KISU Primary Newsletter

Since all classes returned to face to face learning I have had the pleasure of speaking to a large number of parents about their children. I am going to take the opportunity this week to ask parents a number of questions about their children.

Do you know:

1. What the title of the last book that your child read is?

2. What your child's favourite subject is?

3. Which teacher in school they would turn to if things are going wrong?

4. What their favourite meal in the canteen is?

5. Who their best friend is?

6. What homework they have this weekend?

7. If they have any tests or assessments next week?

8. Are there any subjects they find particularly difficult?

9. What they do at break and lunchtime?

10. If there is anything making them unhappy?

When my children were at school I am not sure I would have been able to answer all of these questions, but I do know that I should have been able to. There is lots of research that shows that positive parental involvement in a child's education has a major impact on progress and achievement. Set yourself the task of spending some quality time with your child and get to know more about their school life so that you can answer all of these questions and more.

Before the pandemic the school, in conjunction with the PTA, ran a number of very successful work shops on topic such as internet safety, dealing with teenagers, developing numeracy skills etc. It was very nice to see such a large attendance at our first workshop of this year which focused on phonics in EY and KS1. Thanks go to those staff that prepared the workshop and to those parents that attended. More workshops will be provided in the future.

I would like to introduce to you our school counsellor, Ms. Shatrah Habiddo. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from Makerere University, a Masters Degree in Social Work (Medical and Psychiatry) from Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, India and certificates in ADHD: Everyday strategies for elementary students from The State University of New York and in Mind control: Managing your mental health during COVID-19 from the University of Toronto.

Ms. Shartah spent some time working at KISU as an intern before taking over fully at the start of this term.

Last Saturday, KISU's Primary U11 and U9 boys and girls football teams took part in the first interschool competition held since lockdown 2020 and the event was an incredible success. The amount of organization involved behind the scenes in making an event like this come together is immense and can sometimes be overlooked, however, thank you Mr Garbett, for organizing the ISSAK sports day, every primary pupil involved thoroughly enjoyed it and last weekend has been positively talked about everyday at school since! The coaches, Mr Polan, Mr Robert and Ms Haskins are all in the throws of arranging 'friendlies' with some of the other school that participated last weekend, details and arrangements will be shared once finalized.

U-11 Boys:

KISU 1

3-1 Heritage (Win)

1-4 French School (Loss)

3-1 Acacia (Win)

KISU 2

4-0 Acacia (Win)

4-2 Galaxy (Loss)

U-9 Boys:

2-3 RISU (loss)

10-0 AIS (Win)

U-11 Girls:

1-1 Galaxy Tie

1-2 Acacia Loss

0-3 Rainbow Loss

1-0 Heritage Win

Thank you to parents who attended our Phonics Workshop for parents this week on Tuesday. We had a great turn out and we hope you found the session useful and informative (your positive feedback forms suggests so - thank you for this).

The PowerPoint we shared with parents has been emailed to parents which also has within it links to websites which the handouts came from...

https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/

https://letters-and-sounds.com/

There are many free resources to help you to help your child at home. For any support, please reach out to your child's Class Teacher.

Year 6 interviewers put many of our willing teachers on the spot this week by interviewing them in depth using a range of interesting questions to draw out information about different teacher's mother tongue, culture, home country and background. The students were so polite, so articulate and so interested in the teacher's responses and also so excited to be the ones in charge leading the conversations!

Thank you to the staff on our International Committee, we have all learnt so much from engaging in the many different activities that you planned, resourced and suggested. It has been an amazing week of sharing differences, similarities, uniqueness, commonalities and international mindedness. At KISU, we are proud Global Citizens who respect each other and embrace the many, many cultures that unite us as one family.

Year 5 was abuzz this week as we split into two classrooms and got to engage more individually with learning in smaller class sizes. The class bloomed with new colours and languages during the exciting Mother Tongue Theme Week. Students showed open-mindedness in sharing their mother tongue languages and learning from their classmates. We read in different languages with DP1 students, completed language surveys to learn about the languages of KISU, solved language trivia questions, and had fun crafts and activities based on the story The Name Jar throughout the week. It was a lively week, with students proud to share their languages and keen to learn from each other. Tulabagane omwaka ogujja for the next Mother Tongue Week!

