Primary Newsletter 4

ISHNEWS

#04PRIMARY SCHOOL

Primary Newsletter | Issue 04 | October 15 2010

The International School of The Hague

Wijndaelerduin 12554 BX The Hague www.ishthehague.nl

Primary SchoolTelephone +31 (0)70 338 4567Fax +31 (0)70 328 2049Email [email protected]

Secondary SchoolTelephone +31 (0)70 328 1450Fax +31 (0)70 328 2049Email [email protected]

In this issue

2 Dear ISH News Readers,

4}6 Primary News

7 Dates for your Diary

8}9 Events

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Dear Parents,We have come to the end of a very busy half-term and now have a week to catch our breath before the run-up to Christmas, Sinterklaas and other exciting events. This week we had a visit from Nick Williams, a former Headteacher and now a passionate birdwatcher and wildlife enthusiast. He showed the children his wonderful photographs and no doubt many of your children brought home some of his photos. The children really enjoyed his presentation and we hope to have him in school again next year. The children may be interested in exploring his website http://www.nickwilliams.eu/ You may remember I wrote to the municipality about the problems with traffi c lights on Kijjkduinsestraat/Ockenburghstraat. They are now working again and the municipality have given me a hotline to report any future malfunctions and have promised to monitor the situation closely in the future.I am pleased to announce that we have a new Chair of our Parent Teacher Association (PTA). Sarah Sieglow, one of our Year 1 mums, has volunteered to take the position. I had my fi rst meeting with Sarah this week and I am convinced she will be an excellent chair and make a signifi cant contribution to our school. Thank you Sarah and good luck. More PTA positions will

be announced soon. In the meantime, I am very grateful to Sue Tee for her continued role as staff member of the PTA. She volunteered for this role in her fi rst week at ISH over 3 years ago and has worked tirelessly ever since. She really is the ‘Tee’ in our PTA!On the subject of our PTA, the fi rst meeting of the year will take place in our Conference Room on 15th November from 08:45 – 10:15. It would be good to see you there. On a more urgent issue, our Hallowe’en Party is on the fi rst Wednesday back after the holiday, the 27th October. We are desperately in need of help if we are to make this the fun event it has been in the past. If you can help us, please email Sue at [email protected] As I mentioned in a previous email, we have had a problem with head lice this term, more so than ever before. This is mirrored in other schools I have spoken to, so perhaps the climate has been perfect for them this year. After the break, I will be asking for parent volunteers to come in and check hair. In the meantime, can you please use the half-term break to check and, if necessary, treat your child’s hair.You may have noticed a number of ‘tummy bumps’ amongst our teaching staff recently (female only!) and we are pleased to announce the arrival of the latest new additions to the

Dear ISH News Readers,

This Issue is made byVerona Schroder [email protected] Scott

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Mr. Scott Cont. News

ISH family. I’m sure this is old news for most of you as this sort of information travels quickly. However, we congratulate Ms. Starkey on the birth of her son, Lorien Tai Rong and Ms. Forsey on the birth of Anneke. All are doing well. We look forward to watching the current bumps develop into new bundles of fun and noise in the near future.It was good to see close to a 100% turnout in our parent consultations this week. If you are fortunate enough to be able to share the coming holiday with your children, I wish you a pleasant and enjoyable week. If not, I hope the week at work is not too bad! See you soon.

Best wishes

Graeme Scott

This school year we will be using the Pri-Moodle as an online communication tool with students and parents. By using the Pri-Moodle, we will share year group newsletters, websites, homework worksheets and other useful information. You already receive school information on paper and we will now also upload some information as a backup on the Pri-Moodle.The Primary Moodle is now on our website – the link is:http://www.ishthehague.nl/content/pri-moodle-log Try to use Firefox as your browser, it works better there.You need to enrol as a member of each of the different courses: IPC, ICT, Music, Dutch and PE. We will be working very hard throughout the school year to build up the pri-Moodle in all different areas. We thank you for your patience and all suggestions are welcome.Please feel free to contact me with any question.Sincerely,Mrs. MirosICT Primary [email protected]

CONGRATULATIONS Ms. STARKEY

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News

Mother Tongue News

“Children who come to school with a solid foundation in their Mother Tongue develop stronger literacy abilities in the school language” Jim Cummins

Mother Tongue News (MT)Dear Parents,We had a lovely time with our Spanish speaking families at the opening of the Spanish section of the Nieuw Waldeck Library. Our children sang beautifully and recited some poems in Spanish. This was followed by a workshop of Sevillana dance where, as you can see on the pictures, both the children and the mums had a lot of fun. We were pleased to see our Spanish families appreciating the opportunity to have access to books in their Mother Tongue and many of them went back home with some new enjoyable reading material! Thank you again to Ms. Hontoria Garcia for coordinating the event.Mr. Noordam, the director of the public libraries of The Hague participated in this opening. He was really happy that we came to support the event. Mr. Noordam took the opportunity to show me that in the library they have a computers corner. One of the computers has a very special programme. You can choose your home country and it will show you some of your favourite home newspapers available online to read. I checked my country and could fi nd 6 newspapers in French and even more in Flemish. I then saw the list of the countries, impressive! He explained that there is now one of these computers available in each public library of The Hague and 3 in the central library. So if you miss some of your home information and news I invite you to go and enjoy them at the libraries!Y3’s have been learning about the “Rainforests”. The beautiful rainforest displays the children made in their classrooms were mysteriously destroyed so that the children could empathise and experience how rainforest dwellers feel about the destruction about of their own natural environment. They

