Dear Parents,

Our D1 students had a successful field study trip in Pangani last week and the D2s have only one day left of their mock examinations. The Primary swimming gala was also a great success and we are now getting ready for the inter-house secondary swimming gala on Friday (see below). Also with the release of the national Form Four results very soon, we are now advertising our scholarship places for 2012-2014 and, to support this same programme, we are starting to form Team ISM to compete in the Kilimanjaro Marathon - see details on both of these below.

If you are in Arusha this Tuesday evening (31st January), please join us in the Mt Meru Hotel at 5:30pm for a presentation on ISM. Or you may know of families who would have an interest in learning more about the school. All are welcome

This year we hope that TEAM ISM will be the biggest ever in the Kilimanjaro Marathon on Sunday, 26th February. Any student, parent, teacher of friend of ISM can join and for only TSh 10,000/- you will get admission to the 5km Fun Run, a special ISM T-Shirt, transport from school to the stadium, and snacks in the stadium. We will also be asking all runners to help to raise funds for the ISM Scholarshop Programme. For every TSh 5000/- that you raise in sponsorship, you will receive an entry in a draw to win one of our seven give-away IPod Shuffles. Full details are given at www.ismoshi.org/marathon.htm where you can also find entry forms and sponsorship forms.

Join us and help to make Team ISM a major part of this year's marathon.

As the national form four examination results are due very soon, ISM now invites applicants to apply for a full scholarship in ISM's diploma programme from August 2012 to May 2014. This programme has been highly competitive in recent years and has attracted the very best Tanzanian students. Full details on eligibility and how to apply are at www.ismoshi.org/scholarship.htm. If you know of a Tanzanian student who has achieved great success in their form four exams, please encourage him or her to apply.

All our D2 students have been taking their mock (practice) diploma examinations last week and they will complete these tomorrow, Monday, 30th January.

The secondary inter-house swimming gala will take place on Friday, 3rd February. Regular classes for secondary students are scheduled from 7:30am to 9:35am. After a break, the swimming gala will take place from 10am to 12:35. Students from Arusha Campus will also be joining us and competing for their houses.

In February, students in the P4 to M1 and M3 classes will particpate in the International Schools Assessment (ISA) tests set by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). The ISA provides an insight into students' proficiency in the areas of Mathematical Literacy, Reading, Narrative Writing and Expository Writing and provide us with one set of data to help evaluate and review our teaching programmes. This will be the fifth year that we have taken the tests in February and results of previous years can be viewed at www.ismoshi.org/isaacer.htm. These tests will take place on February 10th and 13th. Because they are designed to assess students' proficiency, there is no need to practise for these tests in advance.

We will also be giving shorter trial tests to the same students (P4,P5,P6,M1,M3) on Wednesday, 1st February. The results of these will help ACER to develop future ISA tests, but will not be reported back to the school.

A group of secondary students from both campuses will be travelling to Lusaka on Thursday, 2nd February to take part in the International Schools Theatre Association (ISTA) drama festival for students. They are due to return on Monday, 6th February.

The M4 students from both campuses will be undertaking field study in West Kilimanjaro from Tuesday, 7th February to Friday, 10th February.

Our annual International Festival will be taking place in Arusha Campus on Saturday, 3rd March. If you would like to join in, help in a tent or be on stage, please contact Sue Jones on .

Click here to see a poster for the event.

Mock examinations for D2 students will conclude on Monday afternoon. D2 students appeared very engaged in the first five days (January 23-27th) of the mock exams. Boarding house parents indicated that D2 students were impressively focused each evening this week as they prepared intensively for the exams. After the mock exams the next couple of months of regular classes for D2 students will be crucial as the syllabi will be finished and a review will occur in preparation for the May IB exams.
Before leaving on Tuesday, D1 students had a normal day of classes on Monday and then were engaged in a fantastic Science Group 4 project trip to Pangani on the Indian Ocean. Reports on the Pangani DP Science trip indicated that the students had a wonderful experience and they were well behaved and it was truly once again a successful three-night field trip. Much appreciation is extended to the three DP faculty members (Elly Nkya, Jon Bigg and Rafael Holt) for their time and effort in organizing this hands-on field study and team-building educational field trip.

