IGB International School Newsletter, Issue 36, Week 5, April 2015

IGB International School’s Weekly Newsletter - Issue 36, Week 5, April 2015

“I see a song. I paint music. I hear colour”

Inside this week’s Newsletter

Upcoming Events 1st May 2015 Public Holiday - Labour Day

Message from Head of School Mrs. Anne Fowles, Head of School

4th May 2015 Replacement Public Holiday - Wesak Day

Updates from Admissions Mrs. Bronwyn Thorburn, Admissions Director

6th May 2015 Nepalese Charity Bake Sale

Updates from Academic and Support Services Mr. Peter Syme, Director of Academic and Support Services

Igniting Minds

8th May 2015 PYP Grade 5 Exhibition 9th May 2015 Student Led Conferences, 8.30am - 12.45pm

Impacting Lives

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Message from Head of School Mrs. Anne Fowles Head of School Dear IGBIS Parents and Community Members, Having our Earth Day assembly last week helped us to appreciate how dependent we are on our earth and our environment. The earthquakes in Nepal, have also brought home again how our environment in turn affects us all.

You may be aware that our school guards are Nepalese. They work here in Malaysia to support their families in Nepal. While thankfully their families are safe, many of them are staying in the open as their homes have cracks in the walls and they are afraid to go back inside due to continuing tremors. Our community has rallied around this cause and parents have offered to organize a bake sale and fund-raising drive to support the families of our guards.

Wednesday May 6th: Nepalese Charity Bake Sale!

Please bring in pizzas, savouries, cakes, cookies or muffins for the bake sale.

(No nuts as we have children allergic to nuts in the school).

You may also donate towards our Nepalese guards at the desk by the car-park drop off area by cheque or cash.

Bake sale times: • Elementary students 9.30am to 10.00am at the Elementary cafeteria • Secondary students 10.10am to 10.35am in the Secondary cafeteria • At the car park pick up area from 2.45pm if there is food still available.

Parents can bring items for sale before these times or send them in with their children.

Students can bring their money to school on Wednesday. Elementary students should bring this in an envelope.

The organisers suggest that this may be a donation of RM10.00 or more towards this cause.

Thanks for your concern for our guards, they are a part of our IGBIS family.

Announcement: School Fees for 2015-16 In last weeks newsletter I mentioned that we planned to release information about the 2015-16 school fees this week. Unfortunately we will need to delay this until official confirmation of the fees is arranged.

Mrs. Anne Fowles, Head of School

IGBIS Instrumental Music Academy As we near the end of the school academic year, I want to share my thanks to our tutors for their work with our students throughout the year. There will be some small studio recitals in the coming weeks for students to show their development. The dates and times will be advertised in the next newsletter.

Enrolments for the 2015/16 academic year will open on the return to school in August.

All students will need to complete a new application form with the latest parent contact details. Next year schedules will be shared with tutors, parents, staff and students using Google Drive. This is a very powerful tool and all our students are currently using it across all areas of their learning. I would invite parents to download this application to their devises for future use.

Mr. Jon Suffolk, Performing Arts Teacher

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Igniting Minds

Impacting Lives

Elementary School Music Music is linking to the classroom program for the Early Years 1 and 2 with the following as the central idea: ‘People create art to express how they think and feel.’

We read a book called “My many colored days” by Dr Seuss, and learned that different colors evoke different feelings in each person and may change depending on the context (a calm blue ocean, a happy blue bird chirping). With an assortment of music to correspond to each color we expressed these feelings while dancing and moving with colored scarves.

We’ve looked at one of Eric Carle’s amazing picture books. “I See A Song” is a beautiful book which transports the reader on a magical musical journey. As a violinist introduces himself at the beginning of the book he explains; “I see a song. I paint music. I hear colour”. We then drew on a big piece of paper while listening to music. Every time the music stopped we had to move over to another spot on the paper and started drawing again as soon the music continued again.

wondering why the student had mainly used bright and vibrant colors. And yes, looking back to my playlist of different classical music pieces I found that we didn’t get around to darker, sad, lonely, angry pieces.

