From the Head of Primary 18.01.2020
Congratulations to our swimmers who took part in the swim meet last weekend. I know that for many of our competitors it meant a whole weekend at the pool but your hard work and dedication certainly paid off. We are looking forward to watching how our FOBISIA swimmers do in Korea later next month.
Our lucky Primary students had a second guest speaker on Monday morning, when they were joined by David McCann from Scuba Junkie SEAS. He was a fascinating speaker and gave us some highly interesting facts about the various turtle species that can be found in Sabah, as well as work he is doing to help protect them. The children were an excellent audience and had very valuable questions to ask and comments to make about everything they heard. On Friday the children were joined by Simon Enderby from Scubazoo who talked to the children about the work that he is doing within Borneo to help endangered animals. Thanks to both presentations, everyone learned a lot more about lots of fascinating creatures! Many thanks to both speakers who gave up their time to visit us. All primary children have now voted for their favourite wild animal to represent their House as their House mascot. The outcome of the primary and secondary voting will be shared with the children in next week’s assembly along with details of a very exciting competition that they can get involved in.
On Wednesday, Maggie Duffield our Head of Inclusion, presented a parent spelling workshop and talked about a number of strategies that parents can use at home to support their children. Maggie discussed the importance of starting early with our youngest children and the benefit of enjoying songs and rhymes that allow children to hear rhythm in words and sounds through repetition. She then moved on to discuss the phonics programme that we use at KIS which is called Read, Write Inc. Read, Write Inc. Phonics teaches children to read accurately and fluently with good comprehension. Children learn to form each letter, spell correctly, and compose their ideas step-by-step. For more information you can look at the link below and if you would like to come into school to see a phonics session in action please do let me know.
Next week we will be celebrating Chinese and Korean New Year in school. On Wednesday the children will be able to enjoy the traditional Lion Dance and are invited to come to school wearing traditional Chinese costume or colours. On Friday we will continue the celebrations in assembly which will be led by our Chinese teaching staff. xin nian kuai le!
Wishing you all wonderful weekend.
Mrs Joanne Smith
Head of Primary
House Mascots
Over the last couple of weeks, you may have been hearing your children talk about the Sulug Sunbears the Gaya Turtles or the Sapi Pangolins and probably wondered who these names refer to?! 
As a new, exciting development for our School Houses, we are introducing a mascot to represent each House! We have selected some of the more familiar Borneo animals who we all know and love and the students across the whole school have been voting for which animal they would like as their mascot. The 6 mascot possibilities are pangolins, turtles, sunbears, sharks, elephants and orangutans.
Primary students have been lucky enough to be joined by 3 animal specialists, who have delivered some fascinating talks about 3 of the animals who may become our mascots. Dr. Wong from Borneo Sun Bear Conservation Centre (BSBCC), David McCann from Scuba Junkie SEAS and Simon Enderby from Scubazoo have all presented interesting facts about sunbears, turtles and sharks. A focus of their talks was about the conservation work they are all doing with these animal species to help protect them and advise us on how we can do our part too.
We are excited to reveal the winners of our House mascot next week along with a very special Primary House Competition, which will link the new mascot with animal conservation. Stay tuned for more details coming soon!
Who do you think will be the new House Mascots?
