As we head into the break I would like to thank everyone who has been involved this term. If you think back, this term started in January and I don’t have space to list everything that has happened, but some highlights are. The AISA GISS Conference hosted in Arusha; the visit by Shelby and Gale Davis; The fantastic performance of Beauty and the Beast; the Mock Exams; Week-without-walls; Project Week; EAMUN; Book Week; International Day; Farmers’ Markets; Blood Drive; PYPx; Cultural Nights; Chess; DP Art Exhibition; Le Cabaret and M5 Mocks. And that list does not include any of the sports, or the nine Outdoor Pursuits trips or any club activities. Really this term has provided a bit of everything at all levels. This array of activity cannot happen without the work of parents, students, staff and community members that get involved regularly.
As you can see below the last week will be no different.
Please note that we have Secondary conferences on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning. This means classes end at lunch on Wednesday and start at 11:20 on Thursday.
Friday is our last day of the term and will end at 12:30 like normal.
For all of those traveling, please stay safe and to everyone have a relaxing and restful break ready to jump back in when classes restart on April 17th.
Bob Cofer – Head of Campus
Upcoming
Hello everybody!
Mark the date! The 24-Hour Run is going to be held on September 29th on Moshi Campus.
For the new members of our community, this event is a fun fundraising opportunity. Students, teachers and members of our community are all welcome to participate and run with us for the donations to fundraise scholarships for students.
As the event is getting closer, we are looking forward to receiving sponsorships from our community, as well as any form of help in planning and advertising. Please contact the school if you would like to become a sponsor or get more information!
Ben’s Corner
This week, students across the Primary School welcomed family members, guardians, friends and teachers to their Student-Led Conferences…SLCs!
“It’s hard to imagine a more high-leverage practice for improving learning than this. It brings the family in as a partner in the child’s growth-instead of being intimidated by facing news from a teacher, the family members are proud to listen to their child present herself with candour and clarity, even when there are challenges” (“Leaders Of Their Own Learning” Rugen, Woodwin & Berger).
Our Primary students shared their Portfolios with enormous pride. They led games and activities that showcased their learning across the curriculum. The students facilitated the meetings from start to finish, confidently and expertly talking through their Units of Inquiry and answering any related questions.
For students, SLCs develop a sense of responsibility and accountability for their own learning and it helps to hone an understanding of what it means to work towards learning targets. At the same time, reviewing Portfolios helps develop a propensity for reflection on personal growth as our young learners begin to take ownership of their learning. Many SLCs also included an opportunity for both the students and their parents/guardians to record their feedback on what is going well and where there might be opportunities for improvement.
Well done to all the students, teachers, EAs and parents/guardians!
Ben Morley – Deputy Head of Campus
Diploma News
The week started with the D2 Art Exhibition, the students displayed the work they have done along with their curatorial rational and information about each piece. On Sunday they were there to talk about the journey their artwork had taken them on. There was a really good turn out on Sunday evening for the opening and then it was open for students to visit for a few days. Art students had a chance to see it and reflect on the work produced.
As we approach the end with D2, the final CAS interviews have started. I find them inspiring. The students talk about what they have done to meet the strands of Creativity, Activity and Service. They tell me how they have developed as people through the experiences. The importance of working collaboratively comes up a lot as does the need to plan. Summitting Kilimanjaro was for many both the hardest and most rewarding experience of their life. One student told me her inspiration was the quote “If your dreams do not scare you, they’re not big enough” Ellen Sirleaf.
As we approach the end of the quarter there are summative assessments for both D1 and D2 students. The final report for D2 students will be issued next week.
The Extended Essay allocations for D1 will be announced this weekend and then they can start the process of deciding on a topic and a research question, before beginning their research.
This weekend we are hosting MUN @ Moshi with students from UWCEA Moshi and Arusha campus. It is a small event but we hope to host a bigger one next year.
Important Dates
D2 Last day of classes: Friday 21st April
D2 Final Exams: Friday 28th April to Thursday 18th May
D2 Graduation: Friday 19th May
D1 End of Year Exams: Monday 29th May to Friday 2nd June
D1 Group 4 Project: Wednesday 7th June to Friday 9th June
D1 TOK Exhibition: Monday 12th June to Tuesday 13th June
Margaret Brunt – DP Coordinator
Open Catagory Chess winners
Primary Catagory Chess winners
In Swahili ab Initio
Swahili ab-Initio class were studying the topic of food and drinks for the whole quarter. In order to make them understand what they were studying, the Swahili teacher (Mr. Anord) organized a special day to shop at the Mbuyuni market in Moshi and students cooked in the school kitchen. The students cooked Pilau with beef and goat, and they also prepared ‘’Kachumbari’’. The shopping and cooking project is very important because the students have learned some of the most important day to day vocabulary of the Swahili language.
