Alex Semerjian & Tamara Rahoumi

New Faces & Spaces At AIS!

We are so thrilled to welcome Mr. Semerjian and Miss Tamara into our AIS family! Both teachers join us from North America and will be living in Albania for the first time. Mr. Semerjian originally hails from Canada and holds a Master of Education degree from Harvard University. He has been a teacher for over ten years at schools in such countries as Korea, Mexico and Jordan. His specializes in teaching middle school math. He will be the homeroom teacher for our fifth and sixth grade students. Miss Tamara is a native of New Jersey, USA and graduated from prestigious Rutgers University. She has a background in both special education and early childhood education, and she will be the homeroom teacher for our kindergarten class. We are confident that both of these outstanding teachers will help put Albanian International School on the map as the best school in Tirana, if not all of Albania! Please join us in making them both feel welcome in their new home!

AIS Welcomes our newest teachers!

Albanian International School

October 1 s t , 2013 Vo lume 2 , Issue 2

A Message From The Executive Director

The first month of school has ended and all is more than well! The students seem happy and they’re all learning, friendships are being made and students and teachers are settling into their classroom routines. It has been a great first month of our second year as a school. Thanks to the students, teachers and staff that have made it so! We have two new teachers: Miss Tamara who teaches Kindergarten and Mr. Semerjian who is the Home Room teacher for Grades 5/6. He teaches them Math, Science, English and History/Geography. Please welcome them to the school and Albania! It seems that each day the school facilities are improving and getting closer to completion. The Kindergarten is getting its fenced-in and covered veranda play area, PreK has received new child-size bunk beds as well as new tables and chairs. The lower level classrooms, cafeteria and kitchen are being completed as well. The school lunch menu will be sent home with students each Thursday for the following week. It will also be on the website each week when we have the new website up. The lunches are nutritious, filling and the children seem to — for the most part — enjoy them. Friday is always Pizza Day! Remember, Tuesday, October 15th is an Albanian National Holiday celebrating Greater Bajram and on October 31st we will be celebrating the American holiday of Halloween. More details to come! If you have any questions, comments or concerns please feel free to contact me. .

Warren Anderson, Executive Director

Core Knowledge Language Arts is the cornerstone of the American education offered here at Albanian International School. Often abbreviated as CKLA by teachers and staff, it emphasizes building well-rounded students who can sight read or “decode” any word with phonics blending and segmenting skills honed in the Skills Strand. It also emphasizes handwriting, spelling and the process of writing. Simultaneously, students develop crucial critical thinking and reading comprehension skills with stories and texts studied closely in the Listening & Learning Strand which emphasizes oral language, vocabulary and background knowledge. Class discussions and extension activities are a key part of this Strand, which is divided into 12 “Domains” that focus on different topics in each grade level. Taken together, students are able to not only read anything at their own level, but also understand what it is that they’re reading and make vital connections between their Language Arts reading and the subjects they’re studying in other classes. Each student using this program will be issued different reading books and textbooks whenever a new unit is completed, and the homework assignments will continue to grow more rigorous every month as the program intensifies. Please explore www.coreknowledge.org/ckla for more information on what makes our program so uniquely beneficial for students at AIS.

A I SA I S O c t oO c t o b e r N e w sb e r N e w s

Core Knowledge language arts

New Language Arts text books for Level 2.

Pre-K Class October Fun! Ms. Barbara J. Meinel

“Good Morning, good morning, good morning to you, and how do you do?” The children in the Preschool class are singing their greetings to each other as they arrive. It is so much fun to see how much progress they have made in one month.

 October is one of the fun months for all students and especially for the Pre-K students! September 21st was the first day of Autumn and the days are growing shorter. We will be learning about the subtle changes that the trees and plants are making in our weekly science lesson. As the temperature drops each night, the trees will begin to turn from green to yellow and orange, and we will be collecting the dried leaves, seeds, nuts, and dried fruits to make a center piece for our classroom display. October also brings one of the funniest holidays for the Pre-K kids: Halloween! We hope you will join us in the fun of dressing up, playing games and baking yummy treats for our school party. Lessons will continue in English, and each child will soon be able to express themselves more clearly in English. Circle Time, Art, and Music are morning activities that all of the children are actively participating in more and more. In the afternoons, I will be introducing new phonic sounds and blends to help their pronunciation and beginning reading skills. And with the change in seasons we will be teaching  them Health and Hygiene through posters and songs. I will be introducing a new science term or nature word called the Science Word of the Week each week during October.        

