RIS January Newsletter 2014

January

Newsletter

RAINBOW INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL

Mission Statement

Empathy

Integrity

Curiosity

Diversity

Rainbow International School enables students to achieve academic excellence while being encouraged to be global leaders who promote global peace through equity, innovation, diversity, integrity, community, care for the environment and self-respect.

Dear Parents, Welcome back to Second Semester of 2013-2014 School Year! I wish everyone a wonderful semester ahead. We look forward to exciting learning experiences here at RIS. As we head into this new semester please know that we continue to encourage open communication between home and school. We appreciate your continued support in your child’s educational experience.

This month our character development focus is compassion.

Teachers will continue to hold classroom meetings to discuss about the welfare of other people.

Please join us at our upcoming PTA Family Brunch Program.

Emin Huseynov - Principal rainbowseoul

ris.seoul

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risseoul

Upcoming Events

!

(February)

MAP Testing

2-5

100th Day

6

PTA Brunch (G1-4)

8

PTA Brunch (G5-8)

15

PTA

27

risseoul

Provides holistic and experiential learning for grades 1 to 8

Rainbow International School

November Newsletter

PTA Family Brunch 2014 The Annual PTA Family Brunch with RIS will be held on Saturdays February 8 for Grades 1- 4 and February 15 for Grades 5-8 in the school cafeteria. The Brunch will be held from 10:30AM to 1:30PM with doors opening at 9:30AM. Both Saturdays will have brunch followed by Family Math games.

Parents and students will enjoy the math games.

FREE iPAD APPS

KHAN ACADEMY

!

iWRITEWORDS LITE

SHOWME

INTEGRITY Doing what is ETHICAL, HONEST, and RIGHT even when no one is watching.

SCREENCHOMP

!

Rainbow International School 1st Grade Learning January was a very busy month is first grade. It was wonderful to hear all about everyone’s winter vacations when we returned back to school over break. This month we have been very busy learning about many different things. I am very proud of all the work we have been doing especially in math! We have been learning about different methods to add and subtract to 20 this month. Who knew there were so many different ways to solve an addition or subtraction problem?

Every student has been working so hard, and doing a great job understanding how to solve these problems. We have even played some addition and subtraction games to generate more understanding. It has been fun!

We have also spent some time working with the IPC unit, The Circus Is Coming To Town. It has been a lot of fun learning about circuses in the past, jobs at the circus and even performing animals. We even took a little “trip” to a circus one day in class, eating popcorn and watching some if the world famous Circ Du Soleil. It was a fun way to begin the unit.

January Newsletter Science in 2nd Grade Second Grade students have been very busy learning about Motion and Forces during our Science unit. During this unit the students have learned about several different aspects of motion and force. Some of these include friction, gravity, speed, simple machines and magnetism.

The students have been participating in many experiments. To learn about friction, the students tested different kinds of materials to find out which one would make the best "classroom ice skates". The students also tested out different kinds of levers by using them to catapult cubes into a cup. The students have really enjoyed this hands-on unit and have gained many great experiences working in groups to test various kinds of motion and forces.

We are looking forward to our next topic: Earth's Surface.

Rainbow Rainbow International International School School

Grades 3 and 4

January OctoberNewsletter Newsletter

We ❤️ Music

Grades 3 and 4 have been working with OP Art for the past few weeks. We learned that OP Art stands for optical illusion art and it is an art form that began in the 1960s. After looking after different examples, we learned that with OP art it looks like the artwork is moving.

Grade 3 class worked on drawing 3d hands. They did this by first tracing their hand, and then drawing curved and straight lines. After drawing, they chose how they wanted to color their artwork. Once completed, it should look like their hands are popping up from the paper.

Grade 4 class worked on creating a drawing that appears to have 3d balls, or ‘disco balls’ as they said. They each needed to include 5 balls, and then they could choose from 2 different background designs either a checkerboard or a tunnel. Many of the students choose the tunnel design because they thought it looked like a ‘dropper.’

In Dec.13, 2013 all of the R.I.S. students

attended at the winter concert. They played the xhylophone, the melodeon, the violin, and the piano.

Most of all, 'The R.I.S. Choir 'showed their first performances in the winter concert. They

Both grades really enjoyed studying OP art and came up with clever phrases to describe it.

Abdur Rohman (Grade 3) said this about OP art, “It makes me dizzy!”

!

While Hyoung Wook (Grade 4) thought of a different name for this art style, “It should be called overpowering art.”

sang some of the musical songs and winter songs. From the beginning of this semester (Jan.), all the R.I.S. students are studying not o n l y m u s i c b u t a l s o L a n g u a g e art ,History and math with using music.