Residential Life
It was a pleasure to see a realm of activities over the weekend as mentioned throughout the newsletter. However, a personal highlight for me was seeing our DP and MYP students cooking with their PYP peers and having the opportunity to see a small group of Kiota girls support Velyn and her personal project at Courage Café, empowering women. Throughout the course of the week, I also had the privilege of being a de-facto parent to two of our PYP students for their student led conferences. I have to say, I was in awe of how far they have come with their confidence, knowledge, and ability to creatively express themselves. Well done to our PYP teachers for all that you do for them.
Last weekend on campus, we had something for everybody and whether it be community rugby, chess tournament for all ages, Le Cabaret, discos, movie nights, hash run, Kivuli football and even the art exhibition, our residential students were involved in it all.
I often reflect on weekends like these and am impressed how much our students and staff do to look after one another, to strive to make our school and community more engaging and inclusive. Thank you all who make this possible it was eventful to say the least!
Lastly from me, please do not forget to confirm your child’s departure plans with them, me, and their house parents and next week I will begin preparing our arrival documentation. For Diploma students remaining on campus, do ensure that you review their leave on ‘Life’ and acknowledge that you are aware they will be traveling unsupervised in a minimum group of 3 and all necessary details of the trip must be outlined in addition to emergency contacts and more. I will not approve any leave without your consent and if you have concerns or queries, please reach out to me.
Simon Johnston – Head of Residential Life
MYP News
It is very intriguing to explore the concept of “time” at a school. Often, the first half of the academic year seems slow, and we often hear the students counting the days until their long Winter break arrives. Then, after that, it seems to speed up a bit too much. Looking at the events of this week, we realised that time is precious, especially with our M5s who will transition from our MYP division very soon!
Personal Project Updates On Friday, the students spent the majority of the day at Courage Cafe for an intense “retreat” to finalise their Personal Project reports, receive some feedback and make sure the Reflection section of the report met the necessary criteria. The students developed quite a reflective nature because of this project and the process, and it is really worth having a conversation with them about it to see how they feel about themselves as learners who now are able to identify their strengths and weaknesses in terms of delivering a “big” project.
Do not miss their exhibition on April 20th under the themes “Personal Project: Le Café”!
On a side note, our M4 cohort has been busy identifying possible subjects of interest for their own Personal Project ideas. We have quite an exciting range. Stay tuned for more updates on that.
MYP Mock eAssessments Week: Our MYP5 students had an interesting week. They got to experience assessments differently. Those sitting for the MYP e-Assessments in May spent the week in the IT Lab completing the assessments electronically. It was very interesting listening to their feedback.
The students also completed their Final French Oral Assessments this week to be submitted for external moderation by the IB.
Important MYP Dates to Keep in Mind:
March 27th – M5 PP Final Report Due with the Bibliography
March 29th-30th – Parent Teacher Conferences
March 30th – All M5 PP Elements to be submitted by 11:59 pm – Product/Report/ Process Journal
April 1st – 16th Easter/ Spring Break
April 17th – Final Tweaks for Design e-Portfolio (if needed)
April 20th – All internal assessments submitted to IB by MYPC
April 20th – Personal Project Exhibition
May 8th- 19th – MYP5 e-Assessments and End of Year Summative Assessments
June 2nd – M5 Ceremony
Farah Fawaz – MYP Coordinator
Outdoor Pursuits
Reefs level 4 Service dives and PADI advanced Open Waters left Friday for Fish Eagle Point. We wish the adventurers a good trip and we look forward to hearing their report back next week.
The following trips went live this week- which means signups are open. Please check your emails to see what trips are happening in the next week and after the break.
Reefs L1: Intro to Fish Eagle Point: 20 April – 23 April Rides L3: Umbwe to TPC: 29 April – 1 May Plains L4: Maramboi: 13 May – 17 May MYP Mindfulness: 13 May – 14 May Reefs L2: Open Waters Activities: 3 June – 6 June at 14:00
Experiential Learning Coordinator- Baden Dowie
Sports Update
As you know, the swimming gala house competition has been underway for some time now, and the points have been adding up.
