December 20, 2018
Important upcoming dates
December 21 - Winter Break starts
January 14 - School resumes
February 15 - Parent Teacher Conferences (to be confirmed)
February 20 - 24 - Ski Break - no school
Dear parent and members of the Nova school community,
I would like to inform you that at the end of the current school year, in June 2019, I will be leaving Macedonia to take up a new position as Head of School in an international school in Beijing, China.
I have thoroughly enjoyed my two years here in Skopje and have made many lifelong friends and learnt a great deal from my interactions with a variety of wonderful people. However, this new opportunity that I have been offered has provided me with a chance to work with architects to design and build a new school and then subsequently build a team of teachers around the IEYC, IPC and IMYC curriculum that we use here at Nova.
I believe that over the past two years, as a community we have achieved a great deal together. I am proud of what we have developed in such a short period of time and I am particularly proud of the teachers and support staff that I have had the honour to work with in order to achieve what we have.
Of course, without the support from you as parents, we would not have been able to make the progress that we have. I have always spoken of the need for the school and parents to work together in partnership to help your children achieve to their full academic and social potential and I truly believe that we are making solid progress in these areas. The ones who will benefit in the long run from a close collaboration between home and school, are your children.
I want to sincerely thank you as parents and community members for your support and encouragement over the past 2 years. However, the year is far from over and we still have much to achieve before the end of this school year. I can assure you that up until the final day of school, that I will be working extremely hard with all of the staff and students to ensure that this year will finish with the same academic rigour and dedication as we have started with, and that as always, the well-being of your children will be my main priority.
I would like to thank the Novakovski family for giving me the opportunity to work with such a wonderful group of students and teachers and I wish them and the school all the very best for the future.
The process of finding my replacement is well underway and I anticipate that an announcement will be made by the Head of School to the Nova community within the next few days. I hope and trust that you will welcome and support this person in the same way that I was welcomed when I first arrived in Macedonia.
Winter Performance
Thank you to all of you for your support and attendance at the annual Winter Performance for EMS. I was delighted to be able to witness such an amazing production that incorporated our music, dance and drama programs that we offer at the school. I am sure that you can appreciate the time and effort that goes into such a large scale production and I would like to acknowledge the staff and students for their hard work and willingness to spend many extra hours to ensure its success. There are a variety of photos in the slideshow at the end of this newsletter that highlight what a truly magnificent performance it was.
DVD of production
I have just been informed that the copies of the DVD are now available so please call in to the HS admin area to pay and collect your very own copy of the EMS Winter Production.
Children in the school after hours
As a school we offer a wide variety of after school activities. These are provided to not only support student learning and engagement but we also appreciate that it provides working parents with an option for care for your children until you are able to collect them after work. However, lately we have had a large number of students who appear to be hanging around at school who are not engaged in an after school activity and whose parents are not at the school to supervise them. Children who are in the school unsupervised present a risk to their safety and the security of the school as there are no staff allocated to supervise these students.
Commencing from January 14, after the winter break, we need to ensure that all students who are not being supervised by an adult will need to go home or engaged in an ASA. We will be contacting parents to inform you if your child is still at school after 3.30pm and requesting that you come and collect them. Please support us by talking to your children about the risks of being at school unsupervised. If you are unable to collect your child, then we are happy to accommodate them in the daycare centre for ES and the homework assistance club the MS. Please refer to this link for more information about your options for care after school hours.
Water fountains
Our new water fountain has arrived at school and children can now fill up their own water bottles with clean, filtered and chilled water. It is located near the nurses station on the ground level. Feel free to have a look and fill up your own bottles as well. This is part of our Green Initiative that incorporates the air the water and the recycling of waste in the school.
Teachers leaving Nova
On a very sad note, I want to inform you that two of our teachers will be leaving us at the end of this week. Ms Tabitha Longley-Coomber, who teaches Middle School English has been with us for 3 years. Tabitha will be leaving Macedonia and relocating to Ethiopia to join her partner who has a new position there. We wish her all the very best and we will certainly miss her when she is gone. Fortunately, we had plenty of notice about her departure and we were able to hire and train her replacement. I am very pleased to announce that Ms Milena Slivoska will be replacing her when school resumes on January 14. Milena has already spent time in the school working with Tabitha in order to ensure that she if fully up to date with our curriculum and procedures.
