SZPAB Newsletter Volume 7.4: English

The Sheikh Zayed Private Academy for Boys

SZPAB Community Newsletter Volume 7.4

October 31st, 2021

table of contents

TABLE OF

contents 3

Message from the Principal

4

This Week at SZPAB

9

This Week in Early Years

14

This Week in Secondary

18

From the Inclusion Department

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A message from the Principal Dear Parents, I hope that you and your families had a restful mid-term break and are ready for the second half of this term. As always, we have a busy few weeks ahead of us and much to look forward to. On Wednesday 3rd November, our school community will be celebrating UAE Flag Day. Students will be invited to come to school wearing either the colors of the UAE flag, UAE National Dress or their military uniform. At 11am, the school will pause to observe the raising of the UAE flag. UAE Flag Day is a very special day in our calendar as it is an opportunity to honor the country’s past, present and future and celebrate the anniversary of His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan becoming President of the UAE in 2004. Later in the term, we very much look forward to celebrating the UAE 50th National Day.

Prior to the mid-term break, you will be aware that our school was inspected by ADEK. We were visited by a team of inspectors who spent four days with us visiting lessons, meeting teachers and leaders, talking to students and analysing student achievement data. As you will have read in a letter from Mr John Conway, our Executive Superintendent, the inspection team were very impressed and complimentary about the continued improvements across our school despite the challenges presented by the pandemic. Our inspectors acknowledged the positive attitudes and engagement of our students, the support of our parents and commitment of our exceptional teaching, support and administrative teams. Our school has made considerable progress since the last inspection in 2018 and we are now focused on continuing our journey to be judged an ‘Outstanding’ school in our next inspection in 2023.

This week sees our first Student Progress Meetings of the academic year. These are an opportunity for parents to meet with our teachers to discuss where their child is in their learning, the progress that they are making and to understand their next steps and learning targets. I would strongly recommend all parents to take this opportunity to meet with our teachers. Due to the current restrictions, these meetings will be conducted online via Microsoft TEAMS and appointment booking details have already been sent home.

Finally, I am sure that you will be aware of the recent launch of the ‘Blue Schools Initiative’ by Abu Dhabi authorities. This initiative is aimed at bringing schools in Abu Dhabi closer to a normal school environment by increasing the vaccination rate amongst students. An in-school vaccination programme is currently being considered by ADEK and further details will be shared with parents as we receive them.

Thank you as always for your continued support.

Your sincerely, Mr Neil Matthews Principal

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This week at szpab Progress Meetings

This week, we will be holding our Termly Progress Meetings to give you the opportunity to meet with your child’s teacher to discuss his/her progress during Term 1. All meetings will be held through TEAMS and will take place at the end of the school day.

Early Years: Student Progress Meetings will be held from Sunday October 31st, to Wednesday, November. 3rd. Parents will have received an email from teachers last week to book a time to meet to discuss your child’s progress. If you have not receive an email, please contact your Homeroom teacher.

Elementary: Student Progress Meetings will be held from Sunday, October 31st, to Wednesday, November 3rd. Parents will have received an email from teachers last week to book a time to meet to discuss your child’s progress. If you have not receive an email, please contact your Homeroom teacher.

Secondary: Progress Meetings will be held from Sunday, October 31st, to Wednesday. November 3rd.

Parents will have received an email with details of how to book appointments through Epraise. If you have not received an email, please contact Mr Paul Dallyn at paul.dallyn@zayedacademyboys.ae.

Grade 12 Student Scholarships

The Distinguished Student Scholarships, administered by the Scholarships Office (www.sco.ae) through the Ministry of Presidential Affaires, are awarded to the highest ranking Emirati students in the UAE to pursue University programs within UAE or abroad.

The application is open now and it will be closed on 10th Nov 2021, It would be great to invite all Emirati distinguished students in Grade 12 to apply to the scholarships by visiting the below link: https://www.sco.ae/ar/web/sco/submission For more details Contact Mr. Zeyad AlHamdan our head of students potential .

Email : zeyad.alhamdan@zayedacademyboys.ae Phone: 022033333 / Ex:325

Lost and Found

A reminder to label all jackets, swimming trunks, towels, bottles, lunch boxes with students' name and class number to ensure lost items can be found and returned to their owner.