learned how to make posters with slogans in their own Mother Tongue and created multilingual displays to develop awareness about the endangered forests. Well done Y3! The posters were really good and everybody can enjoy them as they are hanging in the glasshouse.MT Within the CurriculumThe Upper School sewing project is working well. The children were grateful to have some helping hands to come and support them with this needle work. Thank you to all the mums that joined us during this activity! We can’t wait to see the fi nished murals! After SchoolThe exciting news is that Catalan is also now taking place after school! We wish the children a lot of fun learning and developing further their home language.The sad news is that we haven’t found anyone yet to join us for Dutch classes. However we just have received a new possible candidate that we will try to contact ASAP and I hope we will have better news for the next newsletter.Just a little reminder the French group of Ms. Edith will not have French on 28 October and that session will be postponed to the 16 December.Kind regards,Pascale Hertay, Deputy Head, [email protected]

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News

Sewing Club

According to the world calendar, September was International Sewing Month so to incorporate this into our Upper School Mother Tongue curriculum, the children were asked to think about famous landmarks or symbols that represent their countries. After group discussions, their landmark / symbol was chosen and thus started our fi rst Mother Tongue activity of the school year!We use this time within the curriculum to get together to speak in our mother tongue with our peers who share the same language as us and it is wonderful to hear the different discussions taking place in the various languages! In the primary school a big focus is placed on SPEAKING & LISTENING which suited this particular task very well - after much discussion, the groups then decided on which symbol / landmark they would like to use, to represent their country.The children used the fabric we provided and drew the landmark or national symbol onto it (or various pieces of fabric). They then sewed (using a very simple running stitch, which will be illustrated to them) their collective landmarks or national symbols onto the piece of fabric provided. Our last session, which will take place during the fi rst MT session after the October break, will involve all the groups from Year 4 to Year 6 meeting together and

the children will be able to present their ‘sewing’ masterpiece to the rest of the US MT groups.We had a number of mums who were able to come in over the past few weeks, and help out with the hand sewing, and for this we are very grateful! We appreciate and value all your help, mums! Thank you!Enjoy the photographs of our sewing task in action – we will load more photographs of the last activity, presenting their murals, after this has happened!Click link below for photographs:http://www.ishthehague.nl/category/image-galleries/primary

BuddiesEvery week the children in Reception Beetles are excited to see their buddies from 3J. This week the buddy pairs worked together to build houses. They used a variety of natural materials along with a few other things they could find.

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Dates for your Diary

Start of October Holidays. All Students

Back to School on Monday, 25 October

Halloween Party 18:30 - 21:00

Talent Show Auditions

Daylight saving time, Clocks go Back By

one Hour

IPC Information Evening from 18:00-

19:30

No School for pre-reception, reception

and year 1

Ms. Perala-Ralph

Ms. Welsh

Ms. McCracken

Ms. Perala-Ralph

Ms. Welsh

Ms. McCracken

Ms. Welsh

Ms. McCracken

Ms. Welsh

Ms. Clough

Ms. Welsh

Ms. McCracken

Ms. Clough

Ms. H. Scott

Ms. Rikers (PM)

October November CT DAYSCT DAYS

16 09 25 Oct

1027

28

Please check our website for a complete calendar.

26 Oct

27 Oct

28 Oct

29 Oct31

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Events

Talent Show

Talent show for Kika is coming up! Thursday 28 October 2010 are the auditions. The talent show is for a charity for children with cancer. The talent show will have amazing acts but we need lots of people to participate. So join up now and get the chance to win the biggest prize of all times.The student council:Bhavarth Louis Finley June Anya EleonoraBrice WardFabianna AnaJan Grisha

Parent Partnership

WHO TO CONTACT – E-mail: Karen Gilmour [email protected] Parents,Parent Partnership Group ISH SEN SupportNEXT MEETING –Tuesday 2nd November at 19:00, in school. WE AIM – to support parents of children with Special Needs

ISH Halloween Party

18.00-20.00Wednesday 27th October

Dear Parents, The ISH Halloween Party is being held on Wednesday 27th October, 18.00 – 19.30, in the Glasshouse and will be followed by the ‘Trunk & Treat’ from 19.30 – 20.00.The Halloween team is working hard to make the night as fantastic as in previous years but we need some help from parents with the following: TRUNK & TREATWe need 20 cars (well, just the rear of them really) to decorate and fi ll with candy (that we will provide) for the children to collect as they leave the party. You would need to have the cars at school from 5pm - 8.30pm.Please contact Karen Gallagher [email protected] DECORATIONSThe decorating committee needs volunteers to make the glasshouse suitably scary for the party. Work will start from 1pm on the Wednesday afternoon and any hours you can help out for are appreciated.

CONGRATULATIONS Ms. FORSEY

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Events

Please contact Charlie Keddie [email protected] CANDY COLLECTIONWe need donations of candy for the ‘Trunk & Treat’ that will conclude the party. The candies must be individually wrapped and NOT contain nuts. Please leave candy in the collection box in Sue Tee’s offi ce. BAKE SALE DONATIONSWe need lots of yummy baked goods to sell on the night. Individual cakes, cookies etc are perfect and can be dropped off at the glass house either at morning drop off or 12.30 pickup on the day of the party (27th Oct). Please, NO NUTS.Please contact Leah Studer [email protected] if you have any questions

This is always a really fun night with an enthusiastic participation of students and families and we are all looking forward to some fantastic costumes!Best Regards,ISH PTA

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Primary Newsletter 4