From the Head of Secondary 11.01.2020

Welcome back everybody to a new term and a new year! I hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year celebration. We particularly welcome our new Secondary students into the KIS community.

We will be sending out this term’s Curriculum Statements next week. Do have a look at these as they give you a clear idea about what your child will be learning in the coming weeks.

Some important events for parents to be aware of moving forward:

Year 9 Parents’ Afternoon: Thursday 23^rd January

Year 11 Parents’ Afternoon: Monday 11^th February

Year 8 Parents’ Afternoon:   Monday 30^th March

Parents’ afternoons give the opportunity for teachers to meet with parents and students to review learning and discuss goals. We hope to see all parents there in the hall, with appointments starting at 3.10pm.

Some Reminders:

Punctuality

Please ensure that your child arrives at school by 7.40 am. This gives him/her time to get themselves organised with books and equipment before heading off to the form room at 7.45 for registration at 7.50.

Attendance

We expect a minimum of 90% attendance. The majority of students are achieving and even exceeding this without any difficulty but unfortunately some are well below this. Please note that some absences are regarded as ‘authorised’ by the school. These would include, for example, when a child is participating in a sporting event or indeed if they are ill. Some are ‘unauthorised’. These kinds of absences would include when a child takes extra holidays. The unauthorised absences count towards the total number of absences for the year and will be reflected in the % rate on the final report of the school year. Students find it very hard to catch up when they have missed school and it is better to avoid any unnecessary absences.

Lockers

Every students is given a locker where they can store their belongings, including mobile phones of they have one. It is essential that the locker is secured with a lock and it is the students’ responsibility to ensure that have a lock, and that they use it.

Year 11 students will be starting their mock examinations on Monday, and we wish them every success. This term is vitally important for our students in Years 11, 12 and 13 as these are their final weeks in school before the examination period starts in May/June.  Moving forward we have a number of exciting events to look forward to, starting off with our Duke of Edinburgh Gold Award students on their adventurous journey with Mr and Mrs Colbeck from Monday to Wednesday.

Best regards

Margaret Renshaw

Deputy Principal/Head of Secondary

Over the holidays, two of our Y13 students, Naavin Ravinthran and Ahmad Afiq Ariff Danial Mathew, won first place in the Sabah EduHack 2109 competition.  Sabah EduHack 2019 is a 24-hour education hackathon, which serves as a platform for young people in Sabah from the age of 16 to 30 to communicate their idea of 21st century education. It is also aimed at promoting innovation culture in Sabah by encouraging  the competitors to actively apply their knowledge and creativity to solve real-life problems through the hackathon.

There were seven other teams there, all from UMS. The teams had to choose a problem to solve which was related to education. They were then given 24 hours to design and code a system/application that could help to alleviate the problem.

The problem chosen by our students was to make education more efficient and relevant in the modern world. The students came up with the idea of creating a mobile-friendly web browser application that would allow teachers and students to interact, as they would in a real-life classroom. The site would have a real-time whiteboard so that teachers could illustrate examples, equations and solutions.

Naavin and Afiq did extremely well to win the competition (and a substantial cash prize) against older competitors. Naavin also won the best coder prize.

Many congratulations to  Naavin and Afiq!

This week, our Key Stage 3 students have begun working on their annual entries for the FOBISIA Short Story Competition 2020 which is based on the theme of ‘Protect’.  While this could lead to a variety of imaginative interpretations, it  also reflects the school’s focus on Global Goals. Given the recent tragedy of the Australian bush fires, some students may find themselves inspired to creatively express their thoughts and feelings on why protecting the world and preserving our fragile climate has never been more important.

Although this is a busy time for our older year groups, we would like to encourage as many students as possible to take part in this prestigious competition. We had some incredible entries last year and I have no doubt that 2020 will see the birth of even more creative masterpieces.

The competition is open to all KIS students from Year 3 to Year 13 and the deadline for submissions is  Friday, February 7th. Students should submit their entries directly to their class teacher [Primary] or English teacher [Secondary].

Download poster here

Towards the end of last, our Student Wellbeing Prefect Team undertook some training with our school counsellor Ms Siti.

Listening Skills Training

Often we are too outcome orientated. Sometimes we forget the process that leads to the outcome is long and arduous. What should we do for the young people in our lives to help them manage the process?

Seven members from the Student Wellbeing Team, in their quest to contribute to the wellbeing of their fellow students, have successfully completed their 4 weeks of listening skills training conducted by the School Counsellor.

The training consists of role plays covering these skills:

1. Confidentiality and its limitations
2. Open-ended questions
3. Affirmation
4. Reflection
5. Summarisation
6. Personal values vs others’
7. Terminating sessions
8. Debriefing

They are now ready to render their service to students in need.

Photo from Left:

Dean Knight, Connor Hugo Mansul, Alex Woo, Bobby Wong, Amar Salih, Suraj Kanpoori,  Not in photo: Leilana Pilcher.