The DP Coordinator this week conducted his monthly meeting with DP faculty. Besides planning for the Extended Essay work of the D1s in the next seven months, considerable focus was given to evaluating the academic progress to date of D1 and D2 students. The DP faculty opted to commence a mentor program for those D1 students most in need of pastoral and academic support. The existing mentor program for D2 students will continue and be further strengthened in our quest to help students do well and lead a balanced life in their two years with us in the ISM DP.

Attached is the link to one thought-provoking article by a former Harvard University President. It is entitled, What You (Really) Need to Know, and provides a unique perspective on how we prepare young people, particularly in higher education (but it applies certainly to secondary education too) for the future. Many would argue that the IB's DP education does just this. Decide for yourself and read it at www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/education/edlife/the-21st-century-education.html

As usual feel free to email or call with any questions/concerns.

Sincerely, Rick Fitzpatrick - Diploma Coordinator - ()

Another busy and versatile week in the life of our students.

Students from different levels will be in a drama festival in Zambia at the end of the week. It is a good opportunity for them to see another school and get involved in activities that will enhance their development. Our philosophy is to educate life-long learners and that's the best opportunity for them to apply what they know to other situations.

We also have a swimming gala next Friday 3rd February- I would urge all the Middle school students to do their best to represent their houses. This is not only important for the community but it is good exercise which will enhance their development.

Meeting deadlines: I would like to stress the importance of meeting deadlines especially the M4 & M5 students. There is a tendency to think that they can bring in their work later and it will be accepted. This is not fair on the other students. We are doing our best to instil time management skills in our students right from an early age and we would like the support of their parents and boarding parents. It happens that some students have difficulty managing their time and they need close monitoring in class and at home. In M5, students have a lot of assignments to give in and this is good preparation for the Diploma years; once they can set their priorities right, they will have no problem in the future.

Academic honesty: This is an issue nowadays as there is so much information that is easily accessible through the internet. One of our main aims in approaches to learning is to develop the ability of the students to reference their work. Taking other peoples' ideas and not recognizing them can have serious consequences and we want all our students to be well informed of the latter. To meet this goal, the librarian and myself will be conducting sessions on Plagiarism and how to avoid it for students in the Middle school over the course of this term. All students will be given a booklet which will show them how to reference their work. This will help them when they complete their assignments especially in Humanities and Sciences.

Let us keep our young community of ISM focused and give them all the support they need at school and at home. Growing up can be a tough deal sometimes, but we are all so proud and happy when they accomplish something, be it academically or otherwise.

A very good week to all.

"Even as kids reach adolescence, they need more than ever for us to watch over them. Adolescence is not about letting go. It's about hanging on during a very bumpy ride."
Ron Taffel

J. Quinlan (MYP Coordinator)

Swimming Gala
Friday's swimming gala was held on a beautiful blue-sky day. The clouds that had been ominously looming the afternoon before had vanished during the night. This was a huge relief as the memories of our washed out gala were still fresh in our minds. Thanks to all the parents who attended the gala and supported their children. Quite a few swimming stars have emerged. Our next big primary gala will be on Saturday 25th February, where we will be hosting many other international schools from all over Tanzania.

Cancer Day Assembly
On Monday 30 January we'll be having a special presentation for Cancer Day. We will also be laying down coins to collect money to donate to the cancer ward at a local hospital. We ask that you send in your bags of loose change on Monday, so that we can fill up the letters STOP CANCER with coins.

Parents' Evening
The title of the talk is No Child is the Same. This will be held in Room 16 at 6.30pm on Wednesday 15th February.

