Moshi Campus News – 8 Nov 2019

We are starting to settle into the normal routine after spending the first two weeks after break filled with energy fueled by schoolwide celebrations. All of that excitement can be wonderful, but for some students the loss of routines can be unsettling and stress inducing.

We continue to support students by encouraging them to stay in the moment, and employ healthy coping skills to create balance in the midst of their flurry of activity. This week, we invited two special presenters to provide information to assist students in dealing with some stressors they experience in life.

Hesther Schwarz (former ISM student) presented to a group of M5 through D2 students who were open to learning strategies to maximize their study sessions. During her presentation, she touched upon the topic of neuroplasticity, which is essential to helping your brain change and learn something new. She also taught techniques for remembering information through a variety of strategies, including visualization. Techniques for developing a growth mindset were also addressed, and she demonstrated this herself as a native Dutch speaker doing this presentation for the first time in English. We were also fortunate to have her father, Dr. Rolf Schwarz, an accomplished mental health expert, who spoke with M5 students about the impact of illegal substances on a growing body and mind. He also addressed issues related to addiction, which is a component of the M5 Life Skills curriculum.

The special guests continued when our D2s had a wonderful opportunity to hear from those who recently were in their shoes. On Tuesday, a panel of familiar and unfamiliar faces shared some important lessons on decision making, and making it through the college application process. Our panelists focused on the journey that they went through to get to their current position and the ways they dealt with challenges they faced along the way. Planning and creating a support network of likeminded peers was emphasized, as was the importance of creating balance, especially during stressful times. We are so grateful to our interns and special guests (again, including a former ISM student) for sharing their post-secondary story while the D2s are in the midst of creating their own. It is wonderful to see our village support each other as we all continue to grow and learn.

Upcoming University Events 11 November: Memorial University (Canada) at 10:30AM 12 November: Johns Hopkins University (USA/ Davis Scholar Program Partner institution) 3:00PM Virtual introduction and Essay Writing Workshop

Asante Cassandra Ford

This has been a busy week for some diploma students. Four of them went to St Constantine’s on Wednesday to compete in a swimming competition, congratulations to them. Early this morning, a large group of them have headed off to Fish Eagle Point for the first water OP trip. They will get a chance to go kayaking and snorkelling; there will be photos of this next week.

The D2 students continue to submit their internal assessments, by the end of next week the drafts for most subjects and, even, some final submissions will have come in. The TOK essay draft is the following week and, after Christmas, we have the mock examinations and the orals for languages. Their dedication to the work remains impressive and I hope their hard work pays off. This academic work is in addition to maintaining an impressive CAS Portfolio by engaging in service, participating in sports and being creative.

The D1 students are continuing to come up with ideas for student-led clubs, with a Poetry Club and a Chess Club starting this week. The French Club will be up and running soon. Some students are running clubs for Primary–we have a Choir, a Dance Club and an Astronomy Club. Well done to all involved. We continue to work with them in Life Skills on the recording of what they do in CAS.

A reminder that we have some students doing Diploma Exams at the moment– these students did not get the grades they wanted in May and are trying again. These exams will take place in Room 27, next to my office. Please can everyone continue to show respect to these students by being quiet around the room when exams are taking place.

Margaret Brunt

MYP Service As Action Assembly

We welcome all members of the community to Rafiki Hall on Monday 18th November from 10:30-11:20am. The MYP students will be showcasing their service projects. Service programs in the MYP not only afford students an opportunity to give back to the community but also reinforce students’ ability to apply multi-disciplinary knowledge and skills. They also allow students to practice 21st century skills needed in the modern workplace, such as teamwork (collaboration), communication, reflection, research, critical and creative thinking. These programs also build tenacity, resilience, perseverance and mindfulness as they work towards tight deadlines and relish their successes with moderation.

IDU Trip

The M4 will go to West Kili for an interdisciplinary learning expedition between Tuesday 26th November and Friday 28th November. The trip is coordinated by the Mathematics and Science departments. The students will be exploring biomass, temperature and soil quality at various altitudes to see how these affect each other. They will be seeking to establish the relationship between altitude and biomass. They will further establish the correlation between altitude and crop yields. From their analysis of data including rainfall patterns, they will advise Simba farmers accordingly.

