AIS I s Fr ighten ing ly Fun !

What a thrilling celebration Halloween ‘13 turned out to be! Our students enjoyed a school-only celebration on October 31st when we let them trick-or-treat around the school in their costumes. Then on Saturday, November 2nd, we threw an even bigger party for the entire community to come help us celebrate the season. Over 200 people attended. At least 120 of them made the Halloween Celebration their first visit to AIS. Our students sang, Miss Calloway’s class did their volcano demonstration and explanation, Mr. Semerjian and his students scared and entertained visitors to the haunted classroom and everyone feasted on hot dogs and finger food. The Costume Contest and Parade had over 30 contestants from 2-14 years old. AIS was fortunate to have as sponsors for our Halloween Celebration: the Sheraton Hotel, which provided a gift certificate for two at its “Il Pomodoro” restaurant; Agna Group’s Pepsi Cola division donated free soda, Far East Restaurant donated plates of delicious hors d’oeuvres, KAON Restaurant also donated plates of hors d’oeuvres as well as free beer coupons and New York Bagels provided samples as well as great coupons. MANY THANKS TO THE TEACHERS, STAFF, STUDENTS AND PARENTS THAT HELPED TO MAKE THIS EVENT A SMASHING SUCCESS!

Halloween Scene

Albanian International School

November 5 t h , 2013 Vo lume 2 , Issue 3

Meet the new LIBRARIAN!

As AIS grows, we will be expanding our wonderful staff to include more specialists who can help our school reach its full potential. So please give a warm welcome to our new Librarian!

My name is Ilira Pitarka. I am from Tirana, Albania. I graduated from Tirana University in 1989 with a Bachelor degree in English Language. After my graduation, I took my first job as an English teacher in a Tirana public high school. From November 1994 until September 2013, I worked as class assistant, office helper, coordinator of Albanian Day, art teacher and library media specialist at Tirana International School. In 2008 I completed a two-year course at the national Albanian School of Library, and a 12-class online program on the DDC system, offered by the American Library Association. As the amount of books is really big for a new school like AIS, my idea is to make it a very helpful and necessary center for students and teachers. The first thing I would like to do is to separate titles by sections. Early Readers (for children aged 3 years to 8 years), Junior Fiction (for children aged 9-14 years), Fiction (for secondary students and adults), and Non-Fiction books (where books will be organized based on the subject) available for all ages. Then all the books will be labeled on the spine, and given a unique barcode. There will be a bibliographic record organized in the computer, and hopefully a card catalog system, for searching in the library. I plan to operate the circulation (check in/out) system electronically, which will be much easier for all of us. .

Dear AIS Community: Another month has passed and another one is upon us. October ended and

November began with Halloween Celebrations. On the 31st, the students of the Albanian International School dressed up for Halloween and “trick-or-treated” around the school. There were many cute as well as scary costumes!

Students were very active on the 31st practicing their musical numbers with Ms. Veisla Mucaj, our new music teacher. Miss Calloway’s students recited poems and explained how a volcano works while demonstrating a volcanic eruption in front of our eyes! Mr. Semerjian’s class carved pumpkins that were placed on the school walls and lit by candles for all of Tirana to see.

November will have students preparing for more serious holidays — Albania's Independence and Liberation Days — as well as preparing for the December Holiday Show and Party. This is in addition to the hard work they are doing for their classroom studies.

Let's all work hard to build our community, learn and have fun in the process! Warren Anderson, Executive Director

A I SA I S N o v e mN o v e m b e r N e w sb e r N e w s

A Letter From The Executive Director

Mr. Anderson gives out Halloween candy.

Pre-K News Ms. Barbara Meinel

"Ms Barbara, how much is..." This month the 4 to 5 year olds are learning more numeracy skills: counting up to 100, early addition, place values, and quantity through new math aids that we have made for them. And everyone wants to practice their number writing on the Number Train.

What Do We Wear In... In our "Seasons" study, the children are learning through play about Autumn and Winter, and the type of clothing they should be wearing. I drew colorful figures of each child in the class and laminated them. The children are having so much fun playing and learning with themselves as the main characters. Dress-Up: I put together a dress-up collection for the children to experiment with fashion. You should see some of the designs Melika and Luka are wearing these days! The Dollhouse. I've added a dollhouse, extra dolls, furniture, pets and clothes to a dollhouse I obtained to teach the children the words around their environment. It's a smashing hit with the 3-4 year olds. They are also learning to share with one another as they play house in English. "I am..." Brought back by popular demand is the creation of two students this month, "I am Emma" and "I am Luka." Each child lies down on a table top that has sheets of paper taped to it, and I've drawn their shape. Then the children decide what kind of colored wrapping paper should be their clothes, hair, accessories, and the background of their personal figures. Check out our Wall Art Gallery! Several times a week the children ask me to help them tape up drawings, scissor cuttings and paintings they have made for all of our visitors to see. Come on by and enjoy our art masterpieces!

