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Page 1: 08 newsletter 08 11-2012

Al Yasmina School Primary Newsletter

8 November 2012

Issue 08

Dear Parents,

Dates for your Diary

Monday 26 November - Next FOY Meeting

Monday 26 November - Individual photos

Tuesday 27 November - Individual photos

Thursday 29 November - National Day Celebrations

Thursday 6 December - Year 3 Ancient Egyptian Day

Saturday 8 December - Festive Fayre

Monday 10 December - Al Yasmina Festive Concert

PINK Day

Page 2: 08 newsletter 08 11-2012

Last Thursday 1November was Pink Day! All of the pupils and

staff donated money and came to school wearing pink, to

celebrate breast cancer awareness. The whole school

participated and we raised 14,500dhs. We will present this

money to The Red Crescent, who assist women with breast

cancer who can‟t afford the treatment themselves. A big

thank you to the school nurses for organizing this event.

From The Music Department

Year 5 celebrated their end of topic „Lights, Camera, Action‟ with a sparkling showcase of their work

in the Atrium this morning for the Year 5 parents. Sunbirds composed and performed a piece of

music to accompany a short clip of animated film music. It sounded wonderful. Nightjars gave a

stunning performance of the song “There‟s no business like Show Business”. A very talented selection

of performers from Year 5 also sang “Burn Them Trees” from the show Yanomamo., a beautiful

cantata for choir and solo voices set in the Amazon Rainforest. The singing was fabulous. We are very

proud of them! Yanomamo is happening this evening at Al Bateen School at 5pm. Admission is free.

Well done to this week‟s Musicians of the Week

Steven Tampubolon. (Key Stage1) and Sandali Weerasekera (Key

Stage 2). Steven (Year 2 Flamingos) gave a very fine performance of

a piece called “The Haunted Mouse” on the piano for the whole class

and Sandali (Year 6 Falcons) was super-successful when she

displayed her ability to sight-read 3 difficult tunes and perform them

flawlessly on keyboard for her class.

Page 3: 08 newsletter 08 11-2012

We have 3 dates for your diary:

Thursday 8 November: „Yanomamo‟ at Al Bateen School. We hope to see you there!

Saturday 8 December: FOY Festive Fayre. Both primary choirs have been asked to sing. Further

details will be sent shortly.

Monday 10 December: Al Yasmina Festive Concert, including performances by all choirs and

ensembles. Further details to follow.

For any information about primary music activities, please contact [email protected]

From the Arabic Department

Welcome to the first Primary Arabic contribution to the newsletter

We are looking forward to telling the parents every week about what the children have been

learning in their native speakers and non-native speaking lessons. Each week we will tell you about

the different year groups.

Y5 non- native: children have been learning about the music room and musical instruments and

they have been interested when they have been doing an Arabic activity about musical

instruments. Y6 non-native : children have been learning about the music room and musical instruments and they

were doing an Arabic project about music festivals. The children were really happy and excited

during their lessons.

Useful website: www.funwitharabic.com

Year 5 Arabic

Year 6 Arabic

Page 4: 08 newsletter 08 11-2012

Science Challenge

Congratulations to the Science challenge winners form last

Thursday: FS winner Sophie Kay; KS1 winner Haya Halawa and KS2

winner Grace Lewis. The children had fun investigating if they

could slow down the rotting process of apples. An email has

gone out about the latest science challenge and I hope more of

children and parents will want to join in with our „Fabulous

Floating‟ experiment. We look forward to receiving your entries.

Friend of Al Yasmina (FOY)

FOY Hamper Request

The Festive Fayre on 8 December is just around the corner and FOY volunteers are working hard

organising a raft of activities. You can help make the fayre an overwhelming success by providing

items for hamper baskets, which will be raffled on the day. Each Year group has been given a

different theme for donations. Boxes will be provided in each shared area for donations. FOY needs

all items brought in by November 22 so volunteers plenty of time to wrap them.

