PRIMARY PRESS

MAY

FEATURING:From the H OP

Year Level Pages

Special ists' Updates

Counsel lor s Corner

Learn ing Suppor t

YEAR ONE IN ACTION

assemblyearth day

HEAD OF PRIM ARYWelcome to our May edition of the Primary Press. We are past the halfway mark for Term 2 already with only 4 weeks remaining until the break.

Viruses have plagued us all these past few weeks and have left very few untouched. Staff and students have been extremely unwell but have worked tirelessly as the great team that they are, to avoid disruptions to the student's learning. Thank you everyone for working together to keep primary running eff iciently, teachers and parents alike. We are hoping that the sickness will soon be behind us all and we are all f ighting f it once more.

These past six weeks have been f il led with awesome learning experiences including many excursions to various locations around Suva. From visit ing farms to museums, students have been involved in their own learning, formulating questions, investigating widely and then building new understandings, meanings and knowledge. Excursions provide students the opportunity to acquire some background knowledge of a new topic. This helps them to formulate questions that have true meaning for them. It also allows teacher to assess what students already know so that they can

plan accordingly. Excursions are a valuable part of the inquiry cycle and our PYP curriculum. Many thanks to the parents who also assist on excursions. It is much appreciated.

Our swim team have been busy training in readiness for the upcoming nationals. The competit ion dates have been postponed to a later t ime which will allow the team to better prepare for their races. We wish them well in thei r preparations and thank all involved, including Ms Amele and Mr Petero for their great job as coaches and organisers.

I take this time to also thank our parent representatives who have nominated themselves to assist each class with various activit ies throughout the year, including our upcoming Fun Day . They are also busy helping teachers to gather classroom help in regards to reading and groupwork during the school day. We also hope to include them soon in our bid to beautify the primary grounds including the painting of our iron panel fences and other ideas that have been brought to us by parents, teachers and students. Vinaka vakalevu to those involved and we look forward to working with you for the remainder of the school year. Thanks

also to Lorraine Rimmer who is coordinating this terrif ic group of parents.

In regards to the painting and offers of help to do this, we will be in touch now that we are being blessed with f iner weather. We are in the process of acquiring outdoor paint to get started so if you have any contacts or even leftovers at your own houses that we could util ise, we would love it! Bright colours will be needed to carry out our mural ideas. Our bottlecaps are now starting to come in also in readiness for our bottlecap mural planned for one of the bare white walls near our junior toilets. We can then transfer the mural once our new building is completed and put somewhere pride of place in the new environment. All of our artwork we hope to save and util ise in our new primary landscape in the future. Volunteers, we will be in touch very soon.

With the end of the semester close to being here, we will be preparing our new Primary Activity List for Semester 2. Most

activit ies run for one semester only, particularly those organised by our classroom teachers and teacher assistants. Sports such as soccer, hockey and netball run all year round. Our outside providers also continue into the new semester. Some new and exciting activit ies planned include a Science Club, a Coding Club, Cooking and a Junior Athletics Club. Something to look forward to next term.

Teachers have been busily writ ing end term 2 reports for all students of which will be available in the last week of term. Reports will be sent home with students on the Wednesday of Term 2. There will be an opportunity to discuss these reports formally if required in early Term 3 at a parent teacher interview.

We welcome all of our new families that have joined us this term. If you are leaving us end term, please let us know.

Happy reading!

Kind regards, Karen

TERM TWO IN YEAR ONE SO FAR........."

UNIT O F INQUIRY

Year 1 have had a busy term so far. We completed our unit of inquiry on ?Where we are in place and time? with an enjoyable excursion to The Koronivia Farming Research Centre. We were amazed by the dif ferent examples of technology in use at the farm including a massive machine for making animal feed, a combine harvester, a fully functioning science lab, and various other machines for planting, looking after and harvesting crops. We have now moved on to a new unit of inquiry entit led ?How we share the planet? in which we have been learning about The Water Cycle and other f inite resources. We even managed to create a mini water cycle in our classroom without getting wet! Our whole school assembly performance f itted nicely into this unit of work as we begin to consider how we can manage dif ferent resources with sustainability. We spent this week recording each time we used something made of plastic or paper to build our awareness of the prevalence of these materials in our lives. Our next job will be consider what we should do about it and put our ideas into action.

