From the Head of Secondary 05.11.2022
I would like to thank everybody in the community who contributed to our Pink Day collection in support of breast cancer awareness last week. We raised a fantastic total of RM2161 within a very short space of time. This will be donated to breast cancer charities here in KK. In addition, the student council raised over RM1000 during International Day with their stall and games; it was well worth having all those wet sponges thrown at me as a small part of that! Our Student Council and Charity Committee are doing a fantastic job, and I will be meeting with them next week to discuss future plans for this half term.
Book Week is high on the agenda for the coming week and excitement is already brewing. I am confident in saying that this is Mrs Colbeck’s favourite event of the year, when she gets to share her passion for all things books with the community. This year it will be the full-on rip-roaring event of pre-Covid years, with all the usual happenings, and more: Big Kids Reading to Little Kids, Guess the Teacher, Treasure Hunt, Drop it and Read etc., and of special interest to all the cake-creatives out there, we will see the return of the Cake Competition! The main thing that we all need to know now is the theme and this year it is ‘Action and Adventure’, so students and staff should start thinking now about what they will be wearing while they strut their stuff in the Costume Parade!
Organising Book Week is not Mrs Colbeck’s only interest at this time of year. She is currently working with Mr Bromley and colleagues to put in place a comprehensive careers programme for Year 11 as they think about next year, and the following years. This centres around subject choices for A Levels which the students will be taking in Years 12 and 13. KIS has run a highly successful A Level programme for nearly 10 years, and our Year 13 graduates proceed to top universities around the world. We have no doubt that our current Year 11s will do just as well in taking their A Levels at KIS.
The Community will know that we are excitedly planning our school’s 50th Anniversary celebrations and one very special moment happened this week in the planning committee meeting where we delved into a rather special wooden box [the time-capsule from the 40th Anniversary celebrations] which had been discovered in the store room at the back of the Secondary library. It was really awe-inspiring and there were lots of smiles and laughter as we uncovered letters written by students at that time, where they wrote about what KIS would look like in the future ‘there will be a swimming pool, thousands and thousands of students, a power station so we wouldn’t have any more power cuts and probably we won’t be doing much writing as we will be using computers’. We also looked at some video footage [very shaky camera action and not great sound] that students made going around the school, recording for posterity what it all looked like then. We recognised past students and staff, and some who are still with us! The planning committee are busily planning for next year’s 50th Anniversary, so watch this space for more news about that [including Mrs Colbeck’s ‘Read 50 Books for 50 Years’ challenge, which will be launched during Book Week].
Have a wonderful weekend, and I hope to see many of you at today’s Ubuntu event in the school hall!
Kind regards
Mrs Margaret Renshaw
Deputy Principal / Head of Secondary
Year 11 Geography Field Trip
In May/June 2023 Year 11 IGCSE Geography students will be examined on their knowledge and understanding of how primary & secondary data is collected in order to investigate and analyse four hypotheses. Each student needs to have first-hand experience of how data is collected using a range of methodologies and sampling strategies.
On Monday morning this week the students continued their learning in the ‘field’. They split into three groups and spent the first part of the morning undertaking several housing and environment surveys, standardising their options (which could be varied as this is a subjective method) so that simultaneous data could be reliably collected from different streets off Jalan Tanjung Aru. After this part of the pilot study was completed we were dropped off at 1st Beach. Thankfully with an overcast cloudy sky (the photos almost make the beach look as though it was in the UK, not KK!) we were able to get through all the six data collection methods without fear of serious burns or dehydration, but with the stronger than normal onshore westerly winds there were rough seas. This meant it was Miss McNutt who stood as the wave break marker in calf depth water as successive waves went past and broke onto the beach!
Transects were surveyed systematically using quardrats for sediment type and vegetation. Beach profiles were measured using 2 contrasting techniques using ranging poles, clinometer and 30m tapes. Random samples of beach materials (plastics/ drift wood/ coconut & seeds) were measured with calipers while students also calculated wave frequency to determine wave type and features of wave effects and the process of longshore drift, which we determined today was NOT occurring.
Miss McNutt
Head of Humanities
Geography Teacher
