ELEMENTARY

February 11, 2022

We hope you have had an excellent week.

As we look ahead to the next month of school we have many amazing events planned.

The very first DAA Arts & Athletics Festival is happening next week! FUNTASIA is an event that will combine the disciplines, skills set and joy of Art, Music and PE! Every elementary student will attend and experience a memorable time in their elementary school life! To create “school spirit” around this event, students are asked to wear their class color to show their LeopardPride for the week. This information was shared with teachers, students and on Seesaw.

A reminder that next week is a short week and students are in on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday is a professional development day and our teachers will hear a keynote address from a gentleman at Google, engage in teacher-led workshops on inquiry-based learning and spend the afternoon with our literacy consultant group, Erin Kent Consulting, on Teacher’s College Reading and Writing Project. Friday is then a holiday for all!

As we move into March we have lots to look forward to:

The first annual Grade 5 Camp on Sir Bani Yas Island in Abu Dhabi;
A number of grade levels will hold student learning showcases revolving around their units of inquiry;
Towards the end of the term we will host our virtual student-parent-teacher conferences (March 16 and 17). Booking details will come out at the beginning of March.

It is hard to believe we are already in mid-February!

As we continue to look ahead, I want to thank all those families who have registered for re-enrollment. It is wonderful to have your commitments early so that we can properly plan for the new school year.

If you have not yet re-enrolled please take a minute to let us know your plans. If you have any questions, concerns or difficulties with the link we are here to help. If there are educational questions please reach out to myself, Ms. Salameh, Ms. Bishara or Ms. Gandhi. If you have registration questions or difficulties with the link please contact our Director of Admissions, Mrs. Gabrielle Keane at g.keane_daa@gemsedu.com.

We hope to welcome you all back next year so we can continue this magical learning journey for your children.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Sincerely,

Craig Cantlie

Executive Principal, Elementary

KG1 Learning

KG2 Learning

Quote of the week: There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved – George Sand

We are exploring and learning in a fun way in KG2 classes. During our inquiry sessions, we followed a map, leading to our AI Center where we met Pepper (a robot). We then used our measuring knowledge and skills to help Pepper calculate the length of her arm and leg. The children used their coding skills to move Cubetto on the map. We introduced the new unit of inquiry on weather, and children enjoyed going out to the school track and field in the morning and afternoon to check the weather patterns. For the numeracy lessons, the children enjoyed skip-counting to hundred by tens, fives and twos. We also celebrated the 2-2-22 day on Wednesday where the children showed different ways of making twos (pairs and counting by twos). We explored the concept of capacity and compared different objects. The children had an opportunity to do hands-on activities and discussions within different centers using containers/tools of different sizes and capacities, and manipulatives like pasta, water, beans, and sand. For the Twos day, the children drew self-portraits and wrote sentences such as I have two eyes, two ears, etc. Their work is posted outside our classroom. We had birthday celebrations in class and we are looking forward to celebrating Friendship day and 100 days of school in the coming week of school.