KISU Newsletter

At the end of week 1 we have achieved quite a lot:

The timetable works! You never know if it will work or not until you have had the first full week.

We have had our first home visits for our very little ones.

Year 10 and DP1 have successfully started their new courses.

A few minor queries and problems have been solved.

New staff have met their students and new students met their new teachers and class mates.

Lots of positive learning has taken place.

As always students' learning goes much more smoothly when parents and teachers support each other. Here are just a few of the things we would like your support with:

1. We know that the learning experience is improved when the students and teachers can see each other. One or two students are saying they cannot put their camera on because it is broken. If this is the case then a new plug in camera can be purchased quite cheaply. Teachers will be contacting parents of students who do not have cameras next week to ask for your support.
2. Whilst smart phones are fantastic devices, they are not particularly suitable for online learning. Some students could not access their ICT lesson this week because their phones did not have the required basic software. A PC or laptop gives a much better experience.
3. We will start to send demerits to students who fail to attend lessons or who leave lessons before the end as attendance is vital. If there is a genuine reason for a student not being online please let us know as soon as possible.

Just a quick reminder to students and parents that demerits are not punishments, they are simply a way of informing parents of a situation that has an impact on a child's learning.

Below is a screen shot of my computer. I have access to all of the Google classrooms (both Primary and Secondary) and can be part of a whole lesson or just pop in and out. Both the Primary and Secondary Leadership Teams have access to lessons and Heads of Department can also monitor lessons within their area of the school.

Here is a Year 7 Maths lesson. For this lesson, the year group were being taught together and supported by 3 teachers.

At the start of each academic year both the Primary and Secondary school hold a "Meet the Teacher" evening. These meetings are so that you can put names to faces and to learn a little bit about who does what at KISU. Unfortunately, last year this meeting had to be virtual via Google Meets. A number of parents commented that having one specific time for the meeting was inconvenient for families who work or have other commitments. This year we will be producing "Meet The Teacher" video recordings so that everybody who wants to gets to see who is who. These are in production as you read this and will be made available sometime next week.

It is wonderful to be ‘back to it’. Primary teachers have thoroughly enjoyed meeting their new classes of students this week and pupils have responded well to navigating their Google classrooms, meeting new class and specialist teachers and following their class timetables. Many children accessing their learning from overseas have engaged fully with a number of them returning to Uganda in the next few weeks.

Primary Teachers across the school decided that the first Core Value that they wanted to celebrate was ‘communication’ and the following children have been awarded certificates from their Class Teachers in recognition of exceeding in this area. Next week we are focusing on being caring by ensuring that our friends are happy, safe and valued and that we are empathetic, respectful and kind to all.

Year 6: Jasmine Luswata

Year 5: Gabriel Elamrousy and Ryan Mutwota

Year 4: Michael Coetzee

Year 3: Simon Sichilyango

Year 2: Johannes Esche

Year 1: Vihaan Sharma and Rebecca Peters

Rec: Liam Gutmann and Marine Le Gouadec

KG3: Raphael Museke

KG2: Adiwin Waru

Parents and primary students, look out for your Class Login username and password to enable you to access the OXFORD OWL EBOOK LIBRARY. Class Teachers will share this information with you next week so that pupils can start accessing reading at home with ease. The books available are from the same scheme that we use here in school and Class Teachers and Teaching Assistants can advise individuals which stage/level book each child should be reading. Reading at home has never been so accessible! Don’t forget to fill in your reading diaries each time you read.

In Kindergarten 1 & 2, Ms. Eva and Ms. Dima are offering home visits which gives them the opportunity to interact and work with each child on a personal level. Their first week of home visits was quite an interesting one! The children were excited to welcome them into their homes and were happy to explore the resources we had brought along. Their home visits also give them the opportunity to observe how each child behaves in their own setting as they interact and become more comfortable. Normally, when a new child starts Kindergarten 1 or 2, a parent is invited to spend a few days in our setting while the child settles in. Unfortunately, because of COVID this option is no longer available. Therefore, home visits gives each child the opportunity to bond with and get to know the teachers, making transition into school easier. We are looking forward to welcoming each child into our kindergarten setting as soon as we have permission to do so!

• Read to your child on a daily basis, ask him/her to point to the dog and say ‘dog’, point to the house and say ‘house’ when reading a story.
• Sing songs and rhymes together!
• Speak to your child in complete sentences.
• Talk to your child, narrate what you’re doing, what you can see, what’s happening! ‘I have just washed the vegetables and I am going to make a salad; to begin with I will chop two red tomatoes... ’
• Play the telephone game, or make your own telephones using cups and string.
• Copy Cat Game: Copy each other’s sentences

Introducing History - Toys Now And Then

Wow! What a busy week we have had in Year 2! Our first week has gone by so quickly, with everyone getting their heads round google classroom and our new daily schedule well once we all adjusted. Our new topic went off with a bang when we found out we would be learning about superheroes and real life superheroes especially. I have been especially impressed with the ideas the Year 2 children have and the imagination they have shown. We have started looking at place value in maths and it has amazed me to watch videos that children have sent me of how they have been solving the challenges I have been setting them... You can see some pictures of our excellent problem solvers in action. Keep this up 2LH!

Didn’t we start the 2020/21 academic year online, too? Well, regardless of our frustrations with Covid and not being able to be on campus, Year 6 has had a really strong start to the academic year. There is certainly a silver lining to be found in yet another stint online; teachers and students have built up a strong foundation of online skills that have allowed for a more robust learning experience! Students completing a balance of work online and offline also ensures that when we return to campus, we will have exercise books and tangible work to build from.

Students have been very active in their first week on online learning. In Science we began our ‘light’ unit and conducted refraction experiments, in Maths we reviewed place value, in Topic we began our studies of WW2, and in Literacy we focused on parts of speech and varying sentence structures. However, that’s not all! Year 6 students also attended live lessons in PE, Music, Choir, French, IT, Art, Reading Comprehension, PSHE, Spelling, and Golden time! It’s certainly been a busy week and I’m looking forward to carrying this momentum into next week.

Over the course of the first week of term, secondary teachers have awarded 209 merits. Merits are awarded when a student demonstrates an outstanding example of one of the IB learner profile attributes. When a merit is awarded an email is sent to parents explaining what the merit was awarded for. The receivers of the highest number of merits this week in each year group are:

Year 7 Benjamin Toth-Nagy

Year 8 Tokhirjon Akhmedov

Year 9 Bernadette Basemera

Year 10 Arianna Naggi

Year 11 Emma Yakobi-Campodonico

DP1 Kagale Kiwanuka

DP2 Lucy Kebirungi

Special congratulations to Bernadette who has received the highest number of merits in the secondary school