The post Chinese Journal December 2023 first appeared on Â鶹´«Ã½ | American International School - Wells.

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The post Wells Thong Lo | Happy Teachers¡¯ Day first appeared on Â鶹´«Ã½ | American International School - Wells.

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By Michael Barnes, Grade 3 Homeroom Teacher

The Wednesday Weekly Assemblies have continued to be a growing success at Wells Bang Na. The Kindergarten 3 to Grade 4 students interact with each other and feel a presence of school unity. Each week teachers and staff work together to create activities that are fun and engaging for students. ¡°The freeze dance assembly was the best one! It was fun because we got to dance using so many different poses,¡± said Nina of first grade. ¡°The assemblies are an exciting way for students to learn more about their teacher and classmates¡±, mentioned Teacher David. ¡°I enjoy how Wells Bang Na keeps students engaged even when online learning can be challenging¡±.

The Talent Show

Our most successful assembly to date was the Talent Show. This assembly asked students of all grades to reflect on their creative talents and showcase them to the school. ¡°My talent was memorizing multiplication numbers,¡± said Abhiram of Grade 3. ¡°I wanted to show my friends at school how fast I am at multiplying. Prince of Grade 2 demonstrated a Buddhist chant connecting with his traditional Thai cultural roots. ¡°It was my moment to show and make people interested in chanting. It was a great chance to make merit for the school,¡± mentioned Prince.

The Pet Parade

Even Grade 4 got into the mix of weekly assemblies. They planned and implemented a Pet Parade where teachers and students could showcase their furry friends inside their homes. ? ¡°Preparing for the assembly was a lot of work. The teachers who plan them make it seem so easy,¡± said Jai Jai and Mira of Grade 4. Everyone enjoyed seeing all of the different varieties of house pets. ¡°I loved seeing everyone¡¯s pets. But it was also fun to show off my dog to the whole school,¡± remarked Quinn of grade 3.?

As we continue with online learning, our weekly assemblies will remain a staple every Wednesday. Teachers and staff are working hard to offer our students the best in fun and holistic activities to develop our students¡¯ bodies and minds. We look forward to our weekly assemblies, and we hope our students do too!

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Every year, Wells likes to celebrate the completion of 100 school days with an activity filled event. Here are some of the highlights!?

This year, Mr. Anthony wrote a special song and kicked off the day by singing it at assembly in his own inimitable style!?

In class the students got up to a multitude of learning activities. The nursery class got colorful and creative by decorating ¡°100¡± themed headbands.?

Similarly, K3 students made a ¡°100¡± themed hat on which they had to draw groups of ten shapes to make 100.?

In Grade 1 the classes wrote bucket lists, noting down the things they would like to do before they reach 100 years of age. Well, they certainly have a lot of time! They also did a stacking challenge by working in teams, attempting to label and stack 100 cups.?

As you can see from the pictures, these are just a few of the activities!

Thank you teachers and students for making this such a fun and educational landmark! Here¡¯s to many more days of fun filled learning at Â鶹´«Ã½l.

The post Celebrating 100 Days of School! first appeared on Â鶹´«Ã½ | American International School - Wells.

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Our students were able to connect with students in Japan using Zoom. This exchange took place during the last week of online learning in January, 2021. The ability to take a virtual field trip to another school is a positive aspects of online learning. Through observing the students in Okinawa, our grade 5 students and teachers gained clarity on how to improve their own projects. They also saw how to share the exhibition projects with the greater community.?

Kanade (grade 5 students) reflected, “Previously, I was nervous about my own project. But now, I feel confident about it because I know what to expect.” After the meeting, we received positive feedback from the students and PYP coordinator in Okinawa. They appreciated the questions asked by our students. They felt that they were very strong inquirers and thinkers.?

Looking forward, our students are more equipped and excited to share their exhibition projects. Annie said, “I know what I need to do to improve my project now. I can add more pictures and explain my work more clearly because I know what it’s like to be in the audience.” Hank thought, “This experience gave me some good ideas on what to present.”

