Week Twenty Two - January 28th 2022

Primary School

PYP Grade & Class Pages

Whole School Newsletter

Secondary Newsletter

From the Head of Primary

Dear Primary School Parents,

Welcome to Friday and the end of another week! This week marks the end of semester one and there is much to celebrate! Although we still find ourselves in the midst of a global pandemic, our community has shown a high degree of trust and ambition to ensure learning takes place. It continues to be an absolute pleasure to work with such committed colleagues, students and parents to navigate much uncertainty. We have successfully completed a semester of learning (without modifying grade level outcomes), safely added student extra curricular events and persevered with parent workshops, events and social connections off site. The creativity and can-do spirit has been ever so evident this year ,and for this, we thank-you all. A special shout out to our room parents this week. I have meet with each room parent over the past two weeks to learn about topics of interest for each group of parents. These volunteers promote an important communication bridge between home and school and we appreciate the support they offer.

Thank-you for signing up for parent-teacher conferences for Monday/Tuesday. This offers valuable time for parents to meet with homeroom and specialist teachers. Thank-you to our hard working teachers for preparing for these conferences and using this personalized data to plan ahead for learning in semester 2. There is no school for PYP students during conferences.

Grades 1-5 will begin mid-year MAP assessments next week. There is no specific preparation required for these assessments. It provides a midyear data point for parents and teachers as one part of the assessment puzzle. We will be holding a parent session prior to sending home MAP results, please watch for it to be advertised through our newsletter. MAP Letter for parents

We are expecting to receive official KHDA notice soon about the return of Canteen, ECA's, PE classes and external class trips. We are planning to move ahead with these starting next week.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Kim Conlin (Head of Primary)

Newsletter at a Glance

In this edition you will find:

Updated ECA's information
Parent ConnectEd- Learning Outside the Classroom & PreK Parent Workshop
Coordinators Corner
Peek Into Learning: Grade 2
Quarantine vs Remote Learning Access
Primary Pages - link to Grade and Class pages.

Upcoming Dates

GIS Community Calendar - subscribe by clicking

January 31 - February 1: PYP Parent Teacher Conferences (no school for PYP students)

Feb 2-11 -MAP Assessment Window

Feb 13-17- Week Without Walls (G3-5- information in specific grade page)

*Fridays- wear your house color shirt

ECA Updates:

*External ASAs (Run by outside provider - ESM)

Upcoming Parent Sessions

ConnectEd: Learning outside the classroom

in the PYP

and

Pre-K Parent workshop: Learning in Pre-K

Coordinator's Corner!

click here for more details about MAP assessments at GIS

More info about the curriculum

A Peek into Learning

Grade 2

Grade 2 are deep into their Sharing the Planet unit of inquiry that focuses on conservation. Their central idea is: People conserve and sustain Earth's resources to share with other people and living things. The students have been engaging in a variety of learning experiences to deepen their knowledge and understanding about the role of renewable and non-renewable resources and about the access and allocation of those resources to others. In the final weeks of the unit, the learning will start to focus on the ways in which we can conserve and sustain resources.

Please ask your child about all the fun learning that happened this week!

Inquiring into a very important resource . . . soil!

Action provocation about allocation and sharing resources.

Using maps to track different resources around the world.

to check your child's class page

Primary Class Pages

Check out for weekly class updates

Information for new/starting families

Click here

Not your typical day?

My child will be absent

Email your child's homeroom teacher before 8am so that he / she can mark their absence as excused.
Complete an absence form for more than 2 days and submit to homeroom teacher on the child's first day back at school after absence.
Absence for more than 3 days requires doctors clearance (in some cases a medical certificate is requested )

My child will leave during the school day (exceptional/unavoidable cases only)

Email the gis_primaryleaverequest@gemsedu.com and your child's homeroom teacher 48 hours in advance to ensure your child and their leave slip are prepared in advance.
At the time of collection, please come to the Primary Reception at Gate 4.