KISU Newsletter

On Friday I did a mock inspection of the school to judge how prepared we are for reopening - whenever that may be. I have taken part in inspections by the Ministry Of Health, the Ministry of Education and Sport and KCCA, so I am fairly confident that I know what they will look for. In each of the inspections we have had we have exceeded the inspector expectations and they frequently take photographs of our school as examples of good practice to show other schools.

The main things they are looking for include:

Record keeping of names and temperatures, rooms to isolate anyone showing any covid symptoms, washing and sanitizing stations, social distancing in classrooms, appropriate signage and regular cleaning and sanitizing.

I found all of these to be in place and we only need a few tweaks to get to the very high standard we all want. One extra SOP we are expecting is for them to ask about staff vaccination. Our teaching staff are 99% fully vaccinated and the one or 2 remaining will be done as soon as possible. We also have a very high percentage of our admin and ancillary staff vaccinated and as we find clinics with vaccine, we are working our way towards 100% coverage.

I was looking back at the very first newsletter article I wrote at KISU. I was a newly appointed Head of Secondary and this is one of the paragraphs:

" What will the new year bring? My expectations of the staff and students at KISU are high. It is not possible for everybody to be top of the class but it is possible for everybody to try their hardest and do their best. I want us to be proud of what we achieve. I want us to be successful academically, in sports, in music and drama and to make a significant contribution to our local community. I want us to support each other and work together as a strong coherent team."

That was in 2012. More than nine years on I don't think I would change a word, apart from perhaps adding Art. This pandemic has thrown a lot at us as a school, at you as families and at the world as a whole, but we all still have to aim at being the best versions of ourselves that we can be.

I’d like to introduce you to Adele Hammoud! Born on September 1st at 9:49 am and weighs 3.3 kgs!

Mum (Dima Dakik, KG2 teacher) and baby are doing really well.

September 9th is Teddy Bear Day — the official day for you to get out your best stuffed pal and make him feel special!

Give your favourite bear a hug while you check out these teddy bear facts.

Teddy bears were named after U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt ("Teddy" is a cute nickname for "Theodore"), after he refused to kill a bear during a hunting trip in Mississippi. People learned what happened from a cartoon that was in the newspaper. After seeing the cartoon, a store owner in Brooklyn, New York, made a stuffed toy bear that he called "Teddy’s Bear." It became instantly popular.

Teddy bears were actually made in Germany. At about the same time teddy bears were becoming popular in the United States, a toy maker in Germany named Margarete Steiff also started making cute stuffed bears. An American visiting Germany saw the bears and ordered a whole bunch of them to be sold in the United States. The Steiff Toy Company still makes teddy bears today — over 100 years later!

A bear named "Magellan T. Bear" joined a NASA shuttle mission in 1995. He became the first teddy bear in space.

Arguably the most famous teddy is Winnie the Pooh. He was created by author A.A. Milne, who would visit a bear at London Zoo with his son, Christopher. That bear was actually Canadian — brought to the zoo by a soldier named Harry Colebourn. Harry bought the baby bear in White River, Ontario. Apparently, it was normal to have pet bears back in the early 1900s. He named it "Winnipeg" after his hometown. The name got shortened to "Winnie.” When Harry had to go and fight in France, he left his bear at the London Zoo.

If you love teddy bears, you are officially an arctophile (say "ark-toe-file")! That’s from the Greek words arctos (meaning bear) and philos (meaning loving). There’s probably no bigger arctophile than Jackie Miley of South Dakota, USA. She holds the Guinness World Record for having the most teddy bears — 8,026 at the time the record was set in 2012!

P.S International Teddy Bear Day is 27th October - so you can give your Teddy another hug on this special day.

Our ‘Primary Super Learners of the Week’ for demonstrating great knowledge are:

Year 6: Pranav Iyengar

Year 5: Samwiri Karugire and Suubi Museke

Year 4: Terry Cradle

Year 3: Thomas Coetzee

Year 2: Ali Seblini

Year 1: Blaise Coetzee

Rec: Philipp Esche

KG3: Helma Memarian

KG2: Zoë Bamugye

Next week we will be finding out who our risk takers are in each class. Also, from next week, look out for Specialist Teachers' awards which will celebrate students across the primary school who have excelled in specialist subject areas each week.

During our Kindergarten home visits we have been exploring and joining in numerous activities!

To begin with, we start the session with our usual Circle time routine. We then move on and sing a nursery rhyme or read a story during our literacy session while we work on our listening, language and communication skills.