LITERACY

We have been following the Jolly Phonics Program for learning and revising phonics and spelling patterns in Year 1. The children are enjoying the stories and interactive activit ies to practise their reading and letter formation skil ls. The focus letters form the basis for our spelling program which began earlier this term. The home reading program is continuing as it did last term and we now have some parents volunteering on a regular basis to read with the children before 8:00am at school, which is a great addition to our reading program!

We have focused on identifying dif ferent parts of speech in the form of verbs, nouns (including proper nouns) and adjectives recently. The children are becoming more confident with this aspect of language.

The children wrote their own narratives at the beginning of this term as part of their unit of inquiry and did a fabulous job of thinking of solutions for the problem in their stories. They are now working on writ ing a detailed recount of their holiday, focusing on remembering capitals and full stops and providing details (through the use of adjectives and interesting verbs) to make it fun to read.

NUMERACY

So far this term in Maths, we have been practising addition and subtraction and working on using dif ferent ways to handle data. We used breakfast cereal to help us understand the concept of subtraction (eating it is the same as subtracting it). Keeping with the food theme in maths, everyone enjoyed f inding out about the dif ferent colours of M&Ms in a packet and graphing their f indings (then eating their data)! It was also fun to ask everyone a question of their own choosing and f ind out which answer was the most popular. We are looking forward to working with shapes over the next couple of weeks.

Growing is no easy task. Between the ages of 2 and 18, kids will grow f ive to six times their starting weight and height. Where does all this growth come from? Food!

Breakfast, long known as the most important meal of the day, comes after a long night of sleep during which energy stores are used up. The word literally refers to breaking the fasting period of the prior night. Skipping breakfast puts kids at a serious disadvantage in the growing game. Being hungry at school is no good for grades, either. The reasons for skipping breakfast are easy to understand: getting to school is hectic and cutting out breakfast might save a few minutes. Kids say they aren't hungry, and teenagers who are watching their weight may believe that skipping a

meal will help them lose weight. But a recent review of 36 studies comparing kids who eat breakfast to those who don't found that eating breakfast has universal benefits on kids' behaviour, school performance and overall health. Grades and test scores were higher among breakfast-eaters, attention was more focused and even body weight benefited, with kids who ate breakfast being more likely to have a normal body weight.

After the Easter holidays the children returned to our second UOI on Body systems. The children were working on their layered art pieces to show the interrelatedness between two body systems and introducing a disease that can affect one system and bring the whole body to fail.

To take action on this particular UOI the children

decided to host a healthy breakfast, where they could exhibit their art pieces and also pass on their understanding about how to keep your body systems working together for good health.

On Thursday the 28th of April, we started the day with a litt le yoga practice followed by a shared breakfast. The dif ferent houses brought everything one needs for a great start to the day. We had great food including high f iber cereals and bread, milk and fruit, eggs and some international dishes that had us asking for more.

We sometimes forget that in order to be healthy as a whole person, we need to make sure we feed our soul too. We think we also managed that by meeting new people, coming closer as a community and caring for each other by bringing food to the table.

It was a great experience and we hope to host more events where we can get together and share our learning journey!

Team 4

RISE AND SHINE WITH YEAR FOUR

COUNSELLOR'S CORNER

Kate PassinBula from the counsellor!

On the Mondays and Wednesdays that I am here, I?ve been busy in years 1/2, 2, and 3 implementing the Stop, Think, Do Curriculum. (Last term I worked with reception and year 1). Currently, we are focusing on the dif ference between aggro, weak, and cool strategies when problems arise. Here are some examples from each type of problem solving strategy:

The Cool way is to:

- Speak in a friendly but f irm way

- Stand straight, use eye contact

- Stay calm

- Ignore, compromise

- Feel okay, in control, confident

The Weak way is to:

- Mumble

- Look down, slump over

- Give in, cry, sulk, whinge

- Tell on others before trying to work it out yourself , dob

- Feel unconfident, upset

The Aggro way is to:

- Yell, abuse

- Stand too close, threaten

- Push, hit, kick

- Tease, blame, put down others

- Feel angry, out of control

The kids have learned that before you can even think about your strategies, you must f irst stop and calm your body down. We?ve discussed many ways to keep cool when we feel upset. Here are few you may f ind useful at home:

