Moshi Campus News – 14 Sep 2013

Dear Parents,

You have probably received the notice from our Parents Association of the Fundraiser being organised on Friday, 11th October. This has been organised to start straight after the secondary parent-teacher meetings on that day and I hope many of you who live outside Moshi (as well as those more local) will be able to join us for the afternoon before going home with your children for the holiday. Good food and some entertainment is promised as well as a chance to meet other families and to support our planned improvements for Karibu Hall.

This week from Monday, 16th September to Thursday, 19th September, our M2 students will be travelling to the school house in Pangani to undertake field study along with their Arusha colleagues. They will be camping in the grounds of Kiraha house, and using the rich coastal environment and the historical background of Pangani town in their studies. Amongst the topics being studied will be reasons for migration, creating a timeline for Pangani, slavery, colonial influences, coastal erosion, tides and currents, marine organisms, and the importance of mangrove.

Moshi students will attend the first two classes on Monday morning (whilst awaiting for M2s to come from Arusha) before departing about 10:30am, and are expected to return about 2pm on Thursday.

Last week the M5s went to Marangu Hotel for their leadership sympoisum. A big thank you to the staff at Marangu Hotel who looked after us extremely well. The first day focused on team-building and characters of a team, to gain an understanding of who I am and how I contribute to a team. In their hopes and expectations many students state that they wanted to gain confidence, through the realisation that everyone has a role and a talent to offer many did indeed come through with a stronger sense of self-esteem and assertiveness within the cohort. The second day focused on leadership skills and thanks to our guest speaker, Ms Caroline Schraa they gained a creative understanding of verbal and non-verbal communication. Rick Fitzpatrick and Shannon Howlett also led sessions on leadership styles and identifying your own ability to take on a leadership role. The final day continued with collaborative exercises and a final reflection which brought the symposium back to the student’s own identity and their pathway towards their own choices. Many left feeling inspired and invigorated with the possibility that they are ready to take on their world and the big choices that face them at the end of M5 going into Diploma and beyond.

The following week from Monday, 23rd September to Thursday, 26th September, our M4 students will be travelling to West Kilimanjaro to undertake field study on Simba Farm and in the environs, particularly in the areas of science and mathematics. More details to follow.

This week’s assembly at 7:35am on Monday, 16th September, is a Student Council assembly to arrange their elections for membership of the council. Students from P5 to D2 will attend.

Next week on Monday, 23rd September, will be a Sharing Assembly for primary classes only.

ACT tests will take place in school on Saturday, 21st September and these are folowed by SAT tests on Saturday, 5th October. Registrations for both tests have now closed.

There will also be SAT tests on Saturday, 2nd November – registration for these tests will close on 30th September.
TOEFL Paper-based tests are on Saturday, 16th November in Moshi – registration for these will close on 9th October.

You are very welcome to attend our outdoor Peace concert on Saturday, 21st September at 7.00 pm. Our Peace Concert is an opportunity for ISM students as well as members of our local community to join us in a musical performance.

All around the world events will be happening to support Peace One Day, a grand initiative to support a global truce campaign to reduce conflict in the world. For further information go to www.peaceoneday.org to learn about all the exciting initiatives happening in the world that DO make a difference. People who don’t just talk the talk, but make it happen!

On Sunday, 22nd September we will be hosting six prestigious US universities who are touring Tanzania to promote the Mastercard Foundation scholarships and who can also talk with our students about entry to US universities. Our visitors are from Stanford University, University of California Berkley, Duke University, Wellesley College, Michigan State University, and Arizona State University. They will be presenting in Karibu Hall at 5pm. If your child is interested in a US university and is currently in M5, D1 or D2, it would be worthwhile for them to attend.

On Tuesday, 8th October, there will be representative from Monash University in Australia who will present to our students.

We have now been able to confirm with the Conservation Area authority that they are no longer offering free passes to schools visiting Ngorongoro. As a result our charges for the planned Outdoor Pursuits trip to Ngorongoro on 2nd to 6th October are as follows:
Tanzanian students: TSh 250,000
Expatriates under 16: TSh 395,000
Expatriates aged 16 and over: TSh 555,000
Day students will also need to pay an additional TSh 50,000 for meals during the trip. If your child wishes to join this Level 2 trip, they must have successfully completed a Level 1 trip and must pay the trip fees by this Wednesday (18th Sep). If your child is a boarder and you would like the charge to be invoiced to you through the fees account, please contact Keiron White by SMS or by email on .


This picture was taken during the recent OP trip to the Pares Mountains.

In order to give more time for preparation and to allow the whole of our inter-house athletics tournament to be scheduled on one day, we have now postponed this event to Thursday, 31st October after the break.

