Biweekly Newsletter

Important Notices Happy Chinese New Year! See you back at school Wednesday January 25th.

If you have not received your online library login and password, please contact recep-

tion.

Thank you for your enthusiastic CCA response. All CCAs are full. Soccer CCA will con-

tinue on Wednesday January 25th.

Term 3 withdrawal deadline is Monday January 30th.

Fieldtrip to The Little Newton Learning Centre is on Friday February 3rd. Please return

permission slips and payment by Wednesday January 25th.

Look out for the PTC (Parent Teacher Conference) letter and schedule in early Febru-

ary. PTCs will be held on Friday February 24th. There will be no school on that day.

A big welcome to our new Year One student Tom Lee.

BIWEEKLY

NEWSLETTER January 9th — 20th , 2012

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Jessica Rosenblatt joined the faculty of Learn Different Academy on January 9, 2012 as School Counselor. In her role as Counselor, Jessica is responsible for 1) assisting kids in dealing with behavioral or learning issues that need special attention; 2) conducting guidance lessons on important character-building top-ics and life skills such as understanding one’s feelings, perseverance, ac-ceptance of others, etc; 3) supporting the teachers in developing further means to address children’s special needs; and 4) engaging with parents to provide feedback on their child’s development and discuss any of their questions or concerns. Jessica received her Masters Degree in School Counseling from the University of Central Florida and has extensive experience working with young children. Jessica received her Bachelors Degree in Early Childhood Education at the Uni-versity of Vermont and taught at Park Lake Elementary School, a pre-school in Orlando, Florida for five years. While at Park Lake, the school won the prestig-ious Reading Readiness Award each of the years that Jessica taught at the school, which it had never won prior to Jessica joining the school. In addition to her other counseling responsibilities, Jessica will also work with our stu-dents’ on improving their reading capabilities. We welcome Jessica to the Learn Different family and encourage you to make contact with her if you have anything you would like to discuss.

Ms. Jessica will also be helping out in Ms. Ashley’s class as we have had to bid a

sad farewell to Co-teacher Ms. Dani. Thank you for your efforts at LDA. We will

miss your enthusiasm and infectious smile but we wish you the very best!

SCHOOL COUNSELOR JOINS LEARN DIFFERENT ACADEMY!

We are learning about

shapes in Maths and

are using observations

to find shapes in the

world around us. We

are also learning about

the solar system and

the planets. In addi-

tion to all the great

things we have been

learning about, this

week is sadly the last

After the long holiday

break, we are so excit-

ed to have the boys

back for term 3! After

a few days of revision

and catching up with

our friends, we dove

right into our new IPC

unit, ‘Toys’! This

should be a really fun

unit for the next 12

weeks.

Page 2

We have had a fun and exciting two weeks in school. In the first week, we were pleased to wel-comed Guy and Tom L. to our Year One Class. It was a very smooth transition for both stu-dents. For the first few days we allocated time to get to know one another and become famil-iar with our classroom rules, schedules and routines. The second week was more de-manding as the student’s en-tered the full routine. Now we are back to normal with the presence of Luca and Ashwin who just returned from their extended holiday. Monday was the Entry Point for the new IPC unit ‘’Inventions and Machines’’. Each student brought in a favourite toy, ma-chine or invention for show and

week for Ms Dani at

Learn Different Acad-

emy. We are sad to

see her go but wish

her the best with her

new home and new

baby that’s on the

way!

We had a lovely Chi-

nese New Year assem-

bly and all the stu-

RECEPTION TWO , MS. ASHLEY ’S CLASS

tell. Each student had the oppor-tunity to talk about how to use the machine or invention, how it was discovered, who invented it, where it was originally manufac-tured, and why they chose it as their favorite toy. Surprisingly, our young learners agreed that it would be fun to pretend to go to school with the absence of technology and ma-chines, just like people did during Stone Age (as they referred to it)! While we were outside, our young explorers sat on the stumps underneath the shaded tree and made believe that it was our classroom. Instead of using a pen or pencil, the students were asked to write their notes using materials that may have been used hundreds of years ago. Luca filled in his paper using a muddy stone which surprisingly, works best. He was able to write his name and answer clearly on the paper. Some explorers used sticks or twigs as their pens with mud or soil as ink. Tom suggested that we should try to make a fire using a survival method, just like our ancestors did. We rubbed sticks