Ways to calm down:

Walk away

Take deep belly breathes, breathing in through your nose and out of your mouth

Count to 10 slowly

Tighten and relax your muscles from head to toe

Get a drink of water

Scribble a picture

Write in a journal

Talk to an adult about your feelings

Make your anger cooling by running, walking, or exercising

Go to (or imagine) a place you feel relaxed and comfortable

In addition to Stop, Think, Do, I have been working with the girls? wellness group, seeing individual students, consulting with teachers, meeting with all of the new students, training the student ambassadors, co-developing a student protection policy, and assisting friends with conflicts. If you have any concerns, please feel free to reach out to me!

Vinaka!

Kate Passin

School Counsellor

ISS Primary 6

You can begin bringing in items now. Items required:

Washed tin cans ? any size

Glass jars ? any size

Squeezy Sauce bottles

1 litre soft drink bottles

600ml soft drink bottles

600ml water bottles

2 litre soft drink bottles

Corks

Yoghurt containers (Small, Medium and Bucket)

Ice-cream containers

Scraps of fabric, wool, buttons, lace, ribbon, felt etc

Next term Ms MacKellar will be offering an afternoon Science Club! To help make this work we need PRIMARY to start recycling some everyday items from home. Please wash out any containers before bringing to school.

All items can be delivered to either Ms MacKellar?s 1/2m classroom, or to the foyer of Ms Whittaker?s off ice.

Thank you for your help.

From the children and Ms MacKellar.

SCIENCE CLUB IS COMING.......

Trip to the Fiji Museum to investigate Inventions

With the Central Idea f irmly implanted in their thinking, the Year 2 students (with the company of Year 1 / 2 M) set off for the Fiji Museum last Wednesday to f ind out more about inventions. Our students were fascinated by the number of inventions on display at the museum which were brought from India having already learnt a bit about Fiji?s history, in particular, that of the Girmityas or Indentured Labourers who came to Fiji f rom India over 100 years ago.

The visit had the added advantage of allowing the Year 2s to see the many traditional Fijian canoes or ?Waqa ni Viti? on display. Year 2 students had learnt all about the camakau, takia and drua in Fijian Studies during our last inquiry into the solar system which partly focused on traditional navigation. Our students were thril led to share their knowledge with a visit ing reporter from the Fiji Times who featured our trip in the Kaila! section of Wednesday 18th May?s paper.

An inquiry into Inventions

?Inventions create change that is ref lected in our daily l ives? is the Central Idea for our new inquiry into Where We Are in Time and Place. When asked what this central idea means, some of the students responses were as follows:

?Inventions help us to have a better life. They are changing things that are old.? Andie

?When you want something new, it changes something old.? Will

?Inventions change our lives every day.? Mohamed

Over the last few weeks we have been asking ourselves, who are inventors? Why do people create inventions? And what impact do inventions have on society? We have begun to investigate famous inventors and track changes made to inventions using time lines in class. We hope to investigate inventions further as well as create a few inventions of our own during the course of our inquiry.

WHAT'S NEW IN YEAR 2

PAGE 6

year 2 is in the newskaila!

FUN FOOD TIPSby 4H

Breakfast is my favourite meal of the day. I often watch the food tube channel of Jool Oliver. She looks after a famous chef and four kids, so I thought I would share my inspiration for a great breakfast with you.

My favourite breakfast video at the moment: ht tps:/ /www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-cFK2UKb_s

from Ms Helena

Connor's Homemade Pancakes Serves 5

Ingredients: 6 eggs

2 cups of f lour

1 1/2 cups milk

Tablespoon of butter

Instructions: First put all the eggs in a bowl then add the f lour and mix until it looks like a ball. After mixing while adding milk steadily until all the ingredients are in semi-liquid form.

Cooking: pour some of the mixture into a pan that you greased with the butter. Medium heat on he stove. Each side of the pancake should take about 1 minute to cook varied on taste and heat.

Variations: you can serve them sweet with seasonal fruit or with hearty bacon and eggs.

