In this issue .....
PS-Prek / PS-MS		Pre-K / Moyenne section		K / Grande section		1st g / CP		2nd g / CE1
3rd g / CE2		4th g / CM1		5th / CM2		Alumni Spotlight		Special Events & Professional Development

Preschool-Prek / Petite et moyenne section

Vive l’automne !

Nous avons travaillé sur le thème de l’automne. Nous sommes allés au parc ramasser des feuilles que nous avons utilisées pour réaliser un paysage d’automne. Nous avons recouvert une feuille blanche avec les couleurs d’automne pour le fond (jaune orange, marron et jaune) et nous y avons collé deux escargots décorés à l’aide de boules de  papier crépon.
Les papas et les mamans nous ont aidés à récolter des pommes de pins pour pouvoir fabriquer des décorations de Noël.

Preschool and Prek Happenings

In the preschool and pre-k classroom the students were busy making placemats and scarecrows for the Thanksgiving holiday. We will look forward to creating a winter scene and preparing for the winter holiday season with stories like The Mitten and The Elves and the Shoemaker. We have also been practicing singing our winter songs for the upcoming performance. The preschool pre-k classes have been very excited to take part in all of our seasonal activities.

Pre-K / Moyenne section

La lettre au Père Noël

En ce mois de Décembre, nous avons écrit une lettre au Père Noël.
Ce qui nous a donné l’occasion d’étudier comment se compose une lettre :

- un destinataire
- la date
- le sujet de la lettre
- des remerciements
- la signature

Nous avons découpé des images de jouets dans des magazines spécialisés pour illustrer cette lettre.
Nous avons également travaillé sur une enveloppe adressée au Père Noël avec timbre, expéditeur et destinataire. Nous posterons ces lettres dans une boîte et les lettres seront envoyées au Père Noël.

G is for Girl, G is for Goldfish, G is for Goat, and G is for Gingerbread!

In Pre-k we have been working steadily on the alphabet and letter recognition.   Each week, we focus on the “Letter of the Week”, and recently we learned all about the letter G.  As part of our end-of-year holiday activities, we are going to bake and decorate our own Gingerbread cookies and Gingerbread houses.  We learned about the ginger spice, and that it comes from the root of a plant, and why ginger was so important in the olden days; because it was not only a spice for cooking but also used as a medicine! We read a funny story about a Gingerbread Man who tried to escape all his hungry suitors and finally met his doom when he was eaten by a clever fox.  When Santa Claus comes to visit our classroom we will have a special snack and eat all our Gingerbread creations!

We wish everyone Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!

K / Grande section

Intervention en classe sur le thème de l’eau et de la protection de l’environnement

Yoga avec Philippe

Reflections in Kindergarten

After a discussion with the students about reflecting on all that we are thankful for this time of year, the children shared with us their thoughts on what they are thankful for.

Mathilde – “Princess”
Ben – “My Grandparents are coming from France back here, and my Grandparents are my Dad’s Mom and Dad.
Paul – “For my Mom and Daddy.”
Jeanne – “For my Grandparents, for they are going to be good.”
Barry – “I’m going to Los Gatos to do skiing with my family.”
Maia – “My Mom and Dad and animals and pets.”
Minh Anh – “For my sister because it’s almost her birthday.”
Jillian – “I’m going to the house of Jeanne for three days.”
Nikhil – “To go where my Grandpa and Grandma is.”
Hanson- “Grandpa and Grandma are here and picking me up every day.”
Jean Pierre – “To going home and sleep.”
Leo – “For Christmas because my Grandma and Grandpa come.”
Helena – “I love Christmas trees.”
Audric – “For skiing because my Mom and Dad want skiing.”
Ella – “I’m going to have lunch with my Daddy, and Sasha has a flower.”
Jules – “For dinosaurs.”
Marc – “I bought a new house.”
Tamara – “Because my birthday is going to be soon, and after, it’s my friend’s birthday on the 30th.”
Naoki – “For airplanes.”

We would like to wish you all a safe and healthy holiday season, and a very Happy New Year!