Wow, what a way to begin the year for our swim team! 19 Moshi Campus Swimmers will be travelling to Arusha on September 28-29, to compete in the Tanzanian National Swimming Open Championships. Over the next couple of weeks, our swimmers will be training hard, so that they can hopefully come home with some personal bests!

We are very lucky that some of our Arusha families will be hosting our swimmers in their home for the Saturday night. Thanks Arusha!

We will be very sorry to say farewell to Mark Dombkins (Maths) and Anna Dombkins (Kijana Boarding) when they leave ISM with all their family in December. We wish them well for their return to Australia.
We are however very pleased to announce the appointment of Coenraad and Valerie Wesselink who will join us in January to take on the same two roles. Coenraad has many years of Maths teaching experience both in South Africa and the UK, including a number of postings in boarding schools where he has been a Boarding Housemaster. Val has previous experience of being both a part-time and full-time boarding parent in three different UK schools.

We have now started rehearsing our Oliver musical extravaganza which involves students throughout secondary and primary. Eventually the whole of primary will be involved in this production and we are still looking for a parent representative from each class to look after the costumes for that class. We have a P3/4 and P5/6 representative (Thank you to the parents that already offered) and we are now looking for reps for EC, P1/2 and P2/3. Once we have a team we will arrange a meeting to talk through the process and requirements for each class, the earlier we start the better the costumes will be! I look forward to hearing from you, a team per class can also work very well.
Totty Aris

We have recently had a few instances of student valuables going missing during morning school and are concerned at this development. Please ask your child to keep any valuable items (such as a mobile phone or money) with them during the day, or to lock them away in a student locker or in their bedroom. Items left in bags in corridors are at risk. The school cannot be responsible for any missing items, but we do want to encourage all students to be both careful and vigilant.

As both of us are in many places all over the campus it can sometimes be difficult to pop in unannounced. Therefore you can drop-in at the following times to ensure a meeting without an appointment:
Head of Campus – Keiron White – Tuesday – 8.00 – 9.00
Deputy Head of Campus – Totty Aris – Friday – 8.00 – 9.00

Primary Lunches & Clubs
Thank you for all the lunch info data. The Teaching Assistants and myself have had a meeting to discuss how we can improve our lunchtime supervision, ensuring that all students are supervised whilst getting time for lunch and play. This is also a reminder that all students should wear hats whilst out on the playground or in outside clubs.
If you are interested in offering a club next quarter then please contact me. We are looking for a weekly commitment on a day of your choice, please include the activity and age-range as well as maximum amount of students and if you would like to have help with the activity and we will do our best to accommodate as many clubs as possible. The Clubs will run from Nov 4 – Dec 5.(5 weeks) The week of 10- 12 Dec will be used for the musical rehearsals.

Lousy Lice
We have discovered some students have lice in primary, please be pro-active and check your child’s hair as soon as possible and treat accordingly. Our Nurse will also be checking the students’ hair; if we do find lice you will be informed directly.

Students are now midway through their units for the first quarter in MYP. Over the next few weeks I’ll provide a snapshot of various classes to give you a better idea about what’s happening in your child’s class.

Here’s an update from Madame Valérie about MYP French:
Students have been busy learning new vocabulary and grammar in all different levels. All classes are now getting prepared for their assessments. In M4, students have been looking at the use of technology around the question ‘Modern technology: a friend or an enemy?’. Their Area of Interaction is Human Ingenuity. Students prepared a questionnaire in French about how students use technology; they are supposed to approach D1 and D2 students and conduct an interview in French.

M5 students have been studying about healthy lifestyles around the question ‘How can growing up in any community influence our attitudes to life?’ Their Area of Interaction is Health and Social. They are going to make a poster about one of the addictions they learnt about.

D2s are in the final stretch to completing their Extended Essay and all EEs are due by 9:15pm on next Monday, September 23rd.

September 12th marked the end of the first month of school. D1s were reminded that the drop/add period is essentially over. From this point onwards students stick with the classes selected.

D2 Theory of Knowledge class led by Mr Joe Wright has included, of late, various DP teachers entering the class as guest lecturers on various aspects of the Arts. Our DP Science teacher Rafael Holt came in to talk about classical music, and DP Visual Arts teacher came in to talk about her relationship to the Visual Arts and PYP Coordinator/P5-P6 teacher Scott Hawkins came in to talk about his love of blues and blues-rock. The aim of this has been to get students talking about what the arts mean and exposing them to different aspects of the arts, but also to explore how they work, as opposed to, the Sciences, or Mathematics.

