Al Sedra Newsletter 2019 Issue 10

7th November 2019

Engaged, Enthusiastic & Educated

YOUR WEEKLY UPDATE ON ALL THAT’S GOING ON AT THE GULF ENGLISH SCHOOL

7th November 2019

INFANTS The children in Year 1 have been learning to retell the story ‘Wild’. We made our corridor look just like the story by turning it into a forest.

We have been learning all about the different animals that live there, as well as other animals and their habitats. ​

As we have explored our topic, ‘The World, Our Planet’, we have looked at different things and sorted them into living and non-living. We learnt that all living things need food, water and air and that all living things grow and move, even plants!

We will soon be growing our own plants, making sure they have everything they need to grow and carry on living.

7th November 2019

JUNIORS Since the half term break, Year 5 have been very busy diving into our new class novel “Kaspar the Prince of Cats”. The story is centered around a spectacular cat, who journeys on the Titanic and… survives! It seems cats really do have nine lives. The children have enjoyed writing informal letters and character descriptions and are currently working on creating leaflets to advertise the Titanic.

In our new Science topic “Weather and Climate”, the children have been looking at the difference between weather and climate and how this changes all over the world depending on how far away the equator is. Children particularly enjoyed looking at The Gulf English School in Doha on Google Maps, and comparing the climate and landscape here, to different places all around the world.

5MG also performed an extremely successful assembly on bullying. It was both informative and exciting to watch, sharing a very important message to all.

Year 5 and all of the junior’s staff and students are very much looking forward to Week Without Walls, especially those new to the school! We are attending Snow Dunes, Virtuocity and Fitness at the Farm as well as creating the “Famous Five Dining Experience” in school. Be sure to ask your children all about these amazing activities.

7th November 2019

SECONDARY It has been an exciting term, and a positive start, for both Mr Andre Battah and Miss Heidi Goodall, the teachers of the Modern Foreign Languages Department.

The mock examinations are coming up next month, and deadlines are looming for the Year 11 and IB2 students. At this time of year, the pressure of exams becomes only too real, so can we take this opportunity to say “Bonne Chance, Buena Suerte, Buona Fortuna, Viel Glück, allah yewvfikim and Good luck”?

Mrs Heidi and I are encouraged by the progress of our Year 11 linguists: Amna A, Aman F, Sofiia, Sara, Altheallanis and Tochi in Spanish, have put in a great deal of effort this term and are reaping the benefits in their Speaking preparation. Languages can help people to mature, opening minds to new ways of thinking, and it has been a pleasure to watch them blossom. We are confident of seeing their hard work pay off when the GCSE results come out in August next year.

At KS3, our Spanish classes have been preparing and performing conversations in front of their peers, and they have been taking advantage of our learning platform Firefly, to complete their homework and project tasks. It is exciting to see the range of language and grammatical structures that they are routinely using with increasing confidence. These students are fortunate enough to have three hours of lessons a week, which gives them the time to learn vocabulary thoroughly, and also iron out the tricky grammatical constructions.

Our French learners are also doing their best to keep on top of the workload by following their learning on Firefly, Linguascope, Memrise and Kahoot, and by completing exercises to consolidate their learning. This can be tricky with just one hour per week, but we have seen some promising results from the recent Term 1 tests.

Remember that when learning a language, repetition is all. Experts suggests that most people need to repeat a word at least seven times to fix it in their long-term memory; so

remember, lots of practice!

Please don’t forget to encourage your children to make use of Linguascope. It is a language learning app that can be accessed via the internet on iPads, laptops or on home computers. There is no cost to parents; your only job is to encourage your children to use them! The username is gesq and the password is gesmfl123. Once these details have been entered, a whole array of resources, in a variety of languages, are instantly at your disposal. We are now in the process or adding a new learning platform called ‘activelearn’ where students will be able to access resources with their student’s username and password.

7th November 2019

CONTACT The Gulf English School PO Box 2440, Doha, Qatar Main School: Tel: +974 44578777 Main School: Fax: +974 44861256 Infant Unit: Tel: +974 44886791/90 +974 44886201/93 Infant Unit: Fax: +974 44876821

Email: info@gulfenglishschool.com

Website: www.gulfenglishschool.com