Message from the Head of Secondary - 23 April 2020

Dear Parents,

Thank you to all of you for the support you are providing for our children. We appreciate the sacrifices, patience, and encouragement you are giving. We know you are there, in the background, supporting us, and the children. We trust that a pattern of engagement has now been established and we monitor each lesson, in terms of attendance and participation. We are delighted with the overall attendance, which remains stubbornly high and is a great testament to your support. Year Heads have, and will continue to, telephone parents where a pattern of non-engagement becomes apparent.

During on-line Assemblies, I always encourage the children in four things - moving away from the screen and doing other things with their time; taking handwashing seriously; making opportunities for some aerobic activity to maintain a degree of fitness and volunteering to help you around the house (not waiting to be asked!) I hope some of these behaviours can be established, now and for the future after we emerge from the current situation.

Year 11 have completed Language Orals and are preparing for assessments in three week’s time. We are also reviewing options for assessing other year groups and the subsequent provision for termly reports and parent meetings which will be part of that cycle. We want to maintain our rhythm of assessing, reporting and consulting, albeit within the boundaries of the current restrictions. We know and appreciate your understanding about this. Dates and details will be communicated in due course.

Mr. McAuley and Mr. Booth have entered several students' work in the Katara Short Story competition and I have read some of them. The themes are the current quarantine and the pieces submitted are excellent, honest and quite emotional. We hope to publish some in the near future.

Supplies of exercise books are available with the school security guards. Students are not allowed to collect them so we are grateful for you coming to school to re-stock on their behalf. It is very helpful for our guards to know your requirements in terms of Maths (grid paper), DT (blank paper) and other subjects (lined paper). Although exercise books are colour coded for each year group it is not a priority whether a child receives a red or green or blue book. The most important things are that they have sufficient supplies to continue their work and that they maintain their health.

The issue of 'homework' is one which all parents are involved with and I would like to share the definition and advice we adhere to. Homework traditionally means work completed by the children in the evening or at the weekend. It is effectively, extra work. We are aware that families may be under pressure with regard to device access, physical space or the demands of screen time. Therefore, we have reduced 'homework' to simply the work completed at home, between the start and finish of the school day. In this way, the children should finish their tasks and log off at the end of the day and go and occupy themselves away from studies. Some projects and elective studies will continue, by agreement with the children and their teacher. However, for the great majority of Y7 - Y10 school should be finished when lesson 6 is concluded. I hope this brings clarity. Y11 will be expected to study for their assessments and maintain their momentum as was expected prior to the current situation.

I would like to conclude by thanking you again for your support, your kind words and your stamina. We are very happy with the assistance you are giving. Thank you.

Kind regards,

Mr. Ken Haggerty

Head of Secondary

This week, the Primary SEND and EAL Team have started offering non-compulsory EAL and SEND support sessions to children in Years 1 – 6 who have previously received support from our department. The feedback from students and parents has been great, and it has been brilliant to see the children’s happy faces once again – it has been far too long! These Zoom sessions will continue throughout Ramadan so look out for the Zoom invite in your email inbox.

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, Miss Bunmi, at oluwabunmi.tobun@oryxschool.qa. She can also be contacted by giving her a call on 66011301 from Sunday to Thursday between 8:30-9:30 am and 12:30-1:30 pm. She is always happy to listen and provide reassurance.

Ramadan Kareem from The Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies.

Thank you to all our students and parents for their excellent learning interactions this week.

Our students have learned a lot of skills in the three compulsory subjects and have made remarkable progress in understanding how the distance learning course works, they have also shown commitment in attending classes and completing their homework on time.

Year 7: Will begin to develop their own abstract shapes using their knowledge of Elizabeth Murray to help design them.

Year 8: Will complete their abstract self-portrait adding patterns and colours. Once completed they will begin a realistic self-portrait drawing.

Year 9: Students are continuing their work on abstract photograph collages in response to Marshall Brown.

Year 10: Students will continue developing their paint skills in using acrylic paint as well as develop their abstract painting in response to Georgia O'Keeffe.

Year 11: Students are selecting appropriate work to resolve their components.

Year 10: Students will continue studying Unit 5. Students will learn about new technologies used in Business. They will further enhance their knowledge of CAM systems while exploring the advantages and disadvantages.

Year 11: Students will be revising Topic 2 – People in Business and practise answering 6-marker questions using past exam papers.

