K. International School Tokyo

April 2008
Volume 1 Issue 7

Dates toLearning for Life

RememberTerm 3

Principal’s Message
KIST Students Taking Action!
One of the fundamental parts of the IBO philosophy is the idea of action. Al‐
though described using different names, all three programmes promote the ideathat students, over time, should take action as a consequence of their learning.
Through the idea that the context for learning provides an opportunity for stu‐
dents to make connections to their own lives, students are constantly encour‐
aged to think about their learning using questions such as:
How does what I have learnt change what I think, feel and do?

K. International School Tokyo

Earlier this week I was delighted to be part of our school’s Crisis Management
Meeting and be witness to two of our Grade 3 students acting as representatives
and sharing a plan for action and change that their class has developed.

April:
22nd:
Earth Day
23rd:
Study Skills Workshop
Grade 8 and 9
26th‐6th:
School Holiday
May:

Picture this….

14th:

A meeting amongst six school teachers on a Monday afternoon at 3:30pm. Twovery confident young Grade three students enter the room and wait quietly forthe meeting to start. When the meeting starts and the two students are invited
to speak, they step forward and with great confidence and enthusiasm they in‐troduce themselves and begin their presentation.

MYP/DP Parent Evening

The students carefully explain that they have been learning about disaster pre‐paredness in their unit titled “What a Disaster”. They explain that through their
discussions, learning activities and an idea that was shared amongst students
about an emergency card for students, they had developed an idea that theywould like us to consider adopting as a school.

Grade 5 Exhibition

Within minutes they had the agreement and praise of the committee and a newschool plan to promote school and student safety was embraced.
Over the coming weeks we will be introducing the new student safety cardthrough various activities at school. In short, the idea is that students will keep
an emergency card that is completed by families in their bag. Although the useof this card will be voluntary, the school will promote the use of this card andremind families through various means of the importance of keeping these cards
up to date.
Congratulations Grade 3 on a great action project! We look forward to using
this idea to keep our school community safe and sound.

21st:
PYP Parent Evening
23rd:

24th:
K1‐G5 Sports Day
26th:
K1‐G5 Holiday
Secondary Normal Day
31st:
Secondary Sports Day
June:
2nd:
K1‐G5 Normal Day
Secondary Holiday
3rd to 6th:

Sasha Marshall
School Principal

No ESL or Clubs

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Volume 1 Issue 7

Safety and Responsibility at School
A few safety issues have arisen recently that require whole school community cooperation.
Earrings
For safety reasons, it is our school policy that earrings are not to be worn at school. However, when ears are pierced for the
first time it is necessary to wear stud earrings for a period before changing earrings. This results in a clash with our school
policy. We would like to suggest that students who wish to have their ears pierced do so in the summer weeks, in order toavoid this clash.
Field
We would like to ask that students and parents leaving the school use the path around the outdoor play area at all times.
Walking across the play area interferes with PE lessons, play times and the bus turning circle. This can be both dangerous
and disruptive to staff and students.
Going Home and Supervision
Throughout the school day, we work hard to ensure students are safe by providing adequate supervision. For primary andECE students, this supervision ends at 3pm (2pm for ECE students not in aftercare and 4:30 for students who have after
school activities). We would like to ask all families to ensure that students are going home as soon as their school day has
finished. We ask that all students have left the school grounds within 15mins of the conclusion of their school day. For stu‐
dents who finish at 3pm, this means they should leave the school grounds by 3:15. For students who have an after school
activity, they should leave by 4:45.
Your support and cooperation with these issues will help us to keep our school a safe and positive place.
Primary Class Parents
For many years now, we have had a system of class parent organizers for our ECE classes. These parents have performed arange of duties including compiling class contact lists, organizing birthday celebrations and coordinating events. Throughdiscussions with staff and the PTA, we have decided to introduce class parents for the primary school. The role of theseparents is to:Create a class contact list and phone tree.
Lead the organization of a class stall for the school festival.
Assist the class teacher with organization of events, collection of resources and material making if and when requiredby the class teacher.
As there are only about 8 weeks left until the end of the year, we will introduce these class parents in the new school year.
At this point we would like to invite you to think about whether this is a way that you could help to support the school.
Early in the 2008‐2009 school year we will invite families to volunteer for this role.
Update for ECE Playground Use
Last newsletter I spoke of our discussions regarding parent use of the ECE playground between 2‐3pm. The ECE staff havediscussed this issue in order to find a way that we can offer parents a place to wait and to socialize, thus contributing to asense of school community. In our discussions, staff discussed the benefits of being able to use this space for aftercare stu‐
dents. Many staff felt that this is difficult and too crowded if there are also parents and other children in the playground at
this time. So, unfortunately we have decided to continue to keep the playground closed so that it is available for aftercare
groups. Some families have been using the deck space outside the office area and this seems to be a successful way of
spending waiting time together on school grounds.
Primary Assemblies
This is a reminder that families are now invited to attend our primary assemblies. These assemblies include importantschool messages, sharing and performances by students, singing and often a story from me! Our next assemblies are on
Monday 19th of May and Monday 9th June. Primary assemblies start at 9:15 am. We hope to see you there.
Amanda Cooke
Acting Lower School Principal

