Arusha Campus News – 14 Nov 2021

The triumphant Arusha Rhino Swim Team which surged to overall victory in yesterday’s NTSAA Swim Gala.

Well done Arusha Campus swimmers for winning the swimming gala at St Constantine’s yesterday. For those of you who are not in Arusha at the moment, you may not be aware of the soaring temperatures that we are experiencing at the moment. Rain should have come by now and instead we are receiving the brunt of some brutal midday November heat. I think the swimming gala was welcome respite for some of our athletes!

I wonder if our strange weather here has something to do with the climate change that the world is experiencing as a whole. WIth COP26 drawing to a close, we can only hope that the frenzy of envionmental concern and enthusiasm to ‘do better’ that has been the vogue for the past two weeks in Scotland, actually lasts and turns into something meaningful. That said, its no good lamenting the wobbly conviction of our political leaders if we as individuals do not step up to the plate. I spoke to our senior students last week about the fact that as a UWC we have no choice but to make decisive changes to our own lifestyles that will not only make a difference but that sets an example to others. We are not the golden angels that many of us like to think we are. Lets compare ourselves to the Magereza School on the other side of our road. When calculated per head, UWC East Africa Arusha Campus uses more water, eats more meat, uses more electricity, burns more diesel, creates more food waste, generates more disposable waste……the list goes on.

So in fact, we are a long, long way behind and need to catch up.

Some parents have pointed out that they are not always aware of upcoming events. I have introduced a ‘Dates for the Diary’ section beneath this article which I hope helps in a small way.

Have a relaxing Sunday and week ahead.

Phil

Phil

Friday 19th November – Start of Secondary Sports Weekend in Moshi

Friday 26th November – Start of the Arusha Christmas Fair hosted in the car park of Arusha Campus

Friday 3rd December 7pm – ‘Freaky Friday’ drama production

Saturday 4th December 7pm – ‘Freaky Friday’ drama production

Wednesday 8th December – Last day of School

Monday 10th January 2022 – First day of School

Secondary teachers have been busy completing their first report cards of the year. D2 reports went out on Friday. The D2 reports are earlier than the rest of the school as their school year essentially ends after Quarter 3. MYP, Primary, and D1 reports will come out on December 8th.

Value #9 – A healthy lifestyle and active pursuits
Ms Caitrin, having just recovered from the busy Athletics weekend, turned her focus to preparing for Saturday at St. Constantine’s for the Swim Gala and for next weekend’s very busy Sports Weekend in Moshi. Go Rhinos!

Value #7 – Opportunities to engage in the culture and nature of East Africa
We have two OP trips out this weekend, Plains Level 2 and Peaks Level 3. See image above for the Peaks group at the base of Mt. Hanang.

Value #8 – A shared responsibility and a collective duty of care for ourselves, each other and the environment
Value #10 – The happiness and well-being of our community
Value #6 – The ambition of students to demonstrate initiative and take on leadership roles
In our secondary assembly on Tuesday, Mr Phil shared his thoughts on COP26 and how we at UWC East Africa have a responsibility to make (sometimes uncomfortable) changes to our lifestyles as individuals and as a school. Some ideas shared were increasing our vegetarian days in the canteen to reduce the devastating impact of meat production and reducing our reliance on printed material. Dr Robin also shared with us some great advice and strategies to deal with stress and D2 Alessandro and his CAS group spoke about their Blood Drive initiative.

Value #3 – A holistic and diverse portfolio of learning experiences
Backstage and Props CCAs have been busy finalizing resources and painting backdrops for the musical Freaky Friday which is approaching fast. M5s spent their mornings this week running through a practice session of each eAssessment they will sit later this year. Two of our new CCAs on Mondays have been quite popular. Portrait Photography, which is run by Mr Niels and Golf, which is run by M5 Vivek. So many great opportunities to extend and expand our learning happen during our after school activities.

Do you have a talent or some expertise you could share with our students? Consider offering a CCA next Quarter or volunteering to be a guest speaker. We have secondary assemblies on most Tuesday mornings and would love to include more of our parents or alumni as guest speakers.

Cheers,
Ms. Christy

P2/3 (above) made healthy smoothies as part of their learning. They were very tasty!

