Dear Parents,

What a term! From fixtures, to trips, parent workshops and evenings, spelling bees, our Global Money Awareness and Dr. Hassan Al Thani’s visits, Sports Day and QNV/E-Steam projects, we have been incredibly busy! Our end of term will reach its apex this week with our first 'Junk Art' exposition, our prestigious Sports Day Presentation and of course our International Day on April 3rd.

Sport

We all celebrated Qatar National Sports Day on February 12th, we continued our celebration of sport in school by participating in a wide array of sports and fixtures this term. We have taken part in badminton, football, netball, rugby, athletics and basketball competitions, to name a few and we had some fantastic successes against local schools here in Doha. All these achievements will be celebrated via our Sports Day celebration assembly on Tuesday, April 2nd at 09.45, please do come if you are free. Next term, we are looking forward to participating in our first U13 BISQ Games on May 3rdand 4th, as well as starting swimming lessons in Secondary.

Trips and external visitors

Oryx had the pleasure of hosting Dr. Hassan Al Thani who discussed road safety and explained his role in the Emergency department at Hamad Hospital.

The Secondary students welcomed three guest speakers from QNB who explained the different aspects of banking during our Global Money Awareness week.

We ran our first successful Secondary trip last Monday to the Qatar Stock Exchange. The students had an insightful day during which they were given a mini competition task of investing 1 million Qatari Riyals in businesses currently listed on the Qatar Stock Exchange. The winning group made a profit of over 1,500 QAR within 20 minutes. To end the trip students were taken to the Qatar Stock Exchange hall where they witnessed the live television reporting of the stock market!

QNV and E-Stem projects

Our students have been busy completing their QNV and E-Stem projects this term. You are cordially invited to our first 'Junk Art Project' on Tuesday April 2nd from 08.40, where our Year 8s will discuss how we intertwine our curriculum at Oryx with the QNV 2030 pillars. In STEM students have researched, built and programmed some incredible robots. A group of students are currently competing in an in-house STEM robotics competition where their robots will be tested for speed and endurance!

Options for Year 9

Parents of Y9 students were invited to International GCSE workshops to explore and discuss how to support their child in choosing the correct subject pathways. These were very popular and you will find the presentations in the parent portal for your convenience. Our subscribed software Unifrog is a useful guide for your child and should be used from Y7 onwards. Your child should have login details to start using the software, please ask them more about this tool which will allow you to assist them further.

I wish you all the best for the coming holidays, we are already planning an exciting, eventful Term 3 to conclude our first year of Secondary at OIS!

Regards,

Mrs. Johal