Bregenz Stage for Aida
Summer is a busy time, especially for kids…or it can have those long lazy days that we all cherish. Gissv is ending the school year with Spring Concerts as well as announcing summer camps that offer 4-5 week-long sessions at all three campus locations. There are even opportunities for adult German language classes!
Now, if you thought summer is a “big project,” we thought we would look to the Bregenzer Festspiele in Austria. It is a floating opera stage that is built to mammoth proportions every year in July and August on Lake Constance. This year, The Magic Flute and The Merchant of Venice are featured along with various orchestral performances. May the summer months hold something special and new for you and your family.
For Summer Sessions at Gissv Berkeley Campus please contact Pamela Mead pmead@gissv.org
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Posted in Berkeley
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Tagged music, summer
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This month Gissv-Berkeley grades 3-4 attended the educational series at the Oakland Museum of California. The program is an Educational Performance that featured historical highlights in areas such as art, culture, race and society. The Oakland Museum has
Celebrating Diversity
a mission to tune in to our region’s extraordinary diversity, as the Museum seeks to bring together the many people, voices, and stories of California that create and shape our dynamic and multifaceted community.
The art, music, activism and culture of African Americans in California runs deep, in a land of both opportunity and free thinkers. The curriculum is part of California standards for state history and the civil rights movement. The achievements of African Americans in Northern California are many and we salute their stories that are told in so many ways, of perseverance, community and love in the face of adversity.
We will leave you with a master of the lap steel guitar, Freddie Roulette
from Oakland!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX06XkUhkbs
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Posted in Berkeley
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Tagged curriculum
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Dance to the beat of your own drummer!
Mark your calendars for Saturday, February 2 when we will host the 4th Annual German Family Karneval at the GISSV-Berkeley campus from 3:00 – 6:00 pm.
All are welcome to join us with Free Admission and German food and drinks for sale. Many children and adults like to dress up, there will be activities for children, as well as plenty of music. Highlights include a Karneval Parade led by a Brazilian-style marching band.
All proceeds benefit GISSV’s growing Berkeley campus at 1581 LeRoy Avenue. For further information, contact 510-558-0436 or karneval@gissv.org
gissv-karnival-2013-poster-1
Big Hands 2013
Wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2013! The Swiss mime troupe Mummenshanz came through Berkeley this season and rang in the New Year at Times Square, with rave reviews and audiences charmed by the silent display of sketches, some new and some unchanged for 40 years. Accordingly, more and more articles have come out about the importance of play. A child’s ability to pretend and imagine place the foundation for empathy and creative problem solving.
This attitude towards play, especially outdoors is one that has long informed the German mixed-age Kibili-Kindergarten. Wikipedia has an interesting list of how “Kindergarten” is defined or practiced in countries all around the world. The GISSV-Berkeley campus is having a 2013 Open House for parents and families who would like to learn more about our Bilingual Kibili and K-8 program. Please join us!
Date: Saturday, Jan 12
Time: 11:00 am – 1:00 pm
Where: GISSV Berkeley Campus 1581 LeRoy Ave, Berkeley
Contact: Pamela Mead pmead@gissv.org
JOY. Gissv-Berkeley Campus is a collection point for Toys for Tots while school is in session until December 14. This wonderful program is run by the U.S. Marine Corps and often has participating police, firefighter and other institutions involved in making sure the toys get matched well with children, according to age and expressed wishes. That’s why they ask for new, unwrapped toys. It’s thoughtful and your child can help pick something they would want, knowing another needy child likely wants the same thing. It ensures that foster kids or children of families in need have a celebration and most of all, togetherness. This year recipients will include families affected by Storm Sandy.
As for Gerhard Richter Painting, a new film is now available on Netflix: a biopic of this vigorous yet calm artist who turns 80 years old this year. While he flinches under the scrutiny of the camera, saying “it is 
worse than being in a clinic,” he nevertheless shares his studio, process and thoughts about painting. With a minimalist soundtrack, we hear the rolling casters, gloops and glugs of paint and the scrape of his infamous “squeegee.” Three years were spent following this German Impasto Master at work whose life in Cologne is shaded by a difficult beginning in East Germany, a loneliness and reserve as well as the wordless joy of his paintings. The film affirms, in case you were wondering these days, that yes, we need art of all kinds to help us understand the nature of consciousness.
Joy and Peace to you this Holiday Season.
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Getting the Word Out
Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome! The German International School of Silicon Valley (GISSV) invites you to the Grand Opening and Open House of our new Berkeley Campus!
Where: Hillside Campus at 1581 Leroy Avenue in Berkeley
When: Saturday, November 3
Time: 11:00 am – 1:00 pm
This is event is open to the community with no rsvp required. There will be many activities for kids, German food & drink and an official welcome from GISSV’s Principal.
From our previous post about acquiring the Hillside Campus, you know we are excited to reinvigorate one of Berkeley’s landmark buildings. The Berkeley campus of GISSV is a K-8 bilingual school featuring the best in international education. Meet our families, students and teachers or simply enjoy a beautiful afternoon and get to know our school. Cheers!
For more information, please contact Pamela Mead at pmead@gissv.org
Event Poster: GISSV-open-house-flyer – MUNSON (1)
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Growing up bilingual increases brain plasticity
There has been lots of new neuroscience devoted to studying bilingualism and the brain. While many studies focus on how young children learn and hear language, results have also shown amazing benefits that bilingual or multilingual people may have suspected to be true from experience. This research also continues to inform us on how to teach children who are bilingual, and how to place a value on bilingual learning in childhood.
Ellen Bialystok, a cognitive neuroscientist, points out that growing up bilingual has life long effects on being better at multi-tasking, intuitively understanding grammatical structures, seeing multiple viewpoints and being able to filter important vs non-important information. These strengths of executive functioning and attention can help us in a world drenched with information.
More recently, being bilingual has been identified as being protective in old age against Alzheimers and dementia. She stresses that the languages must be used with frequency and families that speak another language at home should see this as “a potential gift.”
A new investigation by researchers in Finland suggests that “Balanced Bilinguals,” people who grew up speaking two languages, have brains where the two languages seem to be fully intertwined.
A child receiving a bilingual education would be a “Balanced Bilingual,” and really, learning multiple languages is also easier for this group. The cognitive benefits are similar to those with musical training, so the message is: practice, practice, practice! Children have the advantage of making it part of play and academics together.
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