1st g / CP

Ceramic

Starting this coming Friday the Innerart Studio will be offering an eight-week ceramic hand-building clay workshop to the 1st grade students. This workshop will teach students the basic techniques of hand-building using high fire clay. All projects will then be taken to the Innerart Studio to be fired in the kiln. The bisque art works will be returned to school the final week to be glazed by students, followed by a second drying session at the studio, and ultimately displayed at FASSV as a class exhibit. The objective of this workshop is to expose students to ceramic art, explore the talents and creativity of each individual, and equip them with basic skills and tools to cultivate that talent. The ceramic workshops are PTA-sponsored, so on behalf of the 1st grade students, thank you to all the parents would made this opportunity possible! We truly appreciate it!
Much gratitude for the invaluable support.

2nd g / CE1

Madeline's Christmas

On December 8th, the first and second grades went to see the play Madeline’s Christmas.  The play is about resourceful, spunky Madeline.  It’s the night before Christmas and everyone is sick in bed with the flu except brave Madeline, who feels just fine and must take care of the eleven other little girls and Miss Clavel in the old house in Paris all covered with vines.  We all enjoyed this holiday play so much.  Georgia Ellis

3rd g / CE2

Notre assemblée

Le 10 novembre 2009 a eu lieu l’assemblée des Ce2.

Cette année, nous avons profité du 20 ème anniversaire de la Convention des droits de l’enfant pour présenter et rapeller à tous quels sont nos droits.
Ce fut un travail de longue haleine mais passionnant. Nous avons beaucoup appris et nous savons dorénavant qu’aider à faire le ménage à la maison n’est pas une forme d’exploitation.
Notre investissement fut récompensé par un spectacle de qualité qui a été très apprécié des enfants et des parents.
Merci à tous de votre présence.

Third Graders Get Busy With a Cooking Project

The soup and the bread was a really good project because we took little pieces of paper to be in a group. First some volunteers showed up and we divided into four groups so that we knew what jobs we had to do. The soup was super good and we all helped make it.  It was really delicious. It was fun cutting the celery and grating the cheese too. It was good because it had lots of vegetables in it. I liked making the soup and I was in group three and four.  We were with Meyann and Michel’s mom.  It was impressive to see Michel’s mom chopping the garlic. We made the cabbage and the zucchini. Some of us were in a group with a professional chef, that was Michel’s mom.  She showed us how to cut the vegetables. We made the soup and I cut the potatoes and it was fun.  There were carrots and other vegetables in the soup. We waited for the soup to cook and it smelled delicious.
The bread well…Louise made it but we helped cut the rosemary. Groups three and four made the rosemary for the bread. It was super soft and tasted Italian to me.  I liked the herbs in it.
Anais, Sophie, Melanie, Anastassia, Emilie, Michel, Miles, Nathan and all of the students in 3rd grade.

A special thank you to all of the parents who came to help: Gloria Triantafyllou, Vera-Anelies Clydesdale Eberle, Eileen Faury, Anne-Lorainne Bahi, Anna Antonova, Marilyne Cueilliez

4th g / CM1

Notre visite au Musée d’Art Moderne

Le 3 novembre 2009, en compagnie des CE2 et des CM2, nous nous sommes rendus en bus au Musée d’Art Moderne à San José. Là, nous nous sommes séparés en 2 groupes : l’un a d’abord visité le musée et l’exposition d’Alexander Calder pendant que le second groupe, lui, réalisait (dirigé par un professeur d’Art) un mobile à la manière d’Alexander Calder. Puis nous avons permuté.
Nous avons pu admirer des œuvres aussi originales les unes que les autres. Peintures, constructions, sculptures, objets en verre soufflé…
Pour la plupart d’entre nous, nous visitions ce musée pour la première fois. Nous souhaitons vivement y retourner pour découvrir d’autres œuvres.

Students’ Reflections of 4th grade

Below are the students’ reflections of 4th grade so far this year; written by the students, in their own words.  We wish everyone a joyous holiday season and healthy, prosperous 2010.

Cameron Lahitette:
-Writing Assignments:
Writing the ghost story was high-quality practice.
-Field Trips:
Tech Museum: October 6th was AWeSOME because I love Technology and my mom came (Carine Lahitette the tech. teacher).
San Jose Museum of Modern Arts: We got to do Mobiles with Mr. Stuart (he was amusing) and had a tour by Requea (we visited Melt, Bottle house and sculptures by Alexander Calder).
-We are going to present Mission Projects on Dec. 3rd ,7th, 8th, and 10th.

