Making connections with the world we live in A message from the Headteacher As a short week comes to an end, winter is most definitely upon us.
The Early Years section has been quiet without Kindergarten in school, however we are ending the week knowing that Kindergarten students will be back in their classroom from Monday! Our warmest thanks go to our parents for their support and cooperation during this period as well as to all of our staff, who work tireless daily to ensure there is minimal disruption to our students' studies and routines.
Special events are being held for in Middle School and Elementary students are busily working on various winter activities, many of which are alternatives to traditional end-of year events. This year may be different from those that we know, but our community of learners are seizing every opportunity to make it as special as possible. In this newsletter you can read about a unique storytelling project that I hope many Elementary families will get involved in during the holidays. More information will be shared with students next week. In the meantime, I wish you a peaceful and safe weekend and I hope you enjoy the last week of term.
Mr Thompson A creative family project for the holidays!
Elementary School families are warmly invited to take part in a wonderful storytelling initiative during the winter holidays. Little Night Stars is the first community where parents and children can create and share their bedtime stories.
During the course of next week, Elementary students will receive their own Little Night Stars pack, which they can take home with them and start creating, writing and illustrating as many stories as they like, in any language!
The packs will contain a notebook that can be used as a starting place for you to create stories together, whether it is fiction or a narration of real events. We would like to collect as many stories as possible in different languages to share with school communities around the world.
If you need a bit more help, browse the finished stories on the website: www.littlenightstars.com or get inspired by browsing the Instagram account @littlenightstarsofficial.
- Return your notebook to the school office after the winter holidays.
- We will arrange an exhibition in-school and online of the stories handed in.
Happy storytelling! This week in Transition
Reading allows us to be transported from our own world to another. We can become immersed in the lives of fictional characters and learn about different cultures. In Transition, our goal is to motivate children to want to read so they will practise reading independently and, thus, become fluent readers. This happens in class, children enjoy sharing books and recall stories they know, using finger puppets, stick puppets and props. Take part in the Eco Council's December Challenge!
Dates for your Diary
Friday 18th December Last day of term 1. Lessons finish at the end of the school day
Thursday 7th January 2021 School re-opens. First day of term 2
Tuesday 12th January 2021 Virtual Parent Reps meeting
MIDDLE & HIGH follows Week 2 timetable 14th to 18th Dec
A message from the Middle & High Dear RIS community,
With a short week this week, we have had a quick return to normality for our middle school students. I am delighted to hear about our success at last week's Globeducate Academic Olympics, where our team did brilliantly, scooping top prize for the Science category. Well done to all involved.
As we enter our last week of school, i will be sure to keep you all up to date with any planned changes to contact times for our older students, after our return in January. This will be communicated via a separate letter. For students in years 7-9, life will continue as normal.
Have a lovely weekend.
Mr Mongare, Principal Middle and High School Year 12 dive into behavioural Economics
Year 12 IB Economics students have studied the latest Economic theory on 'Behavioural Economics' by Richard Thaler (Nobel Prize 2017). They have learned the difference between Homo Economicus and Homo Sapiens, the Nudge Theory and Choice Architecture. Reading some of their analyses (Jana, David, Ludovica and Alessandro, you have to agree with me that we have some promising economists among us! Insightful, creative and compassionate: Year 8 deepen their knowledge of slavery
Over the last few weeks, Ms Mycroft's Year 8 History class has been learning about Slavery as part of the 'Empires' module. The Empires curriculum only briefly covers slavery, so to enable students to understand more about such an important part of history, the class looked at the topic in depth.
IAL students find cross-cultural commonalities in winter festivities
In the last couple of weeks Ms Parnanzone's Year 8 Chinese and Year 9 IAL students have learned about the various festivities that occur in winter, such as Diwali, Hanukka (or Chanukkah), Christmas, Yule and, later on in January/February, the Chinese New Year.
A common feature of these events is the celebration of light, which seems to be a powerful tool and symbol of regeneration, rebirth, victory over darkness and evil. The students have made a sort of winter tree using branches collected from our school garden and decorated it with cards, ribbons, images about the various celebrations and small bags for a very creative Advent Calendar with Chinese dates on each of them.
Mr Conway's Year 7 Geography students have been learning about two different biomes this term: tropical rainforests and the Arctic tundra. Students have learned about the different plant and animal species, as well the native tribes, in these biomes. Students have then built on this knowledge by looking at different human activities such as logging, oil drilling and mining, and how these are impacting on the biodiversity, tribes and landscape of these biomes.
They have then taken this knowledge and expanded upon it using research, to create sophisticated written reports which describe the extent of the damage we as humans are causing in these locations and what we can do to help!
To learn more about this topic students in 7B were able to join in an exclusive Globeducate online meeting with the Education Manager at the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) Matt Larsen-Daw. Photo: Sasha and his report on how human activities are affecting biomes. |