Moshi Campus News – 22 Aug 2020

Moshi Campus News – 22 August 2020

Contents

Reminders

Ben’s Corner

Diploma News

MYP News

From the Counselor

Outdoor Pursuits

Sports Update

PYP News

EC/P1 Class

P2/3 Class

P4 Class

P5 Class

P6 Class

A Great Week Back

It is now official; we have started the 2020/21 school year and it feels great.  After months with the quiet and encroaching wildlife we have the vibrancy of students back on campus. As of this weekend we have over 90% of all students here with more expected in the next two weeks. Looking around it has been much like the start of any school year with students enthusiastically greeting friends they have not seen and welcoming in the new faces to the crowd.

Although Mr Morley does it more eloquently below, allow me to thank everyone that got us back to this stage, that includes those that work here and the parents, some of whom had to jump through considerable hoops just to get students here.

Looking below you will see important information about upcoming clubs, activities, OP trips and other items in addition to the updates on classes.  Please note we have a primary “Meet the Teacher” event on Thursday the 26th and there will be Parent Coffee Mornings and MYP related events scheduled soon.  Due to the spread of parents around the world, the DP updates will likely still be done via Zoom.

So, from me, it is great to see all the returning families and welcome to the new ones.  If you have any questions, please come by the office to see me, or email me if that works better.

Bob Cofer

Head of Campus

Reminders

Please remember that lunch tickets are available for sale in the accounts office.  These are 7,500Tsh for secondary students and 4,500Tsh for primary students.

Also, UWCEA t-shirts for primary students are available in the development office.  There is an assortment of new colors with more on the way. The office is open for purchasing from 7:15 to 8:00am and from 1:15 to 4pm.

Ben’s Corner

…and we are off!! After what seems like an eternity, our second year as UWC East Africa has officially started. We have all had to adapt and make accommodations and, probably, will need to continue to but we are here, we are together as a community of learners and there is much to look forward to.

We have been unable to have the usual Welcome Assembly for obvious reasons and, so, I would like to take this opportunity to say “asante” to a few people. Mr Afzal, Mr Kaniki and the maintenance team. Ms Asifiwe and the cleaners. Ms Tahera and her dedicated team in the kitchen. Mr Sanga and our often nocturnal team of drivers. Mr Juma and the gardening team. Mustafa and the accounts team and, last but far from least, Mr Josephat, the brand new “Keeper of the Keys.” We are very lucky to have all of these people working behind the scenes and, often, around the clock to make our campus and environs ready so that teaching and learning can happen. Be sure to pass on your thanks too.

Also, thank you to our dedicated team of D2 students, who gave up their time, energy and effort as members of the Student Orientation Committee. Their plans this year often had to be drastically adjusted or, even, abandoned completely but they faced the challenge with flexibility, understanding and patience…most of the time. Thanks to Mr Carson for supporting them.

A special mention to Mr Adam too for continuing to work so tirelessly to support the safe arrival of our new NC students from all corners of the globe. As I am sure you can appreciate, the current situation around the world made this task even more complex than it usually is and hats off to Adam that we were able to open on Monday with the vast majority of our NC students on site.

Lastly, “congratulations” to our new teachers who have survived their first week! In fact, they have all been in-country for a few weeks now, involved in an orientation programme of their own. We hope you enjoyed meeting our students and are starting to feel part of the community.

We are all so happy to be up and running again. There will, almost certainly, be more bumps in the road but at least we are moving again and it feels great to be back.

Ben Morley

Deputy Head of Campus

Diploma News

Classes have started this week and there is a buzz to campus that has been missing for a long time.

For D2 students it was back to work with a bang with assessments in many subjects. This is because diploma is a two-year course and any work studied in D1 will be assessed in the final exam. Teachers are checking with students about the work covered during the distance learning time and although this cannot be retaught, support is available. The IB have recently sent out information about some changes to the May 2021 assessments. In some cases papers have been removed and in others there are changes to the selections of questions or tasks. Teachers have talked to students about this and the implications for the individual subjects.

Students have been reminded of the deadlines for their Internal Assessments, Extended Essay etc. These can be found here. This is a live document and will be updated if things change. It is important students plan their time carefully so they can meet deadlines.

Both D1 and D2 teachers are providing support for students both off and on campus. Support includes Google Classroom and Kognity. For those of you who have children in D2, you should have already received an invitation to receive guardian summaries last year and for those of you who have children in D1 the invitations will be coming soon. If you have not received an invitation by the end of next week, then please let me know on dp_moshi@uwcea.org and I will check it out. Kognity is an online text book which we are using in groups 3 to 5 and TOK, more details can be found here.