FS1 and FS2 - Spa products - body wash, scrub, lotion, shower gel, hand cream, cuticle cream, nail

polish, nail file, aromatherapy candles or oils

Year 1 and Year 2 - Gourmet food - (nothing that needs to be refrigerated) - coffee, specialty teas,

fancy biscuits or crackers, nice jars, oils

Year 3 and Year 4 - Toys/items for children - board games, cards, small books, crayons, colouring

pencils, stickers, yo-yos, small puzzles, bubbles, balloons

Year 5 and Year 6 - Outdoor/garden - vases, candles, lanterns, small garden tools, seeds, hand scrub

and cream, gardening gloves

Festive Jar Competition

Take an empty jar, fill it with wrapped sweets and decorate it as festive as you can. Prizes for the best

decorated jars (one for boys and one for girls). Please see attached flyer for more details.

National Day Celebrations

As you are aware, National Day is approaching. We are currently

putting together an exciting day of celebrations for 29th November 2012,

but we would like to ask for some help. We hope to set up a souk to

showcase traditional Arabic customs and artifacts. We want the

children to see, learn and appreciate as much as possible about the

local culture in which we live.

Any vendors who would like to have a table at the souk, please contact

Miss Dean (see below). There are limited places available. We would like

the stalls to sell traditional Arabic items as far as possible and with prices

suitable for the children.

Page 5: 08 newsletter 08 11-2012

If you have any contacts or would like to help out yourself, then please send an email to Miss Dean

([email protected]). We look for help and support in the following areas: Henna, Face

painting, Buffet food, Camel riding, Traditional cooking, Dancing,

Any offers / volunteers will be much appreciated!

There will be a meeting for anyone who wishes to volunteer at our National Day celebrations on

Monday 12th November 2012 in Year 2 Storks Classroom. Everyone welcome. Thanks in advance!

From Reception

When Student‟s need to leave the School for appointments, a note from Mum/Dad/Guardian needs

to be supplied either via Student Planner or email.

If an appointment crops up last minute, please give us as much notice as possible to enable staff to

locate the student.

Your co-operation is much appreciated.

Car Parking

As ever can we ask you to be patient and drive both carefully and sensibly. Our golden rule for the

car park is to please park in a marked parking bay before allowing your children to exit/enter the car.

Please avoid a situation where you hold up the traffic as you allow your children to exit/enter your

car near the entrance gates. Parents who do this mean well for their own children, but they cause

frustration for drivers waiting to enter the car park. Please seek out a parking bay.

We will be very grateful to any parent who elects to park on the sand to the side of the school and

walks the extra few meters to the school gate. We realise the temperature and humidity can be

uncomfortable but this „sand‟ parking will help ease the parking situation. For parents new to the

school we essentially ask:

1. Do not park next to the yellow or red painted pavements

2. Enter the car park from the main front entrance.

3. Do not drive against the traffic

4. Do not park your car on the pavement

4. Follow the directions and requests of the security staff

5. As pedestrians use the marked crossing points where possible

(zebra crossings). Please set an example to the children

News from Al Muna School

On Monday 10 December, Al Muna School is having a Winter Souk. They would welcome people

who would like to run an art/craft stall – contact [email protected] for more information.

ADDS Panto - British Club Abu Dhabi

We wondered if staff and students aged 11 & over would be interested in attending our Annual

Pantomime “Cinderella”. To be held at the British Club Abu Dhabi – Tuesday 11th December.

Flat fee of Aed 25 for Students, Chaperones FOC.

For any queries, please contact Mrs. Linda Arkley at [email protected]

Page 6: 08 newsletter 08 11-2012

For all Year groups - Come on everybody, show off your talents!

For the attention of all Primary parents

Why not encourage your child to enter the story or poetry writing

competition which is being run as part of the Emirates Airline Festival of

Literature?

Click on the following link to find out more details.

http://www.emirateslitfest.com/writingcompetition

We have some brilliant writers amongst our children and it would be fantastic

to see them being recognized outside Al Yasmina.

If you have any further questions that can‟t be answered by the website, please email Mrs. Wood

(Year 5 Parakeets) at [email protected].

