Reflective) best matches where they want to focus their efforts this quarter. During and after the conferences, please be willing to support attainment of that goal, both at school and at home. In some instances, there will be other focus areas for growth that are discussed.
 

💻  Last week of One Way Interaction

To best enable our teachers to prioritize supporting our on-campus students, this Friday, September 17th, will be the final day of one-way video access into the classroom.
 

⚽️  Profile on PE

by Jenny Collins, Department Leader

In Elementary PE, we focus on exploring and developing the skills needed to enjoy a variety of physical activities that promote long-life wellbeing.  At the moment, our 2nd through 5th graders are developing their foot-eye coordination skills (foot dribbling, passing, and kicking). This is done through a diverse collection of games and activities that allow students to improve their skills at their level.

Most students enjoy participating in a game called 3 Kick Kickball that not only allows them to work on their foot-eye skills, but also teamwork abilities and strategies. During the unit's provocation, one student remarked that he hadn’t realized that there are so many different sports and activities that use kicking skills, not just soccer (football), and he was excited to learn more about them.  At the end of this unit, each student will have a chance to create a video reflection on their progress during this unit.

Don’t forget to check it out on Toddle in a few weeks!

Interim Upper ES Principal | Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

⭐️  Core Values

Integrity and Beyond

Although this year we are focusing on the Core Value of Integrity, we will continue to discuss and model our other Core Values to help our students develop and practice their inter- and intra-personal skills. When we all actively turn on the lenses of Respect - Integrity - Courage - Curiosity - Care, we start to notice that our students have the opportunities to demonstrate these traits all through their days, in ways expected and often unexpected.

Recently, Care was showcased in a not-so-common manner. A few weeks back, on the first day of school, a 2nd grade student showed care for his PreK sister by taking her bags out of the car, whispering encouragement to her while she clutched onto her dad’s leg, and then holding her hand as they navigated through the unfamiliar entrance to her classroom hallway. Flash forward two weeks - this same boy on Monday showed care in an entirely different way. He jumped out of the car, grabbed his bag and just waited for his sister to get out of the car on her own. The PreKer hopped out of the car, hugged dad and then walked off with big brother. They chuckled and chatted about the upcoming day and when big brother stopped to say hello to a teacher, he motioned for her sister to go on ahead. And without a pause...she smiled, shared a “Пока-пока!” and then scuttered off independently to the doorway. At different times, in vastly different ways, he showed the care his sister needed. Two weeks ago, care meant holding a hand. Monday, it meant saying goodbye and letting her enter her school day unaccompanied.

Unexpected care shown in an unexpected way.
 

🎯  Goal Setting Conferences

 September 23 & 24 

On September 23rd and 24th, the Elementary School will be having our Goal Setting Conferences.

At these 20-minute conferences, students will be sharing their personally chosen goals - how they arrived to choosing them, what they mean, and what will be the next steps. In the coming weeks, students will begin looking at our PYP Learner Profile to determine which attribute they want to choose as their overarching goal.

About THE PYP Learner Profile

Should your son choose Risk-Taker, he might talk about areas where he’s struggling to be a risk-taker, and what being a risk-taker for him would look like when learning a new skill in PE, or sharing his thinking during math class, or experimenting with colors in Art, or trying out new types of dialogue when writing a personal narrative. Should your daughter choose Open-Minded, she then might talk about how she will demonstrate open-mindedness when she converses about foods in Spanish, or chooses books during her literacy block, or listens to new genres in music, or debates perspectives during her Unit of Inquiry.

For some students, their goals will be firmly established and the conference will be a chance to share their best thinking. For others, their goals might evolve over the course of the conference, as they reflect on new information or debate where they might better dedicate their time.

Next week, families will receive directions for signing up for their Goal Setting Conferences. For families with multiple children in the ES, please ensure you sign up for each child independently. Also, parents of children in Student Support Services (SSS) will only need to sign up for one conference, where both their SSS and Homeroom teacher will be in attendance.

We look forward to seeing you on Webex in a couple weeks.
 

👕  Uniform Sales

Over the last few months, we’ve been upgrading our payment system to enable uniform transactions.

We understand this delay has been frustrating for families who want their children to have a school uniform, and we are hopeful that in the next week, the system will be finalized so we can start inviting parents to purchase clothing shortly after.
 

💻  Toddle Update

Thank you in advance for your efforts to support and motivate your students to reach their goals.

We are extremely fortunate this year, that, through our Toddle system, you’ll be able to actively share in your students’ learning.

By now you hopefully have been able to sign into our new school platform - Toddle - that will be fully used across all grades in the elementary school. Toddle is a collaboration platform designed specifically by IB teachers for IB teachers. It integrates curriculum planning, evidence collection, student portfolios, and reporting.

In the coming weeks you can nourish learning by:

• Making sure you are signed in to the platform
• Discussing class/student posts with your child 
• Giving encouraging positive comments/“Likes” to a post
• Checking for any school/class announcements

If you have not yet received your family’s login information, please contact your homeroom teacher. If you have multiple siblings, please follow the link below for hints on how to add sibling profiles in one family app.

Adding Sibling Profiles

If you have any technical questions, please email directly to distance.learning@aas.ru.
 

🐧  After School Activity Expansion

This first season, we’ve been extremely fortunate to provide two new after school Penguin Life opportunities - Swimming to Grades 4 and 5 and Drama Workshop to Grades 3.

We recognize that although many families were excited at these offerings, others found themselves a bit discouraged that more choices weren’t available to different grade levels, or that there were some challenging limitations for those that were available (needing to be picked up at the end of the activity and not being able to engage with students from another classroom).

Please know that we are constantly looking for ways to expand our extracurricular offerings, but our foremost priority is ensuring our choices don’t endanger our ability to maintain on-campus learning.

As the season progresses and we’re able to determine the impacts of these programs (both intended and unintended), we’ll be more thoughtfully able to engage in conversations about what could be available after the November break.

We will continue to keep you updated as our thinking evolves.
 

📹  One-Way Video Access

 September 17 

For those students currently unable to be on-campus due to extenuating circumstances, the final day for One-Way Classroom Video access will be September 17th.

From that date, our educators will be focusing exclusively on supporting the learning of the students in the classroom.

Interim Upper ES Principal, Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

🎯  Goal Setting Conferences

 September 23 & 24 

This week, the Middle and High School will be offering a chance for families to connect with teachers through their Back to School Nights.

After our initial Open House conversations, Elementary School parents might be wondering what will be the next scheduled time to communicate with teachers. In the Elementary School, we have three scheduled conferences throughout the year - the first of which is our Student-Led Goal Setting Conferences on September 23rd and 24th.

This year, those conferences will again happen virtually and students will not come to school. During these conferences, students will share with their parents their goals -  academic, executive functioning and/or interpersonal. Over the course of the year, these goals will be revisited in the classroom, and please continue to discuss them in your family conversations.

In a couple weeks, families will receive notification of the sign-up procedure, so they can choose an online WebEx appointment that works for both their family’s and their teacher’s schedules.
 

🐧  Integrity and our Daily Passes

In Arthur Miller’s 1953 play - the Crucible - the lead character John Proctor refused to sign his name to a paper that would free him from punishment, but would force him to sign his name to a falsehood. He justifies his choice, proclaiming to all, “Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life!”  

This scene revealed the ultimate test of Integrity.

Every day, all members of the AAS community have their own test of Integrity when we complete our Daily Passes. A few members of the community have in the past questioned, “Do you know that some people could lie on these forms?”  Yes, dishonesty is always a possibility, but in our school we believe that our community members, when faced with a difficult decision, will choose Integrity as their guiding value.  When we all fill out the Daily Passes honestly, we best ensure our community can stay healthy, that our medical staff can follow up appropriately to support families, and that student learning can remain on campus as long as possible.  As the filling out and signing of passes becomes more repeated over time, it might feel to some like an insignificant task, void of meaning.  But please remember that when we fill out these passes, our Integrity is being tested.  So if ever someone asks you to choose expediency over honesty, please let them know why you chose honesty.

Because it is your name.
 

📋  Thinking Ahead in Case a Class Moves to Distance Learning

Because some or our families are new to our ES community, and as a friendly reminder to those who were at AAS last year, should individual classes ever need to move to the Distance Learning pathway in response to a Covid situation, please see our procedures below.

• We will employ a modified Distance Learning schedule that will maximize learning, while minimizing screen time.
• Classroom teachers will share their schedule of meeting times, recognizing that realities of the learning experience could mildly alter the intended plan.
• Single Subject Classes (Music, Art, PE) will not meet synchronously, but will provide optional learning experiences.
• Students will access the learning through their iPads, using primarily WebEx links to their classroom teacher’s account and Toddle activities.

Although we hope the need to employ the Distance Learning pathway does not emerge, we want to ensure families know in advance, so that they can discuss a plan for how their household would adjust to the altered learning environment.
 

📚  Identifying Student Belongings

Please ensure your students belongings (clothing, backpacks, water bottles) are labeled with your family name.

