Lahore American School. Friday Flash

Transcription

1 Lahore American School Friday Flash Volume 32 2nd May, 2014

2 Contents LAS MISSION Important Announcements Superintendent s Message Secondary News Elementary News French News LAS Arts Week Canteen News Elementary Showcase Secondary School Showcase Contact Information Page Our clear mission at LAS is : Igniting Passion for Learning Connecting to the World Building our Community Preparing for the Future Realizing our Potential Superintendent s Message Dear LAS Families: Important Announcements MAP s Testing for Grade 6 to 9, from Monday,May 5th to Friday, May 9th. High School AP Exams from Monday, May 5th to Thursday, May 15th. Elementary MAP s Testing from Monday, May 12th to Friday, May 16th. ES Assembly Wednesday, May 21st. High School Prom on Saturday, May 24th. Annual Alumni Barbeque on Friday, May 30th. High School Graduation on Saturday, 31st May. We have had an important week at LAS with the Board of Directors elections on Wednesday. Thank you, parents and guardians, for your participation in this event. Congratulations to the three successful Member-at-Large candidates, who will serve two-year terms for : Mr. Adil Bashir (new member) Mrs. Lubna Saeed (returning member) Mrs. Sidra Naveed (returning member) page 1

3 May started off with a Field Day for elementary and middle school, organized and managed by our excellent Community Recreation class, under the guidance of Ms Kim Howell. It was a hot day, but the activities were varied and in different locations, so no one was overwhelmed with the heat. I think our lovely spring in Lahore spoiled us! Now that we are in the final full month of the current school year, the days will pass quickly. There are a number of transitions that many of our students will encounter in August: Secondary News As news of my pending departure spread, a parent recently asked me what I would do to improve Lahore American School. While there are a few possible answers, I settled on the simplest, most profound change that costs almost nothing: girls. Radically boosting female enrollment would do more to improve LAS than a new campus, or a transition to Apple, or any other adjustment. New Kindergarten children will start a full-day program. New Grade 6 students will enter the new territory of middle school. New Grade 9 students will enter the excitement and responsibility of high school. New Grade 12 students will be our seniors. Appropriate activities are in place to ease all of these transitions for the students and their parents. We are here to answer questions, bring clarity to what may seem confusing, and to guide our students in course selections, activities and sports they may like to try. Home and school must work together to help our students assume more and more responsibility for their progress as they mature. May Events Mark your calendars! May 5 to 15 AP Exams May 5 to 9 Grades 6 to 9 MAPs testing May 9 Grade 5 Sleep-Over May 12 to 16 Elementary MAPs testing May 21 ES Assembly May 23 End of Year Assembly for Grades 8 through 12 (academic and SAISA) May 24 Prom May 28 Board of Directors Meeting May 30 Annual Alumni Barbeque to honor our seniors May 31 Graduation For those of you looking far ahead and planning summer trips, please be aware that the first day of school for is Tuesday, August 19. Best wishes, Kathryn Cochran Superintendent Researchers use a fancy term called metaanalysis. What it means in human-speak requires combining the results from many different published studies. A recently reported metaanalysis that looked at the details of more than a million boys and girls from around the planet, including the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East and Asia all found the same results. In all regions of the world, in all age groups, in all subject areas, the females outperform the males. This is a myth buster as conventional wisdom has propagated the idea in middle school that girls start to lag in science and math. The opposite is true. Their advantage in math and science really begins to shine in middle school and continues to accelerate. The misguided conventional wisdom is not completely wrong. Girls significantly outperform boys in language based subjects. But the new numbers well, not so new since the data goes back 100 years indicate the pattern holds across the board, in all subject areas from page 2

