KISU Primary Newsletter

In last week's newsletter there was a section on communication. Over the past year we have welcomed many new students and now that we are back at school I thought it would be a good time to explain to parents how communication works at KISU. The process is slightly different in Primary and Secondary.

Parents communicating with school

Primary

Your first, and most important line of communication is your child's class teacher. If you need to speak to the teacher simply call the Primary office - 0752 711 904 - and an appointment will be made for you. Whilst we always want to speak to parents teachers cannot just leave their class so an appointment is needed. If you wish to speak to a specialist teacher the same process can be used.

If there is an issue that cannot be solved via the class teacher then your next port of call is the Key Stage Coordinator Mr. Polan (w.polan@kisu.com) in Key Stage 2, Mrs. Nsherura (c.nsherura@kisu.com) in Key Stage 1 and Mrs. Thompson (j.thompson@kisu.com) in EY.

If your issue is unresolved then you then should refer to the Head of Primary and finally the School Director.

Secondary

In secondary if the issue concerns a student's welfare then you should contact the form tutor. If it involves an academic subject then you should contact the subject teacher or the Head of Department. Please contact the Secondary office - 0752 711 789 to make an appointment.

For issues concerning IB contact Ms. Jardot (ib.coord@kisu.com).

School communicating with parents.

This is done in a number of ways:

Emails, newsletters, phone calls, WhatsApp groups, reports, parent/teacher meetings, information evening, workshops etc.

To make sure that communication is as efficient as possible please remember to notify school if there is a change in phone number or email.

This week, I received information from the Programs Manager of Prosper Kids League inviting KISU students to take part in their football league. The league starts on 2nd April and the venue is City High School. Prosper Kids League expects to have various teams representing different entities from corporate companies, institutions and schools. The league is split into age groups (4-6 year olds and 7-10 year olds) so that children can compete against boys and girls of the same age. Parents can contact the primary office (primaryoffice@kisu.com or 0752711904) to express their child's interest in representing KISU in an age appropriate team in this football league. When we get enough interest in a particular age group, we can enter one or more KISU teams and share further details with you such as fixtures lists, dates, times etc

Next week, the school is planning a Literacy week based around reading, writing, speaking and listening. There is so much planned already...

Extreme Reading - where can you be pictured (outside of school) that is an extreme place to read? Parents, please encourage your children to read in the most adventurous/unusual place/position, take a photo and and send your pictures to primaryhead@kisu.com.

DEAR - Drop Everything And Read - No matter where you are in school or what lesson you are in the middle of, when you hear the whistle, drop everything and read!. This could happen at any point during the school day for 10 minutes and stops when you hear the second whistle. Don't forget to take your reading book with you everywhere you go around school next week, even to the swimming pool!

Reading Buddies - classes and year groups will pair up to enjoy and share texts together in pairs, groups and as a whole class with different company to usual. DP students will also join in with story time by visiting a number of Primary classrooms and Year 6 pupils will read to and support our youngest KISU pupils.

Book Swap Shop - Are you sick of reading the same book over and over again at home? If you bring a book into school to swap, you can take a different one home that was brought in by someone else. Book swaps are a great way for children to enter discussions about texts, such as recommending a read to a friend, discussing authors, different genres, books that are popular at the moment, new, forgotten about and classics. Please check that any books being brought into school do not have sentimental value. A swap is a swap and not a loan!

Poetry Corner - Next week children will learn a repertoire of poems tied to their class topics. Performance poetry, free verse, poems that rhyme and ballad poems are among the vast array of poetry types that will be shared and enjoyed to enhance learning about poetry. Look out for links to videos of some of our performing poets in next week newsletter.

Dress up Friday - This year children can choose to come dressed up as any character and we will try to guess who everyone has come dressed as. Please do not sent in any books that link to costumes as we do not want these to get muddled up with the 'swap shop books'. We discourage football kits and non-fiction annuals as the inspiration which is why we have chosen the them of a fictional character. If your child does not wish to dress up, they can bring a prop to school that links to a character and we will use this as a clue to guess the character they had in mind.

Whole School Homework next week:

During Literacy week, choose a favourite book, make it and recommend it! Turn a box such as a cereal box inside out by opening it up carefully and laying it flat. Draw, paint, colour the front cover of a favourite book onto the correct face of the box, copy the spine and leave the back blank for your book review to be attached to. When reassembled as a book, these cereal box book reviews make a great interactive display that reviews and recommends an eclectic range of books. Class teachers have book review templates for the back of your cereal book boxes.

Next week a dentist from the Aga Khan University Hospital has volunteered to come into school and run a number of children's workshops on the importance of oral health. To help celebrate Oral Health month, Ms Azeema Ladak will host a small presentation and set up various fun activities for the pupils to engage in. If, like many parents, you battle with your child(ren) daily to ensure they brush their teeth every morning and every evening, they will see the importance of this routine chore for health and hygiene reasons and learn more about how diet and making the right food choices also has an impact on oral health. Thank you Ms Ladak for offering to come to KISU;, we look forward to your visit.

This coming week (week beginning 21st March) is the last week of the first round of our After School Clubs.

