Dear Parents,

Starting on Thursday, 17 August I will be holding optional Parent/Teacher Snapshot Conferences. Each conference will last for ten minutes and it will offer you the chance to share any new developments about your child as well as any concerns that you might have for this school year and perhaps any particular goals you are keen for us to work towards achieving.

If you would like to sign up for a conference, please click on the link below which will bring you to a Google Doc showing the times that I am available. Select the time that you would like to come for your Snapshot conference by writing both your name and your child’s name next to your chosen slot.

August 2017 5R Conferences Sign Ups

Kind regards,
Jamie Raskin

Hello 5R families!

Welcome to the new school year! I am looking forward to meeting each member of our new classroom community on Tuesday, and to diving into getting to know each other.

I would like to take a minute to introduce myself. I am originally from Toronto, Canada, but have spent the bulk of my teaching career overseas in Taiwan, Turkey, Japan and Tanzania. This will be my third year at Zurich International School. My wife Elif will be teaching Art and supporting the Makerspace in our Lower School.

I look forward to working with you towards providing a safe, exciting, and challenging environment in which your child will learn and grow as an individual. I believe in working together and providing the strongest support system your child will need to grow academically, socially, and emotionally.

In order to help us have a smooth start, please note the following logistical matters:

• PE will be on Wednesday and Friday. Please send your child to school in his PE kit on those days with appropriate footwear. Library visits will be by default on Thursday, but theit is possible to return and borrow new books any day during scheduled break times. Ensemble music will be on Wednesdays. Your child will need to bring their instrument if in band or strings.
• We will have snack each day at 10:10. Please remember to send in a healthy snack.
• We will keep reusable water bottles in the classroom. Please send in a well-labeled bottle for your child.
• All our students are required to have indoor shoes that are left at school. These shoes should also function as PE shoes. This means an athletic-type shoe with a light-coloured sole. No slippers or Crocs, please.
• All students will go outside for morning recess, regardless of the weather, and we will also spend time in the forest. Your child needs to be prepared with appropriate outdoor clothing.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns at jraskin@zis.ch. I look forward to a wonderful year ahead!

All the best,

Jamie

Cycling in Alsace this past summer.

Yesterday we were chatting in 5R about how to end the year with our buddy class, Ms McCaughan’s second graders, and to celebrate our year together. One suggestion that got a lot of enthusiasm, was returning to our beginning of the year event, and having another sausage campfire lunch!

Having discussed the idea with Ms McCaughan, here’s the plan…

Next Wednesday, June 14, we will not be having our normal lunch routine. At 11:30 we will meet our buddy class, and head out into the woods behind the school to a campfire site together. We will build a fire, cook our sausage lunch, share some desserts and other foods, and enjoy a couple hours in the woods together. We will return to class for 1:30.

Here’s what we need from you…

FOOD

1. If your child gets pre-paid hot lunch from the cafeteria every day, the ZIS cafeteria staff have agreed to pack a few sausages and some bread rolls for them instead of the usual menu.
2. Otherwise, please send a sausage or two from home (a good idea if your child has particular dietary requirements, they can be veggie, kosher etc.), they can be refrigerated from Thursday morning at school. Please send only as much as your child will eat.

If there is a problem with this please let me know as soon as possible and we will problem-solve together.

Additional foods, like marshmallows, other desserts, easy vegetables (like baby tomatoes, vegetable sticks etc.), bread rolls, potato chips, mustard, ketchup etc., as well as paper plates and utensils, would be welcome in small amounts, to share. The students suggested a sign-up sheet for this. There is no requirement that anyone bring additional foods, I’m sure we will have enough. If you would like, you can sign up here.

One last food note… Please don’t send anything other than sausages/hot dogs to cook over the fire. We won’t be able to do steak or chicken legs this time! 🙂

WEATHER

At the moment the weather looks good for next week. This may change however. If on Tuesday evening the forecast looks really wet for Wednesday, we will have to cancel the event. Please keep a look out for a blog post on Tuesday evening if we are cancelling. If we are not cancelling, there will be no update.

What Else?

Of course, we will be in the woods for a few hours. Please ensure your child has appropriate clothing for this. Mosquito repellant may be smart, and clothes/shoes that can get dirty would be good. As always, please ensure your child has a water bottle with them to take into the woods. A good-sized snack is a good idea as well.

KEY POINTS in this post:

• Plan for your child’s food for next Wednesday (either cafeteria if that is their norm, or packed sausages)
• Sign up for additional contributions if desired
• Keep an eye out for a possible rain cancellation post on Tuesday evening
• Water bottle, bug repellant and a snack on Wednesday

Thanks for your support! It’s going to be a great celebration!

