Moshi Campus News – 20 Oct 17

Welcome back to the second quarter and I hope everyone had a restful break.  As you will see when you come in, not everyone had a break.  There have been some hard-working people that have put a lot of effort into making the campus look good.

We have a full next few weeks around campus with International Day, the Farmers’ Market, Halloween, Healthy Living week, Sports, OP trips and the UWC visit.  Please see the notices below for more information.

Please note that boarders are returning on Sunday the 22nd and classes will start Monday the 23rd.

Please remember that we have our International Day celebrations this Friday we return.  For us this day is a mix of the school’s birthday, the UN founding and a connection to our diverse community.

Students are encouraged to dress to represent their home country or countries. 

We will have an assembly that Friday morning starting at 7:35 am with the parade of flags.  The PTA will be setting up booths from different countries and regions of the world and these will be open from 12:30 to 3:30. Food will be available at many of these stalls and tickets will be sold for 2000 Tsh each.  Each ticket will buy a portion food and can be redeemed at any stall selling food. This money will go to the PTA for work they are doing at our school.

Off the success of the first market we will be having the second one on Friday November 3rd from 11am to 2:30pm outside K-hall.  More information will be in next week’s newsletter.

From Wednesday November 1st through Friday the 3rd, Laurence Nodder will be visiting the two campuses to see how things are progressing in our bid to be a UWC.  I feel that this is an interesting time to visit as we are in a busy stretch. This will be a good portrayal of the types of activities that happen every week here.  It will demonstrate how involved our community is in the school; and how involved the school is in the community.

The week ahead provides us with another chance to celebrate the diversity of our campus.  Over one in ten students here can claim dual nationality and with less than 300 students on campus we represent 24 countries from five continents.  That said, it is important as we go through our daily lives here that we just don’t celebrate the diversity on select days, but that we live the diversity and use it to better understand the world around us.  I hope the mural we all were involved in helps us remember this.

Monday the 23rd nine universities from Canada will be visiting Moshi campus from 3:30pm until 5pm to meet with students and parents.  All students in M5 to D2 are encouraged to attend as are parents.  These universities these universities have had a large number of ISM students attend in previous years and can provide good advice on applying to Canadian universities.

Closing Assembly
We are grateful to all parents/guardians who sacrificed their time to grace our assembly. We also wish to congratulate parents whose children were recognised for OP trips, Learner Profile attributes, sports and games.

MYP Reports
MYP  full reports will be released at the end of Quarter 2 (End of Semester 1). Meanwhile, all criteria grades can be accessed through Managebac by parents. Parents/guardians are requested to discuss these partial grades with their children/wards particularly where the grades are weak.

M5 May 2018 eAssessment Registration
The M5 students have been all registered for May 2018 eAssessment Exams.  They begin the ePortfolio work after November 1, 2017. This will be assessed by end of February.

Personal Project
The M5 students have their Draft 1 of the Personal Projects due on October 24 after the break. They have all support documents on Managebac.

David Ochieng

HOME OF THE LEOPARDS

The ISM Sports Department hopes that everyone has had a restful October Holiday. Lots of sporting action is upcoming for all Leopard Teams as the NTAA starts again on Wednesday October 25th and October 30th vs St Connies and Friday Friendlies on October 27th. Also coming right around the corner is the 17th Annual Sports Weekend on November 24th to 26th.

Congratulations to Kibo House as they won the Secondary School Sports Day.

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

The D2 students embark on a notoriously challenging/rigorous Quarter 2 in which a series of important coursework deadlines predominate including: The Extended Essay final version; the TOK Presentation, as well as first drafts of the Math and Science investigations.  Parental support will continue to be essential.

The D1 students need to be aware of the first Diploma Progression policy benchmarks which state: “At the end of the 2nd quarter, all full diploma students will be expected to have a minimum of 22 points (obtained by adding the reported achievement grades from their six subjects). Any student achieving fewer than 22 points at this stage (or achieving fewer than 11 HL points) will be required to undertake a reduced programme with either fewer subjects or with fewer higher levels in consultation with the DP Coordinator.”

Weblinks:

• On sleep/screens – https://bit.ly/2xqT6IL
• On smart phones/brain – https://on.wsj.com/2kv1eqG

Rick Fitzpatrick

New ISM 16GB USBs are available from reception for 25,000Tsh.  Though they may be small they have significant storage and are easy to twist open and closed.

Boarders are scheduled to return to school on Sunday 22nd October. We do not charge boarders for transport to and from  Kilimanjaro Airport on the scheduled closing day and opening days. However, we are not able to provide transport from Arusha airport. We therefore encourage parents to book flights that land in Kilimanjaro and Moshi airport and not Arusha.

If you did not book return tickets, then kindly arrange to book and send us details of these before the 22nd for planning purposes.

Diploma boys will move into the new dorm next quarter when they return.