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Volume 1 Issue 7

Page 3

Second Harvest Food Bank Drive
Thank you for all the donations of food for the food bank drive. We collected ten boxes of food and three large bagsof rice. These have been delivered to the Second Harvest Food Warehouse. Thank you to the many families who
generously donated to this worthy cause.
Ms Conrick and Grade 9 students

Reader’s Cup ChallengeThis year we will again be running the Reader’s Cup Challenge for students in Grade 6‐10. Teams of four students
may enter and the event is held to encourage students to read and enjoy a range of novels. The novels this year are:
The Conch Bearer, Journey to Jo’ Bourg, Fat Boy Swim, Natasha’s Will, and Samurai’s Tale. The challenge requires
students in their teams to answer a variety of questions about these novels. The students are not expected to haveread all five novels, it would be a good idea if the students have read at least two of the novels. Please encourage
your son/daughter to be involved in this event.
Ms Conrick, Ms Cox, and Mr Hough
English Department

Requesting documents
We would like to remind you of the procedure for requesting documentation from the school. The following docu‐
ments should be requested using the “Request for Documentation Form” which may be downloaded from the school
website:•Proof of current attendance•

Record of past attendance•Re‐issuance of school reports•

Letters of recommendation

All requests must be made by submitting the form to the office. Payment must be received before documents will be
issued. Please note that two week’s notice is required to prepare letters of recommendation. For all other documen‐
tation, one week’s notice is required.
Craig Larsen
Admission Officer

Report from Ohanami Spring Festival
This year’s Ohanami Spring Festival was held on April 6, a fine and clear day. We were
fortunate that the day proceeded very smoothly with no problems. Thank you to eve‐ryone who helped make the festival a success.
Thanks to the large number of people who attended on the day, we raised the follow‐
ing amount to put towards the school’s participation in Habitat for Humanity:
238,998 yen from the PTA booth
265,796 yen from the staff food booth (takoyaki, barbecue, churros and corn dogs), K Shop, school café and sales ofvarious items
123,000 yen donations for the sushi booth from the Kurihara family (K2) and Izutsu family (K3)
TOTAL: 627,794 yen
We would like to express our sincere thanks to all those who assisted at the festival, including those who provided
donations of food. Thank you very much.

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Volume 1 Issue 7

Water DayOn behalf of our school celebrations committee we would like to thank all of our families, students and teachers for their
participation in our recent Water Day Celebration. Through your support we were able to raise enough money to build notone, but two wells for families in Cambodia. Later this week this money will be sent to the Kasumisou Foundation and thenoff to Cambodia! Thank you for your support!

K Teacher/Oxfam Japan 100 km Charity Hike News
Deadline!
First of all we want to send a HUGE thank you to all of those who have generously supported us so far. We still have a long
way to go to meet our promise of ¥120,000 by May 7th however. If you were planning on making a donation to this worth‐while cause then please do so before the deadline.
Every week Mr. Paterson, Mr. Weston and Mr. Thompson go for a tour of the city for 3‐4 hours. On the weekends we havedone hikes in Kanagawa, including one walk from Kitakamakura to Enoshima and back with a little bit of trail walking
thrown in. Over the break we will be doing a long stretch of the official trail as well. We have been training hard but need
your support.
Thank you,
Mr. Paterson, Mr. Weston and Mr. Thompson“The Crew” Team #182