Because many items look similar and/or students might not yet know exactly which items are theirs, this labelling will help with any later needed identification.
 

💻  Digitally Connecting to Your Child’s Learning

Powerschool and Toddle

In the Elementary School, we have two methods for families to digitally engage in their students’ learning and the classroom experience.

Foremost is Toddle. Through our Toddle system, students are able to access their class resources and share their learning with their teacher, classmates and families. In addition to providing regular glimpses into the classroom experience, Toddle will also be the platform for how we will share our more formalized semester reporting.

At the ES level, families will primarily use Powerschool for accessing attendance data and teacher email addresses (the MS and HS use additional features of this system).

For both of these platforms, we need families this week to login and activate their accounts. Toddle login information will be shared by classroom teachers, and further directions can be found through our Parent Toddle Sign-In presentation.

Toddle Sign In Information

If you have not yet received the Toddle activation information from your classroom teacher, you can in preparation download the app. Powerschool login information was shared in a Monday email. Please reference these two correspondences for more detailed instructions, and if you have any questions, please contact distance.learning@aas.ru.
 

Interim Upper ES Principal, Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

Welcome to the new year!

These last few days, we have felt so fortunate to have our halls and classrooms filled with the energy, the chuckles and the excitement of our students. As the students stepped off the busses, exited their cars and entered in from the gates, we saw a bit of nerves, a bit of relief, and a whole lot of anticipation (even from their parents!). From these early arrivals, our students then headed off to their classrooms where teachers started to build their classroom communities - learning more about students’ lives and interests, finding out about what’s possible this year in the classroom and beyond, and setting classroom agreements for how everyone will be treated.
 

💙  Integrity in the ES

Throughout the year, we’ll be showcasing how our school value - Integrity - pops up across our division.

Integrity can be defined in so many ways, but one of the foremost traits of someone with integrity is someone who is honest - honest in their academic choices, their interactions with others, and their self-reflection. Honesty is also something that is not always learned from what we say, but more often from what we do. Our children are constantly taking cues from their community for how honesty is defined, so please join us this year in seeking out teachable moments when you can uncover what honesty means to your family.
 

📖  Home Learning Policy

In the AAS Elementary School, we believe that the school day is intellectually demanding, and that when students return to their homes we want them to enjoy the time with their families and friends, and pursue their individual interests.

Subsequently, we will not be assigning regular “homework” that stands in addition to the work they complete during the day. The most important learning students can do at home is reading - reading from a variety of genres; reading to family members and reading with family members; and having active conversations about what is being read.  In addition, based on the grade of the students, on Monday through Thursday, additional time might be spent either completing projects or practicing musical instruments. For more information on our Home Learning policy (including what happens during extended absences) please check out our "School Handbook".

Read School Handbook Here
 

🚍  Dropping Students Off and Picking Them Up

To ensure a safe and efficient arrival and departure for our students, we ask you to adhere to the following procedures.

• Students will have a staggered dismissal
  • Walking students are able to be picked up at 3:30
  • Students being picked up by drivers are ready at 3:40
• If dropping off/picking your students up by car, please
  • Pull your car up to the furthest available drop-off spot to allow more cars in the queue
  • Remain in your car and students will be brought to you
• Please ensure you’ve secured a badge from the office.
• Please follow all directions (and adjustments) provided by our Security Team
• Please do not walk across parking lot
   

🎨  Art Integration

To allow for a better opportunity for Art-UOI integration in Grade 2-5, Art classes in those grades will now meet twice every 6-day cycle for one semester.

Grade 3+4 art will happen during the first semester and Grade 2+5 art will be in the second semester. In the alternate semester, those grades will not be having art class. We’re excited for the possibilities of how students’ creativity and artistic expression will be further sparked as they will be able to make even more connections from their classroom learning to their art experiences.
 

🍲  Ordering Lunch

To ensure the accurate preparation and delivery of food to your student(s), please use our school ordering system on our Nutrition at AAS page.

Orders should be placed by Friday of the previous week. Any questions regarding our cafeteria should be directed to mos.cafeteria@aas.ru.

ES Senior Associate Principal Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

Dear ES Families,

❤️  Thank You

The Elementary School would like to thank our students and families for an unusual but amazing year that pushed us all to learn in new ways, promoted flexibility and creativity and depended on enhanced partnerships.
 

📊  Report Cards

Report cards will be sent to families electronically via Email.
 

☀️  Summer Learning

We encourage families to keep their children learning over the summer.

Daily reading is the single biggest factor that predicts school success for students. This includes, reading, being read to, and listening to books. Conversations about what has been read/listened to helps to develop comprehension, understanding and inference skills. As you think about the holiday, we highly encourage you to have enough books on hand so that your child can read on a daily basis over the summer.

A way for students to continue to grow as writers is to promote writing for a purpose. This could include:

• writing shopping lists
• daily diary or journal entries
• connecting with friends or family through letters
• sharing persuasive writing to promote change
   

🗓  Next Year

For those families that are moving on to a new adventure, we hope all the best for you through that transition. Please keep in touch.

For those families returning to the AAS Community, we look forward to catching up with you in August.
 

Donna and Jeff Hinton would like to thank you for seven amazing years. The AAS Community is a wonderful and special place and they will very much miss their AAS Family as they move to spend time with their Canadian Family and and take time to pursue their professional goals. They leave you in the competent hands of Julie Villers and Eric Burnett.

Have a safe and enjoyable summer.
The ES Leadership

Greetings from the ES Counselors,
 

☀️  Summer Recommendations

READ daily for a few minutes.
Read books to your siblings, read to your parents, grandparents, just read.  If you don’t  speak English daily at home, make sure you read in English.

WRITE a little each day.
You can write letters, stories, shopping lists, and diaries.

PLAY outdoors daily.
It’s better for you to have a break from screens and get fresh air and sunshine. Gather some friends (COVID safety-permitting) and enjoy free play outdoors.

SLEEP on a regular schedule.
You will want to stay up very late for a few special events. Otherwise keep a fairly regular sleep schedule. In early August, start going to bed a few minutes earlier each night to work back to a school night sleep schedule.

WATCH for communication from AAS.
We will send our schedules and announcements. Just a few days before school starts, we will send our classlists.
 

😎  7 Kinds of Rest 

We posted this a couple of months ago but as we head into summer it is a reminder we can all use and is beneficial for both your children as well as yourself.

Read the article here

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith, a physician, researcher and the author of the book Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity says we all need 7 different kinds of rest:

• Physical rest, both passive (sleeping/napping) or active (yoga, stretching, deep breathing, massage) that help improve the body’s circulation and flexibility
• Mental rest (short brain breaks)
  Many teachers incorporate brain break activities into their students' day to ready them for more learning. 
• Sensory rest (from devices, electronics and screen time)
  Your child should be off all devices at least an hour before bedtime 
• Creative rest (Nature, the Arts, or a good book)
  To reawaken the awe and wonder inside each of us. 
• Emotional rest (The courage to be authentic and talk about how you are really doing to someone who cares)
• Social rest (in person or virtually)
  Spending time with a good friend or taking a break from socializing 
• Spiritual rest
  Doing things that give you a sense of purpose or meaning

Sleep alone can’t restore us to the point we feel rested. What type of rest might your kids need that they are not getting enough of? How can you help them incorporate that rest into their week? What type of rest do you need as parents or individuals?
 

❤️  A Note from Donna

I don’t know how to adequately say thank you to all the ES children and families I have had the pleasure to know and support over these last 7 years. I have known some of our 5th graders since they were in Pre K and we were all new AAS Penguins together. Some students I have just met this year. To all the amazing ES students I have so enjoyed getting to know you. You have put a smile on my face and a spring in my step each and every day. To all the caring parents who I have had the opportunity to partner with in support of your wonderful children, thank you for your trust and your support. I will miss ES and the AAS family immensely. AAS is a unique and special place because of all the fabulous people who put the care and courage into making this a community like no other. I wish AAS and our students the brightest of futures as you embark next year in this next chapter. Thank you for allowing me the privilege of being a Penguin. 
Warmest regards,
Donna.

Please have a lovely restful, relaxing and healthy summer! It has been our pleasure to support your children this year!

ES Senior Associate Principal Eric.Burnett@aas.ru
 

It is an exciting and reflective time as the 2020 2021 school year comes to a close.

🌼  ES Summer Field Day

 June 11 

This Friday, the ES will have their Summer Field Day (weather permitting).

Please support your child in coming prepared. All items, as always, need to have the students name and class code on them.

• Athletic clothes (easy to move in)
• Jacket (preferably water resistant)
• Extra pair of socks to change into after
• Athletic shoes
• Water Bottle
• Sunscreen
• Hat or Sunglasses (Optional)

Thank you to the PTO for organizing cool treats. We look forward to a fun day with students on the field.
 

☝️  Grade Five Moving Up Ceremony

On Monday, the Grade Five classes recorded their Moving Up Ceremony, one class at a time.

