Moshi Campus News – 18 May 2014

Muffins for Mums and Dads is this Monday 19th May at 7.45 am in Karibu Hall. We look forward to seeing our parents this Monday to celebrate the daily loving and caring that our Mothers, Fathers and Carers do for our children.

We are very proud of our D2 class who will graduate from school in a formal ceremony next Saturday, 24th May in Karibu Hall. This, our 39th Graduation Ceremony, will be the largest ever with 48 students graduating from ISM. Seating in Karibu Hall will be limited and we have invited the families of the graduands, our own M4, M5 and D1 students, teachers, Board members, and various others in the community. If you would particularly like to attend and have not yet received an invitation, please contact Janeth, the Receptionist in the main office.

The previous evening, ISM has invited the graduands and their parents to a dinner at AMEG Lodge. We are also hosting a tea after the Ceremony in the Director’s garden.

Although the school organises celebrations for the D2 graduation, the students have usually additionally opted to arrange their own private parties off-campus. These are likely to be on 24th May after the official ceremony. These student-organised parties are not school events and we cannot, as a school, take responsibility for them. Invariably, there is alcohol available at these parties and minimal, if any, adult supervision. We are concerned about the inevitable, and potentially serious risks that arise from these situations, particularly for many of the younger students who frequently receive invitations to attend and we have endeavoured to deal with such issues from an educational point of view in our Life Skills lessons. We also need to be especially confident that parents are aware of the nature of these events, and are happy with their own children’s involvement. We would therefore offer the following requests and guidelines.
For parents of boarders: Boarders staying in school that weekend will NOT be allowed to attend any unsupervised parties. If boarders do want to attend, they can only do so if their parents agree and they have been taken out of the school’s care by staying with another family for the weekend. Even if you have already indicated on the Parental Consent form that your child may sign out to friends at weekends, we would like to further confirm that it is acceptable on this particular weekend. If you have children intending to sign out for this weekend, could you please contact us with that confirmation? You may contact either the boarding parent or Mrs Bango on by whatever means is most convenient (telephone, letter, email or fax). Boarders will be expected to remain in school for the weekend if we have not heard from you before MONDAY, MAY 19th.
We would also suggest on this occasion, that you contact the host family directly to discuss what you feel would be appropriate arrangements, curfew etc for your children on the evening of the party.
For parents offering to host boarders: Boarders signing out on these weekends will need to sign out for the whole weekend from the Friday afternoon until midday on the Sunday, although they may of course attend the Graduation Ceremony if invited. We would suggest that before you take on the responsibility for the guest students over this period, you are confident of their own parent’s expectations in terms of curfew, supervision etc.
We do not in any way wish to curtail the students’ opportunity for well-deserved celebration on these occasions, but we are concerned for their safety and their parents’ full consent and understanding.

On Sunday evening May 25th at 6:30 pm ISM will welcome 44 undergraduate students from the acclaimed “Glee Club” (ie Singing Group) from the University of Pennsylvania (www.dolphin.upenn.edu/gleeclub/).
We are looking forward to a fabulous evening of tremendously beautiful entertainment in Karibu Hall listening to lovely sounds of this singing group. Do not miss it! There will be refreshments at the intermission.

This event will serve as a donation-only fund-raiser for our ISM DP scholarship program (www.uwcea.org/admissions/scholarships/).

As this newsletter goes out, a group of ISM students are returning from Mount Meru where they have climbed to the summit of Little Meru. Congratulations to all of these.

The major OP trip to Uhuru Peak, the summit of Kilimanjaro, is taking place from 28th May to 1st June.

On Saturday, the Senior Girls Netball team enthusiastically participated in an excting tournament hosted by ISM Arusha Campus. After a shaky start, the girls stepped up their game to secure 2nd place overall out of 5 schools. The team is coached by a dedicated parent, Maria Chauhan. Congratulations girls!
The senior school netball team members are: Frieke, Milou, Winnie, Zeinab, Neema, Mkami, Sammota, Kimali, Komal and Sofia.

Last Wednesday, 14th May, ISM students joined the campaign to raise awareness about the over 200 girls kidnapped in Borno State, Nigeria exactly one month earlier by Boko Haram. Many students wore red and photographs of our students have been sent to Ibadan International School in Nigeria who are leading the campaign amongst international schools.

There is a confirmed outbreak of Dengue Fever in Dar es Salaam with over 400 people so far infected. Dengue is a mosquito-borne viral infection and the infection causes flu-like illness which occasionally develops into a potentially lethal complication called severe Dengue. To date there have been no confirmed cases in the Moshi/Arusha areas. Dengue is sometimes mis-diagnosed as malaria.