Â鶹´«Ã½l Bang Na will invite members of the community to participate in the Grade 5 exhibition in May 2021.

The post Wells Bang Na Connects with Okinawa International School first appeared on Â鶹´«Ã½ | American International School - Wells.

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Grade 1 is always busy learning new things. Often, we don’t have a chance to take a breath and think about our own learning.? This year, in Grade 1 Wells Bangna, we have been focusing on reflection. We make? time to reflect on projects and lessons, or even immediately after learning a new skill.? However, before we can start to reflect, we need to understand what it means to reflect.? Piper explained, “It is like looking in a mirror”. While Prim described reflection as “when you think about something you did”.? In Grade 1, we describe reflecting as a way to think about and check what we understand and what we have learned.??

How We Reflect

With this knowledge, we consider how we reflect. In Grade 1, we reflect in 3 ways, namely the whole class, small groups and individual reflection.? Our teacher often asks, “Who is in the learning pit?” to find out who needs some more time to work through a challenge.? The whole class reflects together with the help of questions such as “What did you do well?”? or “What do you need to practice more?”? or even “What are your goals for next time?”.? These questions help us look at the skills we are learning, while having class friends use each other as examples.?

Small Group Work

Another way we reflect is in small groups where we focus on what we do during activities. After our small group activities, we talk about what we did well and what we want to change for next time. For example, some groups work very well together, while some groups struggle to take turns.? We talk about what happened in the activity and how we can change some things. This helps us become self aware and mindful of what we do. On the other hand, when friends do well, we cheer them on.

Conferring with Out Teacher

Even so, our favorite way of reflecting is when we talk to our teacher individually.? Adriana said that she can talk about what she has learned. Nandu likes individual reflection, because he said he can find out what his weaknesses are.? We use the SOLO taxonomy to help us use hand gestures, colors and clear words to describe what we can do.? We discuss our understanding with our teacher and explain why we think we are on a specific level.? It helps build confidence when we talk about our learning. It helps us set goals for ourselves.? It also helps our teacher find areas that need extra attention, for instance, our teacher found out that some students were unsure what celebrations meant during the individual reflections and planned a way to reteach the meaning of the word the next day.???

Ownership of Our Learning

In conclusion, reflection helps us become responsible for our own learning.? It helps us be aware of what we need to focus on and teaches us to set achievable goals for ourselves.? It can be hard work and we still need support from each other, but we enjoy it.? And lastly, don’t forget how proud we are when we succeed and we know it.?

Written by Ms. Sunee Steyn (Grade 1 teacher)

The post Reflection in Grade 1 first appeared on Â鶹´«Ã½ | American International School - Wells.

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On September 25th, teachers from two Wells campuses gathered for a special professional development day. Teachers from Primary and Early Years participated in this training. This workshop included two sessions and was led by mixed teams of teachers and leadership from Bang Na and Thong Lor campuses.?

Two groups, one big goal:

Our Early Years teachers participated in activities designed to build communication and collaboration between teachers and learning assistants. Our improvement goal was to strengthen communication in our school. This is the first step in modeling language to early years students.?

K2, K3 and Primary level teachers joined in a lively writers workshop session. The teachers practiced? hands-on strategies. They explored tools that they can use to promote literacy at multiple levels. ¡±In Writer’s Workshop, Ms. Tracy and Ms. Ann provided us fun, engaging, and practical ideas on how to get students’ interest in writing. As an EAL teacher, I can use these tools to encourage students in building simple to complex sentences. Later on, they will be confident in writing paragraphs, stories and other forms of writing,¡± mentioned Ms. Addie, the Bang Na campus Librarian.?

?Ms. Sunee from Bang Na¡¯s campus shared her feelings about this session: ¡°I have been given a new perspective on writer’s workshops and am now more equipped to create new and exciting learning opportunities for my students.? I appreciate the time and effort our school puts into the development of each teacher. Even though it was hard to forget the work piled up on my desk, I was happy to have Anne and Tracy share their ideas with us.¡±?

Learning together:

In each session, teachers had the opportunity to to build on their existing knowledge, compare communication and literacy instruction strategies and engage in fun, team building activities.?