All of the Grade Five classes will watch the ceremony on Tuesday, June 15 as they enjoy treats provided by the PTO and as a part of their Year End Class Parties. The link to the ceremony will be shared with parents once the video is edited. Enjoy.
 

📖  Home Learning/Homework

There are numerous research articles on the appropriateness of homework for Elementary Students.

Here is a recent article

The guidelines on Home Learning in the ES at AAS are below.

• The intellectual demands placed on students at the Elementary School are great. Educators require students to produce quality work (work created to the best of their ability), and they work with students to ensure their academic potential is met. To support classroom learning, educators will assign a limited amount of home learning during the week. Four times a week, students in Grades 1 - 5 will only receive home learning assignments that include reading, and, if applicable, instrument practice and project completion. Aside from special project completion, home learning will not be assigned on weekends.
   
• All students are expected to read or be read to on a daily basis.
   
• When home learning is assigned, educators will ensure that students know exactly what is required. It is the student’s responsibility to complete the work and to inform their parents that it has been done. Teachers will use these home learning opportunities to motivate students into taking responsibility for their own learning, to strengthen links between learning at school and at home, and to enrich classroom learning.
   
• Home learning will be given when a student misses school due to a long illness and, upon the student’s return, appropriate steps will be taken to support his/her acquisition of key content and skills.  Home learning will not be given for holidays taken outside the school calendar. Please read section 3.7 “Extended Absences” for further explanation.
   
• There are many other ways that students’ home lives can be filled with educational activities in support of those experienced at school. These include writing letters, keeping a diary, crossword/missing word puzzles, playing board games, cooking, talking, and planning trips.
   

📺  YouTube

Here is an article about the new parental controls on YouTube, a way for parents and guardians to ensure safer age appropriate navigation of YouTube for children.

Read the article here
 

🗓  Last Day of School

 June 16 

Please remember that the last day of school is Wednesday, June 16.

This day will not be a late start and students will be dismissed at 12:00. Lunch will not be served this day and students should bring their own snacks from home as usual.
 

Enjoy the rest of your week.
The ES Leadership Team
 

Greetings from the ES Counselors,

👍  Finishing the School Year Well 

As we approach the finish line for this school year the teachers, counselors and ES admin are encouraging students to finish well.

For some students it is the importance of finishing well so that they can start well in their next country, city or school. For most it is the value of finishing well in their current grade and class in anticipation of a new year of challenge and growth as they continue their learning journey here at AAS. This is a year that has truly required courage, care and compassion as we have all faced so many challenges and navigated the various learning pathways needed at that time to best meet student needs and provide the safest current scenarios possible in which to provide for our students and community. If ever there was a year to finish well, it is this one.

We value your partnership in supporting your children to end this unprecedented year strong. Please reach out to your child’s counselor if we can be of assistance.

Below are a few articles that you may find of interest in these final days. 

4 Ways to Help Your Student Finish the School Year Strong

The Importance of Ending The School Year Well

19 Super Fun Ways to Celebrate the Last Day of School
 

🤝  Transition Support

At this time of year many parents ask for teacher reference letters to be sent to new schools. We understand that this can be a challenging time for families and that placement in the next school is of utmost importance to families on the move.

If your family is approaching a possible transition please keep the following in mind:

• Children can often sense the additional stress in the family that the idea of a move can bring so being as open and honest with your children as possible can help them move through this time more successfully.
• Please let your child’s counselor and teacher know of any potential move as soon as possible, and how your child is coping with the news, so we can be of support.
• Please contact your student’s counselor first for: reference letters, online teacher evaluation, requests for report cards, MAP reports and new school assessments.
• Please note that all teacher/counselor or principal references are confidential. Our procedure is that the confidential teacher reference forms or letters are sent directly to the new school by the school counselors or counseling department.
• The counseling department coordinates all documentation requested by parents to be sent to the application school(s). References and records usually take 1-2 weeks to complete.

Transition letter from Counselors

Transition Information for Parents

Tech Back Up Letter for Leaving Students 

We best support our students moving on successfully when the potential new school receives all the information they need to allow them to meet a child’s needs. We want to help students end their time as AAS as positively as possible to prepare them to start well in their next school.
 

Please contact your child’s counselor if you have any questions about wellness, transition or any other issues or concerns that impact your child and family.

It is hard to believe that this school year is coming to an end in just two weeks. It has been an incredibly interesting year.
 

🌻  ES Summer Field Day

 June 11 

We are excited to announce that Summer Field Day for Elementary School is just around the corner!

Students will get to participate in racket games, relay races, throwing tasks, and building challenges. In keeping with the Elementary School Covid mitigations, each grade will have its own summer field day time slot. To help students stay comfortable for the day there are a few things to make sure your child has:

• Athletic clothes (easy to move in)
• Jacket (preferably water resistant)
• Extra pair of socks to change into after
• Athletic shoes
• Water Bottle
• Sunscreen
• Hat or Sunglasses (Optional)

A special thank you to the PTO for organizing cool treats. We look forward to seeing all the students on the field for Field day!
 

📊  MAP Parent Session and Reports

 Wednesday, June 9, 11:00 & 18:00 

Next Wednesday there will be two MAP Parent Sessions offered - 11:00-12:00 and 18:00-19:00 at Kirsten Welbes' webex.

At this session, Kirsten will review how parents, teachers and the school use MAP data.

Join MAP Parent Session

MAP reports will be sent out to parents by end of the day on Friday, June 11.

If you would like a more in-depth report for your child, please email Kirsten at kirsten.welbes@aas.ru and share your child's name, their grade and their homeroom/advisory teacher.
 

Greetings from the ES Counselors,

In our guidance lessons, we are talking with students about upcoming transitions. Your students are talking about their concerns about the next school year. Common themes are:

• What will my teacher be like?
• Which friends will be in my class?
• Will the math be much harder?
• Will I get lost on the first day of school?
• Will I forget a lot over the summer?
• Will COVID-19 be gone from the world?
• Will I grow a lot over the summer?
• How many of my friends will move away?
• What will the new kids be like?

We are listening to each concern and giving age appropriate answers. No questions are silly and each concern is valid. Please ask your child(ren) how they are feeling about next year. Please reach out to us if there are any significant concerns.

🤝  Transition Support

At this time of year many parents ask for teacher reference letters to be sent to new schools. We understand that this can be a challenging time for families and that placement in the next school is of utmost importance to families on the move.

If your family is approaching a possible transition please keep the following in mind:

• Children can often sense the additional stress in the family that the idea of a move can bring so being as open and honest with your children as possible can help them move through this time more successfully.
• Please let your child’s counselor and teacher know of any potential move as soon as possible, and how your child is coping with the news, so we can be of support.
• Please contact your student’s counselor first for: reference letters, online teacher evaluation, requests for report cards, MAP reports and new school assessments.
• Please note that all teacher/counselor or principal references are confidential. Our procedure is that the confidential teacher reference forms or letters are sent directly to the new school by the school counselors or counseling department.
• The counseling department coordinates all documentation requested by parents to be sent to the application school(s). References and records usually take 1-2 weeks to complete.

Transition letter from Counselors

Transition Information for Parents

Tech Back Up Letter for Leaving Students 

We best support our students moving on successfully when the potential new school receives all the information they need to allow them to meet a child’s needs. We want to help students end their time as AAS as positively as possible to prepare them to start well in their next school.
 

Please contact your child’s counselor if you have any questions about wellness, transition or any other issues or concerns that impact your child and family.

Dear ES Families,

We hope that you have been able to enjoy some of the amazing weather we have had in Moscow as of late!
 

🖐  Grade Five

If you missed the Grade 5-6 Transition Parent Meeting yesterday morning, here is the link to the recording of the session and the slide deck presentation.

Watch the Recording     See the Slides

If you have any questions about your child’s transition to the Middle School, do not hesitate to contact them.

Karisti Cormier | MS Sr. Associate Principal
karisti.cormier@aas.ru

Alexander Lopez-Barton | MS Associate Principal
alexander.lopez-barton@aas.ru

James Villers | MS Counselor
james.villers@aas.ru

🎉  End of Year Celebrations

 June 11 - 16 

As we begin the last three weeks of learning, here are some events we have planned to help celebrate and create closure for the 2020-2021 School Year.

Thank you to the PTO for their support.

• PTO Craft Fair  June 11 
• ES Summer Field Day  June 11 
• Grade Five Moving Up Ceremony  June 15  | virtual
• End of Year Class Parties  June 15 
• Good-By Popcorn Parties For Students Leaving AAS
• Last Day of School with Early Dismissal  Wednesday, June 16, 12:00  | no lunch that day
• Report Cards Sent Electronically

We hope the rest of your week goes well,
The ES Leadership Team
 

Greetings from the ES Counselors,

Thank you to students and families for your participation in Wellness week last week. It was great to see all the school spirit and focus on healthy practices. Thankful Thursday and ES students sending messages of gratitude to others in our community inspired others to do the same. Well done to our penguins!
 