Year 7: Students will learn what is Hexadecimal. Students will then learn how to convert Binary into Hexadecimal.

Year 8: Students will learn all about logic gates. Students will then learn the methods of calculating binary using the different logic gates.

Year 9: Students will get an introduction to Python. They will first learn how to create basic programs and then a menu.

Year 10: Students will learn all about Quantum Computing and Nano technology. Students will explore the aspects of Quantum computing taking into account characteristics, uses and ethical issues.

Year 11: Students will complete a range of challenges in programming and we will be going through different ways a program can be improved.

Year 7: Students have started their Board Game project. Instructions for pupils to follow will be shared with them each week. Next week students will begin to research existing products and consider how they could incorporate existing designs into their own concepts. After this they will begin to develop what the game will look like, how it will be played and the rules.

Year 8: Students will be following a series of tutorials about 3D printing and Computer-Aided Design. Via online videos and presentations, students will learn how to create 3D products using different computer software (tinkercad, on shape, freecad). It will not matter if pupils are using a tablet, phone or laptop for their learning.

Year 9: Students will continue the ‘Product in a Tin’ unit of work. Students have been challenged to design a product to fit into a tubular tin that is the same size as a 40g Pringles snack tin or a 60g Nescafe Azera coffee tin. Next week students will be exploring possible solutions and existing products as inspiration for their designs.

Year 10: Students will continue to practice and develop their drawing, sketching and presentation skills. Following on from the work this week, students will begin to use a range of techniques to develop their design concepts for a desktop storage unit. They will use the crating techniques, construction lines and rendering styles learned this week to develop a range of creative ideas.

Year 11: Students will continue to work on the Design and Technology theory content and revision materials in preparation for the assessment week. The last theory section students will be studying will be an in-depth look at timers; including construction techniques, manufacture, tools and machinery used.

Year 7: Students have started a Shakespeare Summer Project. They will be doing a variety of home activities such as interpreting a script for a performance as an actor, director and designer, developing their scriptwriting skills, editing and formatting parts of a script, and recording monologues. All of the activities are based around the play A Midsummer's Night Dream.

Year 8: Students are working on a Live Theatre Project. They will be using the musical Aladdin as their inspiration. They will work as a performer and/or a set and costume designer to complete a variety of tasks around the production. The students will develop an appreciation of live theatre and gain knowledge on the performance and design elements that make a production successful for an audience.

Year 9: Students will complete a theatre evaluation after watching a digital theatre performance to develop their critical writing skills. They will then be researching the theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht and be exploring some of his theories in Epic Theatre. This will contrast against last term's Naturalism style of performance.

Year 11: Students have completed all their practical GCSE work and are now revising for their written paper and practicing past papers.

In English, our students are now well underway in their poetry studies.

Year 7 are beginning by looking at poetic devices. They are gaining an understanding of what a poem actually is. This is a steep learning curve. It is often overlooked but many of our students are studying and learning in their second language which makes their progress all the more remarkable.

Year 8 students have been looking at cultural poetry. We have been looking at a wonderful poem called Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan by Moniza Alvi. The poet discusses her sense of alienation and isolation. Alvi describes a few gifts that she receives from her aunts. This is a metaphor for her Pakistani culture, and she says how much it clashes with her English culture.

Year 9 students are looking at poems born from conflict. We have been discussing the conflict that the British Guyanese poet John Agard and first published in 2005, in the collection Half-Caste. The poem focuses on the holes in the British colonial education system—particularly that system's omission of important figures from African, Caribbean, and indigenous history. We have been looking at some of the rich tapestries of African history that were often ignored by the British education system and how it created alienation and despair in Agard.

Year 10 students are continuing to study the key poems from the IGCSE Anthology including My Last Duchess by Robert Browning.

Year 11 students have practised unseen poetry from the UK poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy and others on the theme of COVID. Then they have analysed the poems and tried to write their own personal responses on a similar theme.

Finally, a big Thank you from the English department to all those pupils in secondary who entered the Katara writing competition on Lockdown Life. Many responses were both moving and entertaining. We hope your excellent prose and efforts are rewarded with the top prize of 10,000 QRS!

Year 7: Students will learn about Africa’s biomes.

Year 8: Students willlearn about the climatic zones and biomes in Russia.

Year 9-1: Students will learn about Asia’s biomes and physical features.

