IN THIS ISSUE:

We Care therefore

we succeed

• Highlights from 1st Grade, 3rd Grade, 5th Grade & English

• Recap on Upper School Musical Bugsy Malone

dragon news

SCIS Pudong Campus

EXPAND YOUR KNOWLEDGE.GET TO KNOW OTHERS.SHARE IDEAS

Shanghai Community International School’s Pudong Campus is hosting a Par-ent Conference titled, “Parents and Edu-cators Acquiring Knowledge” (P.E.A.K.). The event will be held on SCIS’s lower school campus on Saturday, April 17th from 8:30am – 2:00pm. Presenters consist of psychologists, counselors, and educational experts discussing top-ics relevant to expatriates in Shanghai. Some examples of presentations include love and logic, raising 3rd culture kids, gender differences and implications for learning, identifying and serving gifted and talented children, transition-ing to middle school and much more.

For more information, or to obtain a brochure of the event, please contact Jane Macmillan at jmacmillan@scis-china.org. The event is free of charge and all parents are welcome to attend.

PEAK

African Musician to Visit SCIS

Earth Week

Highlights Upper School

Highlights Lower School

Adim Desk

ASA - Bugsy Malone

Up&Coming

Specialist Corner

Say What?

Scoreboard Events

SCIS Invention Convention

Looking in Dragon News

22345678891011

Parents and Educators Acquiring Knowledge

SCIS is proud to present a tribute to African music and story telling. Dingiswayo Juma, a native of Zimbabwe, will be in Shanghai giving music workshops, and SCIS has secured a full day with Dingiswayo at our Pudong Lower School on Tuesday, April 13th!

Dingiswayo started learning the mbira from his Shona grandmother at the age of 8, and was playing professionally at 15. Highlights of his career have included collaborations with renowned artists such as Mbira Queen, Ambuya Stella Chiweshe, and the legendary mbira master Ephat Mujuru.

Dingiswayo is based in Cape Town, South Africa where he regularly performs. As a teacher, Dingiswayo has taught the mbira, traditional dance, and drums at Prince Edward International High School in Harare, Zimbabwe. He has also facilitated workshops in mbira dzavadzimu, kalimba, percussion, drums, and singing and dancing in Zimbabwe. He teaches in both Zimbabwe and South Africa.

Dingiswayo will be running workshops on the Pudong Lower School Campus on Tuesday, April 13. Stay tuned for more details on the specific times. To learn more about Dingiswayo, visit his website at: http://juma.za.net/

FAMOUS AFRICAN MUSICIAN COMING TO SCIS PUDONG!

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Some highlights include:• Award-winning author Trevor Lai will be reading his Ralphy to the Rescue book about saving the planet (to learn more, visit: www.ralphy.ca)

• Teachers will be staging a Reader’s Theatre production of Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax.

• Each class or grade level will be displaying a project connected to Earth Day and how to help our Planet Earth.

• Mandarin students will be doing a skit in Mandarin titled, “Don’t Leave Rubbish.”

• The school will participate in “Earth Hour” during a school day, where all electricity will be turned off for one hour.

• Posters, Poems and Essays written by stu-dents about saving the Planet Earth will be displayed and contest winners will present at the Earth Day Assembly on April 22nd.

It is sure to be an event-filled week dedi-cated to saving our planet!

Quick Trivia:1. Recycling 1 ton of paper (about 8,000 sheets) can save:

A. 5 treesB. 12 treesC. 17 trees

2. In your house, where is the most water used?

A. The bathroomB. The kitchenC. The laundry room

3. How much less energy do florescent light blubs use?

A. 20% lessB. 30% lessC. 50 % less[answers below]

Answers: 1-C; 2-A, 3-B

SCIS Lower School will be celebrating Earth Week from April 19th to 23rd! During this time, students will take part in numerous activities to help

build awareness and change habits to build a greener tomorrow. The slogan of the week is, “It’s Easy Being Green!”