October 2019 IB Online Magazine

Did you know that what became the IB Middle Years Programme was a brain child of UWCEA (back then ISM) in the late 1970s? The IB interviewed David Ochieng, MYP Coordinator, for their October Magazine. You can read the full article here.

David Ochieng Oloo

The past week in Residential Life has been no different from previous action-packed weeks, with various activities taking place on a daily basis involving residential students.

Last Saturday, the PYP residential students went for a fun trip to IBES Play Centre in Maji ya Chai to celebrate Scarlet’s birthday. They enjoyed their day playing on the adventure playground and shared a special birthday lunch. This Saturday, they will visit Mr Owain’s home, our Early Childhood teacher, who has very kindly invited them around for lunch.

On Tuesday, there was a Primary swim meet at St Constantine’s School in Arusha, with a similar fixture for Secondary students on Wednesday.

Today, around 5:30am, a mixture of 60 DP and MYP students (30 from Moshi and 30 from Arusha), plus staff chaperones, left for the very first OP Watersports Trip. Their destination is Fish Eagle Point, above Tanga, close to the Kenyan border. The students will be camping at a remote centre and taking part in kayaking, snorkelling and scuba diving activities. This is an exciting new expansion of our OP Programme and we wish all of the staff and students a safe and enjoyable trip.

Also today, the U13 girls and boys have football matches at Kennedy House.

I would like to remind the Parents/Guardians of all residential students that it is essential that we have up-to-date Parental Consent and Medical Forms. These need to be updated at the beginning of each academic year. If you know that you have not yet completed these for your child, please contact me by email for the blank forms.

Ian Horne

Well done, UWCEA Leopard Sharks, a fantastic effort in the swim meets. Our Primary team dominated their event and have grown from 4th this time last year to 1st at Tuesday’s meet. Our Secondary team competed on Wednesday and continued their undefeated run in the NTSAA with a convincing win. Thank you to Coach Sabini, Debbie and Christine for all your efforts in making sure our swimmers are working hard and enjoying their sports.

This afternoon, U13 soccer teams will travel to Kennedy House for friendly matches against the host school and Braeburn International School. This will be a great opportunity to hone their skills before next week’s official tournament. Next Saturday, we also have the U15 girls basketball and U13 girls and boys soccer teams competing at Braeburn. At the same time, we will also have our U19 boys and girls soccer teams playing at St Constantine’s in their NTSAA tournament. We wish them all luck and I know they will do UWCEA proud.

Dr Marieke and our school nurse have noticed that there have been several shin injuries as a result of students not wearing shin guards to soccer training and in games. In order to protect your child, our PE staff and Coaches have been told that no student may train or play without having shin guards. The PE department has a limited supply of guards and can sign out a pair to students through Mr Patrick from the PE store. Thank you in advance for supporting us in keeping your children safe.

Go Leopards!

Robin Marsh

The week has been as productive as ever as our learning community engaged in different activities around our school environment. Our teachers have surely been fulfilled which is a more positive way of saying “busy” and the weekend is well deserved.

As Ms Elisha communicated during the week, we have started our Primary Student Voice and the reps have been elected by their respective class members. They had their first meeting on Friday and are keen to organise a Spirit Day this semester…so, stay tuned.

As teachers, we enjoyed our second Professional Growth Programme (PGP) meetings where small groups are focusing on school-wide goals. It has been great to see the collaboration between Secondary and Primary teachers as we work towards continually improving teaching and learning. I am leading ‘The Enhanced PYP’ group. An interesting point has already come up around the importance of reinforcing student choice and voice at school and at home whilst actively encouraging the students to express themselves in a principled manner. This will help to create a culture of confident, independent learners and promote respectful interactions.

We also shared that learning is for the whole community and our environment is a great tool to promote formal and informal learning both at home and at school. The IBO has put together a PYP playlist with information for the whole community on different aspects of the programme.

I wish you all a wonderful weekend.

Cathy Wambua-Saha

Thank you for sending in photographs of the children with their pets. We explored some of the habits and needs of each and began to use our IT lessons to find out more. We will be producing models of our pets and building a mini-home for them with all of the things they require to be happy and healthy. Through this, we will see plenty of opportunities to sort, count, read, write, speak, research and share our ideas with others in the learning community.

One of our classmates returns to Australia next week, and we wish him and his wonderful family all the best for the future.

