grades 7-12 handbook 09-10

grades JK-6 handbook 09-10

2009-10 student days off

message about h1n1

muslim approval form

important message for graduating seniors

Message to Parents from the Y.I.S. Principal

Dear Parents,

Regarding our new elementary report card:  You hold in your hands the result of Y.I.S. hearing the suggestions and feedback from many parents over the last four years and the best efforts of our current teachers to give you a brief, yet comprehensive, report on elementary student progress through the Y.I.S. curriculum for each grade.

The teachers worked hard through Virtual School and Open House to share their guaranteed curriculum with you. They have presented their subject matter time-lines and curriculum descriptions or syllabi on their online Moodle or Blackboard on-line classrooms; this way you can view the curriculums as we move through the year, confident that your children will be receiving an education that will prepare them for university acceptance anywhere in the world.

I curtailed the specialists’ participation in the grading of students in this new scheme; this is because each specialist sees students less than 5% of the student's time at school. Once they have completed a full trimester with their students, the specialist teachers in Arabic, Technology, Art, Library, Music, and P.E. look forward to reporting grade indications of students’ learning and progress in those areas through the marks of “E” (excelling), “S” (satisfactory) or “U” (unsatisfactory). For now, however, the specialists want you to see that a guaranteed curriculum is being delivered and learned in all their classes. Therefore, they provided comments in the Elementary Reports describing the activities your children participated in and learned from. The English as an Additional Language specialist will also be making comments for the selected students she is teaching.

Certainly, students earning a mark of “E” or “U” should have a comment indicating the area of superior or insufficient learning, behavior and/or accomplishment. While students with a grade of “S” are making adequate progress, grades of “E” will be relatively rare. Until we are attending every day of a trimester, please appreciate the marks and comments on this report card as an indication of our desire to be active partners with the parents of our students and to produce less printed paper to report on students’ learning and school progress.

We are moving forward with new “school management” software, SERCO, and look forward to being able to share many things with you digitally, including report cards, through password protected access.

If you have any questions about your child’s progress, please do not hesitate to meet the teacher during Student-Parent-Teacher Conferences by appointment, or any time during the year by appointment.

Yours,