It is hard to believe the first month of school is already coming to an end, but what a great month it has been! In our class, we have been covering a wide variety of topics in each of our subject areas. In math, we have improved our one-to-one correspondence, been introduced to the concept of pictographs to help organize and display quantities of objects or people, and we have most recently begun working on patterns. In science, we have learned about our five senses, and have used our senses in a variety of ways, including helping us practice using our new science skills: observing, comparing, measuring, and sorting. Finally, our Language Arts unit has had us working with nursery rhymes! These rhymes give the class an opportunity to have valuable discussions about our readings and develop critical thinking skills. Students learn several new words that we hear daily in our nursery rhymes, such as “fetch” and “pail” in Jack and Jill. They also learn about important terms that we will hear constantly when discussing stories, such as “rhyme” and “character.” Our nursery rhymes also serve as a great way to learn certain cultural traditions or common expressions and idioms, such as the funny saying, “It’s raining cats and dogs,” which we learned while reading It’s Raining, It’s Pouring. This month in Language Arts, we will continue working with nursery rhymes, and will begin looking at fables soon as well! In science, we will be starting our units on pretend vs. real, and living vs. nonliving things, followed by our units on animals and their environments. Finally in math, we will continue working with patterns before moving onto units that build on the knowledge we’ve gained so far, such as creating pattern block designs using our knowledge of shapes.

has them reading daily both in class and at home, and practicing their comprehension skills with daily written answers either assigned by the teacher or found in the book. They’re also reviewing all 1st grade vocabulary for the purposes of sight reading and spelling, to make 2nd grade reading and spelling easier once we begin it this month. Math has also been a lot of 1st grade review, but this month we’ll finally begin covering new material such as more complex word problems and more difficult money and pattern concepts. In Science for both grades, we completed two explorations in September: Insects and The Water Cycle. We hope to put our Water Cycle Rap on Facebook this month! October will find us exploring Weather Systems, Plants and Environments. Finally, Social Studies began with an introduction to basic map skills. Students learned the continents and oceans, and how to read a compass and a map. Next we’ll begin landforms and bodies of water at grade-appropriate levels.

Albanian International School October Newsletter Page 2 Kindergarten News

Miss Tamara Rahoumi

Grade 1/2 News Miss Keelah Rose Calloway

During the month of September, 1st grade students reviewed ABC letters and sounds before beginning the Level 1 CKLA Skills Strand program with lessons in basic phonics. We hope to begin the Listening & Learning Strand in early October, and introduce reading real stories from the UNIT 1 Reader as soon as possible. It’s vital that all 1st graders practice their basics at home so that we can move through the CKLA program even faster at school! Please review ABCs with your 1st grader nightly. Math has gotten off to a great start, with shapes and colors being the basis by which students learn ordinal numbers and the concept of “most” vs. “least.” In October we’ll continue exploring those ideas and start learning about how to count American money. 2nd grade CKLA students have been diving head first into both the Listening & Learning Strand and the Skills Strand, shoring up basic concepts covered in first grade even as we embark on new territory. UNIT 1 of both programs

