PYP Update

School Update

Message from Our

Elementary School Principal Management Team Dear Concordian Community,

A new school year is now upon us and I would like to welcome all of our new and returning students, parents and teachers!

The new school year definitely has a different start with online learning. Classrooms and hallways are beautifully decorated as usual, yet waiting for students with their joyful faces and laughter; students and teachers meet each other for the first time through a screen; old friends give virtual hugs; classroom essential agreements are created online...

As the world continues to navigate the Covid pandemic, we have all had to overcome challenges, adapt and innovate, and do everything we can to ensure that students can continue their learning. Thank you to all parents, students and teachers for your continuous support and effort to make the start of the year as smooth as it has been.

Adaptation shows the ability to make changes and innovation results from the spirit to create. These are two important qualities to have. Concordian has experienced short-term school closures many times due to various crises in the past years such

as floods, landfill smoke, PM2.5, etc., but we’ve never had a closure as long as this one due to Covid. Without the ability to adapt and the mindset to innovate, we would not have been able to conduct a successful online learning for this long.

Concordian has always been a family for me. I am entering my 17th year working at Concordian this year. I started my journey here as an Early Years teacher. It was an absolutely heartfelt moment to witness my first year kindergarten students graduate from our school 2 years ago. I also worked as a Grade 1 homeroom teacher for more than ten years. I have been the Head of Chinese since 2008 and became PYP Vice Principal of Teaching and Learning in 2018. This year, I am very honored to take the role of Elementary School Principal, overseeing the overall academic curriculum and teaching & learning in the PYP. My Concordian journey of course has been full of adaptations and innovations. With the support of a team of professional educators, every step I take and everything I do is and will continue to ensure we are doing the best we can to bring our mission and vision statements to life.

Students, this new academic year may bring you new challenges and opportunities. I hope you will be confident to overcome the challenges and seize the opportunities to adapt and to innovate.

Believe in yourself and everything is possible!

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Sincerely, Ariel Yu Wang Elementary School Principal

The Concordian Management team has an open-door policy and is always available to students who need to reach out.

Success with

School Update

Group Zoom Sessions (mandatory) are provided daily to increase the interaction between teachers and students, to build rapport and to foster relationships. They are arranged in small groups in order to promote and reinforce student’s oral language development and for teachers to facilitate effective discussion and sharing among students. Q&A Zoom sessions (optional) allow primary students to take agency to clarify questions of their task completion.

aims to maintain a continuity of curriculum delivery, highquality teaching as well as teacher-student interaction. Thanks to our professional teaching team, strategic administrators as well as a supportive parent community, together we make online learning as successful as it can be.

At Concordian we care about the needs of all learners whether during on-campus learning or online learning. We continue to provide language support (ELS, CLS, TLS) as well as learning inclusion support to students daily through individual Zoom sessions. Our guidance counselors continue to work with students through a few check-ins and individual Zoom sessions every week to ensure social and emotional wellbeing of the students.

We use both Seesaw and Zoom as platforms to conduct online learning. Every morning learning assignments are posted on Seesaw including unit of inquiry learning, Chinese/ English/Thai language learning, Mathematics learning and Single subject lessons of the day such as PE, Music, Visual Arts and ICT. A summary of daily tasks are be sent to students and parents by 8am via Seesaw Announcement to help students self check and become responsible learners to complete all assignments.

Communication is always the key to everything. Everyday teachers communicate with students through ongoing feedback and feedforward to their submitted work on Seesaw; teachers collaborate among grade level teams in terms of daily planning and lesson preparation; coordinators check daily assignments to acknowledge teachers’ diligence and endeavor as well as to provide direction for further improvement; parents and teachers reach out to each other and work together to ensure the best learning result of their child(ren).

Every learning assignment posted on Seesaw contains a teaching video for students to watch and a task to complete afterwards. The teaching video delivers curriculum content. It teaches, reviews a concept or models a skill through various examples. Sometimes it also goes through a step-by-step demonstration of how to complete a task in order to reinforce curriculum content. Our professional and talented teachers strive to provide the best quality teaching videos, not just to deliver teaching content clearly, but also to promote deep understanding and critical thinking. They utilize dramatic acting, creativity and technology effectively to attract students' interests and attention, which is extremely important for young learners.