The D1 students got a chance to meet with Ms Ford, our college counsellor, or me to discuss their choices last week. For students who are not on campus these were done by Zoom and are still continuing in some cases. These conversations allowed students to explore their interests and future plans as they selected subjects. A few students have made changes this week and they have until the end of the month to change subjects easily. At the end of August, I will send students and their parents a confirmation of their subjects. Changes are still possible after that but are not recommended and require confirmation from parents, all teachers involved and the college counsellor.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Margaret Brunt
DP Coordinator

MYP News

I want to thank you all for the great start of the school year.  The MYP is buzzing with energy and enthusiasm.  As we familiarize ourselves with our new schedules and introduce ourselves to new students we must remember how lucky we are to be here together.

This year we are going to be focusing on various skills during our mentor time.  In MYP our initial focus is on organizational skills.  Please ask to see your child’s diary and note that they are working hard to keep track of their assignments and responsibilities.

My door is always open and I am just an email away, please keep in touch and ask questions.  My goal is to have a parent session in the near future where we discuss the MYP and all its facets to help you better understand what it is you are reading when you look at your child’s reports on managebac.

Stay tuned and welcome back.

Jeanne Aman

MYP Coordinator

Student Activities

Below is an initial list of student activities starting this week.

From the Counselor

We hope that you are ready to enjoy a wonderful weekend to refresh after the first week of the new school year. This is a great time to review expectations and routines now that we’re back in session, and to set goals for a positive year ahead. Hopefully you have seen this week’s Wellness Wednesday Weekly message, and will take a moment to complete the survey. Thank you to those of you who have already completed the survey, we hope to have more responses than we had to the survey at the end of the school year in order to continue planning mental health services for our school community throughout the year. Our staff are already engaged in Safeguarding, and some teachers on the Moshi campus took part in a Mindfulness training by our own Marissa Lipovsky during last week’s Wellness Wednesday. Members of staff also watched the documentary “Angst” this Wellness Wednesday and look forward to exploring more of the topic of anxiety and young people. Stay tuned.

Please remember the Mental Health and well-being survey due 28 August 2020.

On the University planning side, it has been a great week of meeting with Diploma Programme students in person or virtually to review their courses and continue to explore their post-secondary plans. Although our work at this time is focused on DP students, we will be doing presentations with M4 and M5 students in the coming months, as well as parents presentations. We invite you to reach out to us if you have any questions along the way, and invite parents to request access to their child’s Maia Learning account (currently only D2 and former M5 students. More accounts coming soon to all D1 and M4-M5).

Here are the welcome videos that were emailed to Diploma students last Friday, and we welcome interested parents, and students who have not accessed their email accounts yet, to view them via the links below:

D1 Counselor Welcome Message from last week

D2 Counselor Welcome Message from last week

We wish you a wonderful weekend, and are here to support you throughout the school year.

UWCEA School Counseling Team

Cassandra Ford; Emmanuel Kileo

Outdoor Pursuits

This year will see our OP program expand again; it was only 3 years ago we were running 8 OP mountain hike trips. This year we will be offering more than 20 trips with 4 different focuses.  The Mountain hiking will continue bigger and better than ever with Kilimanjaro’s Uhuru Peak summit the pinnacle. The Water OP is looking at moving all the way to level 5 where students could be involved in service, creating coral nurseries, planting coral, Padi dive certification and creating artificial reefs. Our Mountain Bike OP will look to build itself to level 4 or 5 also, with a fantastic level 3 ride from Arusha to Moshi (through Arusha National Park) and the new flatland hike which was a hit will also be developing, building on the level 1 last year to level 4 or 5 by the close of the 20/21 school year also.

Below is a list of trips and dates for semester 1 with dates and costs included.  Sign up closing this weekend.  Please note changes to dates as we had to make some small changes due to Testing conflicts. Also please see which trips which can be claimed as “first free trip” for students new to secondary.

Sports Update

It was a fantastic feeling coming into school on Monday with soooo many students happy to return to some type of normality, I think it was the first time I have had a majority students say they are ecstatic to be back at school.

NTSAA news – The group felt that due to concerns over Covid 19 all official interschool sports for quarter 1 will be placed on hold and only hold more individual/non-contact sports in quarter 2.  This means that we will be running Athletics, Cross Country, Rounders and a Swim Meet during quarter 2 with maybe some less official tennis/badminton tournaments a possibility.  At school we will be running training for other sports such as Soccer, Volleyball & Basketball.

In order to keep you all active and recover some of the fitness lost since March we will be running some internal competitions with UWCEA Arusha Campus so you can get some game time in some team sports. On campus activities will be back in action, with CrossFit going strong already and other activities able to start again now school is open. 

On top of this we will be starting a run/walk challenge against Waterford UWC in Eswatini to see which campus can cover the distance from Moshi to Eswatini. So, keep an eye on the newsletter for more information.

Please contact me if you have any other ideas or would like to offer fitness/sports opportunities to our community in August, robinmarsh@uwcea.org.