Mr Pance Pancevski is leaving Nova after 13 years at Nova. Pance will be taking up a new position as a PE teacher in Stockholm in Sweden. Pance has been a big part of the school for the past 13 years and when someone with that much experience leaves an organization such as Nova, it leaves a big hole to fill. Fortunately, as a school we are very strong in the area of PE and I am happy to announce that Mr Goran Krkovski who has been working at the school for 8 years will replace Pance as the ES PE teacher. He will now step up into the role as MS PE teacher. We have hired a new person to take on the role of ES PS teacher and his name is Todor Dosevski. Todor started working here this week to get orientated and will work closely with Goran who will continue to support him in these early days.
I am very happy to announce that Ms Iva Ristovska will be returning from maternity leave on January 14 and will add to our staffing and primarily support the maths program across the school. She will work with students in Grades 4 and 5 and also support students who have particular needs in the ES and MS.
Holiday reading
To start off the holiday season, I have included 3 highly valuable articles that I thought you may have some time to read over the break. Thanks for the continued positive feedback that I get from the articles that I publish each issue. I try to find articles that are of interest to parents that have children across the full range of ages in the school as being a parent can be just as challenging whether your children are 3 years old or if they are 14 years old.
Children are dangerously addicted to technology
Children are dangerously addicted to technology, with US scientists now claiming smartphones and tablets are damaging early brain development. An ongoing study, conducted by the National Institute of Health, will follow the development of children and their relationship to technology, over the course of several years. So far, scientists have concluded that kids who spend seven hours or more a day on smartphones or tablets are prematurely thinning their brain cortex. The research found that as little as two hours of screen time each day is physically changing the structure of kids’ brains.The effects of this are seen in reduced memory and perception skills, cognitive abilities and IQ scores. To read the rest of this article, please follow this link.
The importance of play
A new paper in the journal Pediatrics summarizes the evidence for letting kids let loose. "Play is not frivolous," the paper insists, twice. "It is brain building." The authors — Michael Yogman, Andrew Garner, Jeffrey Hutchinson, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Michnick Golinkoff — ask pediatricians to take an active role by writing a "prescription for play" for their young patients in the first two years of life. "Play is disappearing," says Hirsh-Pasek, a developmental psychologist who is a professor at Temple University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. By targeting doctors, she explains, the paper hopes to build on the success of a literacy initiative called Reach Out and Read. That program reaches nearly 5 million children annually by giving out children's books at doctor visits. "You have an opportunity there" to change behavior, she says. Prescribing play for kids? Really?
It's a sign that "we're living in different times," comments Anthony DeBenedet, a doctor, and co-author of The Art of Roughhousing and the author of Playful Intelligence, who was not involved in the paper. But he calls the article "beautiful" in the way it marshals the hard evidence in favor of climbing trees and talking on banana phones. To read the rest of this article and learn the 5 benefits of play, please follow this link.
Why reading aloud to older children is valuable
Educator and author Jessica Lahey reads Shakespeare and Dickens aloud to her seventh- and eighth-graders, complete with all the voices. Her students love being read to, and sometimes get so carried away with the story, she allows them to lie on the floor and close their eyes just to listen and enjoy it. Lahey reads short stories aloud, too: “My favorite story to read out loud has to be Poe's ‘Tell-tale Heart.’ I heighten the tension and get a little nuts-o as the narrator starts to really go off the rails. So much fun.” While reading Dickens aloud helps students get used to his Victorian literary style, Lahey said that it’s also an opportunity for her to stop and explain rhetorical and literary devices they wouldn’t get on their own. And they read the Bard’s plays together, divvying up the parts, because “that’s how they are meant to be experienced.” Reading aloud to older children -- even up to age 14, who can comfortably read to themselves -- has benefits both academic and emotional, says Jim Trelease, who could easily be called King of the Read-Aloud. To read the rest of this article, please follow this link.
Exit Points
This week we held Exit Points for Grade 2 on Monday and on Wednesday there will be one for PK students. In addition there will be Exit Points for all Middle School students on Wednesday and Thursday. There are a selection of photos from these Exit Points in the slideshow at the end of this newsletter.
Early Education Centre Winter Performance
On Thursday at 2.00pm the PK3, PK4 and Kindergarten classes will be presenting their very own Winter Performance in the main EMS Auditorium.
Toys for tots
Cub Scout Pack 2187 is collecting new, unwrapped toys at NOVA EMS on December 18, 19 and 20 in support of the U.S. Marine Corps Toys for Tots program. Bring a toy to school so area children without parents will have a brighter new year.
Merry Christmas
Finally, I would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. It has been an excellent first half of the year for us as an Elementary and Middle School and I hope and trust that we will enjoy just as much success in the second semester.