Nathan's Banana Date Logs

Makes 16 balls

Ingredients:

1 small banana

1 tablespoon of icing sugar

100g chopped cooking dates

4 tablespoons desiccated coconut

50g plain sweet biscuit

4 table spoons of drinking chocolate

Step 1

Peel the banana and break it into small pieces. Put the pieces in the bowl, use a fork to mash them. Shif t the icing sugar and mix in the date and the desiccated coconut.

Step 2

Put the biscuit in a plastic bag and fold the end over. Use a roll ing pin to crush them into f ine crumbs. Stir the crushed biscuits into the mixture.

Step 3

Wash and dry your hands. Take a small spoonful of the mixture and roll them into 16 balls Flatten them and shape them into a logs about 2,5 com

Step4

Sprinkle the drinking chocolate on a plate. Roll the logs in the drinking chocolate on a plate. Roll the logs in the drinking chocolate to coat them completely. Put them into paper sweet cases and put them in the refrigerator for 30 mins.

W ar m i n g up w i th M s Am el e befor e ou r PSPE l esson s

M other s Day cel ebr at i on s w i th Dr . M ar sden , Son n y

an d Dr agon

A com bi n ed m or n i n g tea cel ebr at i on for M other s Day

May Greetings to you all.

The highlight for us this month was having our Mothers come and share morning tea with us to celebrate Mother?s Day.

Monday mornings we begin our day with Ms Amele, Mr Petero and Reception for Personal, Social and Physical Education.

We then have Hindi Studies with Guri Gi (teacher).

Tuesday mornings we have music with Mr Tim.

While Secondary was away having their swimming carnival, we went with our parachute to their hard court.

From the Early Childhood 1 and Discovery Team,

Ms Fariah, Ms Josephine and Ms Jacqui.

DISCOVERY AND EARLY CHILDHOOD 1 IN ACTION!

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"W or k i n g together th r ough fun an d p l ay!

Shor t an d l on g soun ds w i th M r Ti m !

Lear n i n g to coun t i n H i n d i w i th Gur i Gi .

Year 3 students have been busy leaning about Forces and Energy. Students have been exploring how force is applied, properties of materials and how the use of force helps to make our work easier. A lot of learning has taken place in Music with Mr Tim where he has incorporated the teaching of forces in the use of musical instruments and voice.

Students are particularly excited about experiments such as the airplane challenge, launching balloon rockets, marbles, cars and are applying skil ls learned in Maths to measure distances in these science activit ies.

Working in teams for students with dif ferent leaning needs has been a great experience for all for there is evidence of students demonstrating the learner prof ile attributes and the PYP attitudes.

MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOUYEAR THREE

1/2M MARVELLOUS MUSINGS

by authorRecently we have been learning all about the solar system and how the way it works affects us on Earth. We were all excited to learn that a month is as long as it is because that is about how long it takes the Moon to orbit the Earth, and a year is around 365 days because that is how long Earth takes to orbit our sun. The stars stil l shine during the day. We just can?t see them. The sun does not go down and the Earth spins on its axis to create day and night! We followed the Sun?s movement across the sky, charted the moon phases, and investigated why our shadows where dif ferent heights during the day. A lot of fun was also had testing the forces of air and gravity by making paper helicopters and then parachutes for our toy soldiers which we then dropped them over the balcony. Sadly, Ms MacKellar?s soldier with no parachute didn?t quite make it in one piece. Fortunately all our parachuted soldiers made it safely to the ground. We have now begun a unit of inquiry into ?Where we are in Place and Time? and focusing on investigations. We have been inquiring into what the most important invention ever invented is. What would your answer be. . . . . . .?

This unit includes how the girmityas (indentured labourers) came to Fiji and what items they bought with them. A visit to the museum helped us learn about some of the items the Indian people bought with them and Guru G helped us to see how these things have changed over time. We will now investigate why objects in our daily l ives where invented and how and why they have changed over time.

Most days the children have ?Listen to Reading? time. This is where the children are read to and can hear how phrasing and f luency works to help us understand a text, what expression sounds like, and how to change voices when characters are speaking in a text. This term we have been using our ?Listen to Reading? to focus on giving a retell of each chapter. A retell is a short 2 to 3 sentence summary of the main points of a story and helps with our comprehension. We are now becoming very adept at retells. Ms MacKellar is reading us Matilda by Roald Dahl and it is so exciting we are also plotting our level of excitement on a line graph in our maths books. We can?t wait to hear what happens next in the story!