Have a great week ahead!
Miss Cindy

Early Childhood Week Preview

Language Focus for the Week

• O is the letter of the week
• ABC book - O page
• Journal Writing
• O as a middle sound - dog, hot, etc
• Asking questions - paint question marks
• Guided reading
• Shared Reading
• Color Song

Math Focus for the Week

• Number Stories
• Continue with sorting and classifying including games to tell what goes together
• Use 'Numicon' and play dough together
• Order numbers
• Counting forward and backwards
• Montessori inspired activities
• Write numbers

UOI (Unit of Inquiry) Focus for the Week
Current unit: "Life Cycles".
PYP Trans-disciplinary theme: How the World Works.
Central idea: All living things change over their lifetime.
Define what a "life cycle" is. Make predictions about beans and sunflowers life cycles. Read about them for background knowledge to add to prior knowledge. Plant beans in jars as an individual project and plant sunflowers as a class project.

ONCE AGAIN PLEASE PLEASE! If you are able to get a caterpillar or a tadpole or anything that we can use to observe a life cycle please send it to school.
If you find a caterpillar, you need to send the leaves that it is on and more of the same because that's what it eats.
AND we also need TRANSPARENT GLASS JARS to plant our beans!!!

Special Messages

• On Friday February 3rd we will celebrate the Japanese holiday SETSUBUN (Bean Throwing Festival) with Nina. We will throw soybeans on 'Oni' and we will say "Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!" Want to know what is means? Ask Mie or Google it!
• We are still waiting for Cristobal!
• Check out my Mrs. AMELIA PRESCHOOL BLOG to see some of the activities we have been doing at school. Go to http://mrsameliapreschool.blogspot.com. To subscribe to the blog you need to click on "Join this site" then you can post comments. To receive a notification every time I have a new post you need to enter your email on the box "follow by email".
• Swimming groups:
  THURSDAY
  9:35 - 9:55 - Delhem, Isaac, Jay, Jelte, Dominic, Cristobal
  9:55 - 10:15 - Sahil, Edvin, Jabari, Jemima, Imani H., Fredy
  FRIDAY
  9:35 - 9:55 - Marika, Amy, Nina, Carlotta, Shose,
  9:55 - 10:15 - Milla, Louisa, Hannah, Imi, Larissa
• Hurray! Our Primary Swimming Gala finally happened. Congratulations to all our participants and organizers!

HOME SCHOOL CONNECTION
Bring something that starts with the sound 'O'. If you send olives let me know if I can open the jar for everyone to have a taste.
Have a great week.
Mrs Amelia

P1/P2 Week Preview

Maths Focus for the week:
P1s:

• Uses vocabulary to show understanding of: day, week, yesterday, tomorrow
• Recognises features of an analogue clock (e.g. hour and minute hands)
• Counts in 1s, 5s, 10s, to 100

P2s:

• Names and sequences 7 days in a week and 12 months in a year
• Recognises features of an analogue clock (e.g. hour and minute hands)
• Counts in 1s, 2s, 5s, 10s, to 100

Language focus for the week::
P1s:

• Is able to write simple sentences
• Relies on the sounds that are most obvious in a word
• Hears, isolates and identifies all letter sounds
• Gives simple instructions, and directions

P2s:

• Predicts what may happens next in a story and revises or confirms predictions
• Use a bank of words that are consistently spelt correctly.
• Organises thoughts and feelings before speaking

Unit of Inquiry (UOI) focus for the week:
This week we will continue to investigate some student led questions about our unit, Everything Has A Place:
What is a community?
Am I part of a community?
What does a community look like?
Can one person be a community?

Info for Parents:
A reminder that we will have swimming on Tuesday & Thursday in preparation for the International schools swim gala at the end of the month on February 25th.
Tuesday: Library

Ms Lindsey

P3/P4 Week Preview

It's hard to believe that the first two weeks of school are already over and her we are ready to start week 3! The students are eagerly awaiting the arrival of our new boy, Pedro and I believe he will be joining us on Monday.

Friday's swimming gala was a great event and the children swam their hearts out, achieving some great personal performances, as well as contributing to the team competition.

This is what our learning in class will look like this week:
UOI - Our 3rd Unit of Inquiry - "Setting the Stage" will wind up this week as we embark on some personal reflections about what we have learnt and our summative assessment tasks.
The trip to Shah Industries and the curio sellers and artists was a very worthwhile excursion and fitted in perfectly with many aspects of our learning.
We still have a number of art projects that I want to complete with the children.