Grade 3 are performing as a class ensemble this last quarter.

They’ve learned the three different patterns of the music piece ‘Balafon’ for Orff ensemble. We are working very hard to play the patterns while following the same beat. Another challenge we are looking at is playing our own pattern while listening to the others playing a different pattern.

Grade 5 are working on their song composition. Some students chose Garageband and others are trying to compose their with their own instrument.

Hadewych Dujardin, Elementary Music Teacher We also looked at Kandinsky’s Concentric Circles. We heard a different type of music for each circle that the students were drawing. When I was looking back at the end result I was

Updates from Admissions Mrs. Bronwyn Thorburn Admissions Director Dear IGBIS Parents and Guardians, Next week, we are hoping to proceed with our re-enrolment for the 2015 - 2016 academic year. As part of this process, we will send you fee details for the new academic year. The re-enrolment process will ask you to complete an online review of your current contact information. The link will be sent to you by email later next week.

If you have any questions, please contact the Admissions Office.

Enjoy the long weekend.

Igniting Minds

Impacting Lives

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Updates from Academic and Support Services Mr. Peter Syme Director of Academic and Support Services May Lunches and Top-up Time It is time once again to ensure that your tags and bracelets are topped up for the month of May. Again this month, the IT department will deduct the additional cost to reconcile the January payments, so that SHF can get paid their due. For the month of May, please refer to the table below to help you with the top-up payments.

The payments are based on 19 school days, including the balance from January of an additional RM50.

Please note that if your child started school after 31st January then there is no need to add in the additional RM50. For example, Early Years 1, Early Years 2 or Kindergarten would only pay RM152 for lunch only NOT RM202.

The May menu will be uploaded to the website under Student Services.

Lunch Only

Snack and Lunch

Breakfast and Lunch

Sandwich Only

Snack and Sandwich

Breakfast & Sandwich

Early Years 1 & 2, KG

Grades 1 - 5

Grades 6 -11

202

240

240

259

297

297

NA

NA

335

202

240

240

259

297

297

NA

NA

335

International Day International Day will be held at school on Saturday, 23rd May 2015. The starting time will be 10.00am so students and families are asked to arrive between 9:30am and 9:40am to take their places in the theatre for the opening event, The Parade of Nations. This is a family event and whole school event so all the staff will be present. The International Day Committee, which includes staff and parents, have asked me to place the following information in this newsletter. The committee have had several meetings and thrashed out several alternatives and are now happy with the way things are looking. In summary, these points include: • • • • •

Colour Passports to be sold for RM10 for each student, parent and sibling which will allow passport holders to sample various items from the International Food Fair and participate in some fun activities and games. These will go on sale from Monday, 11th May 2015 Many parents and several restaurants/catering companies have very kindly pledged or donated food for the event, which represent the rich cultural diversity of our school community The committee request additional assistance from parents on the day to help out with food serving and monitoring so that all parents, committee or not, get the opportunity to spend time with their children and particpate in some of the activities The teaching staff have put together a range of activities that will take place on the field and in the Sports Hall after the Parade of Nations. As well as participating in these events with your children, any offer of assistance from parents would be greatly appreciated by the teachers so that they can also check out other events and activities If you are able to assist and give up 30 to 40 minutes of your time on the 23rd May, please contact the following parent reps Cathy Hearns 012 776 2404 / cathiehearns@gmail.com or Felicier Maccagno 012 914 8214 / feliciermaccagno@gmail.com.

Valencia Bussing Families living in Valencia should by now have received an update letter from me indicating the change in van and driver taking effect from next Tuesday, 5th May 2015. Please update the driver with you mobile telephone numbers so that he can contact you for emergencies or any changes to the routine.

Summer School A reminder to current students at IGBIS that we are running a Summer School during the holidays. There will be 3 sessions, Programme A, B and C. Programme A runs from 22nd till 26th June, Programme B from 20th till 24th July and Programme C from 27th till 31st July. Information and online application form are available at http://summerschool.igbis. edu.my.

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Igniting Minds

Impacting Lives