In the period between October 16th to 24th, and as a cluster coordinator, Miss Rana Lawand travelled to the U.K. to attend the "Connecting Classrooms Contact Seminar" and visit the schools to which Lebanon would be linked with.

Connecting Classrooms is a five year program that links schools in the U.K. to schools around the world encouraging intercultural dialogue and active citizenship. The aims of this project is to connect people worldwide with learning opportunities and creative ideas, to build lasting relationships between the U.K. and other countries, and to develop understanding and trust between young people in different societies, thus creating a safe and more connected world for the future.

In Lebanon, there are 15 schools who are taking part in this project. These 15 schools are divided among 3 clusters (5 schools in each). Our school is linked with Nottingham City represented in its five schools. The work will be divided among the five schools with an average of minimum 3 activities for each school in each cluster. The activities should be completed before the end of March.

Respect is the theme that we have chosen. Keeping in accordance with theme, we will be doing activities for : My City; My Identity, Celebrations, and Caring for our planet as subtitles.

This week was problem solving week in grade 5.All the math sessions were to work with math problems.

Why a problem solving week?I realized that most students don’t love word problems.This week helped students constructing a deep understanding of mathematical ideas and processes by engaging them in doing mathematics,and interacting between students/students and teacher/students.

But what is the difference in these problems?For the first time in class we delt with nontraditional problems that we made our selves.I bought for students short and long stories as: The Three Pigs, Snow White, Martha,and Cinderella.

Students’ task was to transform these stories to math problems and puzzle stories. We added numbers,operations and questions to be answered mathematically.

We worked in four groups depending on which season we were born. We made sentences about the cards we were holding to tell about what people do in different seasons.

We brought Autumn to our KG1 class. We sang Autumn leaves song, rubbed the leaves we collected from the playgraound, sorted the objects according to the leaves' color, counted the leaves and matched them with the right number. That's not all, we also printed our hands with paint to form the leaves then we colored the leaves on the computer . We really enjoyed this season.

A farmer was driving along in his cart one day when a seed fell out and onto the hot, dry ground.

What will happen to the seed? Watch our photostory and find out...

Special thanks to the British Council Learn English Arab World website - go4english.com

Grade2 students are the property managers of their class. They line up on the first morning, and unlock the front door of the ones side. They walk inside and check their class. There are nine desks on the ones side and one table on the tens side that seats 10 students. Everything is clean and neat. They are satisfied and proud.

Just then, the door is knocked, they hurry over and see three students from grade 3 standing. They shake their hands and tell that they want to visit them. (Pick up three sticks and place them on the ones side). Just as they finish setting their friends, the door opens and four more students walk in!

Then, four more students come in, smiling and shaking their hands. They want to visit grade 2 as well. Suddenly, Mohammad Nasser says Oh, no! We have got too many students in the ones side. Hurry; let us get this sorted out. What shall we do?

Omar Shehab says “MAKE A TEN” let us move them to the tens side. Marwa kahaf replies “Super, it is a good idea!”

At the end, Jamal Yamout tells her friends that we have one ten and one more. Therefore, we have 10 + 1 = 11 visitors