For more information, please see advice provided by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at www.cdc.gov/dengue or the World Health Organisation’s fact sheet at www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs117/en/.

The ISM Brownie Guides are running a “good as new” sale on Saturday June 7th from 10.00 am to 1.00pm in Karibu Hall. If you are leaving Moshi this year, this is an ideal opportunity for you to sell items you do not wish to take with you. Tables will cost TSh 15,000/- and need to be paid for in advance by Wednesday June 4th in the main school office to secure a place.
All proceeds from the sale of tables will be divided between brownie funds and children in need of cleft palette operations. There will also be a chance for you to donate clothes, shoes, toys and books for ‘Treasures of Africa’ Children’s Home that P3/4 made a link with during their last unit of inquiry. You can support this event by buying a table to sell your goods or by coming to buy from the stalls. Refreshments will be on sale throughout the morning. Please see Annalee Horton if you have any questions about this event.

Many of our secondary students bring laptops to school and most use them in their school work. From August 2014, we will require all M5, D1 and D2 students to have their own laptop for use in school. Other students will be welcome to bring laptops, although these will not yet be required – students may also use school computers in the library and IT Centre.
I also take the opportunity to remind you that there is free wireless network and internet access for secondary students in many areas of the campus. Boarders will be given a password to access on their device(s) if parents have agreed this on the Parental Consent form. Day students in M5, D1 and D2 are provided with internet access automatically unless a parent requests that we block this. Day students in M1 to M4 may only access the internet if we have received a signed internet access form from their parents. Note that we cannot supervise students’ use of the internet on their personal devices. Students are expected to abide by the school’s Technology Use Policy at all times.
All students joining D1 in August (and D2 students) are required to have a graphic-display calculator for use in their work. The school teaches lessons using the TI-84 plus calculator and we recommend that this model is purchased. Students may either buy their own, or may purchase directly from the school in August.

We welcome Patrick Peter Thomas who has recently joined ISM as our new PE/Sports Assistant. Patrick will be responsible for the sports store amongst his various duties.

The second week of IB D2 exams and the last five school days of the six days of end-of-D1-year exams also went well. ISM’s faculty worked diligently to maintain a quiet and orderly environment in the tuition block area and thus facilitating exam-takers in this critical assessment period.
The excitement among D2 students is brewing in the lead up to the upcoming Graduation Weekend (May 23rd and May 24th). All members of the D2 class of 2014 met briefly mid-week for a graduation-planning meeting and to practise singing the National Anthem and the fantastic Class Song entitled ‘Good Life’ by OneRepublic (which they will all sing together near the end of the Graduation Ceremony). Get in the mood for your son or daughter’s celebratory weekend and watch/listen to that class song at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZhQOvvV45w.
Two student leaders of the D2 Graduation Planning team (Zeinab and Bethany) met with myself and the two dedicated, hard-working co-chairs of the D2 Parent Karibu Hall Graduation Decorating Committee (Dina Mohamed and Teresa Margheri) and we finalized plans for the flowers, the Hollywood-themed décor, etc. We are looking forward to many D2 parents joining us from 8:30am to 4:00pm +/- for the fun, collaborative work on next Friday May 23rd when we transform Karibu Hall into a splendid venue for Saturday afternoon’s graduation. If you are a D2 parent, please arrange your ticket, if possible, to join us for this annual enjoyable effort.
Here is a summary of the other ISM D2 Graduation-related events:

1. Friday May 23rd at 11:45am in the Music Room. Recommended meeting for D2s to practise graduation songs and then assist with Karibu Hall Decorating. 2. Friday May 23rd at 6:30pm class of 2014 students and their family (no friends of the D2 students please) are welcome at the Graduation dinner at AMEG Lodge (www.ameglodge.com). AMEG has special rates for ISM families if you wish to stay there. 3. Saturday May 24th at 9:30am in Karibu Hall. Obligatory meeting for D2 students. Agenda: Graduation Songs; Graduation movements; Run-through of the event from Start to Finish so it is perfect!. A D2 student cannot participate in the Graduation if they miss this graduation practice! 4. The graduation on Saturday May 24th will commence promptly at 2:30pm so all guests are asked to arrive by 2:00pm at the latest. Photos for graduates will occur at 1:40pm near the walkway to the dining hall. 5. Following the graduation ceremony there will be a celebratory reception in the ISM Director’s garden with light bites, a huge chocolate cake and music.