🐧  Finishing the School Year Well 

As we near the end of a school year that has been challenging in so many ways students can run out of steam to finish well.

This short article from Scholastic has a few simple tips to finish strong.

Lead by Example.
Demonstrate for your child what it means to finish strong and develop their own grit, determination, perseverance and resilience to see this year through. Involve them in summer planning to hear what they think they will need to return to school in August recharged and ready to continue their learning journey.
 
Stick to the Routine.
As the Sun stays up later and rises earlier, kids' needs for a good night’s sleep have not changed. Keep bedtime consistent with the rest of the school year. Maintain balance and routines around reading, family and play time. 
 
Set 1-2 Reasonable and Reachable Goals.
Goals are a great tool to help your child to stay motivated, on task and eager to learn. What small challenging but reachable goal can your child work on achieving in our final few weeks of school this year? Support your child in determining what steps they can take to achieve their goals.

Adapted from "4 Ways to Help Your Student Finish the School Year Strong" by Bekki Lindner.

🤝  Transition Support

At this time of year many parents ask for teacher reference letters to be sent to new schools. We understand that this can be a challenging time for families and that placement in the next school is of utmost importance to families on the move.

If your family is approaching a possible transition please keep the following in mind:

• Children can often sense the additional stress in the family that the idea of a move can bring so being as open and honest with your children as possible can help them move through this time more successfully.
• Please let your child’s counselor and teacher know of any potential move as soon as possible, and how your child is coping with the news, so we can be of support.
• Please contact your student’s counselor first for: reference letters, online teacher evaluation, requests for report cards, MAP reports and new school assessments.
• Please note that all teacher/counselor or principal references are confidential. Our procedure is that the confidential teacher reference forms or letters are sent directly to the new school by the school counselors or counseling department.
• The counseling department coordinates all documentation requested by parents to be sent to the application school(s). References and records usually take 1-2 weeks to complete.

Transition letter from Counselors

Transition Information for Parents

Tech Back Up Letter for Leaving Students 

We best support our students moving on successfully when the potential new school receives all the information they need to allow them to meet a child’s needs. We want to help students end their time as AAS as positively as possible to prepare them to start well in their next school.
 

Please contact your child’s counselor if you have any questions about wellness, transition or any other issues or concerns that impact your child and family.

It looks like we have moved into some warm summerlike weather. We hope that you and your family have had an opportunity to enjoy both the warmth and the longer days of sunshine.
 

🍏  Wellness Week

 May 17 - 22 

This week, from PreK to High School, AAS has been celebrating Wellness Week - taking time in our lives to ensure we take care of the health of ourselves and others.

Each day there have been special dress up day options and activities for students and educators to practice care. Individuals looked comfy in their pajamas on Monday, colourful in flowers no Tuesday and there was some crazy hair and wear today.

Check out the Wellness Week slideshow for ideas for your child(ren) for tomorrow and Friday. Students may wear the alternate dress theme or their uniform to school on these last two days of Wellness week.

Wellness Week Slideshow

🙏  PTO

The AAS PTO is currently looking for a VP ES PTO Representative for the 2021 - 2022 School Year.

If you are interested (which is very much appreciated), please contact Ines Cremers.
 

🚨  Code Red

We had a successful announced Code Red Drill this morning.

We routinely have emergency drills at school so that children and educators have the opportunity to practice how to respond in emergency situations. These drills also give us the opportunity to reflect and improve on our emergency procedures.
 

Take care,
The ES Leadership Team

🌱  Wellness Week

 May 17 - 21 

Our ES Student Council has been helping plan some Spirit Dress Days and Wellness activities for our ES Students as we celebrate Wellness Week at AAS.

• Thankful Thursday
  Rainbow Colors / Positive Slogans
• Fitness Friday
  Sports Wear / Team Jerseys

Thank you for supporting our Wellness Week!
 

🐧  Transition

Build a RAFT to help your family navigate the waters of transition.
Adapted from Dave Pollock, Leave Right: Enter Right: Thriving Through Transition, www.tckinteract.net 2003

• Reconciling conflict with others...
  Make peace. Fix any broken relationships as much as possible.
   
• Affirming relationships...
  Aside from your family, who in Moscow matters most to you?
  Tell them, send them notes, let your children write letters to them.
   
• Farewell to people, places, pets, & possessions...
  Check off your Bucket List before you go.
  Exchange contact information.
   
• Thinking ahead to your destination...
  Be honest with yourself about hopes, anxieties, questions you have.
  Make an informational contact in your new place.
   

🤝  Transition Support

At this time of year many parents ask for teacher reference letters to be sent to new schools. We understand that this can be a challenging time for families and that placement in the next school is of utmost importance to families on the move.

If your family is approaching a possible transition please keep the following in mind:

• Children can often sense the additional stress in the family that the idea of a move can bring so being as open and honest with your children as possible can help them move through this time more successfully.
• Please let your child’s counselor and teacher know of any potential move as soon as possible, and how your child is coping with the news, so we can be of support.
• Please contact your student’s counselor first for: reference letters, online teacher evaluation, requests for report cards, MAP reports and new school assessments.
• Please note that all teacher/counselor or principal references are confidential. Our procedure is that the confidential teacher reference forms or letters are sent directly to the new school by the school counselors or counseling department.
• The counseling department coordinates all documentation requested by parents to be sent to the application school(s). References and records usually take 1-2 weeks to complete.

Transition letter from Counselors

Transition Information for Parents

Tech Back Up Letter for Leaving Students 

We best support our students moving on successfully when the potential new school receives all the information they need to allow them to meet a child’s needs. We want to help students end their time as AAS as positively as possible to prepare them to start well in their next school.

🧒  Pause, Reset, Nourish

The National Child Traumatic Stress Network has this great resource on practices that promote wellbeing and enhance resilience in just a few short minutes. Use P.R.N. - Pause, Reset, Nourish - when you gauge your distress level could use a little self-care.

Learn more about P.R.N. here

Modeling well-being and self care practices is an important component in helping our children develop their own strategies for healthy coping and thriving. The ES counselors are available if you have any questions about mental health or wellness.
 

Please contact your child’s counselor if you have any questions about wellness, transition or any other issues or concerns that impact your child and family.

Dear ES Families,

We hope you had an enjoyable Victory Day weekend and had an opportunity to spend time outside in the amazing weather.

We are pleased to have students transitioned back to our Modified Full On Campus Learning Pathway this week.
 

⤴️  Grade 5-6 Transition - Parent Meeting

 May 25, 13:00 

Over the next two weeks, the MS Leadership team will be meeting with Grade 5 students to talk about the transition to Middle School.

We will also be hosting a Grade 5-6 Transition meeting for parents on Tuesday, May 25 at 13:00 on Ms. Cormier’s Webex.

Join the Meeting here

More details will be sent directly to Grade 5 parents next week.
 

🍏  Wellness Week

 May 17 - 22 

Next week, from PreK to High School, AAS will be celebrating Wellness Week - taking a time in our lives to ensure we take care of the health of ourselves and others.

Each day will have special dress up day options and each day will have activities for students and educators to practice care. Check out the Wellness Week slideshow for ideas that the Student Council is creating.

Wellness Week Slideshow

Enjoy the rest of your week.

The ES Leadership Team

🌱  Wellness Week

 May 17 - 21 

Our ES Student Council has been helping plan some Spirit Dress Days and Wellness activities for our ES Students as we celebrate Wellness Week at AAS.

What can you do at home to celebrate wellness? 

• Mindful Monday
  PJs / Comfy Clothes
• Thoughtful Tuesday
  Flower Power
• Whimsical Wednesday
  Crazy Hair / Hats / Dress
• Thankful Thursday
  Rainbow Colors / Positive Slogans
• Fitness Friday
  Sports Wear / Team Jerseys

Thank you for supporting our Wellness Week!

The National Child Traumatic Stress Network has this great resource on practices that promote wellbeing and enhance resilience in just a few short minutes. Use P.R.N. Pause, Reset, Nourish  when you gauge your distress level could use a little self-care.

Learn more about P.R.N. here

Modeling well-being and self care practices is an important component in helping our children develop their own strategies for healthy coping and thriving. The ES counselors are available if you have any questions about mental health or wellness.
 

🕯  Talking with Kids About School Shootings and Violence

News of the school shooting in Kazan this week and the bombing outside of a girl’s school in Afghanistan is upsetting to many.

The news can be overwhelming and cause feelings of anxiety in us as adults. No matter how we try to protect our children they are keenly aware of the world we now live in and the challenges we face. 

Dramatic, disturbing news events, especially in school settings can leave parents speechless. These age-based tips on how to talk to kids about school shootings - and listen, too - can help.

This article is adapted from Caroline Knorr of Common Sense Media.

Focus on helping kids understand the news and information they're seeing and hearing, while allowing them to express their questions and feelings. Cutting through the noise and chaos provides the stability and security kids need to process what's going on -- and to ultimately feel safe again.

