Moshi Campus News – 2 Jan 2019

As we start the second half of the year a big welcome back to our returning families and an initial welcome to our new ones.  I do hope that everyone had an enjoyable and restful break. 

As we enter 2019, I would first like to thank all of those people in our community that helped make the first half of the year so successful.  While a school is there for the benefit of the students it takes a lot of people in a vast number of roles to make it run smoothly.  The efforts on many fronts mean that students at ISM receive much more than a base education, but rather one that provides them opportunities and experiences.

Over the next month students in P6, M5 and D2 will take significant steps forward in their end of program routines.  The P6 students will start looking at their Exhibition, the M5 students will start the ePortfolio and submit their Personal project and the D2 students will sit their Mock Exams.  For these students, these are major events in their education and as such generate excitement and trepidation.  However, it is important to remember that these are only milestones in an ongoing educational process.  It is not an ending, only an occasion to look at how far you have come.  In fact, for all of us, the New Year brings the chance to look back at the past year and reflect on what we learned and look ahead to the fresh year’s challenges and opportunities.

To everyone in our community, I wish you a happy and healthy 2019 with success in all of your personal challenges and opportunities.

Bob Cofer

This month we have the following:

• This month we have two OP trips, a Level 2 trip to the Usambaras that starts on January 24th and a Level 4 trip to Mt Meru that starts on January 31st.
• Diploma Mock Exams run from Monday January 21st through Tuesday January 29th.
• The new sports season has its first matches on Saturday January 19th for U13, 15 and 19s.
• The P6 Exhibition retreat is on January 17th and 18th.

I hope you have enjoyed a safe and restful break with family and friends. For our Diploma students, I trust that you used your time productively but that you also found time to rest, relax and sleep! Good luck with all that is to come over this semester and, at a time when everyone is full of words of wisdom or advice, be sure you do all that you can to ensure your results are a true reflection of your abilities.

Thank you to all of you who were able to come along to discuss your child’s learning at the end of semester Parent Teacher Conferences. We hope these were beneficial conversations for you and opportunities to gain valuable insight into your child’s learning, to hear about their successes but also areas of development and ways that you might support these going forward.

We are excited to welcome a number of new families to our ISM community at this time…from EC right the way through to DP. We are proud of the vibrant and caring community we have here at ISM and look forward to your child (and yourselves) becoming fully involved in the different elements of our holistic learning programme. Karibu sana.

We will soon be into the rhythm of a new semester and all the associated events and happenings. At this time of year, there is often a tendency to take stock and make resolutions for the months ahead. Generally, these resolutions focus on our failings and, ironically, we often fail to keep them. Sadly, education systems also have a tendency to focus on deficits, targeting a student’s “weaknesses” rather than a student’s strengths. So, at this time of the year, I encourage you all to concentrate on possibilities rather than shortcomings. To quote Ellen Goodman:

“We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives… not looking for flaws, but for potential.”

Here’s wishing you all a successful semester of learning together, full of potential. Happy New Year!

Ben Morley

Our Outdoor Pursuits program last semester was fantastic with great involvement from the students.  Due to the rainy season we have fewer trips in semester two, but they are just as much fun.  The first one is the Usambaras L2 trip in January so if you are interested you need to act quick.  Many slots are filled for all of the trips, but space is available if you have not signed up yet.  I hope you get out and enjoy the sights of Tanzania.

Welcome
We welcome all students back to school hoping they have enjoyed their December Break. We also take this opportunity to welcome all new MYP students.

M5 ePortfolio
M5 students are doing their ePortfolio units and assessments in French and English Language Acquisition together with the Arts. The grades in these subjects together with the Personal Project will be submitted to the IB as final grades for the May 2019 examinations.

M5 PP Timeline
The M5 candidates are refining their PP reports. Draft 2 Reports are due on January 15 while final reports will be handed in on January 29, 2019. These reports must be accompanied by the Process Journals and evidence of completed products or outcomes. The exhibition will follow on Tuesday February 12.

