Moshi Campus News – 1 Sep 17

ISM will be celebrating UWC Day this year as we look to join the movement. It falls on International Peace Day, 21st September. The theme this year is ‘The Power of Diversity’ and ISM will be participating in many events surrounding this. Both campuses on Monday 18th September during assembly will be painting with their handprints a mural of the word ‘Diversity’ on the school walls as a permanent reminder of one of our core values. There will also be a photo competition around the word diversity and in classes teachers will be discussing what diversity means to our students and community. We welcome you to attend either of our assemblies and if you want to learn more about UWC please go to  https://www.uwc.org/about

“Saturday the 27th of August, at 5.30 am, four ISM students, a teacher, a driver and our Masaai guide, found ourselves in a land cruiser on a two hour drive to the Arusha National Park from Moshi. The land cruiser was relatively chilly, which didn’t help any of us fight off the drowsiness from our eyes.”

So starts the story of the Sparkling Elephant Project trip with the TEDGlobal 2017 participants as written by Ejofon Ellis-Odjurhe.  This group which also included Luke, Nick and Maggie was invited on the tour along with Sir Richard Bonham to track elephants and discuss their current situation in the region.  

TED is internationally renowned organization that highlights creative solutions to world problems.  What a wonderful opportunity for our students to have participated is such a high profile event.

See https://twitter.com/uwcea for a short video of the event.

We’d like to welcome you all to the Moshi Club this coming Sunday 10th September (11AM-3PM) to help welcome our new children, parents and teachers to the school community.

There’ll be music, games, races and activities for the family, 50:50 raffle, a lucky dip for new teachers, quiz prizes, a buffet lunch provided by the club and PTA (5000tzs), shared deserts and salads, ice creams, decent wine and optional golf.

Proceeds will go to supporting the ISM outdoor pursuits program. The PTA hopes to set up a small fund to support students who might otherwise not be able to afford a trip.

Please bring a small salad or desert to share, sun cream and a smile.

Hope to see you there!

Your Moshi PTA.

A test of our students knowledge of ISM history.

On Friday September 15th, doctors from KCMC will once again be at ISM for a community blood drive.  The drive will be located in Rafiki Hall from 1 to 4pm.  If you are 18 or over (16 with parents’ permission) please come join us for this important event.  For more details see the posters on campus.

Last week KCMC received a donation of hospital beds from the Netherlands and at the last minute, the pediatric clinic there put in some bright colorful toys for the KCMC pediatric ward.  Amoung the toys was a toy car garage, however, they need cars to put in the garage.  If you have toy cars that you would be willing to donate, please leave them in the office with Grace and we will get them there.  

Pictured is Dr Kinabo, Head of the Pediatric Ward, with some of the toys.

A school counselor is an adult your child can turn to when they need extra emotional support. They are good listeners, and they want to help your child to get the most out of school and life. School counsellors help students of all ages handle all types of problems.

For example, a counsellor helps students:

• define their goals and plan how to reach those goals
• gain insights over the issues they are facing
• talk through and reflect on their emotional experiences
• feel supported through a family problem, such as divorce or death of a loved one
• work out how to solve friendship troubles
• face and overcome feelings of nervousness about future challenges

If your child is going through any type of emotional problem, or just needs someone else to talk to, a great person for them to share their thoughts and feelings with is the ISM school counsellor, Emmanuel Kileo. You can contact him on: emmanuelkileo@ed.ismoshi.com    

The ISM counselling office is located between the Library and Art Room.

ISM Counsellor Working Hours: Monday 2 – 5pm, Tuesday 1 – 4pm, Wednesday 2 – 4pm, Thursday 12 – 4pm

Come and join in and participate in a fun community event on the tennis courts!  There will be a two-day informal, organized tennis tournament on Sat 16 Sept and Sun 17 Sept. Both days it will start at 8am. Students and parents are invited to attend as well as KCMC folks and Moshi Club players.  Cost will be Tsh 10,000 for children and Tsh 20,000 for adults. Please email rickfitzpatrick@ed.ismoshi.com for an entry sheet or collect it at the front gate and sign up on the sheet in the breezeway area at school.  Thank you!  See you soon on the tennis court!