October has been a very exciting month for our kindergarten class! We saw our science units come to life as we began exploring the world of living things around us, with our primary focus this month being the study of animals. In our language arts lessons, we have seen language and science come together as we read and discussed how our five senses work! We have also begun working on individual letter work, and through practicing the sounds made by the letters we’ve worked on so far, the kids are beginning to put sounds together themselves to read and form words! Finally in math, we are continuing to develop several of the skills that we have learned so far, including one-to-one correspondence and patterns. However we have been building on each skill and working on practicing more complicated and unique variations of the lessons. For example, as we practice distinguishing between different pattern types, rather than use shape or color patterns as we had initially done, we’ve been doing sound patterns where we use our bodies to make patterns with different sounds, such as clapping and stomping. Moving into November, we’ll continue discussing the world of living things around us — but rather than discuss animals, we will be learning all about plants! We will learn to distinguish between some different kinds of plants, we will learn about plant needs, and we will observe plants outside of our classroom. In our language arts units, we will continue working with several new letters each week, allowing the students to begin building more and more words themselves as we learn more sounds. Finally, in math we will begin learning some new and exciting skills, including how to count money and how to tell and show time to the hour.

Kindergarten classroom

take accurate observations as a way to help draw meaningful, well-reasoned conclusions. In social studies, we concluded our work on William the Conqueror and will continue to explore the repercussions on England and France, with a look at the Hundred Years War and how that was fought. In English, we will continue to work on writing proper sentences and paying proper attention to spelling, grammar and capitalization. We’ve also started reading with an emphasis on punctuation and pronunciation. Hopefully in the coming month we’ll be able to put together and act out short scenes and plays.

Albanian International School November Newsletter Page 2 Kindergarten News

Miss Tamara Rahoumi

Grade 5/6 News Mr. Alex Semerjian

In math, following an exploration of division and remainders, we began looking at fractions as one different way of interpreting remainders. We’ve also begun looking at how fractions on their own can be used to relate different objects. We will continue that investigation during November with a closer look at how fractions are related to each other before moving into a more structured representation of the rational number system. In science, we’ve been exploring the idea of how and why things float with several experiments. There is a continued focus on trying to be mature scientists who are able to ask good questions, write clear hypotheses and, most importantly,

This new combination class has presented a few challenges but a lot of fun opportunities for younger students to learn more challenging material. In October, the older students spent several weeks exploring the properties of volcanoes in Social Studies classes while the younger students focused on learning different land forms and bodies of water. The 2nd – 4th graders then constructed three different types of volcanoes and all students participated in live volcano demonstrations for the school and the community. In November, the 1st graders will continue perfecting their knowledge while the older students move on to exploring the geography, history and flags of Europe. We should have our new social studies books by the end of the month! Science has been exciting as well. Our study of weather has led to some pretty thrilling experiments. Now we will begin using the Science Fusion textbooks and have even more inquiries and experiments to do. But as always, science safety will be our biggest concern! Math is always a crazy period in this class, but all students are learning different things according to their math levels. Grade 1 students head upstairs to learn patterns and counting money with Miss Tamara while Grades 2-4 students break up into groups and focus on various concepts. Counting money, exploring the properties of shapes, graphing — you name it, and they’ve probably done it! Expect all students to have more math homework this month as we intensify our program. Language Arts is never easier than with the CKLA textbooks! After a long, tough haul we completed UNIT 1 for both 2nd and 3rd graders, and new books for UNIT 2 have been issued. We will go much faster now so that we can reach UNIT 4 by January, and then start finishing two units a month in order to complete all 12 units by June. 2nd graders will be completing American Folk Tales in the Listening & Learning Strand while 3rd graders continue Wind In The Willows. The Skills Strand has the 3rd graders exploring nonfiction while 2nd graders read bedtime fables that teach valuable moral lessons. Meanwhile the 1st graders are REALLY READING! We have gone more slowly through their first unit to make sure they know how to read on their own before proceeding. Now that they do, it’s full speed ahead! All students will continue doing weekly book reports and Fridays will be vocabulary/grammar test and lesson days.

Art News Miss Ida Metaj

Albanian International School November Newsletter Page 3

GRADES 3 TO 6: Bonjour! This month we studied:

“Your Details” “Your Home” - Talking about yourself - Rooms in your house - Say what you like - Furniture - Describe your personality

“Your Family” “Pets & Animals” .