Thanks to the efforts of a few wonderful mums, we are one step closer to having our ?Friendship Bench?. A request has been put forward for funding to purchase a bench and we are waiting for confirmation that we can go ahead. We can?t wait to get designing and painting the bench for use in our playground. Don?t forget to check out our web page regularly. All the latest newsletters and notices are updated as they come out and the homework is added each week so there can be no ?left my homework at school? excuses! There are also links to StudyLadder and Spelling City to complement the homework activit ies. These sites are also good for rainy Suva weekends as they have a range of fun and engaging games to play while the children are learning.

Finally, we welcome two new students this term to 1/2m, a very warm bula to Elijah and Ciaran who are both from Australia. We love having you in our classroom and being a part of our amazing class!

Ms MacKellar, Mr Gerry, Ms Roshni and 1/2m

We introduce KIDS ATHLETICS into our PSPE Program in term two in order to help build up our children?s skills for athletics. KIDS ATHLETICS is one of the biggest grassroots development programs in the world and is totally dif ferent from the normal adult athletics. The objectives of the program are to make athletics the number one participation sports in schools, to educate kids into sports in general, promote a balanced and healthy lifestyle and attract and sustain the potential sporting stars of tomorrow. It is an attractive, accessible, instructive and exciting athletics program aimed specif ically at children and is a fun team - based competit ion comprising of modif ied athletics games aimed at avoiding early specialization. It offers better fundamental skil l development and adds variety and the kids love it! Teamwork is a basic principle of KIDS ATHLETICS. All running events are performed as relay- or team-races. Likewise, all technical events [jumping/ throwing] are scored as the overall results of team effort. Because all participants must necessarily compete as part of the team, even the less talented children get an opportunity to take part. An individual?s unique contribution to the overall team result reinforces the concept that the participation of each child is to be valued. In accordance with demand for skil l learning, all team members have to compete in several disciplines of each event group [sprinting/ jumping and throwing] to prevent early specialization and support a multi?varied approach to the development of athleticism.

We looked at the RUNNING skil ls in week 1-2 and then we did some activit ies with straight running, zig zag running and running over hurdles, followed by a running competit ion in week 3. We then went on to do JUMPING and HOPPING skil ls l ike jumping and hopping over cones, hurdles and on mats and we are now having our jumping and hopping competit ion in week 6. We then will be looking at THROWING in weeks 8-9 and we are planning to have a big competit ion in week 10 where all the children in the school will showcase their RUNNING, JUMPING/HOPPING AND THROWING in an organized competit ion.

This program also helps to motivate our children to get involved in physical activity and to f ind out on their own the advantages of regular exercise; to encourage children to play in order to promote long?term health; it promotes team building and social interaction and stimulates children to work together and to realize the importance of cooperation. This program is also conducted in such a way as to emphasize the virtue of ?fair play? which only adds to the educational values associated with the program.

ON THE MOVE WITH PSPE

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9

Our school will be taking part in the National Schools swimming competit ion at the end of week 7 [Friday 27th ? Saturday 28th May] at the Aquatic center and forty-nine children have been selected to represent the school.

We have been preparing for this competit ion from week 3 and have conducted training for those children who don?t have a swimming club at the pool every Wednesday and Thursday while children who have their clubs train in their own clubs. We also have a session every Friday morning for the whole team training and team building.

We thank the parents for their cooperation and Miss Liew for her help and guidance.

SWIMMING

Mike: On Thursday we went by bus to Togalevu village. We took off our shoes as a sign of respect before entering the clan leader?s house. Our guide did a ?tama? and also presented a bundle of yaqona roots informing the clan leader of the purpose for our visit. We listened and asked questions.

Rokoseru: I found out that in a Fijian village wealth is shared. Those who have wealth will share it with those who don?t have any.

Baylian: Togalevu was the first village to have a Credit Union which was started by Rev.Fr.Gainey.

Jinqui Cheng: One of the women?s traditional roles is to go into the bush, cut pandanus leaves and prepare them to weave mats.