In the past three weeks we’ve had the opportunity to get to know each other better and we’ve learned to work together as a class. It’s been fun and exciting! In math, we started exploring new concepts such as the difference between odd and even numbers, place value, how to solve problems, and the properties of different polygons. We also reviewed topics such as reading the time on the clock, counting money, checking the temperature outside, and learning the days of the week and the months of the year. Next month we will focus on multiplication, division, and fractions. In our Grammar class, we have learned 10 new words every week. We analyze the spelling and the definition of each word and the kids have to write them ten times each, so they can memorize them for the Friday test. We have practiced reading and writing in English, so that we may become more comfortable with the language. Learning the pronunciation of certain words has been challenging but exciting too, as the kids get used to using English daily. We are currently working on nouns and adjectives, learning how to use them when we write. Next month we’ll keep working on different parts of speech, such as pronouns and verbs. In our Social Studies class we decided to start the year by playing Memory, a game that would help us learn and memorize some terms and definitions such as “desert,” “gulf” and “bay.” We made cards and we enjoyed playing and learning together. We then started studying different bodies of water with their characteristics and are now focusing on how to read a map and use a compass. During the next month we’ll focus on comparing different countries according to their physical and human characteristics. In Science for both grades, we completed two explorations in September: Insects and The Water Cycle. We hope to put our Water Cycle Rap on Facebook this month! October will find us exploring Weather Systems, Plants and Environments. And in CKLA, students are diving headfirst into Domain 1 of our Listening & Learning Strand by listening to The Wind And The Willows, and shoring up their basics in the Skills Strand by reading classic tales like Aladdin and Alice In Wonderland. Class discussions are a key part of this program, so make sure your child can articulate his or her thoughts about the stories in English at home!

Art News Miss Ida Metaj

Albanian International School October Newsletter Page 3

This month with 3rd to 6th graders, since they are all beginners, we started on the basics: “Meeting & Greeting,” “Numbers,” “Times & Dates” and “Being Polite.” They also began research projects on France, which they will display on posters or booklets. With the younger ones, I used lots of games (ABC, clocks, numbers); books, flash cards and started some activity pages, which they seem to enjoy. Overall, I think we had a good start into the course and I am encouraged that some of the children who were not happy to have French at first seem to enjoy the classes now. Generally, all the students are well-behaved in class and a pleasure to teach. Next month we will be studying:

- Your details: Talking about yourself, your family & home - Your home: where you live, rooms in a house, furniture

- Daily routines, chores - The body & health

Grade 5/6 News Mr. Alex Semerjian

Music News Mr. Daniel Cook

Grade 3/4 News Miss Giulia Panella & Miss Keelah Rose Calloway

The first month of our music program has been very encouraging. I have begun teaching the first steps of reading music to grades 1 and upward. It has been a fun challenge, as most of the kids have never read a note before. There are a few who have played instruments prior to this, but none who know how to read music. This month has been an introduction to musical symbols, how to recognize them, and what they mean for the music reader! We have also been able to spend some time with instruments in class (guitars and keyboard) and the kids have enjoyed that very much. This upcoming month, I hope to move forward into placing musical symbols correctly on a musical staff, reading simple melodies, and even have the kids create some tunes of their own! My ambition is for each child to write a musical piece on staff paper by the end of the month. Then, they will all have the chance to hear their teacher play what they have written, and find out if they like what they have created! Also, we will be introducing some musical history into our classes, so the kids can learn about the great musicians of the past.

In math we started looking at division and the relationship between the remainder, the divisor, the dividend and the quotient. We will continue exploring division by representing it in pictures and then moving onto its relationship with fractions and decimals. Parents and students should also note that there will be a goal set to master the multiplication tables up to ten. In science and history, we will continue trying to work like scientists and historians. In science, students will be designing experiments to test a hypothesis, focus on recording detailed and accurate observations, and then writing out our first lab report. In history, we will continue to look at different types of primary source documents, what historians can learn from them and the process by which history is written. Although I view all classes as an opportunity to improve the English skills of the students, our focus in the English classes will be on writing grammatically correct sentences and the ability to express increasingly complex ideas.

PRE K / KINDERGARTEN / GRADE 1 We’ll learn Elements of art: color, line, shape, form, space, light & texture. In Pre K we’re going to make animals with different materials, starting with the letter they’re learning during that week. In kindergarten, I’ll engage students in recognizing & using different kinds of lines & colors & point out lines & color in nature. In 1st Grade, this is a review. They’ll use these elements in a paper drawing, & together they’ll create their own masterpiece & learn about artists Kandinsky & Paul Klee.