"It takes a village to raise a child" is an African proverb that means that an entire community of people must provide for and interact positively with children for those children to experience and grow in a safe and healthy environment. This indeed seems to be especially true during the pandemic period with online learning. We are incredibly grateful to our teachers, our parents and the whole community for everything you have done to ensure the learning continues for our children and we truly appreciate your continuous trust in Concordian. It is worth celebrating our accomplishments in making Concordian the extraordinary learning community that it is.

The online learning in the Elementary School of Concordian

Ariel Yu Wang, Elementary School Principal 97 CONCORDIANIMPACT IMPACT- -ISSUE ISSUE32 32 CONCORDIAN

School Update

Message from Our

Elementary Principal Management Team Dear Concordian Community,

W elcome Back! I hope everyone has had a

wonderful summer break despite the current circumstances we have all been going through.

I also hope everyone is now relaxed, recharged and ready to start a new school year.

By this October, I would have completed my 20th year here at Concordian. I could not have imagined spending these wonderful 20 years anywhere else other than right here at Concordian! I am honored to also have my new role this school year as one of the Elementary School Principals. I look forward to what lies ahead this academic year and also look forward to having many opportunities of meeting all of the wonderful families of our Concordian community. I am delighted that you are part of our wonderful learning community. I welcome and value your positive energy and dedication to excellence in education, and look forward to working with you and your children this academic year.

Facilities Update If you drove past the school this summer, you may have noticed numerous maintenance and construction projects. First, we added two new parking lot areas to better meet the needs of our growing student population and to make parking as convenient for our community as possible.

Having additional parking should help with the traffic flow and also help with removing some of the traffic congestion once the school reopens.

In addition the PYP Dome area has had the floor completely redone and the floor is padded once again to ensure the safety of our students as they enjoy participating in their physical activities.

The PY Playground has also been expanded, adding a new exciting piece of play equipment for our PY students. The students love to climb and this new piece of equipment will provide them with a fun climbing experience. There are also swings included which the students will enjoy.

The new stainless steel fencing also looks so much better and helps to make the play area much safer for our students.

These are just a few of the many construction projects and additions that have been completed around the school. The campus truly looks amazing!

Concordian always prides itself in making our campus feel warm, comfortable and safe!

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Sincerely, Tim Byrum Elementary School Principal / EY Dean of Students PYP English Faculty Affairs / Whole School Facilities Manager

The Concordian Management team has an opendoor policy and is always available to students who need to reach out.

School Update

March 26th, 2021

Back in the month of March, the Student Council (STUCO) team

launched an event called “Earth Day – Art and Design Contest.”

Earth day is a day that reminds us to continue to do the little things such as turning off the lights, planting trees, recycling, reducing, and reusing to help protect and save our environment.

During this event, the STUCO team asked all participants to create a piece of art or design an invention using recycled goods. We invited our most beloved PYP Art Teacher Ms. Lisa and MYP Art Teacher Ms. Katarina to be our judges for this event. This contest was judged according to the rubrics created

by STUCO Team.

The STUCO team started to promote the event on March 26 by making announcements on flag-raising morning.

Dol G3C

Bruce G2C

Many students were really excited and could not wait to participate in this event. The STUCO team received 28 pieces of amazing artwork from 28 participants throughout the whole PY community. The art work submitted was very creative and fun. It was clear that the participants truly put a lot of effort into creating their submissions.