Tips for Kids Under 7

Young kids tend to think concretely, understand simple ideas best, and think of their immediate family as the center of their world. During times of stress, they may get whiny or engage in difficult behavior. It could be a sign that they need comfort even if they can't articulate it.

Tips for ES Students 

• Ask open-ended questions.
  If your kids don't know what happened and don't bring it up, you don't necessarily have to fill in the blanks. If they bring up an incident, you can ask, "What did you hear?" or "What do you think is going on?"
• Use simple sentences.
  Feel free to oversimplify if you have to. You can say, "Someone hurt people." And if an idea is too complicated to explain -- maybe you don't need to.
• Don't overtalk.
  Once you've conveyed the news, you can wait until your kid asks questions to reopen the conversation.
• Reassure them that they're safe and that people are working on the problem.
  Even if you feel iffy about the situation, you want your kids to feel like you're in charge and that it will be resolved.
• Emphasize that emergency drills help keep them safe.
  Encourage them to follow the procedures and stay calm. Remind them that we have excellent security and safety policies, plans and resources at AAS to keep children and our AAS community safe. 

What to do

• Try to keep the news away.
  You might be eager for information, but try to be discreet. If you can't turn off the news, try distracting your kid or changing their focus with a book or an activity.
• Save strong emotions for your adult support community.
  You don't have to be a robot, but avoid displaying strong emotions related to these tragic incidents around young kids. Kids often get scared when they don't know why parents are upset. Make sure to say, "I'm upset about what I heard on the news. It's not you."
• Allow them to express themselves how they want.
  You may see a wide range of reactions when you discuss bad news. Some kids may cry or act out when they're upset and don't know what to do. Some kids want quiet time with you. Some kids like to talk. Some like to draw their feelings.
• Make it a normal day.
  Try to maintain a typical schedule so kids feel the safety of regularity. But feel free to indulge in extra comfort and togetherness.
   

For more information on talking with older or more mature kids please see the two links below.

Talking About School Shootings     Explaining the news

Advice for Kids Upset by the News from BBC

Please contact your child’s counselor if you have any questions or concerns or if we can support your child through a conversation with them. We are available to support your child and family.

Dear ES Families,

We hope that this week of learning engagements from home has gone well. We look forward to having students in Modified Full On Campus next week.

As a reminder, students will continue to use our Daily Health Pass. Any individual who chooses to travel internationally will need to remain off campus for 14 days and may return, if they are symptom free, after the 14 days are completed. Please contact our Health Office if you have any health related questions.
 

📊  MAP

Over the next two weeks, all students in grades 2-5 are scheduled to participate in Measures of Academic Progress (MAP®) testing on May 12, 13, and 14, with May 17 for make-ups.

MAP, a product of the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), is a computerized assessment aligned with Common Core standards; the learning standards that we have adopted and use at AAS for Literacy and Mathematics. MAP tests are unique in that they are adaptive, grade-level independent assessments which create personalized tests for each student. Simply put, the difficulty of the questions adjusts based on the student’s answers. Therefore, each student completes a test specifically designed for his or her learning level at that moment.  As a result, each student has the same opportunity to succeed and maintain a positive attitude towards testing.

MAP assessments this year are being given in the Fall and Spring to help determine your child’s current instructional level at each of those times, measure academic growth throughout the school year, as well as from year to year, in the areas of Mathematics, Reading, and Language Usage. MAP results are not reflected in students’ grades, but rather will be used by classroom teachers to inform instruction. They are one piece of data that is collected as evidence of student learning achievement.

Last Fall, we completed MAP testing on campus and via Distance due to the challenges related to COVID. For testing this Spring, we will only be testing while the students are on campus. There will be no Distance MAP option.

The data from Fall of 2020 showed that, as a school, AAS saw no “COVID dip”, and outperformed the US, international and CEESA means, which were established pre-pandemic.

This data reassures us that despite the uncertainty and unknowns that we are experiencing, students are still learning at a high level. The Spring MAP test will yet provide another data point to help us better understand where students are in their learning, which is why we are administering the test in May.

Because MAP assessments are designed to be snapshots of what your child already knows, there is no need for students to study to prepare for the tests. To be best prepared, students are encouraged to get a good night’s sleep and to eat a healthy breakfast.

The ES Leadership Team

🌱  Wellness Week

 May 17 - 21 

Please watch the Newsletter next week for information on the school wide Wellness Week May 17 - May 21.

Our ES Student Council is helping plan some Spirit Dress Days and Wellness activities for our ES Students as we celebrate Wellness Week at AAS.
 

🧒  Children's Mental Health Awareness Day

 May 7 

Please follow the American Psychological Association link below for more information.

Visit APA

Further Resources can be found at the National Child Traumatic Stress Network.

Visit NCTSN

We are available if you have any questions about mental health or any other issues or concerns that impact your child and family.

Please also contact your child’s counselor if your child needs any support during our Enhanced DL this week or if your son or daughter would like to chat with us about anything. We look forward to seeing all the students back on campus soon!
 

🪴  Tips for Rearing Resilient Adults

Be a gardener, not a carpenter.

Gardeners guide growth so the plants can flourish. Carpenters have a very clear plan and are making one thing. That can be very rigid. Let your child explore music rather than insisting on a certain instrument that you like.

• Talk and read a lot.
  Let your children explore through books.
   
• Explain things or direct your children on how to get their questions answered.
   
• Describe “activities” rather than people.
  Instead of labeling a person good or bad, talk about the activity.
  “Throwing that trash on the ground was a bad choice.”
  “When you cleaned your room first, you made a good choice.”
   
• Help your children to copy you when you do things.
  Let them pick up toys, sweep the floors, and read when you are reading, help in the kitchen.
   
• Expose your children (safely) to a lot of different people.
  They should see diverse faces and hear other languages as often as possible.
   
• Applaud agency.
  Let children choose whenever possible when either choice is acceptable.
  “Would you rather wear green shoes or blue shoes?”

Adapted from Harvard psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett: 7½ Lessons About the Brain.

Learn more here

🔀  Transition

At this time of year many parents ask for teacher reference letters to be sent to new schools. We understand that this can be a challenging time for families and that placement in the next school is of utmost importance to families on the move.

If your family is approaching a possible transition please keep the following in mind:

• Children can often sense the additional stress in the family that the idea of a move can bring so being as open and honest with your children as possible can help them move through this time more successfully.
• Please let your child’s counselor and teacher know of any potential move as soon as possible, and how your child is coping with the news, so we can be of support.
• Please contact your student’s counselor first for: reference letters, online teacher evaluation, requests for report cards, MAP reports and new school assessments.
• Please note that all teacher/counselor or principal references are confidential. Our procedure is that the confidential teacher reference forms or letters are sent directly to the new school by the school counselors or counseling department.
• The counseling department coordinates all documentation requested by parents to be sent to the application school(s). References and records usually take 1-2 weeks to complete.

Transition letter from Counselors

Transition Information for Parents

Tech Back Up Letter for Leaving Students 

We best support our students moving on successfully when the potential new school receives all the information they need to allow them to meet a child’s needs. We want to help students end their time as AAS as positively as possible to prepare them to start well in their next school.

🖐  Grade Five: Primary Years Program Exhibition (PYPX)

 April 29 

The last G5 PYPX presentations will take place tomorrow.

Click the link below for times, links and instructions for the presentations.

Visit PYPX

All of the AAS Community is encouraged to attend.
 

💻  Distance Learning

As was communicated, the Elementary School will be transitioning to Distance Learning next week, following our Distance Learning Schedule.

Educators will share with students and families a detailed class/student specific schedule that includes times, Webex links and instructions. This will help your child be prepared to engage in learning activities.
 

📝  MAP Assessment

The ES had originally planned to administer the MAP assessments next week. With our transition to Distance Learning we will postpone these to a later date.
 

Enjoy your long weekend.
The ES Leadership Team

👌  Tips for Virtual Learning

Adapted from the book
"A Little Spot learns Online:
A Story About Virtual
Classroom Expectations",
Diane Alber, 2020

• Get dressed - learning in your pajamas doesn’t set the right tone.
• Eat breakfast before you join your online class.
• Find a quiet place to participate with your class. Put your pets in a different room.
• Set your environment up by getting your supplies, including your water bottle next to you.
• Sit at your desk or table 5 minutes before the class is to start and log-in.
• If you need a break for the restroom, don’t take your device with you. Leave it at your desk or table.

Please contact your child’s counselor if your child needs any support during our Enhanced DL next week or if your son or daughter would like to chat with us about anything. We are also available if you have any questions about transition or any other issues or concerns that impact your child and family. We look forward to seeing all the students back on campus soon!
 

🗓  Action Calendar for Families

30 actions for parents to take care of themselves and their families during challenging times.

See the Calendar
 

👟  May Fitness Challenge Calendar

Alliance for a Healthier Generation May Fitness Challenge Calendar

May is National Physical Fitness & Sport Month in the US. These resources provide some great ways to stay fit and healthy with your family.