Fiona Stemmelin:
Term 2: In term 2 we are working on Missions. Everyone had to choose their own Mission. Then we are going to study our Mission. Next make an outline, and once you give it to Anastasia she will correct our outline. And with all the time we have, we are going to make a replica of our Mission. Then we will make our rough draft, correcting our errors. And out of that, we will make our final draft. My Mission is on: Mission of Santa Clara de Anis. It has a Mission College right off the freeway. The school is called: Our Lady of Peace. It’s a school and a church at the same time. I can’t wait for our project.

Kenji Terao:
I enjoyed going to the San Jose Museum of Modern Art on Tuesday November 3, 2009. The piece of art I liked the most was a cabin with a “skeleton” made out of wood. The walls and the roof were made out of blue glass bottles. I am enjoying the missions’ project. I am going to do my report and model on the San Rafael mission. I also enjoyed the Halloween stories. They had to be 8 pages long! At least they had to have half a page writing and half a page drawing, so it made 4 pages writing and 4 pages drawing.

Laurenn Vives:
Fall in Fourth Grade is so much fun! The first thing I want to say is about the Tech Museum. My group did some really fun experiments with germs and water.  Sunglasses were known as safety glasses. After that, we started a Halloween story. We had to follow some guidelines for our story, but, it was still fun! Then we went to the art museum.  We learned a lot a about Alexander Calder. I love Fourth Grade.

Nicolas Duchez:
1 the tech museumWe went to the tech museum on October 6th and the first thing we did was to make some toys to throw a ball without using human force.
2 a ghost story
We needed to write a ghost story. The main character was Shorty Fat- he was a ghost that wanted to make a potion to turn him back to human.

                               
Margaux Gackiere:
This fall, we went to the TECH MUSEUM on October 6. I really enjoyed it, and we learned a lot of things! At the TECH, we went on Earthquakes, which was entertaining! And I loved The Ghost Stories; all of us were full of excitement writing them! And we also went to MoMA of San José, on November 3, 2009. We learned about Alexander Calder, he made lots of Mobiles, big and small ones. We also made Mobiles! Now we are starting Missions, I chose the San Miguel Mission.

Sabrina Holland:
-Writing:
Right now we have been writing a ghost story. It is about a ghost or any Halloween character that you like.
- Field trip:
(MOMA) Modern museum of Art of San Jose was high-quality fun for me. Our guide’s name was Requea. Our Creating Mobiles guide was Mr. Stuart, who helped us make Mobiles.
- Missions:
This year is really difficult.  We are making a mission model. We can present it on the 3rd,7th, ,8th, or 10th of December.

Tim Steuperaert:
Fourth grade is so interesting! When you have been a week studying for everything, you are so enjoying class after! I am so excited about our missions! It’s not every day that you get to do a cool project! We did a Halloween story and it was fun! On missions, I picked Mission Dolores. I wanted to see one that was not so far, because I don’t like sitting in the back of a car too long. Mission Dolores is in San Francisco, fine by me. Good-bye.

Alexei Romanov:

What did I like the most so far in 4th grade?
So far I liked TFK (Time for Kids) the most. It tells you cool  facts like about the Hubble Space Telescope or  the biggest pumpkin grown this year.

Mateen Motavaf:
My favorite part of school is math and Wordly Wise (vocabulary).
I like Wordly Wise because I like learning new words and I could use them in sentences I write and say.
I like math so much. It is really important because when you grow up you need to know it to get a job. My favorite subject in math is multiplication and division; I used to like addition but now I find it very easy.
I love going to school because I can see my friends and learn a lot. I have been in this school for 6 years.  I also liked the field trip to the Tech Museum- it is a super cool museum because you could take a picture of your face and then a robot draws it.

Sami Abdelazim:
Hello, my name is Sami and I am going to talk about what I have enjoyed so far this year. I enjoyed the field trip to the Tech Museum. I don’t have a favorite but I enjoyed making a ping pong ball move with two energies, gravitational and elastic energy. Amin and I had a robot draw our picture for us- it was very funny. One of my favorite experiences was going to the San Jose Museum of Modern Art. My favorite thing was Melt- it was made out of giant cookies!!