I always love the end of unit celebrations. There is always so much happening and it is great to see enthusiastic students inspired by their learning. This week the P2/3 class taught ‘Filthy Phil’ to be healthy (see image below), wrote recipes and then made smoothies, shared their books with the M1 class and discussed the significance of bread all around the world.
The P4/5 class sang a song, created biomes and posters which they shared with all the PYP students at Share time.
Happy children learn best! It has been great to hear from parents that their children go home and tell their parents what they have been doing at school. If your child doesn’t share information with you try asking them these questions  (Source https://www.scholastic.com)

1. Tell me about the best part of your day.

2. What was the hardest thing you had to do today?

3. Did any of your classmates do anything funny?

4. Tell me about what you read in class.

5. Who did you play with today? What did you play?

6. Do you think math [or any subject] is too easy or too hard?

7. What’s the biggest difference between this year and last year?

8. What rules are different at school than our rules at home? Do you think they’re fair?

9. Who did you sit with at lunch? What did you eat?

10. Can you tell me something you learned (or did) today?

I am currently away climbing Mt Hanang with the OP Peaks Level 3 trip but I will see you all on Monday!

Amanda

Ava in P4/5 presents her case for conserving our planet’s precious rainforests, to the rest of the Primary School on Friday.

As COP26 drew to a close, this week’s Share Time saw P4/5 make their own call for climate action. They spoke about pledges made by world leaders in Glasgow and outlined their own actions, from building recycling stations at home to cycling to school and working with their families to reduce meat consumption. They shared fabulous models of precious worldwide ecosystems and, led by Miss Sarah, sang beautifully.

These are some of the pictures I took during P2/3 library time. They were happy to have a taste of it. Many thanks to parents for making this happen.
Bernadetha

A big thank you to our M5 hardworking students who sat for their first on-screen exam practice from Monday to Friday. Also, I would like to thank the invigilators and the IT team who supported us in the successful administration of these exams.

This was the first on-screen exam practice for our M5 students. The aim of the on-screen exam familiarization sessions is for M5s to practice using the IT tools and to familiarize themselves with the type of questions and format of an online exam to manage their time in a 2-hour exam. This was a formative assessment and therefore their grade will not count towards their report. They will also do an official mock on-screen exam in Quarter 3. These sessions will give M5 an idea of what to expect in May 2022 when they will be doing the official on-screen exams.

Students’ Feedback

Valerie

I feel like the on-screen exams benefited me enormously because they allowed me to get used to the structure, wording, and tools used in the test. These onscreen exams have allowed me to see what I need to work on and how I can prepare myself better for the next exams. The exams were challenging in regards to combining it with the other assessments coming up and work that was also still expected of us. Overall, this experience was very helpful.

SeungGyu
The on-screen exams were mimicking Socrate by telling me “Know thyself”  continuously so that I can improve further. I understood more about the format of the on-screen exams. It was a valuable experience that allowed me to realize that I had to try harder to reach my goals.

Harry
I think that the exams have been pretty easy. It has definitely helped my confidence because now I can see that the exams are quite trivial, and so are not worth worrying about, and so distracting me from other work. My one comment for the IB is that it needs to be much clearer in a lot of its questions and sources because this can end up causing a lot of issues in terms of information.

Upcoming cultural evenings

One of the ways we learn about the different perspectives here on campus is through our Sunday evening cultural nights.  Our residential students share information about their home countries; everything from history, geography, politics, music, dance and food are discussed.  The events take place Sunday evenings from 5:00pm- 6:00pm in our library annex on campus.  All are welcome.
The upcoming schedule for November/December:

November 14- Areg and Mihranush presenting Armenia
November 28- Catherine presenting Bolivia
December 5- Anders and Marius presenting Denmark

Residential houses closing during semester break, December 12- January 7

During the semester break, the school and residential houses will close.  Our residential students and their families at home arrange for where the student will spend the holiday.  Many students return home, some travel, and others look for family or friends to stay with here in Arusha. If you are interested in hosting any of our residential students, for any part of the semester break, please let me know.

Chris Green
Head of Residential Life
chrisgreen@uwcea.org

Preparations and rehearsals for the upcoming secondary production of Freaky Friday have been in full swing since the start of Quarter One. Last week saw the start of the “Backstage Crew” CCA, where students will aid in the final weeks of preparation in roles such as stage set up, advertising and prop design. We are also joined this quarter by our student band. A huge thanks to Magnus Fischer and Cody Brown, who have shown such patience and commitment in the student band thus far. The production dates are set for Friday December 3rd and Saturday December 4th at 7pm. Save the date in your diaries and look out event posters and ticket information coming soon. Best of luck to all involved.

If you have any unwanted purple Rhinos t-shirts at home  (like the ones pictred above) please can you consider donating it to us so that we can use them again with some of our residential students.

We will have a collection box in Reception.

Thanks for helping out.

Click on any month (below) to link to the live School calendar on our website