Take a look
 

🔀  Transition

At this time of year many parents ask for teacher reference letters to be sent to new schools. We understand that this can be a challenging time for families and that placement in the next school is of utmost importance to families on the move.

If your family is approaching a possible transition please keep the following in mind:

• Children can often sense the additional stress in the family that the idea of a move can bring so being as open and honest with your children as possible can help them move through this time more successfully.
• Please let your child’s counselor and teacher know of any potential move as soon as possible, and how your child is coping with the news, so we can be of support.
• Please contact your student’s counselor first for: reference letters, online teacher evaluation, requests for report cards, MAP reports and new school assessments.
• Please note that all teacher/counselor or principal references are confidential. Our procedure is that the confidential teacher reference forms or letters are sent directly to the new school by the school counselors or counseling department.
• The counseling department coordinates all documentation requested by parents to be sent to the application school(s). References and records usually take 1-2 weeks to complete.

Transition letter from Counselors

Transition Information for Parents

Tech Back Up Letter for Leaving Students 

We best support our students moving on successfully when the potential new school receives all the information they need to allow them to meet a child’s needs. We want to help students end their time as AAS as positively as possible to prepare them to start well in their next school.

🖐  Grade Five: Primary Years Program Exhibition (PYPX)

 Next Week 

This is an exciting time for Grade Five as they complete their work on their PYP culminating experience, the Grade Five PYPX.

For the past nine weeks, students have been engaged in student driven inquiry using an inquiry cycle. Focusing on the UN Sustainable Development Goals, students have created Websites for their projects and will be presenting their work and experiences. Presentations are open to all AAS Community members, via Webex, on Tuesday April 27 and Thursday April 29.

Learn more here

Use the link above to learn more about the times, links and instructions for the presentations.

It will also include the links to finished student Web Pages that will be coming on Monday April 26. This year, with Webex, the Grade Five students are able to open their presentations and projects to share their learning with a wider AAS Community.
 

🎨  Fifth Grade Artists as Change Makers: PYP Exhibition

The aim of the blog post below is to enlighten you, regarding this year’s strong integration of art and the upcoming Grade 5 PYP Exhibition (PYPX).

Read the Blog Post

As you may know, students are currently involved in a personal investigation of their choice, related to the United Nations Sustainable Goals. Groups have been organised according to interest and students are now in the midst of a collaborative process of inquiry. This year, they will be required to present their learning journey via Webex and by use of a group created Website. This is the culminating learning experience of a child’s Elementary School experience and very exciting! Right now, the PYPX Art Action Station (workspace outside the ES Art Rooms) is buzzing with creative activity on a daily basis. Many students have chosen to sign up for the use of the studio space in order to create artworks which will assist in raising awareness of their findings and desire for change.

Reminder: Earth Day Celebration and Student Dress-Up
Tomorrow, April 22 is Earth Day! In celebration of our Earth, the ES Student Council hopes our families have engaged in activities that support our planet - planting flowers, picking up trash in nature areas, creating earth-related arts and crafts or taking time to read or watch about how we can all help our planet. Tomorrow, in honor of Earth Day, students are encouraged to wear some “Earth Clothing” - items that are colored blue, green or brown OR an outfit or accessory that celebrates our planet. Students may wear “Earth Clothing” or their regular uniform.
 

🌎  Earth Day Celebration and Student Dress-Up

 Thursday, April 22 

Tomorrow is Earth Day!

In celebration of our Earth, the ES Student Council hopes our families have engaged in activities that support our planet - planting flowers, picking up trash in nature areas, creating earth-related arts and crafts or taking time to read or watch about how we can all help our planet.

Tomorrow, in honor of Earth Day, students are encouraged to wear some “Earth Clothing” - items that are colored blue, green or brown OR an outfit or accessory that celebrates our planet. Students may wear “Earth Clothing” or their regular uniform.

Have a great day.
The ES Leadership Team

💙  Revisiting the 5 Principles of Love and Logic
 

Mutual Dignity
“Why don’t you just do it this way, instead? That’s not going to work,” is not a good way of demonstrating respect and dignity. Silence, coupled with a loving pat on the back, would have been a far better approach.

Shared Thinking
When we become the “experts,” it rarely brings the best out of people. When we allow others to think and solve their problems, we show that we believe in their abilities.

Shared Control
Asking, “Would you like to hear what some people decide to do?” shares healthy control. Doing so also opens their willingness to learn from our guidance. Respect is earned by providing supportive suggestions—not by trying to micromanage.

Sincere Empathy
The real “solution” involves love—not lectures. It involves recognizing feelings—not providing fixes.

Loving Relationships
This fifth principle of Love and Logic plays out as a natural result of our living by the first four.

From: Dr. Charles Fay, The Love and Logic Institute, Inc.  
 

🧒  ES Placement Survey Closed

Thank you for completing the placement survey that ran from February 10 - April 12, 2021.

We value and appreciate your timely input in the placement process. The survey is now closed and the fall placement process is underway.
 

🔀  Transition

At this time of year many parents ask for teacher reference letters to be sent to new schools. We understand that this can be a challenging time for families and that placement in the next school is of utmost importance to families on the move.

If your family is approaching a possible transition please keep the following in mind:

• Children can often sense the additional stress in the family that the idea of a move can bring so being as open and honest with your children as possible can help them move through this time more successfully.
• Please let your child’s counselor and teacher know of any potential move as soon as possible, and how your child is coping with the news, so we can be of support.
• Please contact your student’s counselor first for: reference letters, online teacher evaluation, requests for report cards, MAP reports and new school assessments.
• Please note that all teacher/counselor or principal references are confidential. Our procedure is that the confidential teacher reference forms or letters are sent directly to the new school by the school counselors or counseling department.
• The counseling department coordinates all documentation requested by parents to be sent to the application school(s). References and records usually take 1-2 weeks to complete.

Transition letter from Counselors

Transition Information for Parents

Tech Back Up Letter for Leaving Students 

We best support our students moving on successfully when the potential new school receives all the information they need to allow them to meet a child’s needs. We want to help students end their time as AAS as positively as possible to prepare them to start well in their next school.
 

Please contact your child’s counselor if you have any questions, issues or concerns we can support with. Please also reach out to Ms. Hinton if you have any questions or concerns about your Grade 3-5 child’s transition to modified full on campus learning this week. We are available to support your child and family.

Dear ES Families,

We hope that all had an enjoyable Spring Break, spending time together with family.

The students were eager to be back at school and engaged in learning. They were especially excited to be able to enjoy the warmer Spring weather with less cold and layers of clothing.
 

💖  Thank You

We would like to thank the PTO and their volunteers who helped to make our revised version of the PTO Used Book Fair such a great success.

Students were very excited to be taking home “new to them” books to read. We very much appreciate all the time that was given to organize the books by age level, set them up and then store away those that did not find a new home this year.
 

🌎  Earth Day Celebration and Student Dress-Up

 Thursday, April 22 

Next Thursday is Earth Day!

In celebration of our Earth, the ES Student Council encourages our families over the next week to engage in activities that support our planet - planting flowers, picking up trash in nature areas, creating earth-related arts and crafts or taking time to read or watch about how we can all help our planet.

Next Thursday, in honor of Earth Day, students are encouraged to wear some “Earth Clothing” - items that are colored blue, green or brown OR an outfit or accessory that celebrates our planet. Students may wear “Earth Clothing” or their regular uniform. In the coming week, the ES Student Council will be sharing more ideas for how students can commemorate the day, both at school and at home.
 

🌱  Spring Break

We hope that all families enjoyed their Spring Break and were able to have quality time together.

As a reminder, students will continue to use our Daily Health Pass. Any individual who choses to travel internationally will need to remain off campus for 14 days and may return, if they are symptom free, after the 14 days are completed.

Please contact our Health Office if you have any health related questions.

Enjoy the warmer weather.
The ES Leadership Team

🧒  ES Placement Survey Closed

Thank you for completing the placement survey that ran from February 10 - April 12, 2021.

We value and appreciate your timely input in the placement process. The survey is now closed and the fall placement process is underway.
 

🔀  Transition

At this time of year many parents ask for teacher reference letters to be sent to new schools. We understand that this can be a challenging time for families and that placement in the next school is of utmost importance to families on the move.

If your family is approaching a possible transition please keep the following in mind:

• Children can often sense the additional stress in the family that the idea of a move can bring so being as open and honest with your children as possible can help them move through this time more successfully.
• Please let your child’s counselor and teacher know of any potential move as soon as possible, and how your child is coping with the news, so we can be of support.
• Please contact your student’s counselor first for: reference letters, online teacher evaluation, requests for report cards, MAP reports and new school assessments.
• Please note that all teacher/counselor or principal references are confidential. Our procedure is that the confidential teacher reference forms or letters are sent directly to the new school by the school counselors or counseling department.
• The counseling department coordinates all documentation requested by parents to be sent to the application school(s). References and records usually take 1-2 weeks to complete.