Owain Evans

P1/2’s have been busy carrying out exploits in and out of school. A number of them attended the athletics tournament in Arusha last Friday. This was their first tournament out of school and they were very excited! Well done Alice, Tiago, Atuganile, Milo and Rimon.

More congratulations are due to Tiago who was the only P2 student who joined the team that travelled to SCIS to attend the swimming tournament.

After creating the pirate pictures last week, the children have been hankering for more exciting art projects. So this week, we sourced out wood and began creating an art piece that is already consuming our thoughts. We sanded down our wood blocks and created a draft drawing using a pencil. We are still negotiating what media to use to complete our work. At the moment, paint and markers are leading the debate. Thank you Mr. Marsh and Mr. Kaniki for answering our call for wood.

Next week, we will be interviewing people from different classes as we continue to build our knowledge of our primary school. Our math work will heavily involve how we can collect and organise data.

After carrying out our secret ballot, we now have our new Student Voice representatives who are Tiago and Savannah.

Mboka Mwasongwe  

I feel like at the end of every week, I look back and wonder how time seems to be flying by. This week, our focus has been on completing projects and focusing on time. Quite fitting since it is probably the one thing we never have enough of during the school day! We have worked on telling time to the hour and half hour and the students are growing in confidence every day.

We have also been focusing on adjectives and how they can help our writing be more detailed and exciting. The students have created some interesting sentences about a running cat. They have also played a noun, adjective and verb game and made up some funky sentences that will soon be displayed outside our class.

A big congratulations to Ciara Marsh and Janieck Noorlander who have been elected as the representatives for Student Voice in P3. Ciara, Janieck, Gus and Scarlett all did a fantastic job speaking confidently and informing the class of their strengths and why they would be a good leader.

On a less happy note, this was the last week we had Georgina in our class. We are all extremely sad to see her go. Georgina arrived and fitted into our classroom like she had always been there. She will certainly be leaving a void. Good luck, Georgina, and the entire Ward family. We will miss you!

Elisha Jaffer

We carried out some interesting investigations and it was fascinating to observe the various reactions. Paper and its different textures produce different effects when you paint on them. Absorbent paper creates a beautiful effect with water colors. You might want do discuss with your child what they discovered and help them make further connections at home.

Next week, we will be making models using pulleys as we continue further into our investigations into energy and force. In Math, we would like to apply our knowledge of measurement towards arts and crafts. Kindly send your child with an old t-shirt for this project. We will introduce number patterns by making connections with multiplication and repeated addition.

In Literacy, we are using story maps to help us organise our writing into different elements. This will inform us further when retelling the first two chapters of the book we are studying. We are also continuing to make connections with word study and correct sentence structure.

Wishing you a lovely weekend.

Cathy Wambua-Saha

Today, the class shared their informative animal migration posters. Each student chose an animal to draw and research. They learned adaptations to survive, migration routes, risks, challenges, and opportunities animals found while migrating. We have been working as a class community to be more principled, and have a goal to be more kind to our classmates.

Please ask them about “Sam”, a paper doll that we passed around our circle to show how sarcastic or negative comments can affect someone during the day.

Next week, we are lucky to have many D1 students come visit to interview them about their migration history. On Tuesday and Wednesday the class will get to hear about young people who have migrated to Moshi on their own. We would like to invite any parents to come in on Thursday to share your personal stories with the class. If you have recycled materials at home (bottle caps, wrappers), I ask you collect those objects and send them in by Wednesday for our art project.

Lastly, we say farewell to Eleanor today who is returning to Australia with her family. It has been such a pleasure having you in our class. We will all miss you and hope you keep in touch.

Sarah Brummel

This week, the P6 students have been investigating electricity. They have been using bulbs, buzzers and motors to construct simple circuits. Next week, they will work individually to construct a model that shows some kind of energy transformation. We hope to share this work with parents in the future–I will email you the date later.

The children have been playing some dictionary games to expand their vocabulary. Next week, we will look at root words and how they can help us work out the meaning of a word (for example, phone usually occurs in words to do with sound, such as telephone, microphone, symphony.) In maths, we will have a break from our work on addition and subtraction and will do some work with lines and angles.

I was proud of the children that ran as candidates for the Student Voice. There were many very well prepared speeches and it was a close run contest. Congratulations to Tanya and Raymond on their successful election.

Deborah Mills