- SCIS Pudong Green Team

It’s Easy Being Green

To follow up on the seventh grade collaborative unit between the Eastern Hemisphere social studies class and the Language Arts class, we would like to announce the winners of the various categories for the graphic novel project. All of the students read and evaluated each other’s stories as a whole class, and then nominated each other for the following awards: Best Overall, Best Story, Best Art-work, Most Creative, Most Entertaining, and Best Page. Working together, Mr. Finch and Ms. Guard also selected a student to win the Teacher’s Choice/Future Artist award. The winners received a certificate recognizing their achievement and enjoyed a pizza lunch with their teachers. In addition, the winners for Best Overall and Future Artist were awarded with individual copies of Art Spiegel-man’s Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus, which is a nonfiction text recounting the Holocaust. Here is a list of the winners:

List of WinnersBest Story: Julia Pontes

Best Artwork: Ji-Eun (Jeany) ByunBest Overall: Chae-Yeong (Connie) Ko

Most Creative: Ryo YamazakiMost Entertaining: Kyung-Woo (Chris) Shin

Best Page: Emma MerrittTeacher’s Choice/Future Marjane Satrapi: Kyung-Woo (Chris) Shin

The seventh graders can look forward to another cross-curricular unit on Africa, which will focus on civil rights and apartheid. Based on the results of the graphic novel project, we are already excited about the next unit!

As a final project on our unit on colonization and conflict, 5th grade students have created guides—in writing or as an infotainment video—for future generations who may set out to colonize other planets.Using our knowl-edge of Europe-ans’ colonization of the east coast of [what would eventually be called] ‘America,’ our personal journal responses about the mis-takes we felt the natives and colonists made during that time, and formal student-led class discussions, the kids worked in teams to prepare the guides, which answer burning questions like: What if they have a different religion than us? How do we keep from getting their diseases, and vice versa? How shall we treat the natural resources of the planet? What are we going to do for food?Some of the answers are silly, and some are thoughtful, but all of them are ‘out of this world.’

China, what an amazing country, but there are other awesome Asian countries too! This quarter, third graders have been learning about other Southeast Asian countries, such as Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines. We began by reviewing everything we knew about China from shopping and transportation, to celebrations and special places. The next task was for the students to learn about the country their group had been assigned to. While not many of our students come to school by tuk-tuk, they are aware of them and see them in the streets. By comparing countries we now know that while many SE Asian countries have tuk-tuks, they can look very different. So, in connection with our Global and Community Awareness ESLR, we learned that while we have many differences compared to our South-east Asian neighbors, we also have many things in common.

Keep On Keepin’ OnFirst grade has been a busy bunch lately. We have been learning about motion in our science classes. Our focus has been on the difference between things that spin and things that roll. We have compared and contrasted these two words and cited numerous differences. Recently, we experimented with “rollers.” These are wheels bases that are made using different sized plastic discs put together on straws. Students experimented with numer-ous designs in their quest to find out which design would roll the farthest and which would roll the fastest. Some of the designs did not even roll at all! We had a great time and came out with numerous different conclu-sions that often differed greatly from original predictions.This has been a great unit and we are now ready to delve into our spring unit – plants!

Upper SchoolHighlights Lower SchoolHighlights

English 5th Grade1st Grade3rd Grade

Nick Tognari

Kirk Leichner

Lisa Witzel

Amy Guard11, APRIL 12, 2010DRAGON NEWS ISSUE4 11, APRIL 12, 2010DRAGON NEWS ISSUE 5

Throughout the school year, it has felt like we have been in the midst of exciting times. The end of the third quarter has been no different. Often we focus our attention on the high school students as leaders of the school. We look to them as they prepare for their AP exams, cheer them on during the D1 and D2 soccer season, hold our breadth as college acceptance letters arrive, and start making plans for that final day when the seniors don their caps and gowns. No doubt, in our small school community these are very important events and our upperclassmen very important leaders. But, it is important to take a look at our up and coming students. The middle schoolers have now come into their own establishing themselves as important play-ers in our Upper School student body. Both boys and girls had very successful seasons in this past volleyball season, the revitalized

badminton team consisted of mostly middle schoolers, the first ever SCIS Pudong swim team is being led by the youngsters and the astounding musical of Bugsy Malone would have never gotten past the first day of audi-tions if it weren’t for the enormous contri-bution from the grade six, seven and eight students. It has been fantastic watching our younger students catch and embrace the Dragon pride. As the senior class begins to transition into a new phase of their lives, it is reassuring to look at the underclassmen and know that more great leaders will be filling the grade 12 shoes. SCIS is sure to continue its tradition of school involvement and posi-tive environment. Rest assured, we Dragons have a very bright future!

-Ty Smeins

Welcome back! I hope everyone had a restful and relaxing spring vacation. Before the break, it was great to see so many of you at our student-led conferences. I am confident that you were impressed with your child’s growth and success experienced during this school year. It was an opportunity for students to showcase the great things they do on a daily basis at SCIS. Thanks for your continued support!