We are still exciting for learning the next step of our curriculum. We are all musical!

Thank you!

Rainbow International School MS Social Studies

January Newsletter Student Council

This month in Social Studies each grade has still been looking at their own individual time periods. Each of these time periods are exciting for different reasons!

The sixth graders are learning about ancient Egypt. One of the important skills to know and learn in this class is how to make a map. The students enjoyed making a map of Egypt. They showed their knowledge of the region by using a foam board and clay to make an image of the map of the country, focusing around the Nile River. As a class, we also looked at some of the burial practices of the Egyptians. We spent some time talking about the mummification process, and then where the bodies were buried. Grade six had a lot of fun creating their own pyramids, and showing what might have been found inside of them.

Seventh grade has also been studying a lot, and have not had as many projects.

They are currently learning about the Enlightenment Era, a time in which science and questioning of the current political beliefs was happening a lot. Thus, we have spent a lot of time discussing and looking at the different forms of government that exist in the world. As the sevenths graders have found out, each of the governments have strengths and weaknesses. Over the next couple of weeks, they are going to apply these strengths and weaknesses to the governments that rose and fell during this time period as we study three key revolutions: The British Civil War, the American Revolution, and the French Revolution.

Eighth Grade has been looking at a lot of primary sources for the time period we are in: “The Roaring Twenties.” In this time period, people had a money and were spending it without thinking. We had a great time one day in class, discussing some of the new cultural movements of the time. One of those was the emergence of jazz music. We also looked at some of the art that was around at the time, and the new styles that were emerging. The eighth graders have been encouraged to write more and more in this class to strengthen their writing skills. They have been using these images, charts, and music to help them answer questions about the past.

Social studies is always busy, sometimes with a lot of projects! It has been a fun month with everything we have been covering. It can only get better as we continue to move along in the school year!

Student Council has been participating in school assemblies by performing a skit or filming a video according to each assembly’s themes. For January’s assembly, we gathered our heads to come up with a play for Integrity. We decided that ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’ would give the most appropriate moral for the assembly and started practicing.

To increase the concentration of the play we made masks that went along with the characters.

We tried our best to make the play interesting by pitching in some impromptu lines and sound effects.

However, on the day of our assembly morning Umaid who plays the boy didn’t show up so Joshua had to replace Umaid.

Even though there were some last minute changes, Student Council managed to pull off the play and deliver the moral.

Besides preparing for assemblies, Student Council provides academic and social events for the whole school to participate. We will be announcing new school event soon so look out!

Rainbow International School

January Newsletter

MS Language Arts In MS ELA, we have become much stronger readers, writers, and speakers in terms of class discussions and activities. Also, we have been using our access to GoogleApps and GoogleDrive a lot more for in and out-ofclass assignments, so our technology skills have been improving greatly!. We have also begun daily writing activities at the start of every class, or “bell ringers,” focused on the writing traits with which we are currently working. We have grown a lot since the beginning of the year!

Grade 6 For our most recent unit, sixth graders focused on tall tales and the use of voice. We practiced understanding how and why writers use hyperbole in their writing and focused on the book The Bunyans, which depicts the life of the famous tall tale character Paul Bunyan and his family. Then, we worked in groups as well as individually to hone our skills in creating strong voices with distinct tones. To end our unit, we worked hard at creating our own tall tales related to events in our own lives. The result was a lot of hilarious, clever stories made by the sixth grade. Great work, everyone!

Grade 7 During the past month, we have focused greatly on voice and how it applies to legends, specifically the area of mythology with the core text Mythlopedia. We worked together to read and understand how the Greek and Roman Myths use different literary elements to create strong voices that bring the characters to life. We then were able to try out writing myths on our own, and we did a fabulous job!

Grade 8 - For our past unit, grade 8 students worked hard at learning how to improve voice in their writing with a book titled Samir and Yonatan and realistic fiction features. The characters in the text are very imaginative, and through the voice that the narrator and main character convey. Now that we’ve completed the book, we are now working hard at creating and citing a character analysis essay that analyzes the specific traits of a character.

Rainbow International School

January Newsletter

MS Science This month in Science each grade has entered into new unit and still been looking at their own individual time periods. Learning and helping each other through pair work or activity, I am glad to see students’ internal growth and responsibility as students.

The sixth grade are learning Genetics.

