MYP October Newsletter

SECONDARY

NEWSLETTER OCTOBER 2021

ACHIEVE

AT AMBASSADOR INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY

FOR MORE INFORMATION: +971 50 551 0038

admissions@aiadubai.com

www.aiadubai.com

+971 4 580 6999

Pedagogical Leadership Team

Ms. Pratibha Rao Executive Principal

Ms. Rashmi Nagendra Director of Kindergarten

Mr. James Lynch Principal

Ms. Sharmistha Bhatia Vice Principal

Ms. Talia Lazarus PYP Coordinator

Ms. Lindsay Thomas MYP Coordinator

Ms. Arundathi Srinivas KG Head

from the principal’ s desk Dear parents The students have had a busy month with a break in between and I hope all families enjoyed the half term. This week we have two important events, Diwali, and UAE Flag Day. Please can I remind parents of the importance of driving safely during drop off and pick up. We have had a few incidents of drivers parking on the pavement and driving with too much speed. Please remember that the safety of students is off everybody’s prime concern and dangerous driving will not be tolerated and will be reported. Another point that will help ease congestion in the mornings, is the school can accept children from 7am onwards and the children are guided to the MPH and are supervised. Many parents are now trying this option. I would also like to mention is that parents should only be entering school with their badge which has a vaccination sticker on it. If a parent is not vaccinated, then there are alternate arrangements for pick-up which the receptionists can explain to you.

Can I thank all students for the excellent progress being made in lessons across the school. In every phase of the school, I see happy children enjoying their learning and experiences new things at AIA. A special mention to the secondary students and staff who recently had a visit from the IB organization to decide if the secondary school can be fully authorized to offer the Middle Years Programme. This follows our exemplary report last year regarding our Primary Years Programme. We are very excited to share with parents the outcomes from the report when it is released in the coming weeks.

Thank you, parents, as always for your support and feedback.

Every month in this section of the newsletter there will be an update from either Ms Prathiba, Mr Lynch or Ms Sharmistha.

Kind regards,

James Lynch

Principal Ambassador International Academy

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from the myp COORDINATOR October has been a busy month for all involved in the MYP programme. Even with our half term break, it seems we have packed so many activities, events, and opportunities into the month.

At the end of last month, we celebrated our Student Investiture Ceremony and since then our student leaders have been meeting in their respective groups putting in place an action plan and objectives for the academic year. Our Senior Head Boy and Girl have included a message in this month’s newsletter to bring you up to speed with some of the jobs ahead. Our Student Voice group were also responsible for organizing October’s Breast Cancer Awareness initiatives.

In addition to our Pinktober activities, we celebrated Dyslexia Awareness and Mental Health awareness through our first Wellbeing Café of the academic year. Students led a discussion panel on ‘Social media and it’s impact on our mental health’ with insightful contributions from the attentive audience. We also reflected on the UN Sustainable Development Goals during UN Global Goals week.

We celebrated our Standing out Student award, a monthly celebration where we recognize students’ achievements in various academic/specialist areas as well as students who are demonstrating the IB Learner Profile attributes.

Grade 8 students are seriously beginning to think about their future careers, and we held our first careers day event with parents and friends of faculty discussing their careers to give students an insight into the world of work. This was followed up with a visit from Zayed University X Minerva and a workshop about the future of work.

Interhouse basketball at lunch times was a major success with the students and created a competitive spirit amongst the students. We look forward to interhouse football in November.

The first of our DASSA fixtures starts on the 1st of November and the students are looking forward to competing against other schools in football, basketball, badminton, table tennis and swimming.

Finally, we had our MYP Verification Visit from the International Baccalaureate at the end of the month. While we must wait another 6-8 weeks for the official report, the visit was a very successful one and I’d like to thank the staff, students and parents who made it such.

I hope you enjoy reading this month’s newsletter and looking at the pictures of students and their work over the last month.

Stay safe,

Lindsay Thomas

MYP Coordinator Ambassador International Academy

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from senior head boy and girl Dear Parents, Firstly, we would like to thank you for taking your time to read this newsletter. Let us tell you a bit about ourselves. Our names are Ana Beatriz De Oliveira Siva and Sulaiman Peerzada we are the senior heads for this year. We look forward to working alongside many hardworking MYP students at Ambassador International Academy.

Apart from working with MYP students we also have an AIA leadership team and separate groups involved like the Student Voice Group, the editorial board, house captains and more.

Each committee has an MYP teacher who is their supervisor and attends meetings with them.

As a team we aim to achieve many different goals, some of which involve getting more students involved, having more activities led by students, giving out break time duties to different heads. We have many exciting plans upcoming for this year like the interhouse games, cooking without fire, Halloween competition and sports day. We would love to see you with us on this journey.

