Moshi Campus News – 28 Apr 2018

We are now fully into the exam season with the first Diploma Exams for most students starting Monday.  For the next three weeks the D2 students will take over 500 test papers between them spending about 15 hours each on the exams.  Combine this with the M5 students and their exams and Rafiki Hall will see 1000 hours of exams between all the students.  There will be a lot of students happy to no longer see this hall after May 18th.  Intermixed in all of this, the P6 students will have their exhibition in K-Hall on May 8th and 9th. 

Despite all of this and the seemingly unending showers there are still a lot of smiles and laughter on campus. 

Please remember that on Tuesday May 1st there are no classes.

Last week saw the release of our new fundraising video for support for our IB Diploma scholarships. Now we have a new way to give easily from all over the world with credit, debit and Paypal. This link is here: https://cafdonate.cafonline.org/8135 and you can give once or monthly and choose the amount you want to help support. ISM has always been a trailblazer, being the first IB school in Africa and now we want to increase our scholarships to around 30 a year, partial and full, to students all around the world and join the prestigious UWC movement. If you want more info please contact development@ed.ismoshi.com.

Gemma May

Very many thanks to all the children and adults who joined in with our Community Garden initiative last Sunday to mark Earth Day. We were delighted with the turnout. Luckily the rain (mostly) held off and everyone quickly got to work with the clearing, digging, planting, watering, weeding, painting and raking. By about mid afternoon, thanks to everyone’s hard work, the garden was transformed – with a meditation dome, rows of planted vegetable seeds and strawberry plants, a variety of native and fruit tree saplings, filled raised beds, a composting area, mosquito repellent plants, a conservation area, cleared pathways and more. Special thanks must go to the parents who generously donated extra plants and seeds and also shared their gardening know how. The area is now a more colourful space which we can all learn from and relax in. It will be exciting to watch the seedlings grow, the flowers bloom and the trees produce fruit. The Primary children were also provided with extra entertainment from our wonderful Student Council who organised a treasure hunt, played music, set up a face painting, games and more.

Since Sunday the new water fountain has been finished. Soon the swings, seesaw and bee hives will also be installed. Some of you have already been asking about when the next Community Garden action day will take place; thanks for your enthusiasm! We will keep you informed as to when that will be. Meanwhile the CAS Gardening Club will continue to maintain the area. To see more photos of the day, do take a look at our school Twitter page, as Gemma May was sending out live Tweets: @uwcea.

Kate Schermbruker

The ISM Brownie Guides will be organising a garage sale on Saturday, May 12th, from 10 am to 1pm.

If you are leaving Moshi this summer this is an ideal opportunity for you to sell items you do not wish to take with you. It’s also a great place to pick up some bargains; toys, books, shoes, kitchenware and bedding, etc

You can support this event by hiring a table to sell your goods or by coming to buy from the stalls. Refreshments will be on sale throughout the morning. Tables must be paid for in advance at the main school office. The price for a table is 20,000 TSH.

Please see Deborah Mills, P5 teacher, (deborahmills@ed.ismoshi.com)  if you have any questions about this event.

The D2 students enter the first of three weeks of IB DP exams.  Events for the celebratory May 18-19 graduation weekend include: 

1. The annual family decorating in Karibu Hall on Friday morning;
2. The Graduation Dinner at AMEG Lodge at 6:30 pm. ISM will pay for the graduate + two family members.  Guests will cost Tsh 40,000. Extra tickets must be purchased by May 10;
3. Doors open at 2:00 pm for the Graduation; 
4. Tea in Rafiki Hall will follow.

The D1s are in the process of completing a practice TOK essay and for Visual Art students their trial Comparative Study while our historians continue work on their individual historical investigation. Also, the D1 Economics students are preparing their next commentary.  As part of the study of ‘Development’ D1 Global Politics students visited the Natural Extracts Limited (https://www.nei-ltd.com/) factory in Shanty Town, Moshi (see photo).  The D1 students were sent their end-of-D1-year exam schedule which includes a two-hour exam in each subject and extends from May 24 to May 29.

Rick Fitzpatrick

M4 End Year Examinations
As part of examination skills training, the M4 will have end year examinations from May 24-29 in all subjects except Arts, PHE, Design and Life Skills.

MAY 2018 Examinations
The examinations will be from May 8th to 18th. Students received the Interdisciplinary Learning examination reading material on April 3. The Science and Language teachers are equally preparing the students using this material for the main examination. Teachers will also use all accessible on-screen past papers to help students prepare during this period.

Other events in the M5 calendar include:
May 21 – Work Experience
May 28 – 31 Preparation for the M5 Ceremony
June 1 – M5 Ceremony

David Ochieng

Thursday 26th was a public holiday, as Tanzanians marked Union Day.  Boarders had study hall as usual on Wednesday evening, but had time to engage in recreational activities on Thursday during the day. They had study hall as usual in the evening and were back to class on Friday morning.

A number of activities were planned for the weekend, including a trip to Arusha for secondary students on Saturday to watch the movie Avengers: Infinity Wars.

The D2 students have had a week of private study and started their final examinations on Friday afternoon. A majority of the D2 boarders stayed in school for the study week, and had several consultations with their teachers.

Tuesday will be another public holiday, to celebrate International Workers’ Day. This will not in any way interfere with the boarders programme on Monday, and study hall will run as usual. They will have organized activities on campus on Tuesday, and then get back to study hall again the evening. Normal classes will resume on Wednesday morning.

Private Parties
Although the school organizes 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 the 19th of May after the official ceremony. These student-organized parties are not school events and we cannot, as a school, take responsibility for them.

