Secondary Chronicles

December 8, 2023

Message from the Secondary

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Dear Secondary Parents,

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Please enjoy the article from our Counseling Department on “Bully Free Zone Campaign” and some information on Mathematics learning.

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Monday, December 11 is IICS Mental Health Day. Please remind your children to wear the color green

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Have a wonderful weekend,

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Aaron & Omer

IICS - A ‘Bully Free Zone’ On-going Campaign

October 2nd, 2023 marked the kickoff of the 17th Annual ‘World Day of Bullying Prevention’ which is an initiative of STOMP Out Bullying®. During the month of October, we raised awareness about our aim to have a community free of bullying. Information about being an ‘upstander’, being inclusive by ensuring people don’t sit alone at lunch, slogans such as (“Don’t be mean behind the screen.” and “See Something. Say Something.”) and other initiatives were featured in the Daily Bulletin. We also had a ‘Wear White’ Day to show support for a bully-free school. Common threads with Mental Health Day (Oct. 10th) and Digital Citizenship Week (Oct. 16 - 20th) were highlighted. Students discussed the topic in their SEL classes and parents who missed the "Digital Citizenship at Home" presentation can find information related to cyberbullying in the slides. Throughout November, we have continued to promote IICS as a Bully-free Zone during SEL classes while discussing topics on harassment, stereotypes and being kind citizens! This was a good lead-in to our focus on ‘Be Kind Wherever Possible’ which was the theme for this year’s World Kindness Day which took place November 13th. Again, daily bulletin messages and discussions in Homerooms and SEL classes encouraged the community to always remember to act in a kind manner and to assume good intent. “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” —Aesop.

LEARNING IN MATHEMATICS AT IICS

After introducing Building Thinking Classrooms strategies into mathematics classes last year, we are continuing to enhance teaching and learning in our maths lessons by incorporating and adapting these strategies to suit our students. Learning now happens in a variety of modes; group work at tables, group work at the whiteboard, individual reinforcement tasks, etc.

LEARNING IN MATHEMATICS AT IICS

As students tackle thinking tasks on the whiteboard in their small groups, they are practising the following:

• Collaborative skills
• Social skills, e.g. speaking to each other in a respectful manner, only erasing something which they themselves have written or have negotiated with the person who wrote it
• Questioning what other people are saying - asking for explanations, clarification or questioning what they have said
• Explaining their thinking to others
• Exploring different ways to solve a problem
• Writing their mathematics in a logical and clear way so that it can be understood by others (mathematical communication)

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Follow up work which allows students to consolidate what they have learnt in their groups is equally important. This is when students check their understanding. Some choose to work on their own, while others prefer to work together at their desks.

LEARNING IN MATHEMATICS AT IICS

Video of Grade 11 doing a thinking task to introduce the binomial theorem

How the teacher responds when asked, “Miss, is this the right answer?”