DP students attended this past Monday’s UK university fair with sixteen universities represented and that clearly focused their attention on the post-ISM future for them. On Wednesday a good number of diploma students attended the informative presentation from the University of British Columbia.

Reminder: The first marking period concludes on Friday October 11th at 10am. Please do not plan to remove your child early as each DP day of lessons is incredibly important. If at all possible, one DP parent should come to ISM for the Parent-Teacher conferences that go from about 1030 am to 12 noon on Friday October 11th. Similarly, I want to request – if you are not doing so already – that you call your son/daughter regularly as the parental contact is not only a boost but also an absolutely key step on the road to success for DP students!

In case you are curious about the ISM DP numbers, we have 48 students in the D2 class of 2014 (14 different nationalities) and 41 in the class of 2015 (15 different nationalities).

The ten IB “learner profile values” remain foundational support to our teaching. The IB’s learner profile (www.ibo.org/programmes/profile) “is a set of ideals that can inspire, motivate and focus the work of schools and teachers, uniting them in a common purpose.” As the IB states in a recent Learner Profile Booklet. “The aim of all IB programmes is to develop internationally minded people who, recognizing their common humanity and shared guardianship of the planet, help to create a better and more peaceful world. IB learners strive to be: – Balanced, Inquirers, Knowledgeable, Thinkers, Communicators, Principled, Open-minded, Risk-takers, Reflective, Caring.”

Like teachers around the world, ISM faculty grapple with how best to incorporate the digital age in our pedagogical techniques. This New Zealand-sourced article highlights various aspects of this reality for us teachers – www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/9147289/Internet-changing-nature-of-teaching.

When one considers the size of the IB (including MYP and PYP with the DP), its reach is amazing as highlighted by this impressive quote: “Currently, more than 1 million IB students attend nearly 3,500 schools in 144 countries.” (www.ibo.org/announcements/2013/ccrs.cfm – Sept 13, 2013)

Feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.
Sincerely,
Rick Fitzpatrick
Diploma Programme Coordinator

Unit of Inquiry
Next week we will continue to visit the middle years and diploma classes to find out what learning is like for older students. We are going to interview some students to find out what they like doing in school and make comparisons with our favourite activities. Another focus will be thinking about cooperation and its importance when working as a group. Children will observe each other cooperating and reflect on the importance of working together. We will talk about good communication skills, both speaking and listening.

Literacy
Through letterland activities the children will find out about two new friends, Oscar Orange and Bouncy Ben and the sounds they make.
We will write and draw about the weekend.
Children will also learn to play literacy games in groups to develop cooperation skills as well as literacy skills.

Numeracy
Sorting and matching objects will be our focus this week as well as continuing with developing number sense at the childrens individual level. I hope the schedule that the children made at school is helping them develop their knowledge of the days of the week.

Unit of Inquiry
This week we will wrap up our Unit of Inquiry, ‘Healthy Living’. We will discuss how we can take responsibility for the health of our own bodies. The children will complete a summative assessment task and make a healthy living timeline of a typical day. The children will also complete their mini healthy living books.

Show and Tell
The children in P1 and 2 are very keen to bring in objects from home to show. They also like to tell the class news from home. This is a very valuable activity that develops language skills and builds confidence. It is unpredictable how many children will bring in items each day and it can take rather a long time if many children have brought something in to show. Annalee has a great system where each child is given a specific day for show and tell. We will begin this system too.
Monday – Tavari, Sahil, Jay and Prisca
Tuesday – Edvin, Imani, Jelte and Shose
Wednesday – Noah, Aiden, Moses and Patrick
Thursday – Freddy, Mahabibi and Sophie
Friday – Camille, Sameer and Hugo
On Mondays, all children get to share and talk with a friend their weekend news.

Art
Last week the children made a clay fruit bowl and models of fruit. Over the weekend they will dry and we will be able to paint and varnish them.

Language focus for the week
Write a recount of the weekend. At the end of your weekend, you could talk to your child about what they did to give them some ideas about sentences they could write.
Label a timeline to show healthy living throughout a typical day. (Summative assessment)
Write a simple non fiction book about healthy living.
Handwriting: Patterns, own name, numerals and focus on the One Armed Robot Family (bhkmnpr)
Phonics: Revision of initial sounds and words with u in the middle vowel (eg run, sun, cup, stuck, trust, much etc)

Maths focus for the week
Mental skills will include recall of addition facts including doubles. We will also find 1 more and less.
All children will learn about comparing and ordering measures. They will focus on mass and use language such as heavier and lighter to compare quantities. The children will measure mass using non standard units such as cubes. We will weigh fruit! The children will also be introduced to standard units and weigh items using kilograms.

What to bring to school:
A hat for playtime and a healthy snack.