4 the earliest ages through graduate school. I m not making this stuff up! Involvement MSA group has been busy trying to organize the PTA for the school year. We are hopeful we can bring the PTA back to LAS! The report Gender Difference in Scholastic Achievement: A Meta-Analysis was published this week in Psychological Bulletin. The Canadian researchers who sifted through the data from 300 studies work at the University of New Brunswick. So what does that mean for Lahore American School? A quick check of last year s award winners and highest grade point averages shows a strong female bias, despite a significant numerical disadvantage. Imagine, if you will, a girl in every other seat at LAS. Logic dictates that if you increase the numbers of higher achieving students in a class, the average in the class will increase. Increasing the average will raise the academic standard. A higher standard means better university acceptances. Simply stated: more girls = better LAS. David Freeman Secondary Principal Congratulations to the students who were winners of the poetry recitation last week. The students were very articulate and professional. Awards will be given out during the May 21 elementary assembly. Dates to Remember: Friday, May 9 Grade 5 Sleepover Week of May 12 MAPs testing grades 3-5 Wednesday, May 21 May Assembly Elementary News Kathy Khan Elementary Principal It s May and it is hot. Please make sure your child brings a refillable water bottle to school each day. Nestle water is available at several locations on campus to refill water bottles. Students need to stay hydrated. We have one more month of solid instructional time. Attendance is imperative to the success of your child. Teachers are working on end-of-theyear assessments and projects, so please make sure your child is at school each day. Thank you parents, who came out on Thursday, May 1 to re-establish the PTA at LAS. The Parent French News La diversité linguistique de la France La France a une diversité de paysages unique en Europe. Tandis que le sud de pays baigne dans le monde méditerranéen, sa partie septentrionale touche à l Angleterre et aux pays nordiques. Pour ce qui est de son peuplement, la France est page 3

5 une terre qui a reçu de très nombreuses vagues d immigrations de toutes les directions depuis l époque néolithique (5000 avant notre ère). La chose la plus remarquable concernant la France est donc la diversité de sa population humaine sans équivalent en Europe. Pourtant, l image qu ont les étrangers des Français est celle d un peuple unique qui parle une langue, mange un type de nourriture et possède un caractère uniforme. Ceci est évidemment ce que les Français appellent une image d Epinal, ou si vous voulez : un stéréotype, et est très éloigné de la réalité. Il reflète cependant les résultats d une politique d uniformisation culturelle et linguistique menée depuis la révolution française et qui réussi jusqu à un certain point à détruire les cultures et les langues locales. Peu d étrangers savent qu au début du 20ème siècle, moins de 25% des habitants de la France étaient capables de parler la langue française, et que si maintenant tous les habitants du territoire français parlent le français comme leur première langue, c est grâce à une politique linguistique menée dans les écoles de manière généralisée après la première guerre mondiale ( ) et qui a forcé les gens à abandonner leur langue maternelle. Quelles sont ces langues régionales? La majorité des langues de France dérivent du latin et sont appelées gallo-romance, car elles sont issues du latin sur un substrat de langue gauloise. Ces langues sont divisées en deux groupes : langues d oïl et langues d oc. Les premières sont parlées au nord et sont proches du français standard, tandis que les secondes sont parlées au sud et sont à mi-chemin entre français et espagnol d une part et italien d autre part. Il y a cependant quatre langues parlées en France qui ne dérivent pas du latin : deux langues germaniques : le flamand, au nord, apparenté au flamand parlé en Hollande et l alsacien, dialecte de l allemand. Au Sud-ouest, il y a le basque, langue très ancienne et isolée, ne se rattachant à aucun groupe linguistique. A l ouest, le breton, langue celtique apparentée au gallois et au gaélique d Ecosse et d Irlande. Que reste-t-il désormais de toutes ces langues régionales? Toutes ces langues sont menacées d extinction car de moins en moins parlées. Le breton, par exemple comptait 1.5 millions de locuteurs après la première guerre mondiale. Aujourd hui, il n en compte plus que Même si toutes ces langues sont désormais enseignées à l école et ont reçu le statut de langues régionales, elles sont menacées de disparaître dans les quinze ou vingt années à venir. C est une partie du patrimoine culturel de l humanité qui risque de disparaître à tout jamais. François Auffret French Teacher LAS Arts Week LAS celebrated The Arts Week from the 21st 25th April. It showcased all the literary, visual, and performing arts achievements accomplished by the students throughout the year. This celebration page 4