Feel free to write with any questions or concerns about your child in the ISM DP. Sincerely, Rick Fitzpatrick Diploma Programme Coordinator

Primary Clubs
Thank you to our parent volunteer Sarah Rubenstein who has been running the Mad Scientist club. This was a oversubscribed as we have so many kids wanting to become crazy Scientists. The ones that did get a chance to join this club have had such fun every week, creating and mixing and messing with everything and anything that can be connected to the science world.

Rope jumping ran very smoothly this week. Simon and his Mkombozi students did a grand job of getting the stduents skipping in pairs and trying out a range of routines.

Melissa Weaver
This is the last week for our student teacher Melissa Weaver as she finishes her internship to return to the US to start her professional life as a Primary teacher. We have truly valued Melissa’s contribution to our little community, as she has helped out not just with EC but also P3/4 and our clubs. Totty Aris Deputy Head of Campus

We hope you enjoyed the assembly last week. This week we have been very busy preparing a special surprise for Mums and Dads. Please join us in Karibu Hall at 7.45am for our Primary assembly and refreshments. We are very pleased to have Townes back with us and it was wonderful to see photos and hear all about his new baby sister Louise during show and tell. We also welcomed Neville Juma to EC on Monday and he is settling into the class very well.
Unit of Inquiry Next Tuesday we will be going to the Cultural Heritage Centre in Arusha to enable us to focus on the third line of inquiry ‘Art Interpretation.’ We will look at a variety of art pieces and think about what they are saying to us. After the trip we will compare and contrast our ideas and feelings about favourite artworks.

The group paintings are complete. We have Mount Kibo, the snake park, a beach, a garden, a road and a safari park. The groups cooperated really well on this project. Splatter painting is also underway and will be continued next week. The children produced patterned clay tiles this week, which will be painted next week.

Next week we are going to set up exciting art centres with a variety of art techniques to explore from using painted balls down a slide to coloured salt to produce pictures. We are continuing to add the variety of different ‘media’ we use to a list, in order to fully understand the wealth of materials available for art.
Language

• New children will be introduced to the short vowel sound e made by Eddy elephant.
• EC1 children will work on writing the sounds that they hear at the beginning of words.
• EC2 children will produce an unaided piece of writing about a piece of art.
• EC1 children will look at an art piece and talk about what they see and how it makes them feel, which we will then write as a poem.

Muffins for Mums and Dads Assembly
Mums and Dads are invited to a special assembly in Karibu Hall, Monday 19th May, 7.45am.
Unit of Inquiry – Art Theme – How we express ourselves Central Idea – There are different ways to express our ideas and feelings. Lines of Inquiry: 1. There are many types of artists.     Elements of art and design. 2. Expression through the arts. 3. Art appreciation. We have discussed ‘What is an artist?’. (painter, dancer, sculptor, musician). We will continue to learn about the elements of art and design: line, shape, colour, value, texture, form and space. We will focus on line and colour this week.
Language focus for the week Write a recount of the weekend. Children will be encouraged to use the language of time. (First, Next, Then, After that, The next day…) Sentence and word level work will also focus on descriptive language. Write a colour poem. Handwriting: Patterns, own name, numerals and words with an ai and ay spelling pattern. We will also continue to work on capital letters. Some P2 children will learn to join letters together. Phonics – Group 1: Long vowel sounds, ow as in snow.     Group 2: dge as in bridge.
Maths focus for the week Mental skills will focus on counting on and back from any number. Quick recall of addition facts of 10 and 20. Link addition and subtraction facts. Doubles, near doubles and halving. Identify multiples of 2, 5 and 10. All children will learn about addition and subtraction. Add 3 and 4 numbers together. Link +/- facts. Tell simple + and – stories. Add 10 and multiples of 10.
Art We will focus on the elements of line and colour. We will learn about colour mixing and warm and cold colours.
What to bring to school: Everyday: A hat for playtime, a healthy snack, water bottle and reading folder.
Timetable: Monday New reading books and homework packets including spelling lists will be issued. PE (wear your house T shirt and shorts and trainers) Tuesday PE (wear your house T shirt and shorts and trainers) Thursday Library (Bring library books in your special library bag to return and then choose new ones) New class reading books will be issued. Friday Spelling Test

