Message from the Head of Primary - 11 June 2020

Dear Parents

This week, I have been amazed by a number of our students who are so keen to share their learning and inspire others. I would like to say a special thank you to Alice in FS1 for being a superb teacher by teaching her friends phonics. What an incredible job she did! For those of you who haven’t seen the video, please have a look at our Oryx Facebook page. Keep sharing the videos and pictures of your child’s learning: we love seeing them!

Parents will receive their child’s end of term report today. Reports can be accessed on the parent portal via this link https://parentsoryx.orbitaled.com/ The report formats are a little different from usual and so it is important that parents make an appointment to speak to their child’s class teacher on Sunday 14^th June. If an appointment has not yet been made, please contact your child’s class teacher to do this. Our Inclusion team will also be on hand at these Zoom meetings to discuss progress and support.

Next week, as part of our transition programme for students, we will be offering parent and year leader sessions. The events diary outlines the days and times of these events: Zoom invites will be sent via email to parents. This is an opportunity for parents to meet the leader of the year group their child is moving in to. The Year Leader will give an overview of expectations and the experiences your child will have in the year ahead: there will also be an opportunity for questions and answers.

We are currently putting together class lists for next year. 2020 will be the first year that we are not growing in KS1 and, with this in mind, we are able to implement the first stage of a stable class structure. Going forward, classes will be mixed at the end of FS2 and at the end of Year 2. This means that children will move up in FS1 and Year 1 with their class to their next teacher. This ensures that there can be a smooth handover from teacher to teacher and will also provide some stability and continuity for the children. At the moment our KS2 classes are still growing and so all children moving into Years 3 to 6 will have a new mix of students in their class but in 2021 we hope that the re-grouping of classes will only happen at the end of Year 4 and Year 6. Teachers use a range of criteria to ensure each class has an even mix of students, one criteria being friendship groups.

Finally, I would like to express my ongoing thanks to parents for all their support in these challenging times. We all know how difficult it can be to juggle the usual demands of everyday life let alone throwing home learning and working from home into the mix. Our parent-teacher partnership is strong and is very much valued by us all. Thank you!

Stay safe,

Andrea Smith

More great work this week from our Inclusion students. We are all so delighted with the progress that we are seeing, even in such challenging circumstances. It just goes to show how strong and resilient the Oryx students are – however, you shouldn’t feel embarrassed or ashamed if you are finding things tough at the moment. It is only natural to feel a bit out of sorts, on edge and a little bit worried. Try to control the areas of your life that you can control, remember to find time to relax and unwind, and find ways to have fun, smile, laugh and take your mind off what is going on in the rest of the world.

Please remember, if your child has any worries, concerns or anxieties and would like to talk to someone at school please reiterate to them that they can contact our school counsellor, Mrs Bunmi, at oluwabunmi.tobun@oryxschool.qa. She can also be contacted by giving her a call on 66011301 from Sunday to Thursday between 8:30-9:30am and 12: 30-1:30pm. She’s always happy to listen and provide reassurance.

Hello everyone!

We have continued with our fantastic learning! Across Literacy and Maths, we have had a strong focus on understanding our day – the morning, afternoon and evening. We have recorded our daily timetable, talked about our bedtime routine – it was lovely to see the children in action putting their teddies to bed and understanding the key parts of our favourite stories. This week we have finished our set 1 sounds and have started to segment/blend simple words. We went ‘under the sea’ as we danced to the Disney “Under the Sea” song and did different yoga movements with Mimi the Mermaid. Furthermore, we played with water as we further invested floating and sinking as part of Understanding the World.

Next week, we will continue to embed our learning. In Maths, we will be making a jam sandwich and then ordering the steps to develop our language around sequencing. In Literacy, we will be using our beach photos as a starting point to discuss a beach and what we would find there. We will continue to create some beautiful art work linked to mermaids and we will be talking about our time in FS1 and the move to FS2 – so exciting!

We would like to say a big well done to all our parents and children for the teaching and learning this week.

In FS2 Bangladesh this week, we have read the Jolly Postman. Children have written letters to their favourite fairy-tale characters and friends. They got creative and made envelopes for their letters including the address and a stamp. In Maths, we focused on ordinal numbers and used toys to talk about the place that they were in, 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc.

Year 1 have had a lovely week. In English this week they have been learning about poems. They have been writing up their own poems and will be performing them the end of the week. They have been using lovely rhyming words too! In maths they have been learning about 3D shapes and lines of symmetry. For art they have made their very own creative sock puppets. They have done a fantastic job this week.

Year 2 have had yet another fantastic week and we are all so proud of all the great work they continue to produce! The children have enjoyed completing a speaking and listening activity in English this week, for this they had to make a short video of themselves speaking about their home country without having a chance to practice! They then filled in a questionnaire on how they thought their performance went and next week they will have the opportunity to improve their performances even further, we can’t wait to watch your videos already! In maths, Year 2 have been continuing to work on their times tables, using arrays to help them solve multiplication problems. This week’s science lesson saw the children experimenting again, this time exploring what happens to materials when they are heated and cooled, I think we definitely have lots of young scientists in the making. Thank you for all of your super work Year 2 – keep it up!

Year 3 continue to work extremely hard and have produced some impressive work on Canvas this week. In Maths, we have been exploring fractions and have been able to order them and find equivalent fractions. In English, the children have worked so hard learning how to construct paragraphs. Our Science task was to see how different types of chocolate melt in different environments.

Next week we will revise the column method in Maths and create some of our own comic strips in English. Keep up the brilliant work, we are all so proud of you!