Russell O'Neill
EMS Principal
December 21 - Winter Break starts
January 14 - School resumes
February 15 - Parent Teacher Conferences (to be confirmed)
February 20 - 24 - Ski Break - no school
Dear parent and members of the Nova school community,
I would like to inform you that at the end of the current school year, in June 2019, I will be leaving Macedonia to take up a new position as Head of School in an international school in Beijing, China.
I have thoroughly enjoyed my two years here in Skopje and have made many lifelong friends and learnt a great deal from my interactions with a variety of wonderful people. However, this new opportunity that I have been offered has provided me with a chance to work with architects to design and build a new school and then subsequently build a team of teachers around the IEYC, IPC and IMYC curriculum that we use here at Nova.
I believe that over the past two years, as a community we have achieved a great deal together. I am proud of what we have developed in such a short period of time and I am particularly proud of the teachers and support staff that I have had the honour to work with in order to achieve what we have.
Of course, without the support from you as parents, we would not have been able to make the progress that we have. I have always spoken of the need for the school and parents to work together in partnership to help your children achieve to their full academic and social potential and I truly believe that we are making solid progress in these areas. The ones who will benefit in the long run from a close collaboration between home and school, are your children.
I want to sincerely thank you as parents and community members for your support and encouragement over the past 2 years. However, the year is far from over and we still have much to achieve before the end of this school year. I can assure you that up until the final day of school, that I will be working extremely hard with all of the staff and students to ensure that this year will finish with the same academic rigour and dedication as we have started with, and that as always, the well-being of your children will be my main priority.
I would like to thank the Novakovski family for giving me the opportunity to work with such a wonderful group of students and teachers and I wish them and the school all the very best for the future.
The process of finding my replacement is well underway and I anticipate that an announcement will be made by the Head of School to the Nova community within the next few days. I hope and trust that you will welcome and support this person in the same way that I was welcomed when I first arrived in Macedonia.
Winter Performance
Thank you to all of you for your support and attendance at the annual Winter Performance for EMS. I was delighted to be able to witness such an amazing production that incorporated our music, dance and drama programs that we offer at the school. I am sure that you can appreciate the time and effort that goes into such a large scale production and I would like to acknowledge the staff and students for their hard work and willingness to spend many extra hours to ensure its success. There are a variety of photos in the slideshow at the end of this newsletter that highlight what a truly magnificent performance it was.
DVD of production
I have just been informed that the copies of the DVD are now available so please call in to the HS admin area to pay and collect your very own copy of the EMS Winter Production.
Children in the school after hours
As a school we offer a wide variety of after school activities. These are provided to not only support student learning and engagement but we also appreciate that it provides working parents with an option for care for your children until you are able to collect them after work. However, lately we have had a large number of students who appear to be hanging around at school who are not engaged in an after school activity and whose parents are not at the school to supervise them. Children who are in the school unsupervised present a risk to their safety and the security of the school as there are no staff allocated to supervise these students.
Commencing from January 14, after the winter break, we need to ensure that all students who are not being supervised by an adult will need to go home or engaged in an ASA. We will be contacting parents to inform you if your child is still at school after 3.30pm and requesting that you come and collect them. Please support us by talking to your children about the risks of being at school unsupervised. If you are unable to collect your child, then we are happy to accommodate them in the daycare centre for ES and the homework assistance club the MS. Please refer to this link for more information about your options for care after school hours.
Water fountains
Our new water fountain has arrived at school and children can now fill up their own water bottles with clean, filtered and chilled water. It is located near the nurses station on the ground level. Feel free to have a look and fill up your own bottles as well. This is part of our Green Initiative that incorporates the air the water and the recycling of waste in the school.
Teachers leaving Nova
On a very sad note, I want to inform you that two of our teachers will be leaving us at the end of this week. Ms Tabitha Longley-Coomber, who teaches Middle School English has been with us for 3 years. Tabitha will be leaving Macedonia and relocating to Ethiopia to join her partner who has a new position there. We wish her all the very best and we will certainly miss her when she is gone. Fortunately, we had plenty of notice about her departure and we were able to hire and train her replacement. I am very pleased to announce that Ms Milena Slivoska will be replacing her when school resumes on January 14. Milena has already spent time in the school working with Tabitha in order to ensure that she if fully up to date with our curriculum and procedures.