Foundation Stage 1 (FS1)

„I wonder which fruit FS1 will like best...‟ There have been so many to choose

from this week as FS1 have explored their mini topic „fruit‟. We have read the

lovely story of „Handa‟s Surprise‟ looking carefully at the fruits in Handa‟s

basket, along with the African animals. We made some tasty fruit kebabs using

grapes, strawberries and pineapples, talking about how they tasted and which

one we liked best. With water paint, we

painted some of the delicious fruits from the

story. We also enjoyed counting up to 10 fruits

and putting them on a number line. In our role

play fruit and vegetables shop, we pretended

to buy and sell fruit and vegetables using the

tills and counters. Thank you very much to

those parents who contributed their ideas this

week, you made our learning even more

exciting!

Next week we will be learning about bread and cheese. We will have lots of fun making bread rolls,

tasting cheese and bread, learning some words in French and getting creative with French art. If you

think you could help make the week extra special in any way, please get in touch with your class

teacher, we look forward to hearing from you.

Congratulations to last week‟s „Stars of the Week

Our fantastic super stars from last week were Stef Markou from

Yellow class, Lea Jawhar from White class, Misk Al Mukhtar

from Green class, Fatima Al Hammadi from Red class, Hamed

Al Haddad from Gold Class and Matteus Tysse from Blue class.

Well done!

Page 7: 08 newsletter 08 11-2012

Foundation Stage 2 (FS2)

It‟s been a great week this for FS2 - we have had so much fun showing the teachers how clever we

are!! We have written about the different types of food we enjoy eating, we‟ve practiced our

phonics and we‟ve proved how beautifully we can write our names. We‟ve also made our own

fireworks using tin foil and glitter, practiced our tricky words using magic crayons and practiced how

to form numbers the correct way round – some of us are still finding this tricky! Why don‟t you have a

practice at home?

Next week our mini focus for our topic „Food around the world‟ is India. We have got some GREAT

activities planned including tasting traditional Indian food, a demonstration on how to make Indian

bread and we are going to make our own rangoli patterns.

In Maths the children will be introduced to the concept of adding by finding the total number of

items in two groups by counting all of them.

You could help at home by:

• Talking about the different types of food you can eat in India

• Find out information about India

• Talk about how the culture in India is different to their own

• Add 2 groups of objects together e.g. toys, books or even sweets (then they can be eaten…

YUM!)

Phonics Focus:

Revision of Phase 2 sounds: sh, ch, th, ng

Phase 2 tricky words: I, no, go, to, go, the, big, put, but

Helpful website:

Below is the youtube website, it is a great resource we have recently found to help the children

secure their knowledge of sounds that we have learnt so far. You might find it helpful at home too:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mr+thorne+does+phonics&oq=mr+thorne&gs_l=yout

ube-reduced.3.0.0l4.8739993.8741332.0.8744741.9.7.0.1.1.1.574.1068.4-1j1.2.0...0.0...1ac.1.u5kKRPoeli0

Congratulations to last week‟s „Stars of the Week

Isabelle Hodgson from Jade class, Maram Ghanem from Amber class, Mariam Barakat from Orange

class, Hind Al Omaira from Ruby class and Roy Breidi from Purple class. Well done guys, we‟re so

proud of you!!!

Page 8: 08 newsletter 08 11-2012

Year 1

Year 1 came into school on Sunday and found a surprise in

our shared area! It was all cordoned off ready for

construction, the teachers had run out of ideas for our

houses and homes topic! Luckily Year 1 came to the

rescue in their literacy learning this week, making designs in

teams using their labels and captions knowledge and

producing an information booklet containing many types

of houses we could create. Well done Year 1!

Year 1 continue to be busy in numeracy and have been

learning to count in 2‟s, 5‟s and 10‟s this week. They have used this learning to answer number

problems and puzzles. Keep practicing these number patterns at home.

Sparrows: Please note Sparrows PE slot has changed so that there is now not a clash with Islamic

Studies. PE is now on Wednesdays at 9 am, so please send the children in wearing their school

uniform. Swimming is still on Sunday!

Robins: Robins class also have a change to timetable. Library time is now on Thursday.

Help needed:

Also there is still a need for a classroom helper in Sparrows. If anyone could spare an afternoon or

morning hearing readers especially, this would be wonderful! Thank you. Remember that we cannot

have a Sparrows parent in our class…so we are calling on all Larks, Doves, Robins and Cuckoos

parents!