Today in 5R we had our second Child Protection session. The focus of today’s session was unwanted touch and keeping secrets. We began by dividing touch into three categories: Safe, Unsafe and Unwanted.

We defined them as:

• Unsafe: Touch that can be hurtful, kicking, pushing etc., as well as touching of private body parts.
• Safe: Touch that won’t be hurtful, and isn’t threatening.
• Unwanted: Touch that you don’t want. It might not be ill intended, but you don’t want it, like too much tickling or affection in a way that feels uncomfortable.

Most touches, we decided, are safe and fine, in fact, touch is a really necessary part of life. Then we introduced the Touching Rule.

The Touching Rule: No one should touch your private body parts except to keep you clean and healthy.

We discussed what were private parts, which we described as the parts of your body usually covered by a swim suit. We also spoke about the idea of keeping you healthy, and how even doctors shouldn’t be touching children’s private parts without their parents present.

Then we got into the focus of the lesson, secrets. We discussed who to talk to, and what secrets should never be kept.

We began by reading the book: Some Secrets Should Never be Kept, a story written to help keep kids safe from sexual abuse.

What secrets should never be kept?

• Secrets that make you feel uncomfortable or bad.
• Secrets like someone saying “never tell your parents about this…”

How do a lot of children feel when they are abused?

• ashamed, guilty, frightened, worried, nervous etc.
• many children are threatened with consequences by an abuser if they tell anyone.
• as a consequence they feel worried about how them telling what happened will impact others.

We discussed how it is against the law for an adult to touch a child’s private parts, have the child touch their private parts, or for a child to touch another child’s private parts. 

The conversation then went to the subject of “What happens to an adult who is doing something abusive to children?”, and we discussed that sexual abuse was illegal and that there were punishments, that the abuser would be punished, not the child.

Eventually the discussion went towards how despite all of these very scary things that do happen, these things happen very very rarely and these discussions are not designed to make people fearful. These discussions are just designed to help us know what to do, how to be safe, in these really difficult, very frightening, but thankfully very rare, situations.

Finally, we discussed who you could tell if you came across something wrong, or something wrong happened to you. We discussed the idea of having in mind three adults (or older kids) you trust, and how children have to be brave and assertive when sharing these events. We discussed how sometimes children may even have to keep sharing with different people they trust until someone takes action to keep them safe.

This session concludes this series of lessons.

Dear 5R families,

On Monday we had our first Child Protection lesson. The topic of the lesson was communication. The students discussed three types of communication: aggressive, passive, and assertive.

These are notes we made:

• Aggressive Communication:
  • Threatening
  • Disrespectful (words, tone)
  • Rude (words, tone)
  • Ignoring
  • Physical (punching, hitting, kicking, shoving, choking)
  • Takes care of ME (not taking care of other people)

• Passive Communication:
  • Avoid communicating
  • Ignoring (so that you don’t have to deal with something)
  • Letting people get their way
  • Takes care of OTHERS

• Assertive Communication:
  • Involves both what you say AND how you say it.  Tone of voice matters.  Body language matters.
  • Uses “I” messages in order to communicate what you feel, think or need.  Ex:   “I feel  sad when I hear rude words because they hurt my feelings. I like playing with people who use nice words”, or, “I feel upset when you do not take care of my things because I then need to replace them. I need you to take care of my things like I do if you are going to borrow them.”
  • Includes active listening (listening with your whole self).  This means using good eye contact (not staring or glaring), speaking in a calm, even tone of voice, paraphrasing what you heard the other person say, clarifying anything that is not clear, and asking non-judgmental questions.
  • Can communicate a firm message in a way that gets the point across but helps everyone feel respected.
  • Takes care of EVERYONE

After discussing the different types of communication, we role-played different kinds of communication in everyday situations (i.e. you need to get your pencil back from someone who is using it) and then discussed that you might have to use assertive communication in situations to keep yourself safe.

Our next session will be Thursday.  I will blog again then so that parents stay informed of what we discussed in class.

This week students are in their final countdown to exhibition. Nearly all have completed their projects and are deep into finalizing their presentation materials. On their blogs this week you will find individual descriptions of their plans, needs and priorities before the big day, next Thursday!

Sample

Here is what my exhibit space will look like:

The presentation elements I need to have created/prepared are (in order of priority):

1. My solar and wind poster
2. My design cycle poster
3. My “try to build” instructions for visitors
4. My banner
5. My innovator story

I also need to:

1. Prepare my materials for the building challenge
2. Plan the story I want to tell in my Pecha Kucha, and prepare the images (then practice!)