Dear Parents,

Thanksgiving was at center stage in the Lower Elementary School this week. Students celebrated Thanksgiving in their homeroom classes and this entailed engaging in Thanksgiving themed literary experiences, as well as related follow-up activities. Students also enjoyed Thanksgiving class celebrations. Special thanks to our homeroom parents and parent volunteers for all their efforts in organizing the class celebrations. Moreover, this week, in conjunction with our November health focus on gratitude, students had the opportunity to contribute to our gratitude wall by writing and/or drawing what they are grateful for in their lives.

Earlier in the week, we hosted a virtual parent session focused on digital resources. Ms. Jenn McEwan, our Lower Elementary School Technology Integrator, presented information about digital resources that can be used on the homefront to assist students to consolidate and extend their school learning. A recording of this session has been posted on the LES What’s On Teneen page.

At the end of the week, firefighters from the U.S. Military Base conducted presentations for Grade 1 and 2 students to teach them about fire prevention and safety. This presentation and associated learning aligns with our Health curricular standards. Special thanks to our Elementary Health Coordinator, Ms. Anne Sarafin for organizing this learning experience for our students.

Information Technology (IT) Learning Highlights

Prepared by Ms. Jenn McEwan

Pre-K 4: Our Pre-K 4 students enjoyed using some new apps this past month during their IT sessions. They tried out a couple of Bob books apps, called Reading Magic, that focus on foundational literacy skills, and then the children were introduced to two Playhome apps that gave them the experience of working in different environments like the hospital and ice cream shop. When you watch them play, they create their own storylines as they move the characters around the screen; they really enjoy it.

KG: Our KG students have been consolidating some of their homeroom learning with a few academic games: ABC Ride, Sight Words and Endless ABC. These apps reinforce letter sounds and spelling patterns. The children also enjoyed some free time drawing and collage-making using a favorite app, Creative Play, which features the illustration style of Eric Carle.

Grade 1: All of the Grade 1 students have completed Pixel art designs using the app, Qixel, as well as completing LEGO challenges that support their fine motor development and the ability to create something three dimensional that matches a two dimensional picture. It's not easy! These skills will assist them in the next two weeks when it comes time to build two robots: a snail with flashing lights and a fan with spinning blades. They'll use the LEGO WeDo 2.0 app and components to create their robot and write a short program.

Grade 2: The first three Grade 2 classes have now completed their robotics projects using the LEGO WeDo 2.0 kits. In these projects, the students build two LEGO robots and then connect them to their iPad using Bluetooth technology. Afterward, they wrote a short computer program using WeDo 2.0 software to make it perform a specific task. This project will be completed by all of the Grade 2 classes over the next couple of months and shared on Seesaw. In addition to this, we continued to work in our Kodable accounts, practiced snap words in the app, Writing Wizard with a stylus, and math fluency with the app, Dots.

Have a great long weekend and Happy Thanksgiving.

Sincerely,

Dr. Lana Al-Aghbar

Lower Elementary Principal