“Extra, extra read all about it!” Can you guess what year 4 have been writing about this week? You got it… we’ve been reporters on the hunt for this week’s big breaking story on deforestation. We have been thinking about all the features of a Newspaper report and including them in our writing. We have definitely got some budding reporters in Oryx International School. In maths we have been revising the important number skills around place value, it has been a lot of fun using online activities to challenge our mental arithmetic skills. Topic has been a real ‘eye-opener’… we have been researching into the subject of deforestation, the impact it is having on our world and what we can do to help. Did you know that deforestation has a huge impact on climate change? By making simple changes in our daily lives, like using less paper, we can start to make a difference. We hope you are reading this Newsletter on a screen rather than a piece of paper.

As you can see Year 4 have had a really exciting week of remote learning and are very excited for the coming weeks.

In Year 5 this week we've been busy extending our learning about Space into our English work, particularly focusing on chronological reports. Whilst learning all the key features of chronological reports, we have been able to work on improving our research skills finding out about different planets and then applying our newly learned knowledge into writing our very own short chronological report. The children seemed to really enjoy this cross-curricular type of learning.

As we head towards the end of the school year, we have been reflecting on all of our triumphs and adversities during the past nine months together.

We have also been looking ahead to address some of our hopes, fears and expectations ahead of the transition to secondary school.

More specifically, this week in English the children have continued their focused author study on the life and times of Roald Dahl. We looked at a timeline of events in his life and career, along with the experiences which helped shape him as an author and define him as a man.

We looked very closely at his long-held partnership with Sir Quentin Blake and the latter’s own career as an illustrator and children’s author. The children were asked to compare and contrast the two story-tellers, looking at their similarities and different writing styles.

For Maths, we have completed more open-ended investigations by looking into tessellation, the Brahmagupta method of multiplication, exponential growth and the power of doubling! Using the old proverb of The Wiseman and The Emperor, the grains of rice and the chessboard, we looked at what would happen if you placed a single grain of rice on the first square of a chessboard. As you go along the board, the rice will continue to double up until you get to the 64^th and final square. Then you have the simple task of adding up all the previous tiles to work out how much rice is needed.

This sounds simple enough but if the grains of rice were to be placed end to end, they would reach the star Alpha Centauri and back… TWICE!

Topic has seen the children look at physical and natural geography features, along with creating promotional material demonstrating the beauty and wonder of the birthplace of the Olympic Games: Greece.

Overall, it has been another strong effort on the engagement front and we teachers continue to be impressed with the children's commitment to learning and their flexibility of approach during these times.

Have a lovely weekend all and do keep safe.

This has been an excellent week in the field of distance learning for our students.

Our students continued to work on their skills of speaking, writing and reading.

We met with parents of our Sixth Grade students starting in September and discussed information pertaining to the curriculum of the Ministry of Education, the difficulties that students face and raising the competence of our students in all compulsory material skills.

Thank you to our parents and all our best wishes for the success for our students.

This week in our primary MFL lessons, Year 6 students took on a reading text on rollercoasters which they really enjoyed!

Year 4 were learning how to be “chic” as they wrote about fashion in French with Ms Alanya. They are now practicing writing sentences in French, which is a big step up!

Year 1 and year 2 happen to be doing the same topic with Ms Miguel, but they will be playing some fun games on Linguascope.

This week the children have been busy learning how to read different rhythms. They have performed their rhythms to music and some even created their own rhythms. Well done!

Next week the children will be learning about body percussion and the different rhythms and sounds you can create with your body to make music.

I hope you all have a great rest of your week/weekend.

Year 1

Handmade instrument

Students have been working on a handmade instrument project and making they’ve shown us their impressive talent through a variety of creative performances. Not only they’ve played their instrument, but they've also sang and danced along. We can tell they are Superstars!

Cups

Students have been practicing beat and rhythm through playing different songs with cups they had at home. It’s amazing to see how well they’ve coordinated their movements and followed the music matching the different cups' positions. Well done, Y1’s!

Year 2

Handmade instrument

Students have made their own instruments and shown us how talented they are by playing it and even singing and dancing to the music of their choice. Some children have chosen to sing in their language and showcased the cultural diversity of our school. Good job, Y2’s!

Cups

Students have played different rhythms using cups found at home. They’ve shown us how we can make music with objects that surround us and proven their ability to follow a selection of rhythm patterns on a piece of paper with their cups while following the music. Bravo, Y2’s!

Year 3

Check out our marvelous musicians of year 3. What fantastic performances! We have some very talented children at Oryx, I'm sure you will agree. The children made their own instruments at home out of recycled materials and some of them even performed with them. They look great! Amazing performances Year 3. Well done!

Year 4

Look at the fantastic musicians we have in year 4. What talent! The children made some really great instruments at home out of materials they found around their house. We can even see some of the instruments they made in the video. A great way to reuse recyclable materials. They sound great too! Well done Year 4, marvelous performances!

Greetings from the PE Department!

We are now into week 7 of our PE challenges and we have had some brilliant entries and a lot of fun watching you all stay competitive by trying these challenges. They will be posted every Sunday on your class page so make sure you have a look and get involved.

Next week in PE, Year 1&2 are going to work on combining all the skills they have learned together by trying out some multi-skills games. Year 3&4 will be working on a HIIT session and putting their knowledge to the test in Miss Virgo's PE quiz and Year 5&6 will be following a dance routine using balance and coordination and exploring how this relates to creating patterns.

Keep it up the great work athletes.