OCT 31ST, 2021

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From the Head of Early Years Dear Parents, With the first half term behind us, we are looking forward to the opportunity to share your child’s progress and targets for this academic year with you. All parents should have received an email from their child’s teacher requesting you sign up for a student progress meeting. Meetings will be held Sunday – Wednesday after school hours this week. I encourage you to attend this meeting via Microsoft Teams so that you better able to work in partnership with your child’s teachers this year. If you haven’t signed up for a time yet, please do get in contact with your child’s teacher.

In this week’s newsletter, our Early Years Parent Engagement Program and the brilliant Grade 1 unit that started the year will celebrated.

All the best, Honey Tondre Honey.Tondre@zayedacademyboys.ae

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This week in early years This week in KG1 In KG1, we celebrated the end of our “All About Me” unit by inviting students to dress up as their favorite community helper. To further involve SZPAB with the community, the whole school participated and promoted EXPO 2020. Students wore t-shirts which represented the colors of EXPO 2020.

Moving forward, we are excited about our upcoming event: National Day. We are excited to connect our home and school community as one. We will be sharing further information on how you can support National Day celebrations in the near future. Before the end of the term, we will also provide parents with tips and strategies to support literacy and math learning over the winter break.

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This week in early years

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This week in early years The First Unit of Grade 1: Growing and Changing Grade 1 students have been learning how people, places, and things grow and change over time. We begin the year with this unit because one of our strongest beliefs is that mistakes create opportunities for learning. We want students to understand that it’s okay to fail as long as they learn from the experience and keep trying. Our team strives to create a safe space for all students to build this growth mindset. It’s all about growing and changing to become better students and people!

We have been studying characters and how they persevere in adversity. By looking at the main events, we understand how they grow and change to solve their problems. For example, But It’s Not My Fault, the main character learned to take responsibility for his actions. In Sharing a Shell, we discussed the importance of being kind and caring for others. In the story Giraffes Can’t Dance taught us that it’s okay to be different; we just need to find our own beat to succeed!

We debuted our new writing program, Talk for Writing. This program is meant to help students build their language skills through storytelling. The three main components are: Imitate Innovate Invent We began the imitation phase with Mr. Wiggle and Mr. Waggle, two friends that live in different houses and want to visit each other. Next, students used total physical response (TPR) to memorize the story. Finally, after learning the story and mastering retelling it with actions, students were able to create story maps to represent the story visually. We are very excited to move into the next phase, innovation, in our next unit.

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This week in early years We have encouraged students to be mathematicians and challenge themselves. Math centers have created a fun and exciting way for students to work at their level while practicing skills. We introduced Beebots during our centers to practice skills, such as counting, addition, and subtraction, while also learning to code. Technology has become invaluable in our daily lives, and the students are thrilled to use the Beebots to extend their learning.

One of the most exciting topics in our growing and changing unit was Social Studies. We got the chance to explore the past, present and future of the UAE. Students went on a journey through time to learn about life in the past when much of the land was only desert and people traveled by camels. We discussed the present-day UAE and compared how much it has changed over the past 50 years. Then we took a look into the future through the lease of Expo2020. As future leaders, the students had many great ideas about how to continue building and shaping the UAE into a global leader.

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This week in early years

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This week in early years

OCT 31ST, 2021

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This week in early years

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This week in early years Parental Engagement In Early Years at SZPAB, parental engagement is an essential part of our outstanding phase. We acknowledge that for our students to be successful we must engage the parents with many opportunities to be a part of their child's education and to teach them strategies including our language for learning.

During the pandemic, our parental engagement program has had to adapt and suit these challenging times. We continued to cater for all students regardless if they were face to face students or learning from home.

This term we facilitated our first parent workshop, “Early Years Orientation and Curriculum Overview”, which provided parents with information about school readiness in the Early Years. It was wonderful to see the students following the Covid-19 safety guidelines and independently walk to their classrooms. To further support online safeguarding, we organized a parent workshop facilitated by our Early Years Digital Coach, Ms. Lenske. This workshop focused on the importance of online safety at home and shared information about hybrid learning and Seesaw.

We understand these have been challenging times and we hope that in the near future that restrictions will ease and we can finally welcome all parents back into the school for our interactive workshops. We appreciate your patience and participation in attending our online TEAMS parent workshops. We hope to continue to build strong relationships with our parents, and in turn build a strong foundation for our student's learning in years to come.

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From the elementary principal

Grade 3 has begun a new writing program entitled Talk for Writing. Students need to learn a series of stories inside and out so that they can adapt the story and come up with their own unique creation. On Bee Day, students celebrated their knowledge of the first story “The Sleepy Bumblebee” by performing it for all of their friends. Not only did they perform, but they planned stories, created bee art and even dressed up as Bumblebees.