M5 Mock Examinations
The M5 students will take Mock Examinations on February 20 to 22, 2019.

Community Service
The MYP cohorts continue with service activities. M5 students are working with Kibo Secondary school; M4 students are with Kili Centre; M3 students with the local daycare; M2 students are working on Bee Keeping while M1 students continue with school garden.

David Ochieng

Welcome back for the second semester. School opens for quarter 3 on Tuesday 8th January, 2019. Boarders are therefore expected to return to school on Monday, 7th January. Kindly send us flight details for your child if you want us to pick them up from Moshi airport, Kilimanjaro International Airport or Moshi bus station. Information about travel can be sent to the child’s boarding parent and to the Head of Boarding at rosemarybango@ed.ismoshi.com.

We offer free school transport from these locations on the scheduled opening dates. Kindly note that the school does not provide transport to and from Arusha airport. On other days, we charge $60 for transport one way.

Just a reminder that some parents have not filled the health forms for your children. This information is very important for us on campus, or in situations where students have been taken out of campus. If you fall in this category, then kindly ensure that we get the health form filled before the next quarter. We gave all students a form to bring home over the break. It can also be downloaded from our website.

Rosemary Bango

Happy New Year and welcome back Leopards.  This semester looks like another fantastic sports filled time with NTAA U19 and U13 Basketball and U15 Soccer tournaments all coming up very soon (end of January to Mid February), several Swim meets, NTAA Primary and Secondary Touch tournaments, Primary Netball, Primary and Secondary Cross Country, Secondary Ultimate frisbee and a Triathlon just for good measure. 

Kilimanjaro Marathon – https://www.kilimanjaromarathon.com/

This year we would like to get the biggest showing ever of ISMers in the Kilimanjaro Marathon on March 3rd.  Now don’t panic, I am not expecting you all to run 42km, yet.  There is also the 21km and the 5km.  The ISM MYP students will be set a criteria A, B, C and D assignment in classes to design a training program to be able to complete the Kilimanjaro Marathon 5km using and applying their knowledge from the recent Athletics and Health and Fitness units completed before the holiday.  It would be great to have other family members and supporters training and running the race with them. If you are interested please email me robinmarsh@ed.ismoshi.com by Monday the 14th of January with the following details of any runners participating from your family – full name (as shown on your passport), passport number, nationality, expiry date, date of birth, gender and age as of 3rd of March 2019. 

Robin Marsh

On Tuesday 11th December students in Secondary participated in a Mathematics and Science House Quiz. They were split into three categories M1 to M3, M4 to M5 and D1 to D2. Students split into groups of 3 by house and worked together to solve the questions. They then marked their peer’s work.

The atmosphere was at times tense, but the students enjoyed it. The questions were a mixture of easy and hard and gave the students to show off their knowledge and problem-solving skills.

In M1 to M3 the winning house was Kibo and the winning team was Lyra, Ananya, Ceci, and Dhriti from Kibo.

In M4 to M5 the winning house was Kibo and the winning teams were Julius, Willem, and Mushabe from Kibo and Donyo, Nsimbo, and Aftab from Mawenzi

In D1 to D2 the winning house was Mawenzi and the winning teams were Irene, Augusta, and Nikoli from Mawenzi and Michael, Pearl, and Yuk Yi from Mawenzi.

Congratulations to all involved.

Margaret Brunt

Happy New Year and welcome back! It was great spending time with family and friends in Mombasa; my home ground. It was difficult to keep track of calories and days as they went by, which was a sure sign to me that I was in true holiday mode. I hope you have all rested and are ready for Quarter 3.

I would like to welcome families that are new to ISM. We are now looking forward to another busy and fun quarter ahead. Lessons will begin at 7.30am on Tuesday the 8th of January. Please bring the children in a few minutes early, as they will be excited to see their friends and catch up with their news in the playground. You will need to collect your child at 1.05pm on the first day back (11.15 for EC). Clubs will begin on Wednesday 9th January. If you have not had a chance to sign your child up for clubs, kindly do so using this link.

