From the Head of Primary 22.01.2022

Telling a story can captivate an audience!

This term, the primary children are learning about storytelling.  On the final day of this half term, there will be a Storytelling Celebration, where students will share stories from their home culture with their peers.

Storytelling and Intercultural Understanding

There are many benefits of children learning to tell and perform stories such as:

• Increase children’s willingness to communicate thoughts and feelings
• Encourage active participation
• Increase verbal proficiency
• Encourage use of imagination and creativity
• Encourage cooperation between students
• Enhance listening skills
• Learning a wide variety of performance skills from volume, pitch, pace and gestures.

By sharing stories from their home culture with their peers, children will also enhance their intercultural understanding and communication. Such stories can…

• allow children to explore their own cultural roots
• allow children to experience diverse cultures
• enable children to empathise with unfamiliar people/places/situations
• offer insights into different traditions and values
• help children understand how wisdom is common to all peoples/all cultures
• offer insights into universal life experiences
• help children consider new ideas
• reveal differences and commonalities of cultures around the world

Through stories we see how different people share the same life experiences and how human nature can transcend culture. Stories provide a common thread that can help unite cultures and provide a bridge across the cultural gap.

Here are some examples of the Y3 students preparing and developing their storytelling skills ready for their final performance next week:

On Friday, we are also looking forward to celebrating Chinese New Year! The Mandarin department will be leading a whole school assembly and students are welcome to come to school wearing traditional dress or colours.

After the half-term break (from 7th February), PASS Club will return for those students who have siblings in the secondary section of the school. PASS Club will be supervised by KIS staff from 2pm-3pm at a cost of RM12 per session for the first child and RM8 for any subsequent children in the same family. As spaces are limited, we request that if you wish to use this service, you register your child’s place by speaking to Melissa or Sharon in the school office from Monday.

Please remember:

• Students should now be in the correct uniform, including black or white shoes with white ankle socks. Only a single pair of stud earrings is allowed with no other jewellery and no nail polish or makeup is permitted. Hair colouring must be natural colours only.
• If your child is displaying the following symptoms: runny nose, cough, sore throat, shortness of breath or a fever (+37.5C) they should remain at home and only return to school providing either a doctor’s note or proof of a negative covid home test.

Finally, I would like to extend a very warm welcome to a new student who joined us in EYFS this week:

Anton Kwan in F1

Have a wonderful weekend.

Take care.

Ms Karen Hitchen
Head of Primary