Al Sedra Newsletter 22

21st February 2019

Caring, Supportive, Respectable YOUR WEEKLY UPDATE ON ALL THAT’S GOING ON AT THE GULF ENGLISH SCHOOL

21st February 2019

I.B. The Spring Carnival 2019

By Ninotchka Fernandes, IB1

to meet all of his fans as much as they were happy to meet him.

The spring carnival at The Gulf English School was a massive, booming success thanks to the organisation of IB1 students and Primary teachers.

There were a lot of new activities taking place that entertained the crowd, such as the ring toss and lucky dip, as well as dunking the teacher. There was also a colouring stall where little kids could colour for a limited amount of time and the person who coloured the best picture was awarded a prize.

As a part of the IB curriculum, students are required to take CAS, a course where they develop their creative, active and community service skills.

The Spring Carnival was a part of developing our skills, it involved planning something large and carrying it out efficiently while working co-operatively with each other, as well as couple of AS and IB2 students.

We invited a couple of external companies such as Tea Time, Baskin Robins and Mr. Shawarma to offer more options to the public and this attracted a lot of the crowd. People were also very excited to participate in the fun activities held, especially the dunk tank where numerous teachers volunteered to take part, get dunked and had fun. It seems that having a dunk tank at the Spring Carnival might be a developing tradition at our school.

The greatest surprise of the afternoon was when the footballer, Al Moez, decided to pay a visit. The VIP delivered a short speech and was as delighted

In total, all the IB stalls raised over 1000 QR, which will be donated to charity. The organisers, the IB1 class, were extremely happy with the outcome, especially after seeing the cheerful and playful faces of the little kids having a good time in general, which gave us a very heart-warming feeling. On behalf of the entire class, I would like to extend our thanks to all who attended and contributed. I would also like to remind and encourage you to attend next year.

21st February 2019

INFANTS Music Year 1

Year 2

We have been learning about pitch (high and low sounds). We used glockenspiels to play an ascending and descending scale from C as it corresponded to the story of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’.

We have been learning about timbre (the nature of sound) and we did this by making a connection with the weather. We read a graphic score as we created a rain storm with body percussion.

We had a great deal of fun acting out the story and accompanying the story with the footsteps of the giant being played on drums, whilst the sound of the clouds was represented by the triangle.

We also sang one of our favourite songs ‘It’s Gonna Be Hot’, made an instrumental rain storm using words, and later designed a boat and rode the waves of the sea during a mass flood. Luckily, all of the animals were safe and well.

21st February 2019

JUNIORS The Importance and Benefits of Reading A child’s reading skills are important to their success in school as they will allow them to access a range of different subjects across the curriculum and improve their communication and language skills. Reading can be a fun and imaginative time for children, which opens doors to all kinds of new worlds for them.

Reading for pleasure makes a big difference to children’s educational performance. Evidence suggests that children who read for enjoyment every day not only perform better in reading tests than those who do not, but also develop a broader vocabulary, increased general knowledge and a better understanding of other cultures.

Learning to read is about listening and understanding, as well as working out what is printed on the page. Through hearing stories, children are exposed to a wide range of words.

This helps them build their own vocabulary and improve their understanding when they listen, which is vital as they start to read. It is important for them to understand how stories work too. Even if children do not understand every word, they will hear new sounds, words and phrases which they can then try out, copying what they have heard.

Reading everyday has a significant number of benefits for children, such as: • Children who read often and widely get better at it.

Practice makes perfect in almost everything • we do, and reading is no different.

Reading exercises our brain.

• • Reading is a much more complex task for the human brain rather than watching TV, for example. Reading strengthens brains connections and builds new connections.

Reading improves concentration.

• • Children have to sit still and quietly so that they can focus on the story when they are reading.

If the read often, they will develop the skill to do

this for longer.

Reading teaches children about the world • around them.

• Through reading a variety of books children learn about people, places, and events outside of their own experience.

• Reading improves vocabulary and language skills.

• Children learn new words as they read.

They absorb information on how to structure sentences and how to use words and other language features effectively in their writing and speaking.

• Reading develops a child’s imagination • As we read, our brains translate the descriptions we read of people, places and things into pictures. While we are engaged in a story we are also imagining how a character is feeling.

Young children then bring this knowledge into their everyday play.

• Reading helps children to develop empathy.

As children develop they begin to imagine • how they would feel in that situation.

• Reading is a fun hobby • A book or an e-reader doesn’t take up much space and is light to carry, so you take it anywhere so you can never be bored if you have a book in your bag.

• Children who read achieve better in school.

Reading promotes achievement in all • subjects, not just English. Children who are good readers tend to achieve better across the curriculum.

Irrespective of whether children are only just beginning to learn to read or whether they are fluent, teachers and parents can play an important role in helping to keep them interested in reading, not only books but the wide variety of reading material available to them.

21st February 2019

SECONDARY ICT Students across KS3 are working on their Computing topics in ICT and enjoying the new topics which have been introduced this academic year.

The Year 7 students are looking at how computers work, where they get opportunities to explore the technical aspects of computers and how they have evolved over time.

Year 8 students are working on their binary topic and learning how computers use this system to translate commands into on-screen events and changes. Many students have been able to make the connections between Maths and ICT whilst studying this topic.

The Year 9 students are programming using the Python programming language, and they have started to create programs with small functions that can take on board an input, process it and provide outputs.

21st February 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