Mr Pance Pancevski is leaving Nova after 13 years at Nova. Pance will be taking up a new position as a PE teacher in Stockholm in Sweden. Pance has been a big part of the school for the past 13 years and when someone with that much experience leaves an organization such as Nova, it leaves a big hole to fill. Fortunately, as a school we are very strong in the area of PE and I am happy to announce that Mr Goran Krkovski who has been working at the school for 8 years will replace Pance as the ES PE teacher. He will now step up into the role as MS PE teacher. We have hired a new person to take on the role of ES PS teacher and his name is Todor Dosevski. Todor started working here this week to get orientated and will work closely with Goran who will continue to support him in these early days.
I am very happy to announce that Ms Iva Ristovska will be returning from maternity leave on January 14 and will add to our staffing and primarily support the maths program across the school. She will work with students in Grades 4 and 5 and also support students who have particular needs in the ES and MS.
Holiday reading
To start off the holiday season, I have included 3 highly valuable articles that I thought you may have some time to read over the break. Thanks for the continued positive feedback that I get from the articles that I publish each issue. I try to find articles that are of interest to parents that have children across the full range of ages in the school as being a parent can be just as challenging whether your children are 3 years old or if they are 14 years old.
Children are dangerously addicted to technology
Children are dangerously addicted to technology, with US scientists now claiming smartphones and tablets are damaging early brain development. An ongoing study, conducted by the National Institute of Health, will follow the development of children and their relationship to technology, over the course of several years. So far, scientists have concluded that kids who spend seven hours or more a day on smartphones or tablets are prematurely thinning their brain cortex. The research found that as little as two hours of screen time each day is physically changing the structure of kids’ brains.The effects of this are seen in reduced memory and perception skills, cognitive abilities and IQ scores. To read the rest of this article, please follow this link.
The importance of play
A new paper in the journal Pediatrics summarizes the evidence for letting kids let loose. "Play is not frivolous," the paper insists, twice. "It is brain building." The authors — Michael Yogman, Andrew Garner, Jeffrey Hutchinson, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Michnick Golinkoff — ask pediatricians to take an active role by writing a "prescription for play" for their young patients in the first two years of life. "Play is disappearing," says Hirsh-Pasek, a developmental psychologist who is a professor at Temple University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. By targeting doctors, she explains, the paper hopes to build on the success of a literacy initiative called Reach Out and Read. That program reaches nearly 5 million children annually by giving out children's books at doctor visits. "You have an opportunity there" to change behavior, she says. Prescribing play for kids? Really?
It's a sign that "we're living in different times," comments Anthony DeBenedet, a doctor, and co-author of The Art of Roughhousing and the author of Playful Intelligence, who was not involved in the paper. But he calls the article "beautiful" in the way it marshals the hard evidence in favor of climbing trees and talking on banana phones. To read the rest of this article and learn the 5 benefits of play, please follow this link.
Why reading aloud to older children is valuable
Educator and author Jessica Lahey reads Shakespeare and Dickens aloud to her seventh- and eighth-graders, complete with all the voices. Her students love being read to, and sometimes get so carried away with the story, she allows them to lie on the floor and close their eyes just to listen and enjoy it. Lahey reads short stories aloud, too: “My favorite story to read out loud has to be Poe's ‘Tell-tale Heart.’ I heighten the tension and get a little nuts-o as the narrator starts to really go off the rails. So much fun.” While reading Dickens aloud helps students get used to his Victorian literary style, Lahey said that it’s also an opportunity for her to stop and explain rhetorical and literary devices they wouldn’t get on their own. And they read the Bard’s plays together, divvying up the parts, because “that’s how they are meant to be experienced.” Reading aloud to older children -- even up to age 14, who can comfortably read to themselves -- has benefits both academic and emotional, says Jim Trelease, who could easily be called King of the Read-Aloud. To read the rest of this article, please follow this link.
Exit Points
This week we held Exit Points for Grade 2 on Monday and on Wednesday there will be one for PK students. In addition there will be Exit Points for all Middle School students on Wednesday and Thursday. There are a selection of photos from these Exit Points in the slideshow at the end of this newsletter.
Early Education Centre Winter Performance
On Thursday at 2.00pm the PK3, PK4 and Kindergarten classes will be presenting their very own Winter Performance in the main EMS Auditorium.
Toys for tots
Cub Scout Pack 2187 is collecting new, unwrapped toys at NOVA EMS on December 18, 19 and 20 in support of the U.S. Marine Corps Toys for Tots program. Bring a toy to school so area children without parents will have a brighter new year.
Merry Christmas
Finally, I would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. It has been an excellent first half of the year for us as an Elementary and Middle School and I hope and trust that we will enjoy just as much success in the second semester.
Russell O'Neill
EMS Principal