Currently, we have many exciting things upcoming that we were not able to have last year due to covid. We have four trips to EXPO 2020 planed for each of the MYP classes. As the senior heads, we would also like to congratulate all the students who were able to make it in the school teams! We hope that you will have fun and try your best.

To sum up, we are extremely glad to be able to help and improve the school this year alongside you. We hope that you will follow along with us. If you have any suggestions, please do not hesitate to contact us. We hope to be able to make this academic year a success.

Contacts: sulaiman.001563@aiadubai.com ana.001795@aiadubai.com

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curriculum updates visual arts For Unit 1 in Visual Arts, Grades 6 to 8 have explored various concepts and created different art pieces as developing artists.

Everyone started creating process journals as a creative way to record their explorations all throughout the unit to become proactive and reflective IB learners.

Grade 6 inquired about non-objective abstract art inspired by the famous artist Wassily Kandinsky. Meanwhile, Grade 7 have learned about still-life, using Paul Cezanne as their main inspiration artist. Lastly, for Grade 8, they developed their skills in creating a realistic yet expressive self-portrait inspired by the famous artist Vincent Van Gogh.

Overall, students have had much fun and developed as open minded and knowledgeable students.

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music Grade 6 students learnt to compose their own melody and then performed those melodies on the keyboard. They understood the different musical notations used in music literacy. Students displayed keyboard skills by playing a few classical pieces like Fur Elise.

Grade 7 students performed as a whole class ensemble where they played different musical instruments like guitar, keyboard, drums, bass guitar, classical guitar. Students had fun as they collaborated with each other showing team working skills. A few budding singers also sang a few pop songs as they learnt about the evolution of pop and rock music.

Grade 8 students learned to compose music digitally by using Garage Band, Sound Trap and Music Maker Jam software. They created their own music for the animation video and composed music for the soundscape.

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Physical and Health Education Grade 6 – 8 Unit 1 The first unit was primarily concerned with physical fitness. Students created a fitness portfolio in which they completed several tests such as the bleep test, sit and reach test, and others.

They then recorded their results in their portfolios. They repeated the activitiess after three weeks to see if they had improved. Students also created their own circuit workouts, utilizing various fitness components to aid in the identification of various muscle groups.

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events and celebrations Investiture Ceremony 2021-2022 On Wednesday, 29 September 2021 AIA held their first face-to-face investiture ceremony. The event was held in the MPH and attended by both recipients and parents. It was truly a pleasure to have a proper ceremony this year. We were very proud to announce the student leaders for the MYP school and have their parents present to enjoy the celebration. These students were risk-takers who went through a rigorous selection process. The different committees will be meeting weekly with their heads, members and mentors and making improvements to many areas of school life. We look forward to many fruitful discussions and allowing our students to have a strong voice in the AIA community.

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standing out award

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Dyslexia Awareness Week Students at AIA celebrated the Dyslexia Awareness Week. They focused on recognizing their special talents and realizing that each one of us is different. During the library lessons, our kindergarten students were full of excitement to listen to some special stories and share their own talents with their friends. PYP and MYP students were involved in watching videos and discussing the different perspectives about Dyslexia. Connections were also made with the UN Goals (quality education & reduced inequalities). They resonated with the famous quote, “Let us be kind to one another, be aware of each other’s needs, and try to help in that regard Thomas S Monson”

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Pinktober We at AIA came together to mark and honor Breast Cancer Awareness Month. On 13th October, our students were involved in activities throughout the school. Our grade 8 students took up a lesson on ‘Preventing Chronic Illnesses and Healthy Living’ for the Grade 4 & 5 students

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Wellbeing Café It was exciting to see our MYP students participate in the first wellbeing cafe of this academic year. Our panelists did a fantastic job discussing the topic ‘Social Media and its impact on Wellbeing’ to celebrate ‘World Mental Health Day’. They discussed various issues such as screen time, use of the internet, cyberbullying, impact on learning, body image, and so on.

The audience and moderator were extremely enthusiastic in their support and engagement throughout the discussion. We look forward to the next wellbeing cafe in December.

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Wellbeing Workshop MYP students participated in a well-being workshop conducted by Dr. Jelena Lubenko on the topic ‘The Power of Your Choice: Navigating values, thoughts and feeling’. During this workshop, the students explored what truly matters to them, reflect on their major challenges, learn about psychological flexibility, and acquire some practical techniques of navigating their thoughts and feelings.

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Career Day Expert professionals were called in today to encourage our Grade 8 students and enlighten them about the various career opportunities out there. As one of our guest speakers mentioned, the career opportunities today have drastically changed in the past 20 years. Thus, we must keep evolving our mindset and adapt to the new opportunities present now.

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Zayed University X Minerva Workshop Ms. Laila Idris (Student Recruitment and Admissions) from Zayed University X Minerva, conducted a session for our Grade 8 students on ‘The Future of Education & Work’. The students were taken through the importance of building skills, community project and critical thinking during school years, and future prospective.