In Numeracy we are exploring primary colours and will narrow our focus to a colour a week starting next week. We have started with a few colour sorting and colour matching activities.

We then engage in some sensory play! Ice, shaving cream, water, soapy sand- we enjoy getting our hands dirty!

Lastly, we work on our fine motor skills and eye/hand coordination with a puzzle, LEGO, or a lacing activity!

In Year 3 ICT sessions, students have used turtle codes to write and follow algorithms to design regular 2-dimensional common shapes that they learn about in the classroom. Meanwhile, in Year 4, students have progressed to using Logo commands to write multistep codes and are able to spot their own mistakes and debug codes.

In Year 5, students have been coding to write short stories to animate sprites making them move and talk using the control panel well to build code blocks to create a desired outcome.
Year 6 students have worked hard to create well-presented biographies using google slides. They have learned how to insert and format images, text and are able to use transitions and animations within slides to add effects.

This is the third week of the term and we are progressing well with our academics. We extend our appreciation to you for the support that you give the children at home.

In science, students have been focusing on a unit of work all about the digestive system and the organs and parts of the body that make up the digestive system.

Students have particularly enjoyed carrying out their own research on the functions of each organ and creating their own slide show presentations to showcase their learning. Presenting to their peers has really boosted children’s confidence and enabled the children to appraise and evaluate each other’s performance, offering tips and constructive feedback.

In maths, we have been looking at place value. Areas handled are: counting in thousands, number representation to thousands and rounding numbers to the nearest tens, hundreds and thousands.

Learners have found rounding numbers interesting and fun.

Our topic for the term is ‘Who let the Gods out? Ancient Greece.’ It is turning out to be an enthralling topic for the students. Their research is impressive. We have discussed ancient Greece civilization and some of the Gods.

In ICT, students are learning how to code using online Logo software. They have written codes that include movement and turning. They followed algorithms and can write codes, identifying any errors in the process.

For the beginning of Term 1, the Year 1 and Year 2 children are focusing on fitness workouts and games.

Workouts:

In this unit, children are doing a lot of exercises based on building endurance, strength, balance and agility that help to keep their bodies fit and healthy.

Games:

In this unit, children are learning how to replicate a series of moves based on travelling. They are also developing flexibility, coordination and balance.

Children are developing a small repertoire of actions and whole-body movements.

Kind regards,

Mr. Robert (PE coach)

Dear Students,

My name is Eva Toth-Nagy (Miss Eva) and I'm the new Secondary Learning Support Teacher/Head of Learning Support.

I'd like to let you know that together with the school counsellor (Yasemin Aydin) we are here to help and support you with your academic or social/emotional needs.

Please feel free to reach out to us if you need any help with your learning, friendships or just want to have a chat with an adult - we will do our best to support you.

You can find me in the Learning Support classroom (Language block, ground floor), and Miss Yasemin is in the School Counsellor room (Math's block, ground floor).

Whilst we are online, you can always send us an email and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.

We are both looking forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,

Miss Eva (e.toth.nagy@gmail.com)

Miss Yasemin (counsellor@kisu.com)

Firstly a big, big apology to Benjamin Toth. I have been giving him the wrong name for the last 2 weeks - sorry!

This week's highest Merit receivers are:

Year 7 Moira Forbes

Year 8 Alena Sedykh

Year 9 Eynaas Gubara

Year 10 Ariana Naggi

Year 11 Elizabeth Kilonzo & Munenyiwa Munaka

DP1 Kartitkey Jain

DP2 Lucy Kebirungi

The highest number of merits this week were received by Alena Sedykh

When you think of school you often simply think of teachers and pupils. However, more frequently than you think the teacher becomes the pupil. I am pleased to say that 2 of our new staff will becoming pupils in the next few weeks as they take on some significant professional development provided by the IBO. Mr. Vasko will be attending a workshop on Diploma Mathematics: Applications and Interpretations and Ms. Dankjaer will be attending a workshop on Diploma English language and Literature.

Next week all of the Secondary staff will becoming pupils we they look at Bloom's Taxonomy as a way of creating learning objectives and also for providing differentiation in lessons.

This week in our Secondary assembly we looked at some of the strange sayings that are part of the English language. For example, the phrase 'get the sack' meaning to lose your job - where does this come from?

This derives from a time when tradesmen travelled from place to place looking for work. They generally owned their own tools and carried them around in a large sack. At the start of any given job they would hand their sack to their employer to look after. If the tradesman's services were no longer required and he was dismissed from the job, the employer would give him the sack.

If your language has any strange or unusual sayings then please let us have them so that we can share them in next week's newsletter