Timetable:

Monday

• New homework packet issued. PE (wear trainers and a house T shirt)
  Tuesday
  
• PE (wear trainers and a house T shirt)
  Thursday
  
• Library (bring books to return and then choose new ones).
  Friday
  
• Spelling test and return completed homework packet.

I can hardly believe that this week is our final look at the Transportation Unit. We will wrap up our study by discussing the systems of transport needed in different communities. Our consideration of the purposes of Transport was enhanced greatly by visits from two fathers who told us more about water travel. Baba Surya focused on transporting goods and Baba Phoebe shared about sailing across the Atlantic for pleasure. Next week we will go to visit the transport company in town that is run by Baba Yuvraj’s family. During IT, students will be making a bubble map to explain what they know about a specific vehicle’s purpose and its advantages and disadvantages.

Math – Both P2 and P3 will work with word problems this week. We will also continue to order 3-digit numbers from least to greatest and do more ‘Greater than, Less than’ problems.

Language – We will look at helping verbs and aligning them properly with the nouns they follow (am, is, are, was, were, etc). Our Creative Writing time this week will include a visual writing prompt because it was clear last week that most students prefer having a lead-in for writing rather than complete freedom of choice. Our Reading Groups will each have activities and questions to check for individual comprehension. The Spelling chunk of the week is -ot.

Reading Folders and Homework – New books will come home again on Monday and be switched out on Thursday. It was nice to read notes from many parents about the reading that was done at home. Homework will come home on Monday to be returned in completion on Friday.

What to bring to school: a hat for playtime and a healthy snack

Our Timetable: Monday: Library, please bring your books and bag
Wednesday and Thursday: PE, remember to wear your sneakers and a hat and water bottle.

UOI – “Learning from the Past”
Central Idea: Atefacts and other evidence help us to understand history and how people lived in the past.
The students were very busy and hard at work finding information last week for their summative assessment task. This week they will continue with this and begin to work out how they are going to display it. They will also be building models or creating drawings of their chosen artefact. By Friday, our classroom will be turned into a museum displaying all the exhibits. Parents are welcome to visit the museum between 8.00am and 10.00am this Friday, to find out just what our “mini historians” have been up to.

Maths – Miss Jann’s Group Continue with vertical/column addition with and without regrouping, multiplying by 2s, 5s, 10s, 3s and 4s, rounding to the nearest 10 and the nearest 100, story sums involving addition and multiplication.
Miss Debbie’s Group Continue with multiplication as repeated addition, using basic facts for more complex addition sums, odd and even numbers, rounding to the nearest 10 and 100, vertical/column addition without regrouping.

Language – We will be using most of our language time for writing up and displaying the information for our museum exhibits.
Spelling – group 1 – spelling the “k” sound – words that end in “c” e.g. picnic, athletic
group 2 words that end in “al” and mean “to do with” e.g. medical, historical
group 3 the short “u” sound as in “up” e.g. just, under.

Reminders:
Every day:
School t-shirts, hats, zip bags (reading book, reading log, spelling book and homework books), a healthy snack.
Monday:
Homework handed out.
Wednesday:
P.E. wear suitable attire – house/school t- shirts, shorts and trainers.
Thursday:
Library bags and books to school for exchange/renewal
Friday:
Homework handed in
Spelling test
Museum Exhibits – parents welcome to visit between 8.00am and 10.00am
P.E. wear suitable attire – house/school t-shirts, shorts and trainers
Early finishing time – 12.35pm

Looking forward to another great week together,
Miss Jann

This week the children have just begun their summative task which will close the Unit.
UOI – Our first Unit of Inquiry, “Heroes”.
Central Idea: We look to heroes to show us who we can be.
Summative Task: The children have to write a biography on a new chosen hero and, preferably, research the life of that hero in greater depth than previous heroes. To the best of their abilities they will then present their biography to the class.

Reading and Writing
We concluded a big focus last week on prefixes and suffixes and this week the children will work further on their summative tasks; reading from different sources, taking notes and writing these up in the style of biographies studied. Reading groups will begin in earnest on Tuesday.

Maths
Last week we analysed different strategies of addition including partitioning and how to add near multiples of 10. We also rehearsed methods of mental addition. It is clear many children require much practice with mental addition to improve speed and accuracy of calculations and I would encourage this at home. Our class focus this week will look at other standard written methods such as column addition and the relationship between addition and subtraction.

P.E. – is on Wednesday and Thursday. Please ensure that your child/children are dressed in or bring the appropriate clothing to school on these days – house T-shirts/school shirt, shorts and trainers.

Library – is on Monday. Please remind the children to bring back books for exchange/renewal.

Scott Hawkins