Jia Sharma: The chief really enjoyed answering our questions. When asked about the advantages of living in a village he said that you don?t really need money to live in the village because there is land to plant food and you don?t have to pay rent.

Priyanshi: Living in a Fijian village is not bad. Everyone works together on village projects. Unity is their strength.

REFLECTIONS OF YEAR FIVE'S EXCURSION TO TOGALEVU VILLAGE

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FIJIANSTUDIES

SPECIAL EVENSTS WITH ECH2

HAPPY MOTHERS DAYParents of ECH1 & 2 joined us at school for a morning tea. The students performed a few songs and presented ther mums (and some dads) their presents to celebrate Mothers Day.

EXCURSION TO FLOWER POWER NURSERYIt is often said that experience is the best teacher. ECH2 went out for a f irst hand look at Mr. Zane's nursery in Lami. We explored the nursery looking into plants, planting seeds, feeding the rooster and much more.

SUPPORT FOR LEARNING Number Fun

Developing number concepts should be fun and can be done in a play based way! There are many ways to make number value visible to our young learners. Here are just some of them.

Resource: Pinterest

Year 5 students have been busy learning and investigating about the relationship between wealth and power, the impact of the distribution of wealth on communities and individuals and the equitable access to resources and opportunities; as part of their current transdiciplinary theme ?How we share the Planet?. A lot of learning has taken place in Fijian Studies with Ms Kasatoka where she has incorporated the teaching of how wealth is distributed within a Fijian Community. We have also util ized the cultural skil ls and knowledge of Ms. Will iams and Ms Torika during these tuning in lessons where they share their own experiences.

Students were particularly excited about our excursion to Togalevu Village, where they had the opportunity to ask questions related to our inquiry to the chief who is the head of the clan in the vil lage. We were so grateful to Mr. Eroni Tauleka for being our spokesperson and interpreter during the excursion. The students were thril led to learn how the chief had the power over the entire vil lage and how he distributed the wealth amongst his people mainly through dialogue and communication. The teachers and students marveled to hear and learn also from the chief how he used his power to help everyone in his vil lage and what wealth meant to him in a Fijian cultural context. The students inquired on the kind of opportunities that they had in the Fijian vil lage and how some cultural practices are dying out due to modern day inf luences and challenges. Students will investigate further their own cultural wealth and make comparisons and connections to a Fijian setting. We look forward to creating skits for our summative task to demonstrate our understanding of our central idea.

On the other hand, we are enjoying learning ?What is Poetry?? and the dif ferent forms of Poetry. Students are working on their poems on how we share the planet on conflicts, resolutions, freedom, and fairness using many literary devices to compose their own poems. It?s amazing to see students working and learning in groups which have brought in a wealth of dif ferent experiences and knowledge to share in our classes. We thank all students who contributed books, magazines and soft toys for the Preschool at Togalevu Village.

EXCITING LEARNING IN YEAR FIVE

9

PRIMARY CHOIR

by mr tim

Our primary choir students are looking forward to launching our first original song and video which is dedicated to victims that suffered the loss of life, properties and livelihood during ?Cyclone Winston?.

We have completed our audio recording and our production team of teachers and students are now focusing on producing a suitable video clip as part of this production.

Our second original song is well underway and we have introduced and have had our Primary students sing and enjoy this song in our Primary assemblies. We hope to have this song titled ?BULA? recorded as well by the end of this term.

We now also have a few year 5 students working on their original song targeting the theme: ?Children? (this is work in progress) and we hope to have these songs introduced to the school in the new future.

WE WILL RISE AGAIN" "

UKELELE CLUBOur Ukulele students and teachers club have grown from strength to strength and after only 4 classes we are now able to play our first tune titled: ?You?re My Sunshine?. This song consists of only three major chords and our ?Uke? players are having fun learning to change chords in between the lyrics of our song as we work on mastering our first tune. Enrollment into this club is now closed until the beginning of next term.

Our year 3 students are on a new journey working with their new UOI focus on Force and Energy; a science and Music focus.

We are currently towards the end of our tuning in phase where students are discovering the presence of ?Force and Energy? as elements of producing sound for all musical instruments.

During our journey we have dissected the anatomy of an upright acoustic Piano and identified the use of push and pull forces within the mechanics of the piano much to the surprise of our students.

