On November 11, the Ambassador of the Republic of Austria to Georgia Arad Benkö visited the European School. The honorable guest was welcomed by the school administration and the students with the most popular Austrian names-Hannah and Moritz. Portraits of famous Austrian writers, composers and artists were exhibited in the Main Conference Hall together with translated Georgian versions of books by Sigmund Freud, Hermann Broch, and Stefan Zweig. The aim of the event was to learn more about Austria and Austria-Georgia relations. Teachers and students presented various projects related to Austria. Mr. Arad Benkö addressed the ES students, talked about important activities of the Austrian Embassy in Georgia and answered students’ questions. The event ended with students’ musical performances.

On the 10th of February PYP Exhibition Parent meeting was organized for all Grade 5 parents. The main goal of the meeting was to involve parents into the first stage of the PYP Exhibition process and provide information on what is PYP Exhibition and how the roles and responsibilities are defined. The Exhibition is the culmination of the Primary Years Program. Students synthesize the essential elements of the PYP and share them with the whole school community. It is an opportunity for students to exhibit the attributes of the IB Learner Profile that they have developed throughout their engagement with the program. Students are given flexibility in their choice of real-life issues or problems to be explored and investigated. The central idea states a broad conceptual understanding that students will investigate. They explore the local and global issues related to that inquiry, and then prepare a presentation for the community to view. Parents were very active with the questions and received all the answers.

World Cancer Day is an international day marked on February 4 to raise awareness of cancer and to encourage its prevention, detection, and treatment. The Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) announced that 1.5 million lives which would be lost to cancer, could be saved per year if decisive measures are taken.

MYP parents had a session on assessment in mathematics led by teachers. Parents had a chance to find out more about the criteria taught and assessed in MYP.

 February 5, 2020 PYP teachers participated to a mini-professional development session which was devoted to topic” Implementing Agency in PYP”. The main idea of the session as to understand how the concept of agency can be supported in a Primary Years Programme (PYP) context. Teachers browsed MY IB in order to inquiry into the “Learner: Learner agency, Action and Agency in a primary school context.  

On February 5, Webster University Chancellor & Managing Director Vasilis J. Botopoulos and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Susie Michailidis visited the European School. The guests informed ES students about offered academic programs, a variety of courses in different disciplines and campus facilities of Webster-Athens. In the end, the visitors had the school tour.

Grade 3A and 3B PYP students of ES following the inquiry cycle of the current unit “How we express ourselves”, showed great initiative and took actions resulted in a series of events. Being guided by their homeroom teachers and Georgian A teacher, students decided to host a bake sale for other PYP students and raise some money to purchase a very handy and needed knitting material for the nursing home “Katarzisi”. This was successfully implemented and students raised around 200 lari for the desired presents for elderly people. Being supported by one of the parents, students took more initiative and helped to make a traditional Georgian sweets “Pelamushi” by bringing the needed ingredients and cooking a delicious dessert at the school kitchen. Together with the heartwarming letters and students’ smiles and hugs, all this was presented to elderly people during grade 3B visit to “Katarzis”. In addition to the above, students of grade 3A initiated a visit to a kindergarten department where they met with the youngest students of ES school. By asking questions, answering some, reading stories, playing with the toy animals, building blocks, cars and puzzles, 3 grade students enjoyed their time very much as well as made our little kindergarteners day unique and very exciting!

We would like to congratulate all pyp community members with the successful PYP Parent – Teacher Conferences. The focus of the Parent – Teacher Conferences was mainly based on discussing students’ end of Semester 1 Report progress with the parents. The format of the conference allowed all PYP teachers and parents to meet and to discuss the progress and achievement of the child. At the meeting following teachers were available: homeroom teachers; single subject teachers of ART, ICT, Georgian language, French, Russian, German; support learning teachers.

World Read Aloud Day is a popular and special day of reading celebrated in over 100 countries. Read Aloud, Change the World -this is a motto of the ES event aiming to become part of this global literacy movement. The ES students read aloud in Georgian and in English masterpieces of Children’s literature as well as their own poetry and prose works.