Why Listening Skills Are Important

Listening skills will affect your child’s:

• ability to develop speech and language skills
• ability to read (Auditory perception is vital for reading)
• ability to follow verbal instructions at school
• ability to socialize and communicate effectively
• ability to cope in general at home and at school

In modern times, children may be exposed to large periods of screen time as well as many types of stimuli that can be overwhelming. They also tend to have less free time to play.

This affects their concentration span and their overall performance, especially their ability to read, which involves hearing, distinguishing and blending sounds.

The good news is that by paying attention to this skill at home for just 5 to 10 minutes a day, you can make a massive difference to your child’s overall listening ability and help them cope better at school.

Listening is an important part of your child’s overall cognitive development.

The best time to start doing these activities is as early as possible (it starts with your baby listening to sounds and music) and right through the preschool and primary/elementary years.

Here are a few games and activities to practise using listening skills:

Chinese Whispers

Make up a word or sentence and whisper it into your child’s ear, who must whisper it to the next family member, who continues passing the message around the table. The last person to hear the message says it out loud.

Simon Says

Call out instructions by saying, for example, “Simon Says put your hands on your shoulders.” When you give an example that doesn’t begin with “Simon Says,” such as “Jump three times,” your child must not do it.

I Went to the Zoo and I Saw a…

This game is more advanced than the previous ones and involves listening as well as memorizing.

Choosing any animal names, start the game by saying “I went to the zoo and I saw a monkey.”

Your child then responds with “I went to the zoo and I saw a monkey and a lion.” You respond with “I went to the zoo and I saw a monkey, a lion and a tortoise.”

For each turn, repeat the animals that have already been listed, in sequence, then add a new one. You may not repeat an animal.

At first, this may be tricky, but with time you will be amazed at how many animals your child can remember.

This game is actually easier with more people because it is easier to associate words with different people than 10 words from the same person. So be sure to get the siblings, parents and grandparents involved.

This game can be varied with any list e.g. I went to the shop and I bought a…” or “In my fruit salad there is a…”

Which One is the Odd One Out?

This is a game that develops listening for a particular piece of information.

Say a string of words to your child that are part of a particular theme or category. Insert one word into the set that does not belong and ask your child to identify the word that doesn’t belong.

Example:

apple, banana, leopard, pear and apricot.

The word leopard is an animal but the rest of the words are types of fruits.

Start off with an easy example like this and later make the categories less obvious or make the odd word of a slightly different category.

For example, say a list of vegetables and insert one fruit, or say a list of negative emotions and add in a positive emotion.

Make Up an Impromptu Story

At bedtime, make up a nonsense story together by adding on one line each and seeing where the story goes.

Mom: Once upon a time there was a little girl.

Child: She was fighting with her brother.

Mom: Suddenly they heard a big noise and went to the window…

Model Good Listening

It goes without saying…If you want your children to be good listeners; you need to model that behaviour.

Listen to them when they talk to you. Validate what they are saying. Listen to your family members.

Year 2 children have been practising the skill of inference in their reading lessons.

Inference is using observation and background information to reach a logical conclusion. You probably practice inference every day. For example, if you see someone eating a new food and he or she screws up their face in an unpleasant way, then one can infer that he/she does not like the food. Or if someone slams a door hard and on purpose, one can infer that she/he is upset or angry about something (without hearing an outburst to corroborate).

Think of it as 3 easy steps...

Step 1 Observe: What can you see or what information have you been given? (start with a literal response).

Step 2 Wonder: What do know and want to know in relation what it is that you can actually see or about the information that you have been given?

Step 3 Infer: Make an informed assumption based on evidence and reasoning by putting together all the visual cues, known facts, your prior knowledge, your prior experience to .

Your schema plays a big part in influencing your inferences; facts + schema = inference.

Schema is a reader's background knowledge. It is all the information a person knows – the people you know, the places you have been, the experiences you have had, the books you have read – all of this is your schema. Readers use their schema or background knowledge to understand what they are reading.

Here is a task that Year 2 children had a go at in class today and would like other children in different year groups to do to practise their inference skills. Parent's please encourage your child(ren) to use the following information to draw a complete picture. The Year 2 children can't wait to see your pictures of the scene.

Use the information given, known facts plus your schema to infer and add in any extra information and details.

