Hello, dear parents! A new school year has started and ISN has excitedly welcomed its new Grade 3 and 4 students. My name is Igor and I will be the homeroom teacher for this year’s G3/4 students. I look forward to meeting you all in the upcoming meeting before the Spring festival! 🌸

We started off last week by getting acquainted with our new classroom. It is quite a small room for the 19 of us, but we have made it exciting by having it depict a rainforest setting and filling it up with cute rainforest animals! The students seemed excited about the classroom and decided to add their own ideas inspired by the setting, so we worked together on making tropical fruits, raindrops and other craft to decorate further. 🦜

This week, the students have started their lessons. Alongside Mr. Igor, their teachers will be Mr. Momose for Japanese language, Mr. Saito for Japanese maths, Ms. Iinuma for Music and Mr. Terry for the students’ programming lessons which will take place every Thursday. The students seemed to enjoy all of their lessons this week and seem excited to learn more! 💡

We have also started our first Unit of Inquiry this week. It follows the topic of “Municipalities” within the Transdisciplinary theme of “Who we are”. During the Unit, the students will inquire into how people and communities organize themselves and how everyone doing their job to the best of their ability makes the entire community function smoothly and happily. We will also learn about the various municipalities in Japan and around the world, as well as take a deeper look into the municipality where our school is located, Shiga village. 🏡

The students finished the week by deciding a fun festival activity we will prepare for next week’s ISN Spring Festival. Let’s keep it a surprise for now, but you are all invited to come on that day, see the school, eat yummy food, and have fun together! 👻