Transition letter from Counselors

Transition Information for Parents

Tech Back Up Letter for Leaving Students 

We best support our students moving on successfully when the potential new school receives all the information they need to allow them to meet a child’s needs. We want to help students end their time as AAS as positively as possible to prepare them to start well in their next school.
 

🤲  Tools for Praise and Appreciation

Describe what you see
“I see green lines that are zooming up and down on the page. And look how they connect with all the red shapes.” instead of “Pretty picture.”

Describe the effect on others
“The baby loves is when you make those funny sounds. I see a big smile on her face."

Describe effort
“You kept working on that button until you got it into that little buttonhole.”

Describe progress
“You sounded out each of the letters and put them together. You read a whole sentence!" instead of “Nice job reading.”

Consider asking questions or starting a conversation instead of simple praise. Give a child a new picture of themselves. Resist the urge to praise by comparison to other’s work.

Resources: How to Talk So Little Kids Will Listen: A Survival Guide to Life with Children Ages 2 - 7 by Joanna Faber and Julie King, Scribner Press, 2017. Easily purchased on Kindle.
 

Please contact your child’s counselor if you have any questions, issues or concerns we can support with. Please also reach out to Ms. Hinton if you have any questions or concerns about your Grade 3-5 child’s transition to modified full on campus learning this week. We are available to support your child and family.

Dear ES Families,

We hope you have been able to enjoy some of our more Spring-like weather.
 

🚦  ES Conferences

We hope that families enjoyed the process of setting aside 45 dedicated minutes with their child in order for them to provide evidence and perspective on their growth as a learner so far this year.

In addition, we hope the conference with your child’s teacher allowed you the opportunity to collaborate with your child and their teacher, reflecting on goal progress and setting targets for the remainder of the. If you have any feedback on this year’s process, please pass this on to your child’s teacher or to the ES Office.

❓  ES Placement Survey

 Monday, April 12 

Please note that the ES Placement Survey has now been open for 7 weeks and will be closing right after the April Break.

This is your final opportunity to share your valuable thoughts about your child as a learner, if you wish them to be considered as a part of our placement process. Please see the ES Counselor section of the newsletter for more information.

Classroom Placement Parent Survey

 Survey closes Monday, April 12th 
 

🥸  Student Council Book Character Day

Today, all educators and students in our ES Community were encouraged to dress up as their favorite Book Character.

In response to student and educator suggestions in a survey, the Student Council was able to recommend a bunch of reading-related activities that students could do in their classrooms and also a few that all of the ES is doing (Picture to Padlet, Vote for Your Favorite Book Character, PTO Book Fair). Below are the Student Council Slideshow that was used to give more ideas, and a video created by Zahra and Ava that helped to launch the day.

See the Slideshow     Watch the Video
 

📚  PTO Used Book Fair

 April 1 - April 2 

The PTO is very excited to announce that the Annual Used Book Fair will be held on tomorrow April 1st and Friday April 2nd.

Each Elementary class will be taken by their class teacher to visit the fair and will be able to choose up to 5 “new to you” books.

The PTO is asking for a minimum donation of  200  Rub for up to 5 books. The money raised will go towards upcoming PTO events. ES families should have received an envelope in their children’s bag with a brief note explaining the event. The envelope can be used to return your voluntary donations.

There are some fantastic books to choose from. Happy reading!
 

🌱  Spring Break

We hope that all families enjoy their Spring Break and are able to have quality time together.

As a reminder, when students return after the break we will continue to use our Daily Health Pass. Any individual who chose to travel internationally will need to remain off campus for 14 days and may return, if they are symptom free, after the 14 days are completed. Please contact our Health Office if you have any health related questions.

Have a great break!
The ES Leadership Team
 

🧒  ES Placement for Fall 2021

 February 10  -  April 12 

• Creating class lists is a complex process that requires great thought and time involving many perspectives. As professional educators, we invest a great deal of effort in the development of homeroom class rosters to create the best learning situations for all our students and classes.
• A request for a specific teacher will not be considered. However, a request to be thoughtful about a child's learning style will be considered as part of our process. Please fill in the form below to tell us about factors unique to your child’s needs. Please do not request friends by name. We make every effort to place each student with a friend but cannot guarantee your child will be placed with specific friends.
• All information from this survey is confidential and will only be seen by counselors and administration. Thank you for your partnership!

🤲  Tools for Engaging Cooperation

Be Playful
 - Make it a game: “Can we get all the cars into the box before the timer beeps? Ready … set … go!”                                                                                                                                                              
 - Make inanimate objects talk: “I’m an empty sock.  I need a foot in me!”
 - Use silly voices and accents: “ I …. am … your …..robot….Must …..buckle seat ...belt …. now..."

Offer a choice
“Do you want to hop to the tub like a bunny or crawl like a crab?”

Put the child in charge
“Johnny, set the timer for 5 minutes and let us know when it is time to leave."

Give information
“Tissues go in the trash”

Say it with one word
“Trash”

Describe what you see
“I see most of the blocks put away in the toy box. There are only a few more blocks left to go.”

Describe how you feel
“I don’t like food thrown on the floor.”

Take action without insult
“I’m putting the paint away for now. I can’t let you splatter other kids."

In all of these options, the adult keeps control and avoids shaming or name calling.

Resources: How to Talk So Little Kids Will Listen: A Survival Guide to Life with Children Ages 2 - 7 by Joanna Faber and Julie King, Scribner Press, 2017. Easily purchased on Kindle.
 

Please contact your child’s counselor if you have any questions, issues or concerns we can support with. Please also reach out to Ms. Hinton if you have any questions or concerns about your Grade 3-5 child’s transition to modified full on campus learning this week. We are available to support your child and family.

It was wonderful to have all students on campus learning this week.
 

💻  Conference Day

 Friday, March 26 

Please contact your child’s counselor if you would like to meet over Webex on Conference Day.
 

🧒  ES Placement for Fall 2021

 February 10  -  April 12 

• Creating class lists is a complex process that requires great thought and time involving many perspectives. As professional educators, we invest a great deal of effort in the development of homeroom class rosters to create the best learning situations for all our students and classes.
• A request for a specific teacher will not be considered. However, a request to be thoughtful about a child's learning style will be considered as part of our process. Please fill in the form below to tell us about factors unique to your child’s needs. Please do not request friends by name. We make every effort to place each student with a friend but cannot guarantee your child will be placed with specific friends.
• All information from this survey is confidential and will only be seen by counselors and administration. Thank you for your partnership!

❣️  Tools for Handling Emotions

Acknowledge Feelings with Words
“You were looking forward to that playdate. How disappointing!”
“It can be so frustrating when the train tracks fall apart.”

Acknowledge Feelings with Writing
“Oh no! We don’t have the ingredients we need. Let’s make a shopping list.”
“You really want that underwater Lego set. Let’s write that down on your wish list.”

Acknowledge Feelings with Art
“You seem so sad.”
(Draw a stick figure with big tears or simply let them draw how they feel).

Give in Fantasy What You Can’t Give in Reality
“I wish we had a million, billion more hours to play.”

Acknowledge Feelings with Short Sounds
“Ugh!”  “Mmmm.”  “Ooh.”   “Huh.”

After you have acknowledged the feelings, you can move on to the problem. Summarize the issue with “The problem is …” Then you can work out possible solutions with your child.

All feelings must be accepted. Some actions must be limited!
 

Resources: How to Talk So Little Kids Will Listen: A Survival Guide to Life with Children Ages 2 - 7 by Joanna Faber and Julie King, Scribner Press, 2017. Easily purchased on Kindle.
 

Please contact your child’s counselor if you have any questions, issues or concerns we can support with. Please also reach out to Ms. Hinton if you have any questions or concerns about your Grade 3-5 child’s transition to modified full on campus learning this week. We are available to support your child and family.

💻  Conference Day

 Friday, March 26 

Please contact your child’s counselor if you would like to meet over Webex on Conference Day.
 

🧒  ES Placement for Fall 2021

 February 10  -  April 12 

• Creating class lists is a complex process that requires great thought and time involving many perspectives. As professional educators, we invest a great deal of effort in the development of homeroom class rosters to create the best learning situations for all our students and classes.
• A request for a specific teacher will not be considered. However, a request to be thoughtful about a child's learning style will be considered as part of our process. Please fill in the form below to tell us about factors unique to your child’s needs. Please do not request friends by name. We make every effort to place each student with a friend but cannot guarantee your child will be placed with specific friends.
• All information from this survey is confidential and will only be seen by counselors and administration. Thank you for your partnership!

🥪  Anger: A Secondary Emotion

Ms. Ronan recently did a guidance lesson with the PK - 2 students about anger.

Anger is a secondary emotion. Anger is like a smoke alarm letting you know something is wrong. It can’t tell you the cause of the anger.

As soon as you can calm your body down by slow deep breathing, moving away from the situation or other calming techniques, look for what was under the outside anger layer. We talked about safe ways to express anger and unsafe ways to demonstrate anger.

