Lexington School News

Multilingualism Week took place in February. Lexington dedicated a week to the importance of learning and appreciating languages. As an IB PYP school, offering an additional language is a requirement. Staff members encourage students to use home languages and practice additional languages.

For Multilingualism Week, students taught each other languages and participated in a multilingual scavenger hunt and game day. Parents helped students write multilingual Valentine’s Day cards. To commemorate the UN’s Mother Tongue Language Day, students placed a flower and a name of an endangered language around a “Mother Language Monument” banner provided by a Bangladeshi family. Mother Language Day originated in Bangladesh. Next year, we hope to build our own sculpture.

We also celebrated the Lunar New Year. This year is the Year of the Fire Horse. Families and staff with Asian connections helped organize and lead an assembly. We learned some of the differences between Lunar New Year celebrations in China and Vietnam. Parents organized a Chinese student fashion show. The assembly concluded with an amazing Home and School Club funded Lion Dance performance by USA Prancer Development Group. Yellow and red lions performed acrobatic maneuvers and interacted with the audience. Parents led recess activities such as

Chinese calligraphy and paper cutting. TK-5 student-led conferences were a celebration of student learning. Every spring, students show their parents what they have been learning over the past few months. Students might read to their parents, talk about the progress they are making within a unit of inquiry, demonstrate math concepts through games, share projects, reflect on writing, teach a few words in Spanish, or Lexington’s biggest Home and School Club fundraiser, the Wildcat Color Run, occurred during Holi, an Indian holiday that celebrates the coming of spring. It is all At Lexington, it also includes running!

Students raise funds from family and friends depending on the laps they run or as a single donation. Each class has thirty minutes to run around the track as many times as possible. While doing so, parents toss colored chalk similar to what might happen at a Holi celebration in India. Our HSC also brought back a fantastic Dhol drummer to help inspire our runners. It was a beautiful day of community building, health, and Lexington concluded its International Baccalaureate Primary Years Program five- year evaluation visit. After a three-day virtual visit by members of the IB organization, IB PYP Coordinator Anna Kearney and I presented their initial findings to the Lexington community. Lexington was commended for the growth it has made as an IB program over the past five years, the staff’s understanding and passion for the IB’s pedagogy, district support of our program, and how the students and parents embrace