Go Leopards
Robin Marsh

PYP News

Dear Parents,

On Thursday at 6:00pm there will be a PYP “Meet the Teacher” evening. On Friday the youngest child in each family took home a letter about this event and Ms. Grace Mkumbwa has also emailed you the details. The meeting will start off on the grass outside the PYP classrooms and there will be the opportunity to tour your child’s classroom. Please remember to wear your face mask when doing so.

After school clubs begin on Monday 24th August. The slips were handed out on Friday. If your child is not attending a club please be sure to collect them at 1:10pm.

Your child should have given you a parent survey to complete. There is a section for you to complete and a section to write with your child. Please send this survey back to school with your child or hand it to the class teacher on Thursday evening.

Yours sincerely,

Deborah Mills

Mboka Mwasongwe

PYP Co-Coordinators

EC/P1 Class

Dragons and fairies, Spiderman with the Hulk, Brown Bear and purple horses all visited our classroom this week. I am not kidding. It is true! They all joined in with our bump, happy morning song and played knock knock games with us. After all these ‘occurrences’, EC/P1 surely deserved the leaf they received during Primary Gathering for being risk-takers!

Now we begin the journey of – “Knowing how we are similar and different to others helps shape our understanding of self.” This is the central idea that we will be inquiring into this quarter. We will begin by exploring our physical similarities and differences. On our investigation station, there are mirrors that the children will be using to identify what makes us the same or different. For mathematics, we will begin to collect some information about ourselves such as how many are boys and how many are girls. The children will decide what information they will be collecting.

Florence Hoffman and Bent Henke will be representing our class as student voice for this semester. Well done for being willing to do so!

I am looking forward to seeing you on Thursday the 27th for ‘Meet the Teacher’ evening.

Mboka Mwasongwe

P2/3 Class

It’s been a fun first week back to school. We’ve been talking about feelings, learning different breathing techniques, and working on meditating to get into school mode.

We challenged students to use the environment to create a piece of clothing, this particular activity produced some interesting fashion pieces, and in some cases, an opportunity to practice our calming down breathing technique.

Overall, I’ve had a great week laughing and learning more about the students in P 2/3. I believe we’re going to have an amazing year.

I’m looking forward to meeting you on Thursday at the Meet the Teacher evening.

Elisha Jaffer

P4 Class

What a wonderful start to the year! We have a lovely class with lots of enthusiastic students. We spent time learning some basic procedures for the school year and got busy with our math and writing. Our first unit of the year is Heroes and we’ve kicked it off with a quick look at Superheroes! We’ll soon focus on heroes of literature and history but a few days of a fun focus on what makes a superhero so super will point us in the right direction.

  • Unit: Heroes
  • Central Idea: We look to heroes to show us who we can be
  • Lines of Inquiry: The qualities of heroes; Role models and their influence on us; The impact ‘heroic’ people have had on society

Please do join us on Thursday night for our “Meet the Teacher” evening at 6. Details have gone out in an email and on a paper sent home with your youngest student. I look forward to telling you more about the plans for the year and taking your questions.

For the week ahead, please remember that PE SWIM starts on Monday. Send your child with a swimsuit and towel (goggles are optional) in a separate bag.

Our regular PE will be on Wednesday so students should wear or bring trainers. Our Library day is now set for Fridays so books need to be returned and new books will be checked out.

Talking points with your students: our time capsules and superhero stories that you know.

Kacey Buckley

P5 Class

We have had a lovely week in P5. The children have been happily reconnecting with old friends and Ms. Lydia and I have been getting to know them all. We are all looking forward to Habib’s arrival next week. The children have completed a maths investigation based on the book, “Martha Blah Blah,” by Susan Meddaugh. They have also made posters about themselves and written about an activity they did over the long break. You will be able to see these things on display at the “Meet the Teacher” evening at 6:00pm on Thursday 27th August. Please  be sure to wear your face mask when you enter the classroom. Next week we will start our unit of inquiry on Rights and Responsibilities. Home learning will start next week and the children will bring home a daily reading book. The children need to have a pair of indoor shoes to keep at school – please can you send these in next week if you have not already done so.

Deborah Mills

P6 Class

The P6 students had a great first week back in school. We all appreciated and enjoyed simply being together again. This week was full of fun and activities both inside and out. Beyond the fun the class completed some good beginning of the year business. They set goals, created a job board, took a math assessment, and revised their classroom agreement.

We started reading a new book, which they are already requesting daily. Number the Stars takes place in Denmark and involves a Jewish family receiving assistance to escape. This is allowing us to look at how different governments responded and what actions leaders took during a time of war. It connects us to our first unit, governmental systems and decisions can promote or deny equal opportunities and social justice. If you would like to share about your personal country’s government, please let me know. 

I’m looking forward to meeting you on Thursday at the Meet the Teacher evening.

Sarah Brummel