Why do they want a cleaning robot? Where are they? What is the room/place like? Why is the person in that place? Who are they with? What are they doing? Do they need a cleaning robot? Why is the robot female?

During this term, the Early Years children have learnt and developed skills in Gymnastics, Dance and Swimming.

In Gymnastics children have investigated movement, stillness, and showed how to find and use space safely. They have explored basic gymnastic actions on the floor and on apparatus. They have copied or created, remembered and repeated short movement phrases and linked actions, e.g. two jumps or two rolls or a jump that leads into a roll. They have performed individually, in pairings and in groups. We have many talented gymnasts in Early Years!

In Swimming children have shown much improvement in terms of enthusiasm and many of our youngest pupils are much more water confident. Some children are now able to float and glide towards a coach and even swim across the width of our smaller pool with minimum support. What great progress we are seeing in a short amount of time!

Year 2 are enjoying their French lessons with Mr Joseph (L'année 2 profite de ses cours de français avec M. Joseph).

They are absorbing everything like little sponges and have moved on from introducing oneself, counting (numbers 1-20) and naming colours, to learning parts of the body. (Ils absorbent tout comme de petites éponges et sont passés de la présentation, du comptage (chiffres de 1 à 20) et de la dénomination des couleurs à l'apprentissage des parties du corps).

Well done Johannes for confidently speaking in front of the whole class!

(Bravo Johannes pour avoir parlé avec assurance devant toute la classe!)

Also, well done Year 2s for performing your French song in our KS1 KS2 assembly, it was great!

Critical thinking teaches students to question claims and seek truth and creativity teaches students to think in a way that is unique to them. Collaboration teaches students that groups can create something bigger and better than they can on their own and communication teaches students how to efficiently convey ideas.

Year 6 students are working collaboratively to create a school magazine. This task requires students to work in groups and use their online skills to communicate with group members, assign tasks and work together to develop, edit and publish quality articles for the magazine. The students did all of the above with an openminded approach accepting other children's contributions, suggestions and ideas... Here they are working through a shared Google doc file.

This week, pupils have been exploring what it means to be openminded. This theme tied in perfectly with our Mother Tongue whole school focus by encouraging all children to be self aware (tuning in to our own feelings, thoughts, and actions and also recognizing how other people see you), self confident, respectful and considerate. These qualities enable us to embrace each other and celebrate what it is we love about our friends and peers.

Year 6 Pranav Iyengar

Year 5 Anjolaoluwa Windapo and Abhav Midha

Year 4 Miia Merryfield and Jovana Videnovic

Year 3 Simon Sichilyango

Year 2 Armaan certificate

Year 1 Nrupali Mehta

Reception Jaythan Kimbugwe

KG3 Phoebe Liu Jun

KG1/2 Alvah Mugenyi

Specialist Subject Award Winners:

Primary Sports Person of the week is Zeinab Ahmad for performing such amazing rolls in gymnastics. Zeinab's forward roll, shoulder roll and log roll was technically perfect! 10/10!

Primary Super Musician of the week is Amaanya Sachdeva for actively participating in singing songs of different languages and instrumental activities with enthusiasm. Amaanya's behavior too is excellent and always sets an example to the rest of the class.

Primary French Speaker of the week is Rafi Damani for sustained focus and concentration during French classes this week.

Primary Artist of the week is Lethabo Hlanyane for simply being so talented. Everyone needs to know just how capable and able this young artist is. Every piece of work Lethabo does is executed with care and precision due to great effort and the passion she has for this subject area.

The Literacy Committee are planning our next whole school themed week for later this month and KISU students will be celebrating all aspects of Reading and Writing week beginning 21st March. World Poetry Day (Monday 21st March) also falls into this week creating further opportunities for the development of speaking and listening skills through performance poetry, studying different types of poetry across a range of themes and author studies. There is bound to be a Literacy Dress up Day - watch this space for more information next week (after the committee have met once more).

Monday 7th March is the first Monday of the month, children can wear their coloured PE shirt to represent their house.

Parents of Year 5 children, please join us at 2:35pm on Friday 11th March in the upper spectator area of the Auditorium. Please enter through the main reception from 2:20pm and have your temperature taken, before heading down to the far end of the campus. You can collect your children after assembly from the front of school as per the normal arrangements and sign your child out.