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 rosemarybango@ed.ismoshi.com by whatever means is most convenient (telephone, letter, or email). Boarders will be expected to remain in school for the weekend if we have not heard from you before MONDAY, MAY 14th.  We would also suggest on this occasion, that you contact the host family directly to discuss what you feel would be appropriate arrangements.

Rosemary Bango

This past Saturday April 21st our U15 and U19 Netball teams played games at SCIS in the 2nd Round of the NTAA. It was a good day for both the U19 A and B teams as the each won 2 and 1 games respectively. While the U15 had another good learning experience. The U19 A team still leads the competition with their undefeated record. Great job Leopards. The last weekend of NTAA competition will be hosted by ISM on Saturday May 5th.

Those students who were not in attendance at the Sports Awards Evening are kindly requested to pick up their participation certificates and if they earned a special award to pick them up from the PE Office during lunchtime.

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

Well done to the P1 – P5 children who completed their fifth unit of inquiry this week. I noticed some really creative summative assessment tasks taking place around the Primary School.

The P6 children are now getting closer to their final presentations. There is a real buzz coming from Room 16 as they delve more deeply into their inquiries and carry out their PYP actions.

Reminder: Tuesday is a public holiday (Workers’ Day) and so there will be no lessons or clubs on that day.

Kate Schermbrucker

The EC children have been thinking about books this week. We found two new favourites… ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ and ‘The Whale and the Snail’.

Books:

• are about so many different things (Tiago)
• have new and wonderful words (Savannah)
• have great pictures (Atuganile)
• are for reading (Henry)

The EC2 children each found excellent examples from our library of stories of Voyage and Return on Friday. They could locate and explain their choices and are really showing that they are ready to take on the challenges of Year 1.

Next week’s story archetype is Comedy. Our artistic form will be Video. Comedic stories have a series of expanding events that are eventually resolved. Think Mr. Bean. Our attribute focus will be Balance in terms of the importance of a sense of humour in life. The children will be producing their own video of what they find funny.

Owain Evans

The children were busy working on their summative assessments this week. They created short skits/commercials to encourage people to reduce, reuse and recycle. This linked in beautifully with earth day on Monday. They also created mobiles making promises to earth and to themselves as shown in the picture. To culminate the unit, we watched the 2012 version of The Lorax in order to cement the need for us to take care of the world.

“Unless Someone Like You Cares a Whole Awful Lot, Nothing is Going to Get Better. It’s Not.” Dr. Seuss.

Next week, we will begin our last unit of the school year. We will be inquiring into the past with our transdisciplinary theme, where we are in place and time. We will be looking at sources of historical evidence and how they help us learn about the past.

In math, we will be working on building our strategies bank of solving word problems.

Show and Tell: Gabriel and Garvin

Mboka Mwasongwe

This week the P2/3`s have finished off their fifth unit summative assessment. They will be bringing home a copy of their solar system quiz and rubric. Please note that for this unit the children created their own rubric criteria. This was a challenging activity in which the P2/3`s excelled.

Next week the children will continue to inquire into fresh water access and where in Tanzania we can find fresh water sources. If you feel you can help with this unit, please email me. The children would learn a lot form these types of activities.

The class are writing, an “Important Book” based around water.  They will continue to research about water and its impact on life.  In Math the children will work on estimating and measuring volumes of liquid.

Please ensure that your child is reading their home reader at home as in class we are focusing on nonfiction reading strategies.

• Monday – Homework
• Tuesday – NO SCHOOL
• Wednesday: French
• Thursday: Swimming all children are to swim unless they have a note / email from a doctor or parent.
• Friday:  Return homework

Have a wonderful weekend
Clare Hibbard

We have had a very successful conclusion to our Unit of Inquiry. The kids enjoyed showing their favourite pieces of work during our gathering on Friday. Thanks to all the parents and family who attending to support the students. They enjoyed presenting their learning and showing their models to a live audience. For the summative assessment they presented their projects in front of the whole class while their peers listened and took notes.  I was very impressed with their growing ability to summarize content meaningfully. Great job P4!

Julie Bowen

This week the children carried out a role play whereby they had to complete a task (building a newspaper tower) under a dictatorship, a monarchy, a democracy and anarchy. The photo shows the direct democracy group in action. The activity was lots of fun and the children learned a lot. They had to grade each system of government in terms of efficiency and also happiness of the “civilians.” Next week the children will complete this unit of inquiry by designing their own country and system of government and explaining the rights that the citizens will enjoy.

In maths we have revised reflective symmetry and explored rotational symmetry. The children also worked out missing angles. In the coming week they will do some basic algebra (missing numbers) and look at translations of shapes.

Our language focus will be presenting research on a political figure or Human Rights activist and we will complete an art activity to go with this work which will then be displayed on the breezeway.

Deborah Mills

The week has been very productive and the students have worked tirelessly in the different areas of their Exhibition unit. A number of P6s have left for the Swim meet in Mwanza and we wish them all the best. In the classroom, the students continue to work on their oral presentations and so far they have been impressive. They have had great opportunities to showcase their knowledge, skills, PYP attributes and action. The process of preparing for the exhibition has helped them develop in so many different ways and it is great to see how well they work together.

In the coming week, we will continue to polish up our presentations and continue with assessments. The media group will also be going over to Fountain Radio here in Shanty Town to see how they incorporate social media in their work.

Exhibition evening: We hope to see all the parents during the evening presentations and kindly be reminded that your child is to be dressed formally on this evening.

Cathy Wambua