The P1 – P6 children are now halfway through their first unit of inquiry; EC will spend a bit longer on theirs. They have all been working hard, with their teachers, to ask questions, find out answers and go further with their investigations. I’ve noticed a great deal of enthusiasm and creativity going on in and around the classrooms. Many thanks to the parents for supporting and encouraging their inquiries from home. The children are now much more settled into the Quarter, e.g. with classroom and homework routines. They know their afternoon clubs and so no more changes or swaps will be allowed at this stage. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the teachers, teaching assistants, volunteers and parents who give up their time to run our wonderfully wide ranging clubs programme.

Kate Schermbrucker

Update:

• The ambience of seriousness continues to pervade the campus as DP students appear to be engaged in lessons and getting involved as expected in the Creativity, Activity and Service activities in the 3-6pm slot each afternoon (Monday to Thursday)
• Many D2 students are proceeding with IB coursework. One example is this D2 female Scholarship student shown interviewing high school students for her Global Politics global engagement project associated with the free education initiative in Tanzania.
• This coming week will see the start of our Pamoja Education on-line IB courses and those taking these courses will be supported by Mr Jon Bowen, the ISM site-based coordinator.  Learn more at www.pamojaeducation.com.
• D1 course changes should largely be completed by September 16th.
• DP parents are encouraged to access the ManageBac page and fully track both what their children are learning and how their assessment grades look.

Upcoming:

• Monday Sept 11, 2017 – D2 Extended Essay Full Draft due.
• The period of Oct to Dec will be jam-packed with IB coursework deadlines and parental support in this challenging period would be essential and much appreciated.
• Presently we are accepting nominations for the May 2017 IB DP graduation speaker.

Weblinks:
On the IB DP – https://www.ibo.org/programmes/diploma-programme/

Rick Fitzpatrick

HOME OF THE LEOPARDS

It was another good week of practices! The coaches would like to emphasize the importance of student expectations when being a part of a sports team. All students need to follow these expectations

• Be prepared and on time with proper sport equipment for the sport.
• If you are to miss any team event, speak to the coach at least 24 hours in advance.
• If you are sick or injured you must still be present at practices and games as you can learn by listening and observing.

On Saturday September 9th ISM is proud to host the 1st Round of the NTAA in U15 Boys/Girls Basketball and U19 Boys/Girls Football, please keep posted for further information.

Last Saturday the U19 Boys and Girls Basketball teams played games vs Orkolili Secondary School. Our boys won convincingly 56-31, while our girls’ team lost 24 to 8. Great job to both teams.

As the season and year progress please keep up with all the info, news, and sports reports by reading the Moshi Campus News.

Go Leopards

Scott Hibbard

This was a long weekend with the Muslim students celebrating Eid on Friday 1st September. Some of the boarders travelled home for the celebrations, and will be back on Sunday 3rd September. We wish all the Muslims a happy holiday.

We continue to remind parents to send us consent forms for the year. Boarders will not be allowed to sign out without a current PC form. The forms can be downloaded from the school website.

A reminder to parents of boarders who may wish to allow their children to sign out for the weekend that:

• Before a student can leave for the weekend the host family must contact the Boarding Parent by letter, phone, or in person so that we can be confident of the invitation
• Invitations be made by the Thursday evening preceding the weekend
• The school reserves the right to withdraw permission for a student to accept weekend invitations if we feel that adequate supervision will not be given
• We sign out boarders to families, not to places.

Rosemary Bango

Mama Eefke brought some edible plants and gardening tools this week to kick-start our EC garden. It’s a relatively small space, but one which the children have already begun to embrace as an exciting learning opportunity.

Mr. Juma came to dig over the patches, Mr. Kaniki to fit a new tap for water.

Today Christian and I worked on building a small ‘archway’ entrance, and the other children soon joined in with their own ideas- watering plants, moving stones, sectioning areas off with string and edging the ‘paths’ with bamboo sticks.

Even this basically empty patch provided much time for the children this morning as they explored, improved, thought and shared. Soon we’ll start manuring, planting and further tending to our little garden. We’ll leave a space for digging and relaxing of course, as well as providing tools, pots, seeds and seedlings so that the space can be a constantly evolving and fun area to play and learn.