Ms. Ellie from Grade 2 shared her thoughts after the workshop. ¡°Having an in house PD day was really useful as our administration listened to our needs so we did activities that we could really take back to our classrooms. I enjoyed the writers workshop session because we did a lot of hands-on learning that we can use to help our students be better at the writing process.¡±?

Conducting professional development within our own organization gives teachers the opportunity to grow as a team. ¡°I found the professional development day valuable, worthwhile, and relevant to my development as a teacher. Through collaboration amongst colleagues, we were able to share our knowledge and learn from each other’s experience,¡± said Mr. Jordan from Grade 4, Bang Na.

Building our team:

One of the most important takeaways from this day related to the roles of teachers and teacher assistants. In small groups, we listed the roles of homeroom, specialists and assistants. When we compared these lists, it was clear to see that our jobs are always overlapping and interconnected.?

Growing together:

In the future, we will conduct more in-house professional development to address the growing needs of our schools. “I think the idea that teachers are still working to improve their craft sets a good example for our own students. It encourages them to do their best, especially when we return from professional development with these new activities they haven’t experienced before; PD is so visceral and real”, reflected Mr. Russell, the Grade 5 teacher from Bang Na.

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First, to inquire into the different social interactions we have, we asked questions about what we were wondering about and shared what we knew about the topic. Aurelio asked, “How do people use words?” . Then, Nandu wondered how people are different.
We inquired more into what Nandu asked about. As a class, we discussed things that made us special. Then, we talked about all the similarities we had. Piper said we all had families, but Prim said that our families were not the same. We decided that we wanted to compare the similarities and differences in our families.

So, we made a Venn-diagram to show how we compared our own family with a friend’s family. We made Venn-diagrams in pairs and wrote the things that were different in the outside circles. Then, we wrote the things that were the same in the small part where the circles overlapped. We found some interesting differences, such as some people were from Thailand and some people were from other countries.

With this in mind, we made a class Venn-diagram and compared the students from Thailand and the students from other countries. We looked at things we do, food we like to eat, languages we speak and even the flags that look different. We found so many differences, but, to our surprise, we found many similarities too. We found out that we all loved our families, we were all happy, we all liked Christmas and we were all living in Thailand.

The post Who We Are: Grade 1 Unit first appeared on Â鶹´«Ã½ | American International School - Wells.

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The video shows that our students are thinkers forming their own ideas based on their theoretical knowledge and experiential learning.

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Although Covid-19 challenged students and teachers in many ways; our classes openly discussed strategies to support the development of communication and presentation skills. Our students chose to teach each other how to prepare a healthy and balanced meal in their first remote learning videos project. When these presentations were completed, we watched them together with the students. Then we discussed and critiqued the presentation techniques. The students were excited to share their work in this way. So they voted to keep producing videos as a component of their class work.?

A Healthy?Recipe

Our current unit for these classes is ¡°Who We Are¡±. It? focuses on health, growth and responsibilities. Online learning encouraged our students to become more independent. The situation of studying at home requires self-discipline and maturity. In some ways this unit has been enhanced by social distancing measures. Our students have been especially reflective about this experience. They are able to see the true value of physical fitness and nutrition. They are taking steps to make fitness a part of their daily schedule, without adult pressure.?

The teachers Ms. Viki and Mr. Jordan wanted students to be active in their approach to learning. We designed activities in which students could personalize their learning. Then demonstrate their learning in a fun way. One activity involved students researching a healthy meal. Then they cooked it with a parent.Students chose their own meal and ingredients. Then they demonstrated why it was a healthy choice. In another activity, students designed their own 7-day fitness plan. After that, they will design their own fitness magazine.?

Sam Makes a Sandwich

Learning is not always pencil, paper, and books. Sometimes it involves students getting their hands dirty, using deeper thinking, and challenging themselves to do new things. We encouraged our students to practice the learner profiles during this difficult time for all of us as we continue distant learning. We could not be more proud of the students, thankful for the parents, and continued support from the school administration.?

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