Mel Hauradou:
What I liked the most so far in 4th grade was TFK (Time for Kids). We learned about pollution and about someone who raised the biggest pumpkin in a contest. It also told about some very long snakes.

Killian Allaire:
I like in 4 th grade the history of the Missions, and making my mission project and math. The math tests are pretty cool, too.   

Callista Dhellemes:
What I liked in 4th grade:
-I really liked writing a Halloween story
-I enjoyed doing grammar, phonics, and Worldly Wise a little bit.
What I didn’t like in 4th grade:
-I didn’t like when I always fell on the same knee every time.

Amin Hakem
My favorite part of fourth grade:
My favorite assignment was when we wrote our ghost story. I wrote a Greek mythology-based story about a young boy named Pecry and his two friends. They had to save the world by stopping an army of monsters from finding a collar of a great beast that would help them bring him back from the underworld. They had a pen that could turn into a sword. A different one could shoot pure force. And finally, a DS that scanned things and copied made clones of whatever it scanned. They found the collar and gave the monsters a fake copy. That exploded when they tried to summon the great beast destroying themselves.

Alexandra Verbeke:
Hello, my name is Alexandra.  I enjoyed going to the Tech Museum, because we got to do cool things like: make our known gravitational toy, mix jelly fish genes with human genes and the next day it glowed. There was also a place where you build a building with blocks and then you could see if an earthquake would damage it. I also enjoyed the San Jose Museum of Modern Art; my favorite piece was Melt- it was made with cookies. I love this year!

5th / CM2

How Sweet It Is!

On November 5, 2009 the 5th graders did an activity on the different intelligences that individuals may have.  According to Howard Gardner, there are seven intelligences that a person might possess.  On this activity we focused on 5 of the 7 intelligences.  Those intelligences were: musical (write a song about your structure), linguistic (write an evolutionary history about your structure), kinesthetic (create a dance that brings attention to your structure), spatial (create an advertisement or poster to promote your structure), and logical (create a series of blueprints for your structure). 
The students were split into two groups.  Each group consisted of four students.  The students’ mission was to construct a 3-D structure using a bag of gumdrops and toothpicks. Once the group decided what they were going to build, they needed to build it, name their structure and then complete 4 out of the 5 activities that focused on the intelligences that we were working on.
The students worked diligently on this activity.  They listened to each other’s ideas and worked as a team.  In the end, both groups did an outstanding job on this activity. 
Great job 5th graders!

La lettre

Au début du mois de décembre, nous avons travaillé sur la rédaction d’une lettre. Nous avons analysé les différents types de lettres et nous avons préparé une lettre type pour le Père Noël. Ensuite, nous nous sommes demandés ce que les tout petits aimeraient pour Noël et nous avons préparé des listes de jouets pour les garçons et pour les filles. Nous avons imprimé nos modèles de lettres et nous sommes allés voir les élèves de la maternelle afin de les aider à écrire leur lettre au Père Noël. C’était très amusant de s’asseoir avec eux et de leur demander ce qu’ils voulaient. Certains étaient très bavards et ont dû être très sages, parce que leur lettre est très, très longue. D’autres étaient plus timides, mais ils ont probablement été très sages eux aussi. En tout cas, nous avons passé un bon moment dans leur classe et nous leur souhaitons à tous de recevoir tous les cadeaux qu’ils ont demandés. Quant à nous, nous avons tous été très sages aussi…

Alumni Spotlight

Name: Katharina Smundak                     
Year graduated from FASSV: 2000
Languages spoken: 4

Schools attended since FASSV:

Middle School: International School of the Peninsula
High School: Henry M. Gunn High School
University: New York University

If in University, what is your major?  If not yet in University, what do you want to study later on?  Why is that field of interest to you?
I am an English literature major. I’ve always been interested in writing, and the more I work and study in this field, the more I enjoy analyzing literature and discovering all the intricacies that become key components of a text.

What career do you think you might like to pursue as an adult?
Ideally, I would be a professor or a writer for “The New Yorker,” but I’m realistic, so I haven’t thought that far ahead. I just know I will be going to graduate school for Comparative Literature

What are your pastimes and interests? 
In high school, I did Russian theater and played piano. Since coming to NYU, school and work have dominated my free time, but I genuinely enjoy going to the various museums New York has to offer, and just generally exploring the city since there is no shortage of new neighborhoods to discover.