Rosemary Bango

We hope you have all had an enjoyable break with your family. We are now looking forward to starting Quarter 2 when we will have lots going on: International Day, ISM’s 48th birthday, a PYP Sharing Assembly, overnight camps for some classes, Healthy Living Week, a visit from the United World College, Halloween fun, an inter-house primary athletics sports day, the Bugsy Malone musical production and lots, lots more. Life’s never dull in our school!

Thank you to all the parents who joined in with the Goal Setting Conferences just before the break. I hope you found this to be a valuable experience. I’m sure you will agree that with both their parents’ and teachers’ support the children are more likely to achieve their goals.

Reminder: The P1 – P6 students will now start their weekly swimming lessons. Please send your child with their swimming kit on the correct day.

Reminder: Clubs begin on Tuesday 24th October. Please collect your children at 13.05 on Monday (11.15 for EC).

Kate Schermbrucker

This quarter we start our unit “Sharing the planet”. We will begin by exploring the natural beauty and huge variation of life within our own school environment through photography and art. We will find and begin to classify some of the living things that we can see around us. We will focus on the three kingdoms of Animalia, Plantae and Fungi, and begin to understand what these living things have in common and how they are different from each other. Later we will look into how we as humans interact with other living things. The beauty and variation within our living world will serve as a starting point for us to find out more, and we will concentrate on the positive ways in which we as humans are working together to protect, encourage and appreciate our beautiful and fragile planet.

As always, learning through play, interaction and exploration will be a major focus.

You can help by encouraging the children to notice life around them on a daily basis, by asking questions and starting discussions about what they can see, hear, smell and feel around them. Be sure to let us know their interests and wonderings, either by letting the team know directly or through show and tell.

Owain Evans

Welcome back to school everyone.

I hope that you have all had a restful two weeks and are ready for the our next quarter.

We will be continuing with our transdisciplinary theme, how the world works. This coming week, we will be comparing our needs to the needs of other living things as we also review how to sort living and nonliving things. Do animals and plants share basic needs? It will be interesting to hear what the children have to say.

In maths, we will continue learning about our shapes. We will be listing the properties of 2D shapes and creating shape animals.

• Phase 2 sound: short vowel sound a
• Phase 3 sound: long vowel sound a
• Show & Tell: Janieck and Mahi

Please note our swimming lesson times as we prepare to start swimming lessons this quarter.

• Tuesday: P.E.
• Wednesday: Swimming

Mboka Mwsongwe

Thank you to all of you for encouraging and supporting your children with their goals.

This week the children will be putting their goals into action. They will be continuing their writing process and creating their own non-fiction book. We will be reviewing long vowel spelling patterns and short vowel sounds for those that need it. Handwriting will continue to be an ongoing focus. During reading the children will be focusing on making more connections with what we read, with what we know and comparing that information. In our unit we have decided to look at diversity and research into art from all over the world. In Math we will continue to work on identifying 2 and 3 dimensional shapes. They will be identifying the attributes of each shape (faces, sides, vertices etc).

Monday: Homework comes home
Tuesday: Library and PE
Thursday: Swimming will begin in class time
Friday: Homework due in

Have a restful weekend

Clare Hibbard

Welcome back! This quarter we have a lot to look forward to. The students have decided that they would like to research ancient Greece and have chosen various aspects of life and society that they would like to know more about. They will be inquiring into:

• How past civilisations were organised (FUNCTION)
• How the geographical environment affected past civilisations’ achievements (CAUSATION)
• The relationship between our past and our present day society (CHANGE)

They will be looking at Greek myths in language and beginning to craft their own stories. In Math we will continue to look at number systems and prepare for our own mathematical mini-Olympics. The students will be using computational skills (multiplication) in a practical and active way through this event. More details to come as the students plan this fun activity.

Please bring swimming kit to PE this quarter as swimming lessons will be taking place on Mondays and remember proper running shoes and water bottles for our Wednesday lesson.

Julie Bowen

I hope you have enjoyed the October break with your children and that they are feeling refreshed and full of energy for the next quarter. This week we will follow up our successful trip to the Karanga River by discussing the impact of mining rivers for gravel and sand on communities. The children will also continue researching the natural resources of different countries and start considering which areas interest them and might form the basis of a personal research project. We will carry on with our work on maps, scale and location and also start to publish our animal creation stories ready to read them to a younger class. Please note that swimming starts on Thursday.

Deborah Mills

Our current unit of inquiry is “People’s relationship with the Earth’s resources drives many of our actions.”
We are inquiring into:

• How communities and individuals use resources.
• Access to resources.
• The impact of the availability of resources on communities
• Consequences of our choices on the earth’s resources.

As part of our inquiry the P5 and P6 classes will be going on an overnight camp. We have made plans to camp at Simba Farm Lodge 7th- 8th November.

Cathy Wambua