6 of the arts went on for a week with a wide variety of events around the campus. A lot of hard work went into the production of the presentations which were put together by our young artists and in the making of the countless art pieces that were displayed in the exhibition. It not only allowed us to appreciate our students work but to give importance to art itself, as we believe that creativity is as important as literacy. Best in Show--Painting: Iman Mazhar Best in Show Photography: Rijah Mazhar Best in Show--2-D Design: Rijah Mazhar Best in Show--3-D Sculptor: Dayaam Sial Shamaila Shahryar H.S Visual Arts Teacher Canteen News The menu for the week beginning the 5th May, 2014 is as follows. page 5

7 Menu Monday Chicken Seekh Kebab Aallo Bhaji Fruit Salad Tuesday Mac & Cheese Sautéed Vegetables Fruit Salad Wednesday Thai Chicken Baby Corn Garlic Rice Salads Fruits Thursday Halwa Puri Fruit Salads Pizza for KG and Grade 1 Elementary School Showcase wounded, or strained and tired work animal carrying more than supposed to. Support a clinic, and avoid animal tested cosmetics by looking for the animals not involved label. Cai Verwer, Abdullah Sheikh, and Hassan Chatoor from Grade 5 Animal Cruelty is quite common in Pakistan. People beat horses, mules and donkeys. They killed a cheetah just because it was from India and they throw dogs out of the house when they re naughty. One of the common forms of animal cruelty in Lahore is the zoo. Many of the animals there live in small cages and suffer, although real habitats were huge and the best thing is for the animals to run wild. The wolves there didn t have much space to run and the size of the cage was not close to being big enough for wolves that actually move 50 miles per day. We should stop this madness, it s rude and inhumane. One thing to do is spread the word. Quick! Eman Naufil, Haniya Khan, and Seoyoon Chang from Grade 3 Stop Animal Cruelty! The Love Animals, Help Animals club is trying to stop animal cruelty in the city, so please help us by adopting stray cats and dogs, informing people about animal cruelty, trying to make clubs of your own and helping clubs like us to stop animal cruelty. A thing I do is go vegetarian once a week, or limit your meat. Animal cruelty is a very bad thing, I mean how would you feel getting whipped or kicked? Please help animals in any way you can! Eden Verwer and Duaa Hussain from Grade 4 Love Animals, Help Animals club We are the club that helps animals, hence our name, and we want your help to try to help those animals in need. We are the people that protest against a hurt animal, no matter how small or tall. But we are a small, little known group that doesn t have much power. We can t always help a straining animal. That is why we need your help. We need all we can get. What you can do is feed strays, or nurture them, or take them to the vet if hurt. Report a sick, Campout Well, it was the time of the year when we have our annual LAS Scouts Camp-out This time it was the Scouts all by themselves. They did everything from putting up their tents and helping to make dinner, to washing plates and pans. They even made their own eggs at breakfast time. Our scouts enjoyed all the activities. Sleeping in their own tents at night was quite an experience for our page 6

8 Grade 3, Grade 4 and Grade 5 Scouts. Here are few comments: Secondary School Showcase Drama Lights Up the Stage On the afternoon of April 30th, Grade 6 Drama did their first ever performance of not one but two plays: Cupid on the Loose and Hansel and Gretel. The audience of interested parents, elementary and middle school students and teachers added that essential ingredient without which any theater performance is impossible. On Friday, May 2nd it was the Grade 8 thespians who entertained the entire middle school and their parents during Buffs Block. The talented students performed a play titled Revenge Served Cold. These experiences on stage are developing students into confident performers who are able to improvise, enunciate and be confident. No more stage fright! I love the scouts camp-out. It was the best one yet! Eden Verwer, Grade 4 Fatemeh Qizilbash MS Drama Teacher In scout s camp-out, we played, we slept in a tent, and we made lemonade and salad. That was the best scout s camp-out. Ibrahim Ali, Grade 4 We roasted marshmallows and sausages at the camp out. We did lots of fun things as scavenger hunt, making lemonade, cooking scrambled eggs. Seoyoon Chang, Grade 3 The best club ever! Hussain Ahmed, Grade 4 The campout was really fun. Akbar Bashir, Grade5 Nasia Kazi Elementary School Teacher Contact Information Address The Lahore American School, 15 Upper Mall, Canal Bank, Lahore, Pakistan Telephone: / 7 / 8 Fax : Website: page 7