Common roots of anger are being tired or hungry. Sometimes we have expectations that were not met or are worried about another topic. Some students show anger when they are frustrated at not getting the outcome they wanted on an assignment. At times, anger can bubble up from feeling that something is unfair.

Anger is only a feeling that lets us know “something is not going well”. Looking under the feeling is the best way to dissolve the anger.

We compared anger to the tip of the iceberg and to the bread on the outside of the sandwich.

Resources

The Anger Sandwich

The Very Well Family
7 Ways to Help a Child Cope with Anger

AAS Wellness Page 
 

Please contact your child’s counselor if you have any questions or concerns or if we can support your child in any way. We are available to support your child and family.

🧒  ES Placement for Fall 2021

 February 10  -  April 12 

• Creating class lists is a complex process that requires great thought and time involving many perspectives. As professional educators, we invest a great deal of effort in the development of homeroom class rosters to create the best learning situations for all our students and classes.
• A request for a specific teacher will not be considered. However, a request to be thoughtful about a child's learning style will be considered as part of our process. Please fill in the form below to tell us about factors unique to your child’s needs. Please do not request friends by name. We make every effort to place each student with a friend but cannot guarantee your child will be placed with specific friends.
• All information from this survey is confidential and will only be seen by counselors and administration. Thank you for your partnership!

💚  Wellness

Please see the AAS Wellness Page for resources to support your child and family.

😀  7 Kinds of Rest

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith, a physician, researcher and the author of the book "Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity." says we all need 7 different kinds of rest.

1. Physical rest, both passive (sleeping/napping) or active (yoga, stretching, deep breathing, massage)
   Helps improve the body’s circulation and flexibility.
2. Mental rest (short brain breaks)
   Many teachers incorporate brain break activities into their students' day to ready them for more learning. 
3. Sensory rest (from devices, electronics and screen time)
   Your child should be off all devices at least an hour before bedtime. 
4. Creative rest (Nature, the Arts, or a good book)
   To reawaken the awe and wonder inside each of us. 
5. Emotional rest (The courage to be authentic)
   Talk about how you are really doing to someone who cares.
6. Social rest (in person or virtually)
   Spending time with a good friend or taking a break from socializing 
7. Spiritual rest
   Doing things that give you a sense of purpose or meaning

Sleep alone can’t restore us to the point we feel rested. What type of rest might your kids need that they are not getting enough of? How can you help them incorporate that rest into their week? What type of rest do you need as parents or individuals?

Read and Watch more here
 

Please contact your child’s counselor if you have any questions or concerns or if we can support your child in any way. We are available to support your child and family.

🧒 ES Placement for Fall 2021

 February 10  -  April 12 

• Creating class lists is a complex process that requires great thought and time involving many perspectives. As professional educators, we invest a great deal of effort in the development of homeroom class rosters to create the best learning situations for all our students and classes.
• A request for a specific teacher will not be considered. However, a request to be thoughtful about a child's learning style will be considered as part of our process. Please fill in the form below to tell us about factors unique to your child’s needs. Please do not request friends by name. We make every effort to place each student with a friend but cannot guarantee your child will be placed with specific friends.
• All information from this survey is confidential and will only be seen by counselors and administration. Thank you for your partnership!

💚 Wellness

Please see the AAS Wellness Page for resources to support your child and family.

😀 Action For Happiness

We celebrate mindfulness this month. Mindfulness is something the ES counselors have talked with many classes about in recent months. Mindful moments can help students refocus and center themselves so they are able to be at their best. A mindful moment can also help students before beginning an assessment or presentation.

Action for Happiness writes:  “Let's take the time to pause, breathe and really take in what's all around us. This month we're encouraging you to take some time to look within. Learning to be more mindful and aware can do wonders for our well-being in all areas of life - like the way we eat, the things we notice or our relationships. It helps us get in tune with our feelings and stops us dwelling on the past or worrying about the future - so we get more out of the day-to-day. It can also help us identify what we're grateful for, which has been proven to help boost your happiness levels!”

Download the Action for Happiness Mindful March Calendar and try some of their suggestions with your family. 🙂

DOWNLOAD MINDFUL MARCH CALENDAR

🧒 ES Placement for Fall 2021

 February 10  -  April 12 

• Creating class lists is a complex process that requires great thought and time involving many perspectives. As professional educators, we invest a great deal of effort in the development of homeroom class rosters to create the best learning situations for all our students and classes.
• A request for a specific teacher will not be considered. However, a request to be thoughtful about a child's learning style will be considered as part of our process. Please fill in the form below to tell us about factors unique to your child’s needs. Please do not request friends by name. We make every effort to place each student with a friend but cannot guarantee your child will be placed with specific friends.
• All information from this survey is confidential and will only be seen by counselors and administration. Thank you for your partnership!

💚 Wellness

Please see the AAS Wellness Page for resources to support your child and family.

😀 Action For Happiness

We celebrate mindfulness this month. Mindfulness is something the ES counselors have talked with many classes about in recent months. Mindful moments can help students refocus and center themselves so they are able to be at their best. A mindful moment can also help students before beginning an assessment or presentation.

Action for Happiness writes:  “Let's take the time to pause, breathe and really take in what's all around us. This month we're encouraging you to take some time to look within. Learning to be more mindful and aware can do wonders for our well-being in all areas of life - like the way we eat, the things we notice or our relationships. It helps us get in tune with our feelings and stops us dwelling on the past or worrying about the future - so we get more out of the day-to-day. It can also help us identify what we're grateful for, which has been proven to help boost your happiness levels!”

Download the Action for Happiness Mindful March Calendar and try some of their suggestions with your family. 🙂

DOWNLOAD MINDFUL MARCH CALENDAR

☕️ ES Virtual Parent Coffees

Enjoy the rest of your week and the February Break!

🧒 ES Placement for Fall 2021

 February 10  -  April 12 

• Creating class lists is a complex process that requires great thought and time involving many perspectives.  As professional educators, we invest a great deal of effort in the development of homeroom class rosters to create the best learning situations for all our students and classes.
• A request for a specific teacher will not be considered. However, a request to be thoughtful about a child's learning style will be considered as part of our process. Please fill in the form below to tell us about factors unique to your child’s needs. Please do not request friends by name. We make every effort to place each student with a friend but cannot guarantee your child will be placed with specific friends. The survey is only available for parents whose children are currently in grades PK - grade 4.
• All information from this survey is confidential and will only be seen by counselors and administration. Thank you for your partnership!

💚 Please see the AAS Wellness Page for resources to support your child and family.

❄️ Winter Field Day

February 4 & 5 - Please remember to send your child to school in appropriate winter wear on Thursday and Friday for our days of snow fun.

❗️ Pilot Full On-Campus Learning for Grade 1 & 2 Students

February 8 - We are pleased to share that we would like to pilot having all of our Grade One and Two students in full on-campus learning every day starting next Monday. Some recent research continues to provide evidence indicating a lower risk of COVID spread, with fewer or no symptoms if it is contracted, by younger learners. Our mitigations for safety, no evidence of spread on campus, smaller class sizes in these grade levels, and taking into consideration that for our younger learners the ideal situation is to have them on campus each day instead of a need to have them engage through synchronous learning from home, provides confirmation for taking this next step.

The stamina and level of independence during learning from home has greater challenges for many younger learners and being on campus every day would provide an enhanced balance between safety providing for the interactions and scaffolding that is more effectively provided in person for these students. In addition, Grade One and Two classroom teachers will be re-arranging classroom spaces and will integrate further mitigations in these classrooms before all of these students return to campus. When making family plans, please be mindful of our fluid circumstances during this pandemic that may result in last minute notifications of a transition in Learning Pathways for a class, grade level or division as we continue to strive to keep our students and school community as safe as possible.

As a reminder to our families and students, please adhere to health guidelines that protect all individuals:

• We understand the challenges of self-isolation, families should be maintaining their social bubbles and not mixing with others
• For the greatest mitigation, wear masks at all times when outside your home, and particularly if  you  are not able to socially distance (grocery store and other essential activities)
• We recommend that social gatherings including playdates, sports outside of AAS, or parties outside of family bubbles, should not be participated in
• If your child is not feeling well or has any symptoms, please keep them at home and contact the AAS Health Office
• If a family member or student receives a COVID test result, please send this to the AAS Health Office
• Everyone should wash their hands regularly for at least 20 seconds.
• If your child is identified as a close contact, either from being on campus or due to an event off-campus, he/she must have a PCR test according to our protocols and obtaining this test as soon as possible is recommended to best manage transmission within our community taking the following into consideration:
  • This gives prompt identification of positive cases who may be asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic as these individuals can still transmit the infection to others
  • This helps us identify further close contacts and to minimize further exposures
  • This allows AAS to continue to monitor any impact a positive case on our campus might have
• Please follow our AAS COVID Response Flowchart
• Please remember to accurately complete the Daily Health Pass each morning and follow the response flowchart if any answers are “yes” to these questions