This past week the P2/3 class worked extremely hard to finish their Tanzania informational posters. The posters turned out great and the class showed how much they have learned the past few weeks during our unit on Tanzania. We just began our Unit of Inquiry on Adaptation this week and the class has already shown their interest and background knowledge of how living things adapt to their environments in order to survive. Here’s what we have coming up this week in the P2/3 classroom:
Language Arts Next week we will begin exploring poetry and how to become creative poets. We started this week by writing some acrostic poems and will continue next week by going on some poetry walks and writing list poems. I am very excited about our poetry unit since we have so many creative writers in our class.
PE Our new volunteer, Mr. Matts has been helping our class with PE the past two weeks and we have already learned some fun new games to work on our ball skills! In the upcoming weeks students will work in groups to come up with their own games. They will have to come up with rules, skills that the game works on, equipment they may need, and decide how to score the game.
Unit of Inquiry This past week we took a look at our new Unit of Inquiry on Adaptation and talked about what aspects of it we would really like to learn about. Below is an outline of the new unit and what we aim to cover. Central Idea: Over time, living things need to adapt in order to survive. Lines of Inquiry:

• Concept of adaptation.
• Circumstances that lead to adaptation.
• How plants and animals adapt or respond to environmental conditions.

Four weeks down and only 5 to go! I find the thought very bitter-sweet. Because I was on the mountain for 4 days last week, I was not able to submit a weekly preview for the newsletter, so below, please find a brief outline of our learning last week and for the week to come.
Huge congratulations to Thompson, Noga, Emily and Theo who were selected to go to Arusha last week for the St. Constantine’s inter-schools swimming gala. Thompson and Noga came away with gold medals for the 25m butterfly and 50m freestyle, respectively and all 4 students were placed 2nd or 3rd in many of the other events in which they participated.
UOI Unit 6 – Children’s Rights Central Idea: Children are a unique part of our society who have specific rights. Lines of Inquiry: The role of children in society         Rights and responsibilities of children         The application of children’s rights in certain parts of the world As an introduction to this, we wrote down what we thought all children should have. We then talked about the world wars and the formation of the United Nations and the UN convention on the rights of the child. We started reading the book, “For Every Child” and discussed and made posters to reflect that “every child has a right to a name and a country”. We will be looking at other rights and responsibilities this week e.g. the right to an education and the responsibility to work hard. Interwoven with this will be discussion on what life is like for children in other parts of the world and even in our own society.
Maths – Miss Jann’s Group – Data handling. We completed work on bar graphs and pictographs and interpretation of the data they display. We also learnt to make statements concerning the data. We began to learn about Venn Diagrams. Next we will complete Venn Diagrams and learn about corall diagrams, line graphs and line plot graphs. Miss Debbie’s Group – Data handling. Conducting surveys, displaying data and interpreting data. Tally charts and bar graphs. Due to power failures and the ice cream melting, we were unable to make our times tables ice cream sundaes last Friday, but all being well, we will enjoy them this week.
Language – I introduced our new writing genre – persuasive writing – and with the help of a writing frame, the children wrote an argument to support their views on Coca-Cola. We will be doing more persuasive essays on various topics to familiarise ourselves with this style of writing, before tackling our views on topics pertaining to children’s rights. Spelling – Group 1: sometimes magic y – words that end in y that sounds like e and how the y makes the vowel in the word say its name rather than its sound e.g. baby, tiny Group 2: the suffix -ful e.g helpful, awful Group 3: The long e sound – -e.g. green, teeth
Reminders Every day: School t-shirts or polo shirts, zip bags (reading book, reading log, spelling book all need to come to school, a healthy snack for break time. Monday: 7.45am Special Primary Assembly in K Hall – Muffins for Mums and Dads. All primary classes will be presenting an item. Homework handed out – spelling, reading, Maths and Language sheets. Wednesday: P.E. – Cooperative games. Wear house t-shirts and shorts or tights. Long hair tied up. Thursday: Library bags and books for exchange/renewal. Friday: homework due in Spelling test Swimming – remember costumes, towels, goggles (if you wear them) etc…
Looking forward to a great week together, Miss Jann

This week we had great fun looking at our childhood beliefs and preparing a little something for the Muffins for Mums and Doughnuts for Dads assembly in the Karibu Hall on Monday morning. We do hope you can attend. The assembly will begin at 7.45am.
UOI – Beliefs Central Idea: People’s beliefs influence their behaviour The children will begin to consider superstitions from home and host country and make a class list of these. Following that, children will work in groups to investigate a different religion and come together to draw connections between those religions.
Reading, Writing and Drama In writing we will find superstitions and list them and then try to devise their own. Children will work in groups researching religions from books and internet, taking notes before rewriting these to explain and present to their peers.
Maths We will look at time zones around the world and understanding the differences between them and why they exist. Following that we will begin to look at probability.
P.E. – is on Wednesday. Swimming will once again be on Thursday.
Library – Will be on Monday. Please remind your child to bring their books for exchange.

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