From the Head of Primary, 02.02.19

Book Week

As you are aware, KIS hosts many different theme days and weeks throughout our academic year, but Book Week has remained my firm favourite for many years. This year’s event has been just as magical as previous years. Students in Years 6 and 7 have been seen around school ‘muggleising’ each other during break and lunch times. The story tent has been very popular with many of our younger students this week. On Thursday when we all came to school in our pyjamas I was very pleased to see that we didn’t have anybody fall asleep as we were all so comfy! Along with the well loved drop it and reads, guess the teacher and book swaps we have also had the new event of having a reading monster come in to class to kidnap the students if they were not reading enough!

I am a firm believer that reading is the best gift you can ever give to a child. If somebody, no matter their age, can read and develop a love of reading then they have a whole world of information at their finger tips. and can use this skill to develop their knowledge and understanding of any area that they would like to learn about.

I would like to thank all of the teachers and TLAs for the effort that they have put in to making Book Week 2019 a huge success. I would also like to particularly thank Mrs Colbeck, Mrs Walker and Ms Kerry for all the hard work that they have put in over the past few months to ensure that this Book Week will be just as memorable as the many others we have hosted at KIS.

Chinese New Year

A huge thank you to the Mandarin Department for decorating the Primary school so well this week in preparation for Chinese New Year. The scrolls and other decorations welcoming in the new lunar year have been very carefully made by our older students. I would also like to say thank you to the staff again for the assembly that was held yesterday. The time and effort taken to create something like this does not go unnoticed.

TA JAWS Hosted by KIS

It was with great excitement, and some trepidation, that we hosted our first JAWS event from the 25th to the 26th January. After much planning and logistics we were able to release all of our Teaching and Learning Assistants to join with TAs from four other schools (Alice Smith, KTJ, Tanglin and British School Jakarta) for the Primary TA JAWS. In all 30 participants came together for the two days of workshops.

After a very energetic team building activity presented by some of the staff from KIS, the participants were treated to a wide ranging selection of workshops that covered many aspects of a TA’s role – such as How to be an Effective Teaching Assistant and Teaching Assistants, Best Practice – as well as how to help support students with specific needs like English as an Additional Language, students with Autistic Spectrum Disorders or anxious students. Additional workshops included:

• An introduction to bar modelling to support problem solving
  ECA Activities
  Strategies to promote sequential memory through play
  The importance of routine for Foundation Stage
  Fine motor skills
  Dough gym
  Display
  Primary After School Service (PASS) Club

It was wonderful to witness so many different types of learning going on during the event. It was very obvious to see that gone now are the days of didactic, lecture style, teaching. The participants had people moving round the room, participating in physical quizzes, using Talk for Writing to help deliver messages, using manipulatives during the workshops to help emphasis how to support students, not to mention all the lovely displays that were created and craft activities made.

I always judge the success of an event by how quickly the participants want to leave at the end. At the end of this JAWS the majority of the participants were staying behind to swap contact details, take additional photographs and to continue discussing professional topics. It was a pleasure to witness this number of TA’s gathered in one room engaging in such worthwhile CPD outside of their own school and with their peers from other international schools. I hope that this will be the beginning of many long lasting professional connections for these participants and that the TA JAWS will continue next year.

Maths Success in Year 2

We were very pleased to hear at the end of last week that Seoyun from Year 2 has been working exceptionally hard with her Maths. She entered a worldwide Maths Olympiad at the end of last year and for her age group, not only did she come first in Malaysia, but she also came first in the world out of a total of 1677 students. I am sure that you will all join me in sending our heartiest congratulations to Seoyun.

Mrs Nicky Russell
Head of Primary