Teachers have compiled a new list of clubs that they are keen to lead and these will start the week after next and run for the last ten weeks of the school year! I will email the club list early next week and children can sign up from when you receive the emailed list. Once again, there are limited places in each club due to SOPs and pupils will be offered a place by the club leader on a first come, first served basis.

In Primary, the ISSAK sport will switch from football to basketball. We hope children will attend the trials next week for the U9 and U11 girls and boys teams. Thank you Mr Ramo for organizing this.

ISSAK Basketball Tryouts next week after school

Girls - Monday & Thursday from 3:10 - 4:10pm

Boys - Tuesday & Friday from 3:10 - 4:10pm

U 9 teams - Sports Hall

U 11 teams - Outside court

Don't forget to bring your water bottle and training kit.

It's great to see so many merits being awarded for a huge range of deserving reasons. Merits are given by teachers when children go above and beyond the expectations. Parents, you should be extremely proud of every merit your child achieves, not only are they giving extra effort in a way that exceeds expectations, but they are helping their House to accumulate the most points. One of the main strengths of the House system is giving students of all ages the opportunity to work together, creating a truly cohesive environment. However, potentially it is the competitive element of the Houses that people think of first. Competition is good, it drives our students to aim high, improve, nurtures the spirit of collegiality and teaches how to accept defeat and win graciously!

This week's house with the most merits...

1. Semliki 201

2. Otukei 177

3. Kibale 203

4. Bwindi 153

This makes the running total:

1. Semliki 557

2. Otukei 557

3. Kibale 440

4. Bwindi 413

To care is a quality that can be shown in so many different ways. To care means that we have a secure understanding of what it means not to care! A simplified way to demonstrate care towards others could be to always treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself. The world includes many qualities that all of our students demonstrate everyday. This week's award winners chosen by their teachers are...

KG1/2: Abdul Hamid Hirji

KG3: Sidi Sillah

Reception: Precious Mirembe

Year 1: Rishaan Kotecha and Aya Adams

Year 2: Anisa Nahdi and Lethabo Hlanyane

Year 3: Trinity Frances

Year 4: Daniella, Daniel and Fadil Katende

Year 5: Ngarijok Mamur 5FS and Israel Mwesigye 5AH

Year 6: Jade Luswata

Specialist Award Winners:

Primary Super French Speaker of the week is Miia Merrifield. Miia is a conscientious and reflective learner who sets high standards for herself. What a great attitude to learning.

Primary Musician of the week is Nampoina Rakotondrabe for her superb musicianship. Nampoina sets an excellent example of both performance and behaviour to the rest of the class. She is always eager to learn more and this week has played different recorder pieces with confidence. Well done!

Did you know that your arm span length is the same as your height? Do you know that there are 100cm in a meter? Do you know that Year 2 are excellent at measuring? Well now you do! We have been very busy using different methods, different units of measure and different resources to accurately measure the length and height of objects in and around the classroom, including our teachers! Have a look at some pictures of us in action.

This week, the students in EYFS developed aural skills by exploring and imitating sounds, pitch and rhythm patterns using their voices, instruments, movement and body percussions.

KG2 and KG3 had great fun singing songs about numbers while making beautiful sound rhythms on the drums and rhythm sticks.

KG3 also learnt a new song ‘Glad to be me’ which helped them appreciate themselves fully and be self confident.

Reception children were given the opportunity to explore different instruments and materials to create sounds, they then played and accompanied a class text bringing the story to life!

Reception children were diving into the 2Dshapes this week in an attempt to create 3D models. The children concentrated really hard to click together the construction equipment (which is a skill in itself - if you have ever tried using these shapes, you will understand the frustration of them collapsing as you add another shaped face!) The pictures below examples of what they made.

Year 1 have been studying stories from a range of cultures for the past few weeks. Our core target was to be able to write a short story based on what we have read together. The children were required to change a story from another culture and make it their own. The final outcome would be a new version of the children’s story “Handa’s Surprise” by Eileen Browne (Our Key Text)

First the children read “Handa’s surprise” through shared reading, they then had a go at acting out the story (role play). Next the children were asked to sequence the main events from the story and write a short caption for each. They had some practice writing descriptive sentences based on the same story.

Their next task was to retell “Handa’s Surprise” in the form of writing. Once they were confident to do this, they used a story map to plan their own version of the text and write it out using story language, complete with illustrations.

Here we are each step of the journey towards writing our own stories.

Lastly, this week the KG2 Class led the Early Years assembly. Great fun, great singing, great actions everybody! Enjoy...

Why do children try so hard to make artwork so perfectly neat, and tidy?

"Can I have an eraser?" No!

"Can I start again?" No!

As part of our festivals topic, Year 1 artists made lovely self portraits, then we 'Holified' them! The flicking and splattering of the paint was the best part and the children had great fun! We looked a bit like our self portraits by the end of the session but we love our Holi portraits and we hope you do too!

Next week the DP students have invited Primary pupils to participate in their Spirit Week. I received the following information late on Friday from the DPs who have put a great deal of effort into organizing next week, and although Sprit week coincides with our planned Literacy week, we can do both, of course we can! However, please choose to dress for Literacy week on Friday!