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From the SEcondary Principal Dear parents, Following our visit from ADEK prior to half term I wanted to share my thanks and gratitude to the students and teachers who showcased the school to it’s full potential. Whenever I or the secondary leadership team walk throughout the phase we are filled with immense pride when seeing the hard work, diligence and enjoyment that surrounds the learning taking place. I was delighted when the inspectors also highlighted these core strengths of our phase, recognizing the journey we had been on and the quality of teaching, leadership and students engagement throughout their visit.

This week we have begun our Term 1 Progress Meetings which take place from Sunday 31st October 2021 – Wednesday 3rd November 2021 between 2.15pm – 3.30pm. These provide the opportunity for parents to have important conversations with teachers regarding their son’s education, future aspirations and how we can collectively work together to enhance the academic achievement of your sons.

Mr. Dyaa (Student Counsellor) and Mr. Zeyad (Academic Cousnellor) will also be available throughout the events should you wish to receive any additional support or guidance.

Bookings for Progress Meetings is through Epraise with details of how to arrange appointments found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LehUx3_Q5uo

OCT 31ST, 2021

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From the SEcondary Principal You will have recently received an email from Epraise.co.uk requesting you to sign up to an account.

To create an account, please follow the instructions on screen, notably:

We look forward to welcoming you!

NYU Visits SZPAB

Last week, NYU University met with our senior students to discuss the program options, admission requirements for the upcoming 2022-2023 academic year.

OCT 31ST, 2021

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From the inclusion department Dyslexia Awareness What is Dyslexia?

Dyslexia is…

A specific learning difficulty that alters the way the brain processes written words. This makes it difficult to recognise, spell and decode words.

People with dyslexia may struggle with…

Planning and organization Reading Writing Confusing the order of letters in words Putting letters the wrong way round (such as writing “b” instead of “d”) Finding it hard to carry out a sequence of directions Understanding information when told verbally, but have difficulty with information that’s written down Telling the time

Each person with dyslexia is different. For some people, it may just slow them down when reading and writing; for others it can cause more visual interruptions when reading, where words and letters appear blurred.

Dyslexia is not linked to intelligence. It is thought to be a genetic condition that is neurological and can’t be cured. Many people with dyslexia have strengths in relationship building, critical thinking, creative endeavours and problem solving.

It’s important to understand how to help people with dyslexia. Always be patient with those who struggle and encourage them. Learning to read or practicing reading can be a very stressful process.

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From the inclusion department Facts About Dyslexia for Parents

Having a good understanding of the type of difficulties caused by dyslexia will help you support your child. After you have learned about dyslexia, explain it to your child. Knowing there is both a reason and a solution will help them to deal with it.

1.At the end of a day of reading and writing a child with dyslexia is exhausted.

This is because the brain is less efficient at processing letters and sounds so it has had to work much harder. When they get home give your child ‘down time’ to relax and switch off before attempting homework.

2. Kids with dyslexia may have good and bad days for no apparent reason.

Some days they can seem to remember then other days everything is forgotten.

3. Dyslexia affects everyone differently in many ways.

After 100 years of research there is no one definition of dyslexia because it covers so many different areas. Lots of different skills are used to read, that is why it is so important to identify and understand an individual’s learning strengths and where there is a weakness.

4. It will take them much longer to do reading and writing tasks Ask the teacher how long they expect homework to take and explain that this is how long they will be working.

5. Many children with dyslexia have low self-esteem, but are often very creative.

Praise your child for small accomplishments and focus on things they are good at.

6. Lots of people have dyslexia – it’s nothing to be ashamed of!

Dyslexia is the most common cause of reading, writing, and spelling difficulties.

At least 1 in ten people have dyslexia and some statistics suggest 1 in 5.

Many remain undiagnosed, untreated and struggling with the impact of their dyslexia.

More than 2 million people in the UK are severely affected.

Over 40 million American adults have dyslexia.

With determination and creative ideas many with dyslexia become successful after they have left school.

One fun way that parents can help children with dyslexia is by reading books to them. This will help them enjoy books and stories without having to read themselves. You will foster an interest in telling stories and familiarize them with imaginative vocabulary to help them get a stronger, more confident grasp on the spoken language.

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From the inclusion department See Dyslexia Differently Watch this short video with your children to start a conversation about what is dyslexia.

OCT 31ST, 2021

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