Director Update!

Greetings as we reach the end of the second week of the school year! A lot of families have rejoined us this week and a few new students have joined us bringing current enrollment to 82.

A focus of AISF this year will be continuing to develop our social emotional learning program. We know that most of those who lead happy, productive, and successful (however one might define that loaded word!) lives have more than academic skills—they have learned skills in areas such as interpersonal relations, resilience, emotional balance, and so on. To help further the development of our students, AISF has entered into a relationship with American educator Katie Fowle—you can find her on Twitter(!)—who is working with our teachers to enrich their skills. As a result, our classes are experimenting with morning meetings to help all students feel included, listened to, and supported.

Back to School Evening!! Thursday 12th September 4pm to 7pm.

On Thursday 12th September, AISF will host a very informal evening to give you the opportunity to come in, meet your children’s teachers, and learn more about our program and expectations. In order to try to accommodate your various work and life schedules, we are running this evening as an informal drop in with classrooms open between 4:00 and 7:00. You just need to drop by at your convenience and introduce yourself and engage with the teachers who will present their program to you. I will be managing the meet and greet and will see that you find your way. It’s very important to establish an excellent home-school partnership, so please do plan to join us.

After-School Activities Begin

Our after-school activities program begins on Monday 9th September. If you haven’t signed up yet or need additional information, please contact our wonderful Mariana Alie at malie@ais-freetown.net .

Muse of the Week

As a head of school, I must do a bit of just about everything, but I am, first and foremost, an educator so, from time to time, I will include some thoughts on educational topics—please feel free to read or disregard!

Schools need to teach students how to fail. A couple of years ago, this quote popped into my inbox, and I found myself thinking how schools have traditionally regarded “failure”. Now, I am not suggesting that I want students to fail important final exams or do badly on their MAP tests, but I do think that we need to challenge students to do things that are difficult and to explore unfamiliar and difficult ideas, skills, and concepts—and that means that they will not always succeed and will need to learn to try, try, try again…rather like learning to swim or ride a bicycle if you think about it.

When the American President John F Kennedy set out plans for the United States to go to the moon, he said, “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept…”

There were many, many failures on that road to the moon before eventual success. Yet schools have often been critical of students when they do not achieve immediate success. How many of you remember papers covered in red ink?

Fortunately, I like to think that we have moved beyond this and that good teachers create an environment where students feel comfortable embracing challenges, taking risks, getting it wrong, and then learning how to pick themselves up and try again. A good teacher creates a high challenge, high support environment! So, schools really do need to teach students that there can be no success without at least some failure…and with that comes resilience.

Volume 19.20 Issue 002

24 Hill Cot Brow Hill Station Freetown, Sierra Leone

Phone: 076 622453

Website: www.ais-freetown.net

“Preparing Students for Success in an Ever -

Changing World”

September 6, 2019

This week in the ECC we started working on our new Eureka math curriculum and we love how engaging and fun it is. We dived into Letterland phonics and met some of the characters who live in this secret land. Some students are learning letter sounds while others are learning to blend simple words. In science we introduced water as our unit this trimester and the students discussed where water comes from and how the circle goes around.

ECC

We have been playing some new games in our Morning Meetings at 8 o’clock including Caught Red-Handed and Group Juggling!

Grade 1-2

Grade 3-4

We come from many different parts of the world. This week we researched amazing facts about our home countries and the many languages spoken in our class.

Every morning we start the day with either exercise, or a let’s dance video to wake our bodies up for a great day of learning.

We love reading! As a class we are currently reading The Witches by Roald Dahl

We kicked off ELA this week with an introduction to expository writing by categorizing water through manipulatives. On Thursday, we began our grammar curriculum by familiarizing ourselves with the parts of speech. Grades 7 and 8 crowned their inaugural Grammar Champion through a Kahoot quiz; Cheryl Cole toughed out fierce competition to win the gold. In Social Studies, 5th grade learned about cardinal directions and applied their knowledge by creating directions to our classroom from the main gate. 6th grade practiced using map grids and finding latitude and longtitide directions. Grades 7 and 8 explored the geography of Africa through various map challenges. We also read and discussed current events happening in South Africa.

Grade 5-8

This week the Middle School has been plugging away at their math lessons. We are investigating ratios and functions. In science we are wrapping up a project on Madagascar animals and looking into properties of matter.

This week the students have been progressing with their studies and working hard. We have also had some discussions about who our role models are, and why. There were many many examples that these bright learners came up with, but we just selected a few for now. We’ve also been improving our language skills with a quick game of Pictionary! :0)

High School