Donation Information (English):https://oxfam.jp/forms/en/sponsor_teams_form.html

Secondary Newsletter
Change to Secondary School start times for the 2008/2009 school year

As the student population grows we need to revise structures such as our timetable to maximize the use of our facilities.
With our predicted growth for next year we will need to stagger the start of our ECE, Primary and Secondary Schools in order
to allow all students across the school access to the field at recess and lunch times. One change that will allow us to do this is
the movement of the start of the Secondary School day to 8:45am from its current start time of 8:30am. This will allow us todifferentiate the use of the playground without altering the schedule significantly as school would finish at 3:25pm and stu‐
dents could move straight to clubs or ESL. This change would also create time for a ten minute secondary homeroom before
the start of school from 8:45am to 8:55am where teachers could meet with a class and assist students with structures target‐
ing effective organization and also communication between the school and home.
Secondary School Schedule
Homeroom

8:45am – 8:55am

Lessons

9:00am – 3:25pm

After school ESL and Club Activities

3:30pm – 4:30pm

These changes will commence from the new school year in September 2008
Study Skills Workshops
We have recently held two Study Skills Workshops run by Mr. Fortin where students from Grades Six and Seven had the op‐
portunity to work with their parents outlining the various activities that compete for the limited amount of time available tostudents during a week, prioritize these activities and try to organizing a balanced weekly schedule. We would like to thankall of the families who came along to these sessions. This support from families is extremely important for students and wehope to continue activities targeting this study skill development in our Homerooms next year.
Damian Rentoule
Upper School Principal

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Volume 1 Issue 7

PYP NEWSLETTER ARTICLE #7
Whole School Inquiry Cycle – DEMONSTRATINGSTANDING

UNDER‐

In previous articles, I outlined the different parts of the In‐
quiry Cycle, which teachers use when planning inquiry
units. This, the final article in this series, will focus on –Demonstrating Understanding.

K. International School Celebration
May 15th is International Day of Families!

When students Demonstrate Understanding, they explain,interpret and apply the knowledge and skills learnt during
the unit. Students can demonstrate understanding during
any stage of the Inquiry Cycle. Listing new facts gained,
demonstrating new skills, writing a report and creating anannotated illustration, are some examples of tasks that allow
students to demonstrate their understanding. Teachers use
a wide variety of Demonstrating Understanding Tasks inorder to check for students’ understanding. Using thesechecks, teachers adjust their planning and make it more re‐sponsive to the students’ needs.

We would like to celebrate and we would like your help
to do this.

Our celebrations will include…

•

A non‐uniform day where students are encouraged
to wear your family’s traditional dress, or clothes
that represent your family in some way. Students
are asked to pay ¥100 for this, which will help us
raise money for…

•

A school donation to a family in need. Through oneof our staff members, we have links to an organiza‐tion in the Philippines that assists families withloans in order to develop sustainable businesses.
This money would be paid back by the family andthen loaned to another, thus continuing support forfamilies over time. This money will be collected at...

•A celebration assembly! During this assembly wewill give a presentation on the program in the Phil‐
ippines. We would also like to celebrate by sharing
thoughts, photos and family gatherings of some ofour school families. We will be approaching several
school families to help out with this. Each year we
will approach different families so that we can learn
about the diversity of our school community.

Supporting your ChildOn a more practical note, here are some ways in which par‐ents can also foster Demonstrating Understanding at home:•

After reading a story with your child, have them retellthe story. At a more advanced level, ask your child toprovide the key ideas, themes or morals of the story.

•

Provide your child with opportunities to explain andteach others. E.g. perhaps you have shown your child
how to correctly set the timer on your DVD re‐corder. Give them the chance to teach this to anotherfamily member or a visitor; thus demonstrating theirunderstanding.

•

When you are teaching your child something at home,teach them in small steps. At the end of each step ask
them to explain, show or draw what they now
know. From their response you will be able to assess
the level of their understanding. If it is low, you mightneed to go back and re‐teach the previous step.

Paul Langtree
PYP Coordinator

We hope you will join with us in celebrating Interna‐
tional Day of Families by doing something special withyour whole family on the day!