Students compared traits that they have been inherited from parents and had a fun time to play Trait Bingo. They learned about Mendel also known as ‘Father of Genetics’ and his work using pea plant to discover dominant and recessive trait. All students could be confident to predict genotype and phenotype of offspring using Punnett Square. In second section of Genetics, cellular division and blueprints of genetic information, DNA, were introduced. They showed me amazing work and collaboration when making the sequence of mitosis activity using form boards, threads and macaroni. Six graders have figured out the base sequence of DNA and have made double helix DNA models. All their work are hanging on the wall of science lab, 4th floor. The seventh grade are learning Atmosphere and Water Cycle. In this unit, It was helpful for students to understand the roots of greek or latin. As a group, they had a web-quest about the layers of atmosphere and it provided visual aids and simulation which allowed students to picture the sky all the way up to space. During water cycle activity, each student was assigned to a different location such as soil, sea, groundwater or clouds with various situation written on a dice. Whenever they encounter each other, they roll the dice and keep record of it. Students were able to compare each other’s journey log to see that water never leaves the earth but cycled in many ways. During making cloud flip books in the last section, students also proved me their creativity to describe different types of clouds using limited materials..

The eighth grade are learning Sound and Light. Students learned two different types of waves and applied their math skills to find out speed of wave. They also graphed waves to understand constructive and destructive interference. Sound as a longitudinal wave is all around us.

Students has studied structure of the ear and how sound travels and transmits signals to the brain. In second section, eighth graders have observed different sound from passing ambulance and are able to explain Doppler Effect using relationship of frequency and its pitch. Light is electromagnetic waves and we spent some time to browse light spectrum and its application in our lives.

Students have studied characteristic of visible light, difference of reflection and refraction and used cellophane films to understand that adding primary colours of R,G,B results in white light.

Science contains somewhat unfamiliar terms in macro or micro level, however, I am doing my best to utilize visual aids, simple explanation and encourage students to help each other. Most of all, I appreciate for all the effort students make to take part in science class and asking for extra help. I strongly believe that it can only get better as we continue to work together and care about each other in class.

Rainbow International School

January Newsletter

4th Grade Social Studies The grade fours have joined their friends in grade five and are working on a new Social Studies unit titled, “Moving People: Migration.” By the end of the unit they will understand that whether people choose to move, or whether the movement is forced upon them, both types of movement can have an impact on the societies and places that they leave behind, and those that they join at their journey’s end.

travel bag for homework… ;)

Ms. Wendy and I began the unit with a exciting entry point activity.

When the grade fours and fives arrived at school on a chilly January morning, we told them that we would be pretending there was an emergency in Seoul and they had to leave right away. Luckily our students had already packed a

When the emergency siren sounded the students hurried to a safe location, (the school roof aka Busan), where a variety of materials had been left scattered about. The students needed to use these materials to prepare a warm, waterproof shelter, where they would “sleep” that evening.

students’ survival skills!

The grade fours and fives didn’t waste a second getting started on their shelters. They immediately broke off into four random groups and began to forage for materials. It was as if they were transported to a real refugee camp! In about 30 minutes, all four shelters were prepared.

They were unique and well executed. Ms. Wendy and I were extremely impressed with our

http://vimeo.com/84443258 Check out the Vimeo link to watch the fours and fives in action!

Rainbow International School

Art 6 During the past month in art class, grade 6 students have been learning a lot about art history, specifically the early-20th-century art movement cubism. We learned about the reasons behind the movement—how the innovation of the 20th century, with cars, factory, telephones, etc., really changed the way that people viewed the world. We discussed how a view artists, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in particular, led the cubism movement. We also looked at and discussed the w o r l d ’ s reaction to these artists’ w o r k .

Then,after learning about the theory, we practiced the methods as a class, specifically blind contour drawing and drawing forms from different perspectives. We also talked about cool and warm colours, using gradient shading in areas where appropriate. After using each other as a human figure model, we all chose different objects or ideas to draw and create our own piece of cubist art. The results are beautifully colourful, creative pieces of art!

January Newsletter

Art 8 In art class, grade 8 has been working on creating stained glass art. After looking at and discussing different samples of stained glass in real life, eighth graders worked hard to create their own stained glass windows.

Stained glass is a famous style that can be seen in the architecture of significant buildings around the world. Students used pieces of colored cellophane to create a stained glass effect. “It was difficult at first; when we saw the final product, however, it was worth all the hard work,” said Mobark, an eighth grade student.

Art 7

In Social Studies, the seventh graders are learning about the Enlightenment Age. In every time period, there is art that helps to the story of what is happening. Thus, in seventh grade art, the students have been studying art in the E n l i g h t e n m e n t A g e .

First, observing examples of famous art from that movement and then practicing on their own. Currently, they are creating self-portraits done in the Enlightenment Style. Thus, the students have started to draw as realistically as they can what they look like. Eventually, they will get to paint the pictures to make the portraits look rich and luxurious, just like the time period art. The students have been working really hard on each of their pictures, and they will look fantastic after they have had some paint on them!