We are thrilled to announce that we finally have the results for both Primary and Secondary divisions! Each house gave it their all, and the competition was intense till the very end. Without further ado, here are the results:
Congratulations to all the winners and to every house that participated! Your energy and enthusiasm made this event an exciting competition. But don’t forget – There are more exciting house competitions to come.
Thank you all for your hard work and dedication. Keep up the great work, and let’s continue to make this school year an unforgettable one!
On another note, we are committed to providing the best possible sports facilities and opportunities for our students, which is why we would like to remind everyone in the community to kindly follow all the rules when using our facilities.
We kindly ask that all visitors and guests adhere to our school policies, particularly the dress code, school facility use times and not going into student only areas. Following these guidelines will allow us to continue to have the community join us on campus.
For those using the gym, we encourage everyone to assist in keeping the space clean by returning the weights back to their rack positions after use.
Mostafa Rihan – Sports & Activities Coordinator
Isamilo Invitational Swim Gala
Last weekend 2 swimmers, Rhea C and Tabea R took part in the Isamilo invitational swimming gala held in Mwanza. Their hard work and training paid off and they had many new personal best times. Congratulations!
There is a potential upcoming swimming gala will be on 29 April, hosted by Arusha Swim Club. ALL swimmers are encouraged to participate! More details to come.
PYP News
Congratulations to Leon (P6) who came second in the PYP Chess Tournament last week.
Thank you to everyone who attended the Student Led Conferences on Thursday. This is such a happy and positive event and motivates the children to continue to make progress with their learning.
EC/P1 presented a wonderful Primary Gathering on Friday. Congratulations to Ms. Mboka, Ms. Durriyah, Ms Neema and the children for such an entertaining and interesting presentation. In the weeks beforehand, the EC/P1children took charge of their own learning and chose the words they were going to present in the gathering for themselves. This voice and choice, demonstrated by our youngest learners, develops over their time in the PYP, meaning that by the time the children are in P6 they have the skills needed to design their own PYP Exhibition. On the final Friday of the quarter (March 31st) the P3-P6 children will be presenting the Primary Gathering and will be sharing the learning they are doing in French.
Our PYP Student Voice organised a superb Disco on Friday night with some delicious mocktails available. The students organised different dance competitions and took turns at being the DJ. It was a great evening.
Afternoon clubs have now finished for the quarter. No afternoon supervision will be provided so the children should leave school at 1:10pm, unless they are planning to eat lunch in the dining hall. The final Saturday football session will happen on Saturday, 25th March. If you would like to offer a club in Quarter 4 please email our Head of Sports and Activities, Mostafa Rihan, on mostafarihan@uwcea.org.
A link for the clubs on offer in Quarter 4 will be shared with you by email when the schedule has been set. Some of the clubs have a limited number of places so please be sure to sign your child up promptly.
The last day of the quarter is Friday, March 31st. We look forward to welcoming the children back to class on Monday, April 17th.
Deborah Mills – PYP Coordinator
EC/P1 Class
What a whirlwind week! Thank you to all who made it to the Student-Led-Conferences as well as the primary gathering. The children were great communicators and I am sure you had a wonderful time hearing all that they wanted to share with you. They deserve a restful weekend as well as the holiday coming up. This coming week, we will not be issuing reading books nor homework for P1s. Please send the homework folder to school. The children will still have their library books which can be returned on Friday.
The rains are here so please remember to send in indoor shoes which will remain in school. We will try to minimise mud in the classroom as much as possible. Also, a light sweater in the bag will help when the weather changes abruptly.
Mboka Mwasongwe
P2/3 Class
I hope you all agree that the Student-Led Conferences were wonderful. The children were so excited to talk about it on Friday- they loved showing off their learning to you! It is fun to step back from the week-to-week lesson plans and see how far they’ve come this year so far.
Next week we will be busy with our new unit. We will continue on with our study of measurement with a focus on capacity. Remember that there will be no clubs after school so please plan on children leaving school at 1:10.