Unfortunately, due to online learning taking place from April until the last day of school, the STUCO team weren’t able to celebrate the event properly. However, STUCO advisors have created a video showcasing and acknowledging all participants and their hard work towards this event. We are really very proud of our PY students for coming up with such a creative and meaningful artwork representing Earth Day. Ms. Leyla Huang STUCO Advisor

T he PYP Exhibition is an opportunity for students to showcase 11 9

Denim, A-Chi, Kayton, and Toto from G2S

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An G2C

School Update

Semester 2 of 2020-2021

The PYP Exhibition is an opportunity for students to showcase

WEEK 2: WRITING THE CENTRAL IDEA AND LINES OF INQUIRY - Students were matched up with like minded students to explore further into their topics of interest. They wrote central ideas and lines of inquiry. They also made Action Plans which they would work on over the course of the unit. In this week, students were assigned mentors which they would organise to have weekly meetings with. Mentors are staff members who offer support and guidance to the students in their groups.

their learning from G1-5 as PYP Students. It is not just a small task that is done at the end of a 6-week unit, but a crosscurricular project that includes Learner Profile Attributes, Approaches to Learning and Key Concepts. The students at Concordian International School incorporate Chinese, Thai and English Language in the process of learning. They take meaningful Action and collaborate with their groups. The end result was a Zoom sharing and website, but leading up to that, there WEEK 3 - 5: LINES OF INQUIRY RESEARCH - Each week the were a whole lot of twists and turns. students became experts on each of their 3 lines of inquiry. They WEEK 1: UNPACKING THE THEME - The students started by wrote research questions and gathered information. At the end being introduced to the transdisciplinary theme, How We of each week, they gave mini presentations about their lines of Express Ourselves. They delved into the meaning of this theme and inquiry. As well as researching, they also worked on their Action selected topics of interest that were related to How We Express Plan, wrote songs related to their topic, created a movement to Ourselves. They set up their digital process journal using Google express themselves and made a video trailer.

Slides and explored Learner Profile attributes, Key Concepts and Approaches to Learning. On top of this, they wrote essential WEEK 6: THE SCRIPTS - This was the week where the students organised their 5 weeks of research into scripts for 20 agreements for the 8 week journey. minute speeches. This was a challenging task as groups had over 100 slides to convert to a 20 minute speech. The students were amazed with how much work they had built up in their process journals over the 6 weeks. All scripts were complete and everyone was ready to spend the next two weeks practising their speeches, until we had a spanner in the works.

All scripts included the following: 1. Thai Introduction 2. Line of inquiry # 1 3. Line of inquiry # 2 4. Line of inquiry # 3 5. Song parody 6. Action video 7. Explaining Action 8. PE Movement 9. Chinese 10. Trailer

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School Update

WEEK 7-8: SPANNER IN THE WORKS: an event, person, or thing that prevents the smooth or successful implemetation of a plan; a drawback or impediment. Our spanner in the works was a school lockdown due to Government regulations regarding Covid. The live presentations ended up being Zoom Presentations. Although it was disappointing to not be able to present to a full house in the Grand Theatre, we all learned how to deal with unexpected changes that were out of our control. The resilience from all involved was amazing.

We are so proud of the achievements from all the groups. Over the course of the 8 weeks, the students clearly demonstrated that they are definitely ready for the MYP. They were able to overcome so many challenges along the way to produce an amazing website.

The students grew so much during the 8 weeks. There were many hurdles, but each person jumped over every hurdle like they were running in the Olympic Final. This Exhibition will be one that the students will never forget.

Mr. David O’Shea Grade 5 Homeroom Teacher

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School Update

I t was 6 years ago when I met the graduating Grade 5 class of 2021. As their PYP Visual Art teacher all that time, I was very fortunate to share their journey and process as developing young artists. At the culmination of their art career, Grade 5 students created an art piece representative of what they learned in art throughout their time in the PYP.

Through this publication we celebrate their learning and recognize their talent in these drawings of portraiture, identity and selfexpression. Students applied a variety of drawing and shading techniques demonstrating their technical skill alongside a conceptual representation of themselves.

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School Update

I hope you enjoy this beautiful display made by a group of talented and resilient artists whose dedication is evident in their work.

Congratulations to each and every one of you for learning how to think critically, problem solve and express yourselves creatively through your art.

Ms. Lisa Saldana PYP Visual Art Teacher

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School Update

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