With the students showcasing their great work, I feel it an ap-propriate time to showcase one of SCIS’s recent achievements. Over the course of the year, our Pudong campus has developed and expanded our Language Schools for native

speakers. We currently offer after school na-tive language instruction in Swedish, Portu-guese (Brazilian), French, and Mandarin. Taught by teachers from these countries, with the goal to maintain and improve reading, writing and oral language development in students’ mother tongue, the program continues to expand. This has added yet another offering to our extra-curricular activities.

Maintaining a child’s first language is of utmost importance as he or she develops. The native language serves as a building block for all other languages and is a strong predictor of overall academic success. As a diverse com-munity, we recognized this need and have fully supported efforts to increase first-language instruction at our school. Students are able to continue learning their native language and maintain strong cultural ties to their home country. With the great success of these initial programs, we are looking to continue

expanding this program toward other languages, including Dutch, Norwegian, Finnish, Korean, Danish, and German. If you are interested in learning more about our language program, or would like to see a specific language offered, please contact me.

Finally, please join me in welcoming 16 of our newest students and families, all arriving since February. They come from places around the world, including: New Zealand, Brazil, Sweden, South Korea, Finland, and Switzerland. A big GO DRAGONS to all of you!

-Daniel Jubert

After three grueling months of rehearsal

and lots of yelling from Mr. Girdner, the SCIS

Arts Department finally finished their perfor-

mance of the spring musical, Bugsy Malone.

A lot of people don’t realize the amount of

work that goes into these performances, so

just to give you an idea, we had over 35 kids

audition, 10 of which dropped out at various

points in the rehearsal process. On average,

students and teachers contributed at least

10 hours a week OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL to

rehearsals. Ms. Velamuri worked to costume

every single one of our kids, most with mul-

tiple roles. Ms. Dethy led the dance rehears-

als. Ms. Ho did the vocal performances.

Ms. Ramsey brought together a band that

consisted of both high school students and

teachers. All of this culminated in the FIRST

musical performance from the SCIS Pudong

Upper School. We hope you’ll look forward to

more in the future!

Randy Girdner

SISAC CHAMPIONS

Girls ACAMIS

Bugsy, Bugsy, Bugsy!

ADMIN DESK ASA After School Activites

Ty SmeinsUpper School Vice Principal.

Dan JubertLower School Vice Principal.

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您

Mandrin

FrenchSpanish

MANDARIN

您The lower school has taken advantage of the few beautiful days Shanghai has seen and played some American Football. We have a busy finish of the year coming up. Students are currently working on their Frisbee skills. After the break we will be moving on to soccer, fitness test (yup that fun mile run is coming in April), and climbing. Spring is looking to be a fun time. Please help students remember to bring water bottles with them as well as proper shoes.

After school activities registration is in full swing and activities will start April 19th. We are excited to offer for the first time a few bus options for students who ride the bus. We hope this will allow them to participate. This quarter we also have a great opportunity for our soccer playing students. SCIS is going to team with BISS and offer a few soccer matches to students in grades 3 to 5 who have Wednesday free. Sports for Life will also offer our students in grades 1and 2 an opportunity to play in tournaments on Saturdays. Please see the registration information for more details or email me at amiller@scischina.org.

LowerSchool

What is the most difficult part of the Chinese studies? What frustrated the learners most? Definitely, most Chinese learners will give the answers as Chinese characters! There are over 10,000 characters in Chinese. It is estimated that some 3,500 characters are needed to read a newspaper

in Chinese. So, you can see the task of learning characters is quite a challenge. In my Mandarin classes, the students have already learned some basics about speaking and listening comprehension, however, knowing the spoken language does not mean that they can easily transfer this to reading and writing. Chinese characters are ideographic rather than phonetic. Speaking Chinese can be helpful in learning characters, but it is still necessary to learn the written system separately.

So it there any smart way to learn characters? Of course “yes”.

The basic tools to master the whole system of Chinese characters are being taught during the whole year in my classes. In the Chinese writing system, some 300 basic characters are used to create all other Chinese characters. So we provide the building blocks (radicals) and the characters based on these foundation elements. This approach makes the students’ learning efficiently and gives them a mental structure for recognizing and remembering new characters easily. By learning the basic building blocks, they are equipped to go on learning new Chinese characters until they have mastered the whole Chinese character system.

When the students understand the system, they will find writing characters is not difficult and reading is also not difficult. They will enjoy their adventure in learning Chinese characters!

Make Your Mandarin Come Alive!

