Dear Parents,
I hope that this email finds you well! I hope that most of you were able to join us for the Summer Fair on Saturday and that you and your family had a lovely time! It’s absolutely wonderful to have events like this that allow the whole XLIS community to come together to celebrate.
We are now into our final four weeks of the 2022-2023 academic year! Our teachers have been very busy assessing students reading, writing, mathematics and English proficiency. I am happy to say that with our current programs in place – such as using the Daily 5 Framework, Guided Reading and IXL for supplementary practice – on average, our students are showing improvement in all areas. Thank you for all of the support you have been providing them at home. Only when the home and school work closely together will our students have the best chance of success. Our focus on our first school-wide goal of students demonstrating improvement in XLIS’ language of instruction (English) and our fourth goal of strengthening communication and collaboration between school and home are directly impacting the success of our students.
I am very excited to be in Shanghai this week on an ASC WASC school review team. Just last year, XLIS received its accreditation and now members of the XLIS team have the opportunity to serve on a review team elsewhere. This is excellent professional development for me as I learn how other schools are implementing their programs and how they focus on student learning. In addition, it highlights many of the things we do well at XLIS. I will return to Xi’an on Thursday evening.
This week, on Thursday the 25th, we have a great Parent Workshop led by Mr. Ben and Mr. Boel that will focus on the online platforms we use in our primary school. They lead you through the features of Seesaw, IXL and RAZ-kids, and answering any questions you may have about them. If you attend, please have your child’s username and password for these platforms so you can sign into your child’s account to explore! Next week we will have three more workshops – Assessment in the PYP, Learning Mandarin in the Early Years and Transdisciplinary Teaching. Registration links will be sent by our PR, we hope you can attend!
When I return to Xi’an, I will start meeting with our grade-level teams to start our class arrangement process for the 2023-2024 academic year. Please understand that in order to create balanced classes our teachers discuss several criteria: nationality, gender, social dynamics (friendships); behavior, attitude toward learning, and English language ability. We try to ensure each child has a friend with them and teachers will separate children who do not get along or work together well. Unfortunately, we are not able to accommodate special requests for class placements as we have many factors to take into consideration. Please be confident that our teachers have the children’s best interests in mind with regards to their academic and social-emotional well-being when completing this process.
As always, I look forward to hearing from you! Please contact me at any time with feedback on your child’s year.