Reading - Miss P gave us some very good ideas in reading last week regarding learning new vocabulary in order to improve our understanding and fluency. We are going to start using these strategies of writing definitions, finding synonyms, drawing illustrations and finding which group the word belongs to.

Writing - We started learning about how to write limericks last week and will finish these this week. We are also learning to publish some of our poetry on the computer.
In spelling we will be focusing on words that have an "e" in them that sounds like an "a" e.g. "they", and words that have "ei" in them which also sounds like an "a" e.g. "eight".
Our grammar focus will still be on pronouns.
Cursive writing using the Nelson style - our focus will be on joining letters with "exit flicks" to "tall letters" e.g. a to b, or c to k.

Maths - P4: These students will continue to work on recognising and representing the groups of 10s in 3-digit numbers, finding pairs of numbers that add up to 100, estimating the sum of 2 and 3-digit numbers using a knowledge of place value and known combinations and finding the difference between 3- digit numbers.
P3: These students will continue to work on developing strategies for solving a variety of addition and subtraction story problems with totals up to 45 and recording their work. We will also be working on solving problems with an unknown change, using standard notation (+ - =) to represent a variety of addition and subtraction situations and writing stories to match given equations.

Homework - reading, spelling and Maths and language worksheets will be sent home on Monday and are due in on Friday.

Reminders:
House T-shirts should be used for PE lessons on Mondays.
School Polo Shirts should be worn every day.
Swimming Please bring swimming gear to school on Wednesdays for PE.
Library - on Thursday. The children are supposed to have library book bags in which to carry and store their library books. Any type of cloth bag or something similar to the homework bags will do.
Overnight Camp - more details will follow soon, but in the meantime, please mark March 7 and 8 in your diaries as the dates for this exciting event.

Best regards,
Miss Jann

P5/P6 Week Preview

Mathematics Focus for the week
Orange group will continue estimating and measuring lengths and recognizing and explaining possible sources of measurement error. They will also begin defining polygons as closed figures with line segments as sides, and classifying polygons by attributes.
Purple group will continue to classify and describe polygons based on examining their interior angles. They will also begin a focus on linear and area measurement by finding perimeter and areas of rectangles. They will be learning about square units as a unit of measurement. This week's challenge will be to create different rectangles that have the same perimeter but different areas.

UoI Focus for the week
Wild Weather: Central Idea: Weather changes as a result of environmental factors and human influences. We will be looking at the first line of inquiry: How Weather Changes. We are looking for a parent or adult that could come and talk to the class about how Kilimanjaro affects the weather and climate in Moshi. We also welcome anyone else with some expertise in weather or climate. I am also looking for a connection to the Moshi airport. If you know someone that works at the Moshi airport that could arrange for us to visit to see the different ways weather is measured at an airport, please let me know.

Language Focus for the week
This week we will be looking at the reading skill of "skimming and scanning" when reading nonfiction texts. We will also be practising with root words and prefixes in our homework and morning work this week. Students will have a reading passage in homework that will practise reading boldface words and interpreting images in an informational text.

Specialist Teacher information:
Swimming - Tuesdays
ART - Wednesdays
PE - Fridays
Library - Friday

Interesting tidbits

• We are so excited to welcome Miss Hannah Miller to our class this Monday! She will be a student teacher in P5/6 until the March break.
• We will have a Cancer Assembly on Monday morning. There will be a coin laying ceremony. Please bring loose change. The money raised will go to the cancer ward at KCMC.
• P5/6 Camp will be on February 21-23 in West Kilimanjaro. Arrangements are still being finalized with Arusha campus.
• Saturday, February 25, Primary Interschools Swimming Gala and Football tournament here at ISM!
• Sunday, February 26th, Kilimanjaro Marathon, Half-marathon, and 5-k Fun run! We had excellent participation in P5/6 last year. Let's see if we can repeat that same enthusiasm and participation this year! (Yes, this will be a busy week for P5/6!!!!!!)

Have a great week!
Mrs Marlaina