Dear parents,
Good morning, I hope that this email finds you well! I am so happy to be back at school after a week of professional learning in Bangkok, Thailand at the EARCOS Leadership Conference. It was wonderful to connect with other educators from the East Asian region, learning from one another, and meeting some highly respected educators in the field. I am, however, excited to be back, seeing the smiling faces of all the students today during our kick-off to Literacy and Culture Week!
This week is a special one for our school as we are celebrating Literacy and Culture Week! I loved seeing all of the students dressed up in their pajamas yesterday and am excited to see all of the amazing activities the homeroom teachers have planned to foster a love of reading in the students. Until Wednesday, a book fair has been set up where children have the opportunity to buy new books, but there is also a book swap – students may bring books from home they don’t want anymore and change to another one. This week is not only about what we can do at school to celebrate reading, it can extend to the home! What will you do this week to make reading fun? Here is an idea that was created by some of our teachers:
Of course, the day that the students love the most is “Book Character Day” on Friday, where they get to dress up as a character from a book they have read. I enjoy seeing the creativity and it’s so much fun trying to guess the book they are from.
Literacy and Culture Week is one way that we are striving to achieve our #1 schoolwide goal of supporting students to develop their competencies in the XLIS language of instruction (English). Another way we plan to do this is through professional development for our teachers and TA’s.
This Wednesday, November 1st, we have an early release day for students at 2:30. Buses will leave at this time and all students need to be picked up. For the rest of the afternoon, teachers will join workshops for professional learning. In addition, we will have a two-day Professional Development Workshop on November 14th and 15th this month that is “Agency, Action and Engagement” and is led by the IB. Please note there will not be regular classes for students on these two days.
I am looking forward to celebrating literacy with the students this week! I’d love to hear how you plan to do the same at home! As always, I am happy to receive feedback from you, so I encourage you to reply to this email to let me know how things are going. Remember to include your child’s name so I know who I am communicating with and if you have a “qq” email address you will need to type my email in (not just reply).
Happy November!
Sincerely,
Marly Song
Primary Principal
marly.song@xalis.com