What is your favorite memory from your years at FASSV?
I loved my 4th grade trip to Yosemite—we all got to school at 5 AM, then it turned out that the bus had not been reserved, so we wound up leaving at around 9AM. Then, the first night there, we were staying in a wood cabin akin to the ones the pioneers stayed in; hence, the absence of any kind of heat. In the middle of the night, when people had finally gotten warm enough to fall asleep, we heard a beeping that became increasingly frequent. As it turned out, the batteries in the fire alarm, the only modern equipment in the cabin, were dying. There was some resentment.

What is something you appreciate about France or the French culture?
I appreciate French candor. They’re just not shy about stating their opinions, and it’s refreshing.  I like the lifestyle. Of course, this is a generalization, but I love that they can stop and have three hour dinners, and enjoy their time with other people.

How has learning French impacted your life?
Learning French has definitely helped me learn other languages, and it’s been invaluable in my travels because knowing the language of the country when you visit it completely changes the nature of the visit.  Knowing how to speak French has also heightened my appreciation of the value of language—one of my greatest fears is forgetting French because it’s the most important window into another culture.

Do you keep in touch with your former classmates from FASSV?  
I am friends on facebook with a couple of my classmates. (Does that count?) They are: Cyndhia Ramatchandirane, Maeve Coudrelle, Brandyn Le-Lewis, Charlotte Perez, Maelia Bianchi, Alice Varma.

Special Events & Professional Development

Mark your Calendars!
FASSV International Week
April 5 to 9, 2010

FASSV will be hosting our first school-wide International Week from April 5th to 9th in 2010.
The purpose of this event is to have an educational, multicultural festival which celebrates the different nationalities and cultures of our school’s community.  The week will consist of 4 types of activities:

Continent Exhibits:  Each grade K to 5 will prepare an exhibit focusing on one of the world’s continents and host and “open house” for all the other students to attend.  Each class has been assigned the following continents:

- Kindergarten: Asia - 1st/2nd: North and South America - 3rd: Europe - 4th: Australia - 5th: Africa

The Pre-k class will support the 4th graders and the Preschool/Pre-k class will support the 5th graders.

Music Assembly:  The school will have a music assembly focusing on international songs from different cultures or in different languages. 

International Sampling Buffet:  Parents could prepare bite-size samples of sweet and salty foods that they would like to share from their cultures.  The students will be invited to visit the buffet for their afternoon snack, and widen their palette by trying a variety of samples.   (Note: this will not replace the normal lunch period).

Parent Presentations:   Parents will be invited to come into their child’s classroom and briefly present something about their country or culture to the students.  A sign-up sheet will be posted outside each classroom after the February break.   

As we get closer to the event, a detailed schedule of all the exhibits and parent presentations will be published so that anyone who is interested in attending may do so.

We are very much looking forward to this enriching experience.  Our students will soon realize that in fact, with over 25 different cultures and nationalities in our student body, we are much more than“French” and an “American” School!

Professional Development

Créer un cahier de vie  en ligne en contexte nord américain 

« Le cahier de vie est un support vivant de mémoire qui conserve et présente les productions et les éléments importants dans la vie de l’enfant et de l’écolier »
Eve Leleu-Galland in. « Les cahiers, mémoires de vie », CRDP d’Amiens , 2002

Le 23, 24 et 25 novembre dernier, nous avons participe à un stage organisé par l’AEFE (Association des Enseignants Français a l’Etranger) au lycée La Pérouse à San Francisco. Ce stage était intitulé : « Créer un cahier de vie  en ligne en contexte nord américain ».  La création d’un blog par la classe et par les familles et l’apprentissage de la construction de documents repères : textes, vidéos, montages photos, etc.… étaient au programme. Les objectifs du cahier de vie étant :
La création avec les élèves de moments forts de la vie de classe.
La création d’un lien fort avec les familles pour favoriser la continuité éducative.

La classe moyenne section aura son propre cahier de vie en ligne très rapidement dans le courant de cette année scolaire.

Carine Lahitette, Technology Coordinator et Charlotte Raveneau, enseignante de moyenne section