We also discovered the art of ?Circular Breathing? , a blowing technique used by most wind instrument players. A performer masters the skill of exhaling and inhaling at the same time to allow the instrument to produce a sustaining drone without interruption. This skill is most commonly used by ?Didgeridoo? players of Australia and to master this skill players need to use push and pull forces by inhaling and exhaling at the same time. We used a cup of water and a straw to experiment how these forces worked and we practiced the art of circular breathing only to later discover that it would take quite a lot of practice or even years to master this ancient skill.

We look forward to having our a guest artist from Australia to share their knowledge with us later in this UOI and we are also anticipating on visiting the ?Fiji Police Band? in our taking action phase to make further connections with our UOI.

SCIENCE AND MUSIC WITH MR. TIM UOI YEAR 3FORCE AND ENERGY

Students pract icing yoga with M s Chandra.

M rs Chandra also showed us the ar t of breath ing and exercise.

Year 3/4B has been busy learning about the Body Systems and Energy in the last couple of weeks. The Body Systems unit f inished on a high note with a healthy breakfast that included parents, siblings and teachers.

Using their layered books for summative assessment, the students confidently shared their learning with their parents in discussing the interrelatedness of two chosen body systems. Their class presentation showed knowledge and skills in answering questions posed to them by parents and peers.

Our unit on Energy is also generating a lot of interest after the three classes visited the Energy Hut at USP. We saw renewable sources of energy tried out in Fiji; eg wind, solar, wave and solar powered cars. Knowledge gathered and learnt from this unit will assist students with their f inal task of creating renewable and sustainable energy on an island.

Body System s

year 3/4bHappenings

WE'VE GOT ATTITUDE!Congratulations to our Commitment award recipients for

March/April

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PYP SELF STUDY - IN READINESS FOR OUR PYP EVALUATION, 2017

ISS primary will undergo an intensive evaluation where we will assess ourselves against the standards and practices set forth by The International Baccalaureate Organization (IB). The self-study is a process of formal ref lection in which the school?s constituents (teachers, students, parents, board members and administrators) honestly evaluate our achievements and ongoing init iatives that enhance the implementation of the IB programme. The self- study evaluation is a common practice in all IB schools. It usually begins a year prior to the actual IB visit. Our self-study begins now and ends around the same time next year. Our visit is scheduled for September, 2017.

For those of you who are new to the IB and to our school, I will take a moment to explain some background information in order to familiarize you with the procedure. Our previous visit was held in 2012. Two IB representatives visited for three days, meeting with all stakeholders (teachers, students, parents, board members and administrators) to verify the school?s self-assessment and to gather evidence in regards to the implementation of the programme. After the visit, a report was provided with commendation, identifying practices that were in place or went beyond the expectations of the programme. It also highlighted areas of the programme that needed further and immediate addressing. An action plan was then created with objectives and monitoring systems to ensure that the school was working towards achieving our aims.

The process of the evaluation visit is conducted in four stages: ·The self-study process, the school visit, the report from the IB and the ref inement of the action plan.

What is the self-study? The self- study is an important process guided by a questionnaire, which involves the whole school assessing the delivery of the PYP programme. The self-study questionnaire is based on the following practices and standards of the IB PYP Programme:

· Section A: Philosophy · Section B: Organization · Section C: Curriculum

Each section has a set of criteria which are measured both by the school and the IB. The self-study should ref lect the results of discussions and ref lections of documented evidence gathered in the process.

How will we be measured? The school is measured against the IB Standards and Practices in its implementation of the programme. We will not be compared to other schools but assessed on the outcome of our self-study questionnaire. The completed questionnaire should ref lect a broad view of the all the members of the ISC community.

How will it be organized? · Groups will be composed of teachers, students, parents, administrators and the council. · Each group will be responsible for answering dif ferent sections of the practices and standards · A time line will be defined of the objectives that will be achieved · Means of how information will be gathered, e.g. meetings, surveys · Resources to be identif ied as necessary

Parental involvement is an important component in the success of the PYP programme?s evaluation process. As we begin to prepare, we will need parent volunteers from every grade level, committed to dedicating their t ime, energy and enthusiasm to this intense process. We are invit ing parents who have been members of our school for more than three years. In conclusion, the process will be a learning experience for all, as we work together to acknowledge our accomplishments, as well as analyze the areas of improvement and growth.