We also had lessons & practice on all the different phonetic sounds particular to the French language, which will help the students with good pronunciation of all the words they learn. In addition, review of some of the previous lessons. For next month, we plan to review what we learned so far and study: “Where You Live” “Daily Routines” “Chores” “The Body & Health”

PRE-K We started a new reading method for young children, which they like, and we’re doing well learning some of the basic phonetic sounds and new words. We’ll continue with flash cards, adding a few new vocabulary words and playing games. I’m looking forward to an exciting new month of learning and implementing new ideas to make the classes more interesting and motivating the students to participate and do well in class.

Meet the New Music Teacher! Miss Veisla Mucaj

Music News Miss Veisla Mucaj

Grade 1-4 News Miss Keelah Rose Calloway

This month, we have to practice for Albanian Independence Day on November 28th and 29th. I’m going to teach all the students Albanian songs, not only patriotic ones but traditional numbers as well. I’d like to call November “The Albanian Month” not only because we are going to practice Albanian songs but because we’re also going to learn something about Albania’s traditional music and its most famous professional musicians! For example, we’ll learn about the most important Albanian composers like Tonin Harapi, Cesk Zadeja and also those who made great musical films. Lessons will also touch on the importance of Albanian traditional music — especially the polyphonic music of the south that is recognized and protected by UNESCO.

I started playing the piano when I was 6 years old, and that journey ended formal in 2007 with a degree as a professional pianist from the Academy of Arts, the most important artistic education institution in Albania. I recently finished a specialization in piano playing at the Tsakalof Conservatory of Music in Ioaninna, Greece. This year, I’m pursuing a second degree in music studies, this time in the field of Musicology. I've been teaching piano in the most important professional music and art schools in Tirana such as Jordan Misja and Servete Maci. I am also a piano accompanist at the Academy of Arts.

PRE-K / KINDERGARTEN This month with the little kids, it’s going to be great. We are going to make a lot of crafts using several materials by mixing them together, and create wonderful toys and animals for ourselves. Another goal that we have is to learn cutting perfectly, by following the lines. But we’ll practice on different kinds of lines: straight lines, oval lines, zig zag lines, and curly lines.

GRADES 1-6 We have reached all the goals for the month of October: the murals, the Halloween decorations and all of our lesson plans! In November, we are going to have a lot of fun, free classes. But that doesn't mean that we are not going to learn and study. We have some art history — some stories from ancient Rome, ancient Egypt and ancient Greece are waiting for us to explore them! And don't forget, we have Albanian Day this month, which means that we have to get the school ready for that and make some very patriotic decorations. So let's have a lot of fun this month!

French News Mr. Michel Ramond

NO SCHOOL NOVEMBER 28TH - 29TH Due to the Albanian Independence Days holiday, all AIS classes will be cancelled for 2 days this month.

CAFETERIA OPENS! Hopefully by now you have been able to check out our new cafeteria and its chef, Vera. The menu will be made available each month, both posted at school and on our new website. We can also email it to you if you want a personal copy.

OTHER IMPORTANT DATES TO REMEMBER: Dec 20th — Winter Celebration for parents at 1:00PM Dec 21st — Term 1 classes end/Winter Recess begins

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 November Newsletter Page 4

Important Events:

The first 3 students to complete the puzzle correctly and

return it to Miss Calloway will win a prize!

Final Volcano Demonstration: November 8th at 3:30PM Miss Calloway’s class has saved the best for last, and will demonstrate the eruption of their biggest volcano right after school on Friday. All are invited!

Albanian National Days Celebration: November 27th at 1:00PM The entire school will honor Albanian Independence Day with traditional music & food. Please join us for our special celebration of this wonderful country!

This Month’s Highlights:

Students of the Month

Student Spotlight Llani Dogjani, Grade 5

Leo Mulaj & Endrin Berisha

.LEO was nominated by Ms. Barbara, Miss Ida and Miss Tamara for being so positive and eager to learn this month! He is kind, polite, helpful and Miss Barbara calls him a “bright star on the horizon.” Wow! Awesome work, Leo! ENDRIN was nominated by Miss Ida and Miss Calloway. He has been Best Student of the Day many times and Best Student of Week at least twice! He is one of our Science stars, and rarely misses a homework assignment. Great job, Endrin! And we loved your Charlie Chaplin Halloween costume!

It’s been 1½ months since I joined A.I.S., but it seems like I’ve been here for a long time. There are a lot of things that I like in this school, my favorite are science and math. I like science, because we did experiments on things that would float or sink. We tried a lot of items, even a can full of Coke! We compared the Coke with Coke Zero. The Coke Zero floated and the Coke Classic sank. I think the Coke Zero floated, because it had more gas. This experiment raises many questions: how do Navy or cruise ships float being so heavy? As for math, I like it because Mr. Semerjian always challenges us with difficult math problems. He doesn’t give us ready answers, which makes us think in different ways to solve the problems. I also like math because it is always interesting and very cool. In math we’ve been learning about fractions and division. I’m just enjoying my time at A.I.S. learning new things by observing and thinking in-depth together with my classmates.