Cathy Wambua-Saha

Welcome back!

I trust that your holiday was relaxing and fun. I’m looking forward to hearing all the children’s stories. “On Christmas we went to the beach and saw Batman fighting with an elephant” etc.

We’ll be starting a new unit and things will be hotting up for our EC2 children in particular. This second part of the year will be a chance to introduce them to their own reading book and begin to increase the time they spend in more ‘formal’ classwork and activities in preparation for their move up to P1.

I look forward to a great year ahead. Please remember to send library books, and especially swimming kits, each and every Friday!

Owain Evans

Happy New Year to all of you and welcome back to another semester. I hope you have all had a restful holiday and are ready to start with us.

As a reminder, we will be continuing with our unit concerning how we express ourselves. Our central idea is creativity can be nurtured through inspiration, imagination and application.

Our lines of inquiry are as follows:

• Identifying imagination
• How we use our imagination
• Investigating what inspires people
• Applying imagination to creative endeavours

This coming week, we will be creating plays in groups and performing them in class. We will also be creating oral stories and talking about our holidays.

This week, show and tell is free for all. Before we closed, we talked about being ready to show the class an item that would highlight our holidays. All the children are able to bring in anything they wish on any day and we will make time for them to show and tell about it.

Mboka Mwasongwe

Happy New Year! I hope the start to 2019 was a joyful one for you and your families. It is hard to believe that Moshi has now been home for 5 months. Time seems to have passed very quickly and I thank you all for the seamless start and end to Semester 1.

Many of you may have heard the words “Mickey Mouse”, “hydrogen” and “oxygen” being used before the break. One of the student questions for our current unit on water was “what is water made of?” In order to showcase this, we had the help of Mr. Melhado’s Chemistry class who came in and showed the class the process of hydrolysis and electrolysis. We talked about what allows oxygen and hydrogen to bond and saw that the water molecule rather resembles Mickey Mouse’s face. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Rhona, Jigna and Tanpreet for coming in and answering A LOT of questions!

I look forward to seeing the students back in school on Tuesday the 8th of January, as well as a fruitful second semester.

Elisha Jaffer

Happy New Year to all the P4 families. I welcome you back to a new quarter and hope you have all had a very restful break. We have some great activities lined up for the week as we continue with our unit on our beliefs and values. I would encourage your child to bring in an artifact that represents culture, religion or a personal belief. We will be looking at how we are connected through celebrations. In Math, we will focus on time and in Language Arts, we will use poetry to express ourselves.

Our timetable remains the same- Tuesday – Library, Thursday-  P.E. and Friday – Swimming. Kindly return any library books borrowed over the break.

Cathy Wambua-Saha

Happy New Year and Welcome Back! I hope you all had a great holiday with relaxing and fun moments. I spent time in Michigan with friends, family, and my beloved dogs. I am looking forward to seeing all your children and sharing stories about our vacation time.

Before break, a copy of their Migration Narratives went home. I hope you were able to enjoy them. If they got lost in the hustle and bustle of the holidays, we can email a copy to you. Please let me know.

When we return, we will be investigating energy and humans relationship with power. In math, we will continue with decimals. Though currently I am in snow country, I know the heat is gaining intensity in Moshi. Please remind your child to pack a hat and water bottle daily. It is important that they get their break time play, and can stay hydrated in class.

Sarah Brummel

I hope that you have enjoyed the break. I look forward to seeing the children back at school on Tuesday, 8th January, refreshed and ready for the second semester. The first week back we will be starting a maths unit on shape and space which will include working out area, perimeter and measuring angles. We will also continue with our work on advertising. The children have devised the central idea, “Advertising comes in different forms and tries to make you behave in a certain way.” They will make their own adverts, employing some of the persuasive techniques they have researched.

Deborah Mills