Kacey Buckley
P4/5 Class
It was great to see everyone at the Student Led Conferences. The children were very happy to share their work with you and I hope you enjoyed seeing your child’s progress. For those of you who attended the conference, no explanation of the photograph is necessary. Thank you for your co-operation and good humour in participating in the practical activities on the day and remember – smoking can lead to a compromised respiratory system! We are finishing off our unit on the human body at the moment. Two doctors for KCMC will come to class on Tuesday to carry out some practical investigations with the children. The children are still working on their model body systems and planning how to share their learning with the PYP classes (through games, songs, posters – it is their choice). We will make a start on our new unit of Migration but will continue with some body systems activities at the same time until everything is completed. Next week in maths, we will look at finding the range, mode and median of a set of data and P5 will look at how to calculate the mean. We will also look at the language of probability and learn how to record probability as a fraction.
Deborah Mills
P6 Class
Thank you to all who came to the Student Led Conferences on Thursday. The students enjoyed sharing their work. As well as talking through the portfolios, students also shared games like loop cards and demonstrated their coding skills via studio.code.org. For those parents unable to attend, (residential children shared with a teacher), they can bring home their portfolios to show you over the break. We started our new unit this week, “Early Civilizations have Shaped How the World is Today”. We discussed how this shaping has been both positive and negative. For home-learning, they were set a task of interviewing someone from an earlier generation to think about changes over time and learning from the experience of others. In English, we wrote about our own first school experiences with a successful focus on paragraph structuring. In maths, we’ve started decimals. Next week’s home-learning will be the by-now-familiar learning grid of activities: they are suggestions for the next few weeks. We also elected co-vice captains for the school’s inter-house tournaments. Congratulations to Colin, Kudzai and Gus; with Declan, Simreet and Mahi chosen as reserves.
Hywel Davies
Sustainability
A new beginning for our Sustainability Committee!
As our current D2s are busy with their final deadlines, we have decided to renew our Sustainability Committee’s members, with a new chair of the committee, Mathieu D. Founded in 2021 by current D2s and our Sustainability Coordinator, Mr Simon, the Committee aims at ensuring that the school abides by the UWC mission of creating a sustainable future. Our committee also plays a considerable role in spreading awareness amongst our PYP, MYP and DP students, as well as our staff members.
To trigger greater change, we have also been nationally involved through Pre-COP movements, and internationally involved through constructive youth proposals sent to the United Nations. Our current working groups are Waste Management, Water Consumption and Carbon Footprint. From finding alternative clean energies to researching efficient carbon offsetting measures, and collaborating with local recycling plants, our Sustainability Committee is working to become a key element of the Moshi Campus.
Our new committee members:
We are now focusing on an aerated box composting system to sustain our permeable gardens, helping in the creation of the tree nursery, finding ways to reuse greywater, in addition to cooperating with other groups in and off campus. Working with local regulations and, considering economic and technological factors, we are finding innovative measures for sustainable development and for creating a positive impact on communities.
We encourage everyone to approach any of our committee members regarding sustainability matters. Special thanks to Justina, who created and brilliantly chaired the Committee over the past year, as well as to her amazing team of D2s.
Emira and Mathieu
Rugby
We are thrilled to inform you that our school’s contact rugby club has been making tremendous progress, with over 40 students showing excellent passion for the sport. The team is led by an exceptional group of coaches, Mr. Simon, Mr. Baden, Mr. Alastair, and Mr. Hywel, who have been tireless in their efforts to support these young athletes.
Recently, the team played their first-ever game against the Moshi Bulls, and despite being unlucky with the scoreline, they put on an impressive performance that left the spectators entranced.
What’s even more inspiring is that the setback did not break their spirit, but instead motivated them further to strive for their next victory. Their dedication paid off last Thursday when they played against the Moshi Town team and stunned everyone with an outstanding performance that resulted in an incredible win. The team scored a decisive 38 points – 7 win, which ignited great excitement and pride throughout the school community.
After the game our D1 student and team captain Damien said “Rugby is a beastly game played by gentlemen, where you give it your all and leave it all on the field,” as Mr. Alastair would say. In just three weeks, our team has transformed from a group of novices with only the vaguest understanding of rugby to a squad of battle-hardened players, marked by well-earned grazes, tender muscles, and blue bruises. A huge thank you to everyone who came out to support us at our first-ever match, and to the loyal fans who cheered us on during our recent victory against the Moshi Bulls Local Team”
In addition to their success on the field, we are also thrilled to share that the rugby team has received their first official sponsorship for the kit from Zara Tours. This kind of support is not only a boost to the team’s morale but also showcases the exceptional talent within our school.
We wish the contact rugby team all the best in their upcoming games and competitions and look forward to cheering them on as they continue to go from strength to strength. A big shoutout to Mr. Simon for organizing these energizing games that have set our students on fire!