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NOOM PROJECT - GRADE 8 Grade 8 students had an exciting and engaging workshop last Sept. 27 called “Noom Project”, an activity organized by A.R.M Holding Children’s Programme, Studio Sain, and Art Dubai, about designing their own imaginary version of the moon or a planet with a community of the future that is sustainable, innovative, and imaginative. They have brainstormed and created a 3D model of their vision.

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UN Global Goals - GRADE 6 In Individuals and Societies the grade 6 students have been learning all about globalization and what it means to be a global citizen. They have been working on their summative assessments for Unit 1.

The task required them to investigate an issue in their local community (school or neighbourhood) and collect evidence about it and to then work collaboratively to offer some solutions to the issue. Being Global Goals week this provided an excellent opportunity for them to consider one or two UN Global Goals they can link to their chosen issue.

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UN Global Goals - GRADE 8 Students of grade 8 made sketches of various projects using sustainable materials. They designed layouts for the Multi-Purpose Hall to display the community projects and made the layouts of the Sports field or their own classrooms for the Sports day. They were developing ideas and discussed how best the structure can be made sustainable, keeping in mind the UN sustainability goals.

Designing a sustainable structure using environmnet friendly material

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Sketch the layout design of the MPH for community project exibition - using sustainable material.

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Designing the layout for the MPH- using sustainable material

Discussing how to make a classroom with sustainable material

Sketch the layout of a class made with sustainable material for its furniture.

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Student Leadership Hello, and welcome to the 2021-2022 Student Voice Group committee. We are a group of seven students. This year, we are looking forward to working on a variety of projects and hearing from students.

In such a short period of time, we have achieved several objectives. Making ribbons for Breast Cancer Awareness Month and distributing them to students, as well as sending out a form to students for new monthly award categories, are just a few of the exciting tasks we have been able to achieve so far.

We will be able to achieve many interesting goals with your help and support. Keep a look out for the interesting things we still have planned.

Our weekly meeting Regards, Emma and Kulthoom Student voice group 2021-2022

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Sports Updates Inter house games - Basketball MYP students at Ambassador International Academy participated in inter-house basketball matches this month. Three times a week during the 1st half of lunch students played a match against another house. The sixth graders fell into one category, while the seventh and eighth graders fell into another. There was a schedule in place to ensure that each house had a chance to play. It’s been incredible to watch teams come together and play as a team. The points from all the matches will be calculated at the end of October, and a winner will be chosen.

Hopefully, as November progresses, the weather will improve, and inter-house football will be played.

Interhouse basketball winners 1st place - Hawks 2nd place - Weavers 3rd place - Ravens Well done to all students who contributed from all houses.

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6A-6C Grade 7&8 Weavers vs Nightingales 6A-6B6 Grade Hawks vs Nightingales

Week 2

Week 3

7A-8A6 Grade Nightingales v Ravens

Ravens vs Nightingales

Grade 7&8

7A-8A6 Grade Hawks vs Weavers

Grade 7 & 8 Hawks vs Ravens

Monday

Grade 7&8 7B-8A Weavers v Ravens

Grade 6B-6C6 Ravens vs Weavers

7B-8A Grade 7&8 Hawks vs Nightingales

6B-6C6 Grade Hawks vs Ravens

Thursday

A Students v Teachers game will be held on the last Thursday of every month from 1:10-1:30pm after the scheduled Interhouse game.

6A-6C Grade 7&8 Hawks vs Weavers

Grade 6A- B6 Weavers vs Nightingales

Week 1

Week 4

Sunday

12:45-1:10

November Football Interhouse Games

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U16 FB - @GEMS Metropole Girls U12 FB - @Home v Brighton College 3:30pm Kick Off

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U16 FB - @Home v Nord Anglia Intl Boys U16 FB - @Home v Raffles Intl Girls

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U16 FB - @GEMS Wellington Boys U16 FB @Brighton College Girls 3:30pm (Rajvi) Bus Transport

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U16 FB - @Hartland Intl Boys U16 FB - @Home v GEMS Intl

U16 FB - @Home v NLCS Boys – 3:30pm (Diarmaid) U16 FB - @Greenfield Intl Girls – 3:15pm (Rajvi) Bus Transport

Monday

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U16 BB- @Home v Brighton College- Kick Off 3:30pm

Tuesday 3

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U16 BB - @Kings Al Barsha

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U16 BB - @Home v GEMS Intl 4pm Kick Off

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U16 BB - @CAS – 3:15pm (Rajvi) Bus Transport U12 FB - @JBS Boys 4pm Kickoff (Diarmaid) Bus Transport

Wednesday 4

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U12 FB - @GEMS Al Barsha National School

U12 FB - @Home v Dubai Heights Academy

Thursday

Friday

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november 2021 DASSA AIA Fixtures Saturday

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Sunday

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