JIES News
Earth Day
JIES celebrated Earth day on Tuesday, April 24th .We discussed the responsibility aspect of the "Sharing the Planet" Theme. We asked the students, "What can we do to ensure that we will have a healthy planet with lots of plant life?" and the students came up with the idea of planting trees. Therefore, we decided to plant trees outside of the school to contribute to keeping the earth green and healthy! We got permission from the Meguro Ward Office to plant twenty trees in Higashiyama Park. The students planted ten Golden bells and ten of Reeves spirea. Each class made their own Earth day poster which reflects their feelings about Earth. Parents were invited to join us and five mothers of students put their hands in the soil with JIES students.
Finally, we had a presentation about how to plant a tree from preschool and kindergarten students.
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International Children`s Day
JIES celebrated the fifth annual ‘International Children’s Day’ on Saturday, April 21st.
International Children’s Day is an event where children get to have a fun day in celebration of their efforts through the year.This year, we invited other international schools, outside communities and Japanese schools in Tokyo to make it more internationalized and lively.During the event, we put on various fun activities, performance (Bubble Show by a professional performer), as well as a bazaar and snack sale.All of which were enjoyable for both children and adults alike.
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Numeracy & Science Week
This year we held Numeracy and Science Week between March 1st and 9th. Our aim was to promote the enjoyment of Numeracy and Science to all students in all grades. We achieved this through fun activities in mixed age groups as well as projects done during class time built around a general theme of Space. The games that we played were Pin the Tail where children searched while blind-folded with help from their team-mates for answers to questions stuck on a life-size skeleton. We played Build a Tower where teams had to build a tower from blocks as high as possible in two minutes then balance raw eggs on top in order to get bonus points. We played Grab a Number where children had to find the answers to Maths questions, Maths and Science Jeopardy as well as balloon rocket and paper aeroplane investigations. Class projects were based around a hypothetical discovery of a new planet between Mars and Jupiter called Blars. Preschool and Kindergarten had to design Alien Life Forms, Grade 1 made paper mache planets, Grade 2 made a 3D map of the Blartian surface, Grade 3 did an investigation into possible vegetation on the planet, Grade 4 made a scale model of the solar system and did a water filtering investigation and Grade 5/6 research gravitational effects and also came up with a plan to extract water from beneath the surface of Blars. Numeracy and Science Week was extremely successful and the students really got a lot out of the activities.
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Literacy Week
The second week of February was Literacy Week – a week of exciting literacy related activities for the whole school!
Throughout the week, the children took part in activities relating to every aspect of literacy, that they could enjoy and be inspired by. As well as different daily activities, there was a book fair all week and normal lessons were interrupted for ten minutes each day as the whole school dropped everything and read when they heard the sound of the reading bell! Literacy Week continued at home too, with a story writing competition set as homework.
On Monday, the whole school prepared for shared reading sessions with classes from Jinsho, the neighbouring Japanese school. The children chose a book to read and allocated parts or pages to be read by each child in the group. On Tuesday and Thursday, classes from Jinsho came to hear our English stories and to read one of their own in Japanese.
On Tuesday, the children were set the task of designing a poster to encourage reading. They had to try to incorporate persuasive language and advertising techniques into their posters, which were displayed around school as a colourful reminder to keep reading during and beyond Literacy Week.
On Wednesday, we had a spelling bee. Each class held their own spelling competition, before gathering in the playroom for the final to see who became JIES’s champion speller. Wednesday was also the day for readers’ theatre performances. Each class practised reading a play script, and then performed it at the end of the day to the rest of the school. All of the classes tried really hard to read with expressive voices in order to make their performance come alive.
On Thursday, we held a ‘Jeopardy’ style literacy quiz, in which teams competed to answer questions and score points. After being sorted into teams by the famous Harry Potter hat, the children wracked their brains to remember answers to questions set by their teachers.
Friday was costume day, and both children and teachers dressed up as a book character for the day. Throughout the morning, the children rotated between five different activity centres: a Pictionary grammar game, an instructional scavenger hunt, a literacy board game, recording a poem with sound effects and filming a scene from a story. After the activities, the story competition winners were announced, prizes were awarded and another year’s Literacy Week came to an end.
Now we’re looking forward to next year’s Literacy Week!
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Japanese Culture Day
The Japanese Culture Day was held on Friday, February 3.
This year we invited a professional shakuhachi player to our school. For most of our students it was the first time to listen to the shakuhachi performance. The player was wearing kimono and played some popular kids songs, too.
After that students had more Japanese fun activity corners. They listened Kamishibai “Samugari oni” (Japanese story telling). After playing a dice game Sugoroku , they made Deamon's Mask and played Mamemaki game (scatter roasted soybeans to drive demons away). At the end, students enjoyed Mochi (Rice Cake)with many flavors.
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Earthquake Donations
Dear Parents,
As you may know, the city of Van, which is located in the eastern part of Turkey, was hit by a massive 7.2 magnitude earthquake on the 23rd of October, 2011. Several buildings collapsed. Some people were trapped under the rubble of buildings and unfortunately some of them lost their lives. Immediately after the earthquake, emergency teams, rescue workers, and military troops were sent to the area to search for survivors.
After the devastating first hit, some of the residents were homeless and had to stay in tents despite the cold, and some were too afraid to stay in their houses.
As a Caring and Courageous school, Jingumae International Exchange School organized an outreach project for these victims of the earthquake. Our aim was to increase awareness among our students about the situation and difficulties that residents experienced after the earthquake in Turkey. To initiate the outreach, we implemented a number of activities running throughout the week through which students could not only enjoy special games, but also donate 100 yen at a time to the citizens in the affected area. During the morning assemblies, we also talked about how a small amount of donation could help people who need food, tents, blankets, and toys. I can easily say that all of our students were eager to participate in this outreach, not to have fun during recess time, but to help those suffering in Turkey.
This outreach was a good opportunity to help our students empathise with the peoples’ feelings who have suffered from different natural disasters. At the end of the week, we collected ¥75000 from students, parents, and from Jingumae Elementary School. The donations will be sent to victims in Turkey via “Kimse Yok mu”, an NGO dedicated to international disaster relief which was very active in Japan after the Tohoku Earthquake last March. We are very proud to have such caring students and school community at JIES!
Regards,
Kenan ULU
Principal
Jingumae International Exchange School