Init ial discussions will be had with primary parent representatives next week to gauge interest before parents are invited from the wider parent community. There will be a survey to accompany the self study which will be emailed out to all parents next term, allowing all to be involved.

hindi studies - namaste

Main pustak part i huu. Ek,ek,ek Munna laya kek, D,do,do,

The ECH 1&2 classes are current ly learning act ion songs about Hindi numbers, while Year 3s are learning the Hindi names of the objects in the classroom. Year 5s are learning to-start up simple conversat ions in Hindi.

Year 2s and Year1/2M are Inquiring into ?Where We are in Time and Place?. The Central Idea is ?Invent ions?- ?AVISHKAAR.? Having already learnt a bit about Fij i?s history on migrat ion of Indians to Fij i , our students then went on excursion to the Fij i Museum. At the Girmit Display they saw some of the of the art i facts brought by the Indentured Laboures (Girmiteers) 137 years ago. We hope the students wil l learn much more as they research how these invent ions (art i facts) have changed over a period of t ime and their impact on today?s society.

Mickey and Sof ia can?t wait to t ry them. Students are fascinated at seeing some of the art i facts displayed in the classroom.

Dhanyavaad - Mrs.Chandra - Hindi Studies

COLLABORATIVE BOTTLE CAP MURAL

Thank you to those of you who are col lect ing plast ic bot t le caps and jar caps f rom home and bringing them to school . We are looking for a wide range of colours to inspire a fantast ic mural l ike the one pictured. Once we have enough caps, students and teachers wil l sketch out the mural design and paint the background. From there we wil l arrange the caps onto the mural and safely dri l l the caps onto the wal l .

We wil l help to beaut ify our school and at the same t ime repurpose/ recycle plast ic caps, keeping them out of our landf i l ls. Plast ic bot t le caps are one of the top 10 items found during marine debris beach clean ups. We wil l need at least 2000 caps so please, keep col lect ing and sending to school !

This term, Reception students are looking at how people value the natural environment. With the Central Idea ?People interact with, use and value the natural environment in different ways? they have been looking at dif ferent artifacts made from natural environment.

Through ICT students have been learning about how to use a Microsoft PowerPoint to create a slideshow. As part of the learning process they will choose an artifact and present it using a PowerPoint slideshow. Finally the students will print their slides and compile a booklet which will later be shared in the classroom. Students have the opportunity to explore and use Windows 8 to enhance their learning during this UOI.

ICT WITH RECEPTION

k odu club

Kodu is a new visual programming language made specif ical ly for creat ing games. It is designed to be accessible for children and enjoyable for anyone. The program is cal led Kodu Game Lab.

If you are interested in creat ing computer games, this club is for you! It wil l start next term on Wednesday af ternoons as part of the af ter school act ivity program.

You wil l need to return your permission sl ip once the act ivity l ist goes home in the f irst week of Term 3. Spaces are l imited to 20 and it is for Upper Primary - Year 3 - 5.

Venue: Mr. Romeo's classroom

Time: 2.50pm - 3.50pm, Wednesdays, Term 3

what is kodu?

8

mr. navin & mr. gerry

coming soon......

Canteen ProceduresAll primary school orders are via the school order/ lunch crate system. Write your order on a piece of paper and place in the named zip lock bag with the correct money (where possible). Students then place their zip lock bag into the class lunch crate in readiness for the teacher assistant to take to the canteen.

Orders are not taken via phone directly to the canteen or through siblings in the middle and high school. Parents will also be unable to place orders directly at the canteen for primary age students.

If a student is late to school, we will ensure that the order reaches the canteen before the lunch break.

When a product is unavailable, the teacher assistant, along with the student involved will visit the canteen to decide on a replacement meal. Please let us know if you child suffers from any allergies. This should be done through primary off ice with the medical alert forms.

Primary age students are unable to visit the canteen without adult supervision before, during and after the school day.

Icebock orders are now done within the primary by our Year 5 students so students are asked to provide their order and money before Friday if they wish to have an iceblock.

The canteen menu changes each term. Please see below Term 2's canteen menu.

International school suva primary primary press edition 3, 2016