Congratulations to last week‟s „Stars of the Week‟

Larks- Cillian Mitchell, Doves- Sabrina Heymans, Cuckoos- Karen Al Mokatash, Robins- Kayed Al

Hammadi, Sparrows- Jack Wild

Year 2

This week has been another busy week in Year 2. In

maths we have been working on „inverse‟ to help us

understand the link between addition and

subtraction. We have also been working on

fractions. We used play dough to help us think

about halves and quarters and we were introduced

to the words „numerator‟ and „denominator‟ to help

us understand how many equal parts we had to

make.

Page 9: 08 newsletter 08 11-2012

We are all very excited about our visit to the fire station and we have been using our time in literacy

and topic to research fire safety. We even made our own adverts to teach younger children the fire

safety rules! Next week we will be moving on the „The Great Fire of London‟. We will be learning

about this important historical event in lots of fun ways. We hope you enjoy looking through a

selection of photos from our fantastic creatures of the desert day and last weeks „dress pink‟ day for

charity.

Congratulations to last week‟s „Stars of the Week

Sandpipers – Shamma Al Khali, Spoonbills - Thomas Muller, Herons – Alissar Nizameddin, Flamingos –

Hannah Barber, Storks - Adham Foud

Year 3

The children have had an exciting week with their visit to Sheikh Zayed grand mosque. They have

learned lots of fascinating facts that they have been sharing during our UAE Social studies lessons.

This week in Literacy we continued reading “The Twits” and have written another first person account,

e.g. a character‟s own account of an incident in the story. We have also written a rhyme to perform

to the class and we have been developing our comprehension skills by learning how to find keywords

and use these to help us answer questions. We have also written a completely unaided piece of

writing to describe a new nasty trick that we think the twits could perform on each other.

Page 10: 08 newsletter 08 11-2012

In Maths the children have been answering questions by collecting, organising and interpreting data.

They have used pictograms to represent results and illustrate their observations.

This week we have been drawing and labeling the different features of a plant and finding out why

plants are so important to us- e.g. food, furniture, building, papyrus-clothing -Egyptians, perfume,

medicine etc. In future weeks we will be planting and growing plants and investigating how best

they grow. In preparation for this we ask if the children can bring in a plant pot by Wednesday 14th

November (Between 10 and 15 centimetres in diameter).

We have continued to find out fascinating things about the Ancient Egyptians, this week we found

out all about the many different gods and why they were important. Next week we will learn about

how the Ancient Egyptians entertained themselves and we will be playing and making some board

games.

Next week we have our Assessment week and will be doing a reading comprehension and revising

some of our grammar rules that we need to apply to our writing for example changing present tense

to past tense and vice versa. In maths we will also have a maths assessment and work on problems

involving money.

Date for your diary: Ancient Egyptian day is on Thursday December 6th.

Congratulations to last week‟s „Stars of the Week

Daniel Florence- Curlews, Ziead Kaddoura – Buntings, Umar Ibn Yahya– Cormorants, Georgia

Coulston – Ravens, Ethan Wong – Terns

Page 11: 08 newsletter 08 11-2012

Year 4

Stop the presses! What a fantastic week it has been in Year 4!

The children in Year 4 have turned into journalists this week and

have been reporting on the exciting events from our Healthy Eating

Days.

We have learnt about the features of a news report, what makes a

good headline and the difference between reported speech and

direct speech. We even held a press conference to collect quotes

to include in our newspaper articles about Healthy Eating Day.

We looked at some TV news reports and pretended to be news

reporters ourselves, reporting live from scene of Humpty Dumpty‟s

tragic fall from the wall. We have some talent in year 4, the BBC

had better watch out!

We have kicked off our new topic,

„Architecturally Sound‟, this week and

have been looking at some amazing

buildings and structures around the world, including the 7

wonders. We used world maps and atlases to help us. It

was really interesting. We found out that the Taj Mahal in

India was built by Shah Jahan in memory of his wife and

that the Great Wall of China can be seen from space! We

are looking forward to having a real life architect

come and visit us on Thursday and discuss her job

with us.