In any language class, students are very encouraged to speak in front of the whole class, and mistakes are allowed to happen. Of course, it also works in Mandarin class!

The lower school Mandarin learners not only like to speak out, they also like the language to be more alive. They set up different background settings and create real-life situations.

For example, fifth graders have made quite a few plays on “Job searching”, “House hunting” and “Shopping”, etc.

Fourth graders prefer to have more conflicts in plays. They did “Time traveling”, “Hungry thief” and “A horrible meal” as a result.

Students benefit a lot from talking in real-world situations in that they will build a natural sense of the language. With the given situations, they memorize words and sentences better and quicker. If they reuse them in real life, they are making Mandarin alive!

Lower SchoolMandarin

Upper SchoolSpanish

Parents and Educators Aquiring Knowledge (P.E.A.K.) Parent Conference

scheduled April 17, 2010 from 8:30 AM to 2:00 PM

AP Science Mock Examsscheduled April 19, 2010 from 3:15 PM to 6:30 PM

Earth Week KickoffAssembly scheduled April 19th, 9:00 AM-10:30 AM

LS Author visit: Trevor Laischeduled April 21, 9:00 4th & 5th; 9:45 2nd & 3rd; 10:30 PS - 1st

LS Earth Day Assemblyscheduled April 22, 2010 from 1:15 PM - 2:45 PM

US PAFA meetingscheduled April 28, 2010 from 9:30 AM to 10:30 AMLocation: Upper School

Instrumental Music Concertscheduled April 28, 2010 from 6:30 PM to 7:30 PMLocation: Upper School Black Box

Grade 5 Invention Conventionscheduled for April 29, 2010

AP Examsscheduled for May 3, 2010 to May 13, 2010Location: US campus

Up&Coming:

Corn

er

SpecialistForeign Languages at SCiS

Say What?

PE Specialist Andrea MillerHUT... HUT... HIKE...

Andrea Miller

Daisy Ye

Daisy Mi

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“I can’t believe impossible things,” said Alice. “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day.

Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

- Lewis Carroll

Dear Parents,

In a bit of time, these budding Grade 5 inventors, in celebration of the awesome spirit of ingenuity, will converge and publicly display their inventions at the 7th Annual SCIC Invention Convention.

In a nutshell:

Who: All SCIS Grade 5 students from Pudong, Hangzhou, and Hongqiao will participate in the Invention Convention. Parents, friends, teachers, and all other students are also welcome to come, support the fine work done by these learners, chat with inventors, and take pictures.

What: We will have a science fair, more affectionately called the Invention Convention.

Where: SCIS – Pudong in the Lower School Gym.

When: Launches 29 April from 9:00- 2:00.

Why: This convention provides our students a chance to expe-rience the excitement of publicly displaying and presenting their inventions to our community at large.

Finally, to make the Invention Convention spectacu-lar, we need 30+ volunteers to serve as judges. This call goes out to anyone who has an engineering, scientific, or in-ventive background. For details on the judging position or if you have any general questions about the science fair please contact Ms. Sandoval at jsandoval@scischina.org.

See you at the Invention Convention!

Invitation & Call for Volunteers7th ANNUAL SCIS INVENTION CONVENTION

and Global Times are collaborating

to give Shanghai’s international

students the opportunity to share

your viewpoint on a variety

of ideas.

Shanghai Interkom

If you would like to write for the Global Times please

contact Ron Mona at ron@communitycenter.cn.

Upcoming Sport EventsBoys Soccer D1 vs DCS @ Home April 13 from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM

Girls Varsity Soccer vs DCS @ Home April 13 from 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM

Boys Soccer D1 vs SMIC @ Home April 14 from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM

Varsity Girls vs BISS April 15 from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM

SISAC 7 ASIDE Tournament April 17

ACAMIS SOCCER April 22-24, 2010 in Beijing

http://iweb.scisdragons.net/activities/Please check the master calendar schedule at http://iweb.scisdragons.net/pd/ for full details and any changes.

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DRAGON NEWS CONTRIBUTORS: LAYOUT AND DESIGN: PAULO VALENZA; EDITED BY LOWER AND UPPER CAMPUS ADMINISTRATION; ARTICLES ARE PROVIDED ON A ROTATION BY ALL TEACHERS AND OCCASIONALLY BY STUDENTS; PHOTOS TAKEN BY STEVE CLARK, PAULO VALENZA, & OCCASIONALLY BY OTHER TEACHERS/STUDENTS

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