Archive for January, 2009

IB PYP Teacher Training

Friday, January 23rd, 2009

As part of our on-going professional development, Riverstone’s Elementary school teachers will be taking part in two days of training on Friday 23rd January and Saturday 24th January. 

The International Baccalaureate Primary Years Program (PYP) requires far more collaboration from teachers than other programs so that the children get a far more holistic and realistic view of the education. For this to work effectively, teachers need to spend far more time working and planning together.

On Friday, Ben, Lauryn and Andrew along with several parent volunteers will take the Elementary children up to Bogus Basin for a day of tubing as an extension of the Outdoor program.

Andrew Derry

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Future Cities

Thursday, January 22nd, 2009

Riverstone Future City Team Results

The statewide Future City competition happened January 10, 2009 and we are proud to announce that the Riverstone team won the “Most Sustainable Food Production System Design.” The team (included Jenny, Kristin, Drew, Parker, Aaron, Asher, Mary, Erik, Jack, Roan and Alex) worked together for several months to build, create and engineer systems within a fictional city (Avant-Garde) that could be feasible 150 years from now. The team submitted 5 deliverables under the guidance of an engineer mentor, Lisa Hecht and teacher Sam Goff. The team wrote an essay describing a closed water system in a residential unit, designed a city using SimCity 4 Delux, built a model of their own imaginary city and created a formal presentation describing their city and model. Also, the students faced nearly 20 separate judges and participated in Q&A sessions with them over particular facets of their city design.

The team pulled through the event with great confidence and pride and won an award to showcase their hard work.  

Congratulations to the Future City team! 

 

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recent meetings

Thursday, January 15th, 2009

Dear friends

It has been a pleasure to see so many of you at our information meetings this week. Our Elementary school open house saw a record turn out to find out more about our Kindergarten and new Pre-Kindergarten classes.

The new Pre-K class will be for children between 3 and 5 years old and will follow the International Baccalaureate PYP program (note that *Riverstone is authorized to offer all the Diploma and Middle Years Programmes and is still a candidate school for the IB Primary Years Program (PYP)). In line with the school’s international mission, the program will be taught bilingually in English and Spanish.

The class will follow the same times as the rest of the school: 8:30am to 3:30pm. New for next year, we will also offer an early drop-off from 7:30am and a late pick-up until 5:30pm This opportunity will be open to all Riverstone parents.

Interest in the program has been high, with several applications coming in within the first 24 hours. If you are interested in finding out more about the new Pre-K program or any of our Elementary school programs, please do not hesitate to contact Rachel Pusch, Director of Admissions at rpusch@riverstoneschool.org, or call 208 424 5000.

Andrew Derry

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Grade 8 Winter trip

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

Grade 8 students departed from school earlier this morning on their winter outdoor trip.

A very brave Ben Brock (suffering from Flu symptoms but well medicated) led the group to Idaho City for their three-day adventure in Yurts.

 

Take a look at Ben’s blog when he returns at the end of the week for more information the trip.

www.riverstoneschool.org  

Grade 9, snow cave venture coming soon!

 

Andrew Derry

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Strategic Planning underway

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

The Board and Head of Riverstone International School officially kicked off its new strategic planning process earlier today with the first meeting of the Steering Committee. 

Although the Board will ultimately take the final decisions for the plan, the process will be fully inclusive of all stakeholders in the school. 

The Steering Committee comprising of two board members, two administrators, two faculty members, two parents and a student will guide the process, solicit input from the entire school community and eventually make recommendations to the full board for approval. 

The process will take a total of eight months to complete and in the end will produce a working document and a guide that will steer the school through the next five to seven year period.

Since your opinions are highly valued, please do not hesitate to get involved in the process via the various focus groups, committees and surveys over the coming months.

Andrew Derry

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Pre-School comes to Riverstone

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

Riverstone International School is proud to announce its new PreSchool program for September 2009.

The new program will be a special and unique opportunity for children and parents in that:

· It will be an integral part of our International Baccalaureate (IB) program and a natural start to our Primary Years Program (PYP)

*Note: *Riverstone is authorized to offer all the Diploma and Middle Years Programmes and is a candidate school for the IB Primary Years Program (PYP).

· It will be a bilingual program (English and Spanish)

· It will be open to 3 and 4 year olds and provide a smooth transition to the rest of Riverstone’s programs

· It will have full-day and half-day possibilities

· It will allow for early drop-off (7:30am) and late pick-up (5:30pm)

The IB PYP program is designed to start at Pre-School with the emphasis on learning and inquiring using the PYP questions through constructive play. Starting at this age and aligning our program with the full IB philosophy at all IB age ranges will help children and parents to understand IB philosophy and pedagogy sooner.

As an International School, we will be putting high emphasis on language acquisition and communication skills through a bilingual approach, for several reasons:

· Benefit to our students in later life, as they work in a more global work place

· Shorter term benefits as we develop more exchange opportunities between schools

· Modern brain and pedagogical research shows that children who grow up bilingually from an early age, develop to be more flexible and adaptable in a variety of subject areas.

The absolute key to developing higher language acquisition in students (to the point of true bilingualism) is the age at which the child acquires the language. All research shows that ‘the earlier, the better’. The key ages are between 0 and 8 years old. With this in mind, most bilingual IB schools, purposely develop Pre-School classes as their starting point.

Our plan is to monitor the success of the Pre-School language model and then investigate the possibility of continuing this bilingual approach through Elementary school as a flexible dual-language option

You are cordially invited to come and find out more about the new Pre-School program as well as all of our Elementary programs at the Elementary School open house on Tuesday 13th January at 6:30pm

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