In ICT this week we have been taking part in the Middle East Math

Challenge. It has been great fun to play the games and compete

against children from different schools and even from other countries!

Next week we will be learning all about different units of measure in

Maths and will be doing some hands on activities measuring the length and perimeter of objects. In

literacy we will be focusing on TV news reports and will be working towards writing and filming our

own! We are looking forward to learning about iconic buildings from around the world in Topic, such

as the Sydney Opera House, Empire State Building and the Burj Khalifa. It‟s going to be another a

fabulous week in Year 4!

Congratulations to last week‟s „Stars of the Week

Wagtails- Saoud Al Nassai, Pipits- Allan Murad, Warblers-

Charlton Yau, Wheatears- Julia Ebner, Sand grouse-

Charlie King

Page 12: 08 newsletter 08 11-2012

Year 5

This week saw our Lights, Camera, Action topic come to an epic finale. On Wednesday evening the

children (and teachers!) enjoyed the thrill of the movies, munching on hot dogs and crisps while

watching Hugo, a 2011 film based on the life of an orphan boy, living in Paris.

Many famous Hollywood actors were welcomed to Al Yasmina‟s red carpet for our Oscar award

ceremony on Thursday.

We saw Johnny Depp in his roles of Captain Jack Sparrow and Edward Scissorhands, the glamorous

Audrey Hepburn as Holly in Breakfast at Tiffany‟s, Bruce Wayne as Batman, Judy Garland as Dorothy

from The Wizard of Oz and many many more. Children (and parents) made a fantastic effort,

working hard to prepare their costumes and their tear-jerking speeches in anticipation of receiving

the ultimate award of an Oscar. A huge thank you goes out to all who helped with this event.

In Literacy this week we have written about the adventures that an alien encountered together with

his earthling friend during a visit to Abu Dhabi and have developed our ability to describe using

powerful vocabulary. Next week we shall be finding out how to produce television news reports and

writing our own for presentation.

This week‟s Maths has focused on developing our data handling and mental maths skills. The

children have also battled it out against others from all over the UAE competing in the Middle Eastern

Maths Challenge. Children will continue to develop their problem-solving skills next week in the

context of measurement, focusing on length and time, including using a calendar.

The excitement of the recent F1 carries on in Year 5 next week with the introduction to our new topic.

Children will begin to find out about the race locations and the drivers involved in this exhilarating

sport.

Congratulations to last week‟s „Stars of the Week

Umar Bashir (Parakeets) Reem Al Rawi (Sunbirds) Riley Forbes

(Nightjars) Elliott Pollendine (Mynahs) and Jonas Greene

(Swallows)

Year 6

Year 6 have been working very hard this week and are to be commended on their behaviour and

dedication to learning. During Literacy this week we have been focusing on how to write instructional

texts. The pupils have been able to identify key features and have followed the teachers‟ instructions

wonderfully in order to produce excellently written, clear and precise instructions. In Numeracy the

pupils have been revising properties of 2D and 3D shapes, while also thoroughly enjoying taking part

in the Middle East Maths Challenge; competing against other students from all over the Middle East.

Science this week has been learning about forces. Test your child‟s knowledge by asking them what

type of forces were acting on the F1 cars as they raced around the Yas Marina Circuit last weekend.

Page 13: 08 newsletter 08 11-2012

Discovering the difference between the weight of an object in

water and in the air.

Next week in Literacy we shall be distinguishing the difference between instructions and guides and

then focusing on how to write a guide. The pupils will be collaborating in class to create a guide

book on how to be an outstanding student within Al Yasmina School. In Numeracy lessons we will be

continuing to classify 2-D shapes and 3-D solids according to their sides and edges and identifying

lines of symmetry within 2-D shapes.

Well done to our stars of the week this week!

Isabella Jarman (Owls), Nandini Bhalla (Eagles), Mohanad El

Chouemi (Falcons), Jasmine Cheah (Kestrels), Alexa Rayner

(Ospreys).

Al Yasmina School

Tel: 02 5014888

email: [email protected]