YEAR ONE , MS. KATRINA’S CLASS

students and teach-

ers surprised me

with a beautiful

birthday cake and

card. Thank you and

enjoy the holiday!

them to learn to use non- stand-ard units of measurement like paper clips, pencils, blocks etc., as well as learning to use the Stand-ard Metric Units of measurement. Surprisingly, our Year One Mathe-maticians were able to gauge the length, width and even calculate the perimeter of an object that they found at school and with things from home. They all seemed to find this challenging, but fun and interesting too. Learn-ing Metric units such as inches, centimeters, meters, grams and kilograms and finding real masses of a particular object kept every-one’s attention. In Literacy, we are learning how to read words with /kn/,writing sen-tences using their own /kn/ words, answering questions about them, and reviewing adjectives. To cap off the week, we had a special Chinese New Year celebra-tion hosted by Laoshi and Ms. Nicky. All had a great time with students bringing home their lucky golden coins and other goodies. On behalf of the Year One class, we wish you a joyous year of the Dragon. Happy Chinese New Year!

together for a few minutes with dried leaves below, but it didn’t work. Now everyone realizes it is harder than they originally thought and you need special tools and techniques to make it work.

Everyone had a great time and we hope this made them realize how much we depend on complex technology that we perhaps take for granted now. The next day we tried the magnifying glass to cre-ate fire. With the right amount of sunlight and some dried leaves, the experiment worked perfectly. Of course, it all happened under strict supervision! In our Maths section we concen-trated on learning how to measure length and finding the mass of an object. The objectives were for

Page 3

RECEPTION TWO , MS. KARINA’S CLASS

RECEPTION ONE , MS. GETTY ’S CLASS

In Literacy the children reviewed the sounds they learnt previously and prac-tised using finger-spell then reading for speed. In Maths, the children ex-plored the world of shapes and built special construc-tions from basic shapes. They also learnt to write the shape names and to identify features in basic shapes. Now they know that a square and a dia-mond have four sides that are the same in lengths while a rectangle has two short sides and two long sides. This week ended with a special festive assembly to celebrate Chinese New Year. The children came in Chinese costumes or wear-

ing red and enjoyed a lovely assembly led by Ms. Nicky and Laoshi.

After the assembly, we all gathered to celebrate Ms. Ashley’s birthday and to sadly say goodbye to Ms. Dani. You will be dearly missed, Ms. Dani. Happy Chinese New Year!We wish you a prosper-ous new year filled with boundless happiness and good luck!

the break was so long, we decided to review some of the things we learned last term. In Literacy, we re-viewed our letter sounds, and some of our c-v-c words. Some of the students are also starting to form their own sentences using the words that they learned. In Maths, we reviewed sub-traction and addition prob-

cond week of school we started to harvest even more information about the children’s favourite toys. They were busy pre-paring for a presentation and did a marvellous job at presenting the facts about their toys in front of the Year 1 class. Well done, everyone!

We are back in school after a long holiday! We shared our holiday stories and the stu-dents liked talking about where they went and what they saw during their trips. This conversation blended nicely into our new IPC unit “Toys”, Yeeeeey! The stu-dents each brought in their favourite toy for show and tell. They were asked to de-scribe the toy, and explained what makes it special to them. We also learned what kinds of materials they are made of (wood, plastic, cotton, metal, etc.) Back to school means, back to more learning too. Since

The first two weeks of 2012 had been coloured with fab-ulous stories about the stu-dents’ Christmas and New Year’s holidays. The chil-dren, especially those who are new to our class, have been settling in well to Re-ception 2 . We are very hap-py to have Adam, Anoushka and Harsha join us this year. The first week of school was filled with lots of opportuni-ties for children to get to know each other. While talking about likes and dis-likes, the children brought into the discussion their fa-vourite toys and games. Alt-hough we hadn’t officially started the new IPC unit on “Toys”, the children are al-ready very knowledgeable about this subject. The se-

lems. We also moved up to measurements, starting with length. The students had a blast measuring the length of objects around the classroom by just using blocks/cubes (non-standard unit). And then compared which one is the longest and shortest.

We ended the week with our Chinese New Year As-sembly. We talked about how the New Year is cele-brated around the world, we played a fun game and watched movies related to Chinese New Year. We also got to take home some treats. Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Every child deserves the right to be taught in the way he or she learns best!