Year 9-2/9-3: Students will learn about how energy is transferred through the food chain.

Year 10: Students will learn about the importance of coral reefs and the threats to them and the formation and characteristics of mangrove forests.

Year 11: Students will look at figures and use different command words to analyse them.

Year 7: Students will learn to examine Britain’s role in the slave trade and to explain the difference between pirates and privateers including Blackbeard.

Year 8: Students will have to describe why the average life expectancy was so low in industrial towns and cities.
Explain why disease was so common in the living conditions of the time.

Year 9: Students will have to understand the reasons why the different European powers were interested and involved in the Balkans.

Year 10:

Lesson 1:

Understand the key features of the Marshall Plan.

Understand how the Marshall Plan challenged communism in Europe.

Understand Stalin’s objections to the Marshall Plan.

Lesson 2:

Understand why Stalin established the Berlin Blockade.

Understand the American reaction to the Berlin Blockade.

Year 11: Students will revise gaps in knowledge for the IGCSE's.

Year 7 Lesson 1: Sequences - Identify number sequences in geometric patterns (L4), 13a-pg248

Year 7 Lesson 2: Multiply and divide numbers by 10, 100 and 1000 (L4)

Year 7 Lesson 3: Term-to-Term Rules , 13c-pg252 Generate and describe simple sequences (L4)

Year 8 Lesson 1: Ch11 Kerboodle Assessments

Year 8 Lesson 2: Sequences, 13a- Pg236 ; Term-to-term rules - Find and use the term-to-term rule in a sequence. L6

Year 8 Lesson 3: 13b- Pg238; Position-to-term rules - Find and use the position-to-term rule in a sequence. L6

Year 9 Lesson 1: Complete correction of ratio IGCSE questions

Year 9 Lesson 2: Simple factorising

Year 9 Lesson 3: Simple factorising – extend pupils to more complex cases including higher powers and multiple terms. If time permits, recap simplifying algebraic fractions (without factorising)

Year 10 Lesson 1: Solve quadratic equations by completing square

Year 10 Lesson 2: Solve quadratic equations by completing square.

Year 10 Lesson 3: Solve quadratic equations using Quadratic Formula

Year 11: Practicing Exam questions from Past paper Booklet and revising.

French

Year 7: Students will be studying their past-times and the weather

Year 8: Students will be writing about what kind of food they love

Year 9: Students will be writing about where they live

Year 10: Students will be describing the house of their dreams

Year 11: Students will be correcting their speaking exam

Spanish

Year 7: Students will be studying their school

Year 8: Students will be writing about how they dress

Year 9: Students will be correcting work which examines their impact on the planet

Year 10: Studentswill be writing about celebrations

Year 11: Students will be correcting their speaking exam

Year 7-9: This week, KS3 music students will continue to explore and examine the context and background of their chosen stream of study for the Music Personal Project
Year 11: Continued development of the composition brief and finishing touches for free composition.

This week in secondary PE students have been completing the Fitness circuit challenge and learning about the Cardiovascular system. Our Year 10 and Year 11 GCSE PE students have been keeping busy by completing agility challenges and taking part in online Kahoot quiz's testing their Theory knowledge on the different exam components.

Just a reminder that as we approach the holy month of Ramadan, it is an expectation that students still complete their online PE lessons. The PE teachers have been mindful that some students may be fasting and have created activities that are not too demanding. We would greatly appreciate if all students complete their lessons as normal and take additional breaks if they need to.

We are extremely pleased with how hard everyone has been working and we look forward to seeing more of you in action next week.

Year 7:

Set 1 - Reproduction both asexual and sexual reproduction

Set 2 - Forces and Reproduction both asexual and sexual reproduction

Set 3 - Atoms and Elements, we will be looking at the structure of the atom and exploring its subatomic particles.

Set 4 - Reproduction both asexual and sexual reproduction

Year 8 All: Rocks and weathering.

Year 9:

Set 1 - Biological Molecules and enzymes

Set 2 - Diffusion and Osmosis

Set 3 - Stopping distances and Newtons Laws of motion

Year 10:

Set C & E Biology - Plant transport

Chemistry - Extraction of metals electrolysis

Physics Set C - We will be studying density and pressure

Physics Set E -We will be studying the gas laws

Year 11: We will be looking at past questions in Unit 6 and 7 of the IGCSE physics syllabus.