Please could you send in a small digging/pruning tool (a ‘real’ tool please… they can do it!), a small watering can, little plant pots or any seedlings (especially edible plants) that you can spare from home?

It will all go towards making our little shared project a huge success.

Enjoy your long weekend- I hope you’ll be able to get ‘outdoors’ as well…

Mr. Evans

We have had a short but very busy week. The children enjoyed reading ‘Whoever You Are’ by Mem Fox. They made Venn diagrams in pairs, inquiring into their differences and similarities.
After reading our book, the children were curious as to who Mem Fox was, so we searched through her website and learned some facts about her.
https://memfox.com/all-about-mem-too-much-information/
In maths, we have been adding by using objects, fingers, pictures and our heads (mentally). Next week, we will be learning how to add using more different strategies.
The children enjoyed playing word games in phonics this week as they learned to read with the sounds of the week. We will be continuing with the same sounds next week; Phase 2: I, n, m, d and Phase 3: y, z, zz, qu.
Our unit of inquiry leads us to our third and final line: understanding and respecting other people’s needs and wants.

Mboka Mwasongwe

Dear P2/3 Parents,

The children this week have been working on building positive relationships around school. They have been identifying ways in which they can calm down when faced with a difficult situation. At home talk to your child about these techniques and encourage them when needed.

The children have been writing and sharing their personal narrative stories. We have begun guided reading groups where children work together on reading strategies. They are working in math groups to develop their understanding of number and place value with different games.

Next week we will focus on our third line of inquiry: How positive relationships benefit us. In reading the focus will be asking questions as they read. During writing we will be planning sentences before they write them down. In Math, we will compare numbers and identify the place value of individual digits.
Please remember the children need their home readers and homework folders every day. They also need to bring in their library books and PE shoes on the following days.

PE: Tuesday and Thursday
Library: Tuesday
Homework due on: Friday

Have a lovely long weekend,

Clare Hibbard

P4 was excited this week to have a visit from Mr.Horne the founder of East Meru Community School. He informed us that many children in Tanzania do not have the same right to education as we do.  The children were very engaged in learning and asking questions about his NGO and as a result have been busily thinking up ways they can take action and help address this problem in our community.  We have also looked at how having a disability affects children’s access to resources. After reading about Helen Keller the children experienced a touch of what it feels like to have impaired vision by blindfolding each other. We have made Braille art and organized data in Math using tactile graphing techniques.

Julie Bowen

We have had a productive, fun and busy week in P5. The photo shows the children working on a maths activity, using their thinking skills.

The week ahead:

UOI
The children have looked at a world map and have considered the theory that the earliest people lived in Africa and migrated out over thousands of years to settle in the rest of the world. Mr. Evans (EC) has a lot of interest in ancient history and will come in next week to talk to the children about archaeology, bones, early artefacts etc. We will consider the push factors and pull factors that encourage people to migrate, both now and in the past.

Maths
We will be writing, ordering and comparing 3 digit, 4 digit, 5 digit and 6 digit numbers and using the < and > symbols. We will also be rounding numbers.

Language
We will write some poetry about ourselves, likes, dislikes and characteristics.

Art
We will continue with our self portraits – these are looking great!

I hope you enjoy the long weekend with your children.

Deborah Mills

The week went well with students busy catching up on their learning as it is a shorter week. We celebrated Lisa’s and Thomas’ birthdays this week and we wish them many happy returns.

The week ended on a high note with Ms Kate teaching about bias. The lesson was great fun as the children listened to a short story, saw her role play and saw how bias can be used in news around us. It was great to see the students share passionately about why they thought their football teams were the best and they got to see other instances where people are biased without their own knowledge.

In the coming week we will be exploring digital media tools that we can use for advertising and presentation of topics we are passionate about.  We will also review the concept of money and connect it to fractions. In Language Arts students will follow up on the lesson about bias. We will be learning how to find out whether information is reliable or whether it is a biased opinion.

This coming Friday is the P6 Primary Gathering and all P6 parents are welcome.

Have a lovely weekend and to all the Muslim families, have a wonderful Eid.

Ms Cathy