GRADE 2 In second grade, we’ll continue to discuss elements that children learned about in kindergarten and 1st grade, and recognize lines as horizontal, vertical or diagonal. This month they’re also going to learn about Pablo Picasso and his famous painting Mother and Child. Another new lesson this month will be about sculpture.

GRADE ¾ We’ll learn about the sculpture, painting, architecture and mosaics of ancient Rome, which includes a little bit of art history.

GRADE 5/6 The focus here is to combine art history with analysis of specific illustrative works. We’ll observe ancient Greek art characteristics considered “classic“ idealization of the human form: The Discus Thrower, Apollo Belvedere and the Parthenon.

DON’T FORGET: THIS MONTH WE’LL PAINT THE MURAL AGAIN, SO PLEASE REMEMBER TO BRING YOUR OLD CLOTHES!

French News Mr. Michel Ramond

We should be at school before 8:00AM because Mr. Semerjian gets angry with us if we aren't on time. When everybody is here, Mr. Semerjian tells us to see the science experiment that we did. We put chicken, sausage and bread in containers and we saw what would happen for a week or so. Then we started Albanian history with Mr. Hoxha. He told us that Tirana is made from 3 cities called Kamez, Vlorë and Tirana itself. I love Albanian history because it tells me and my friends about our own country. After Albanian history, we have Albanian language class. For Albanian language we have learned paragraphs, sentences, stories, verbs and nouns. I love this class because I have never learned the Albanian language after spending 11 years in English schools. After snack, we have French with Mr. Michel. I love French because I have never spoke this kind of language and because of the way Mr. Michel teaches us. After French, we have history with Mr. Semerjian. He taught us about a large tapestry that was 70 meters long. I like history very much because it tells us about our past and about the things we want to see like dinosaurs and other historical periods.

NO SCHOOL OCTOBER 15TH Due to the Bayram (Eid al-Adha) holiday, school will be cancelled for one day this month.

BASEMENT REFURBISHMENT ENDS! Construction on our basement ends this month! We look forward to enjoying expanded classroom spaces, a school cafeteria, an art room, a music room and so much more!

OTHER IMPORTANT DATES TO REMEMBER: Nov 28th & 29th—Albanian Independence: No school Dec 21st — Term 1 classes end/Winter Recess begins January 6th, 2014: Term 2 classes begin/break ends

A l b a n i a n I n t e r n a t i o n a l S c h o o l : Dream bigger. Learn better. Shine brighter.

24 Rruga Elbasanit Tirana, Albania 1001 042 273 488

Albanian International School October Newsletter Page 4

Important Events:

The first 3 students to find all 20 words in the puzzle

below and return it to Miss Calloway will win a prize!

Farm Field Trip: Friday, October 4th All students & interested parent chaperones are invited to join us in Vlorë to tour a real farm! We will leave school at 8:15AM and return by 4:00PM.

Mid-Term Report Cards: October 25th Mid-Term 1 grades will be ready for pick-up by parents or sent home with students.

Halloween Party, Thursday, Oct. 31st Our annual holiday celebration will include games in every classroom, treats for every student and a costume competition. Normal afternoon classes will be cancelled.

This Month’s Highlights:

Students of the Month

Student Spotlight Neri Xhani, Grade 5

Melika Pirpiran & Elisabeta Mulaj

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MELIKA was nominated by Ms. Barbara and Miss Aurora for being a star student this month! She has been helpful, a good listener, cheerful, forgiving, respectful of her classmates, and she made a real effort to befriend new students. Great job, Melika! ELISABETA was nominated by Mr. Anderson and Miss Calloway. She has been very helpful in class translating for new students until they learn English better, has not missed a single homework assignment and is always enthusiastic about new projects and activities! Congratulations Elisabeta! Keep it up!

The first 3 students to find all 20 words in the puzzle and return it to Miss Calloway will win a prize! Here are the words:

apple fall leaves pear school brown geese maple tree pumpkin sweater chilly harvest October red vegetables colors hay orange rice yellow