From the Head of Secondary 25.04.2020

Well done to students, teachers and parents for making it through another week of home learning. There have been a few minor bumps along the way but on the whole everything is going very well. In this newsletter you will read about some of the exciting work that has been going on at home and it is wonderful to see teachers and students adapting to the new reality and creating lessons that are as interesting and enjoyable as ever.

Our Year 11, 12 and 13 students are busily working with their teachers to collect evidence to support the forecast grades; these will be given to the Cambridge Examination Board in the absence of traditional exams this year. No one can deny that it’s a stressful time especially for those students who have worked hard with the exams as a clear target in their line of sight. However, I have been impressed with the way that our students have accepted and adapted to the current situation.

Year 12 online learning will resume on the 11^th May when students will commence A2 studies. Discussions are taking place at the moment about what we can provide for our Year 11 students. There is time available before the end of term 3 which we will make use of to continue the learning paths that the students are on. More news about that in the near future.

Some news from last term!

With the lockdown we were unable to have our traditional celebration assembly. Normally Ms Watt would have announced the state of play regarding House Points.

Below are the Term 2 Point scores.  It was very close!

3rd Place = Gaya Pangolins on 1612 Points

2nd Place = Sulug Sharks on 1686 Points

1st Place = Sapi Sun Bears on 1694 Points

Well done Sapi!

Do you want to get some House Points for your House? Take part in the ‘Trick Shot House Competition’, Students will receive 5 House Points for their entry and we will also be selecting overall winners.

To enter students need to submit their videos at www.kis.edu.my/upload by clicking on the ‘Trick Shot’ link.

Entries close on Thursday 30th April.

Mrs Renshaw

Deputy Principal / Head of Secondary

Secondary students might not have access to a lab at the moment but as you can read here, there is plenty of improvisation going on!

Well done Year 9 and A Level students!

One of the most interesting parts of Science lessons is the opportunity for students’ to investigate topics using practical work. During the MCO, this is somewhat of a challenge. However, Mr Baxter’s Year 9 classes have been investigating some techniques used by Forensic Scientists when they analyse crime scenes.

One of these techniques is to study the size and shape of blood splatters, a grisly but effective technique that reveals important information about where and how the blood arrives at different points around the crime scene. The students used fake blood (often tomato ketchup) and dropped or flicked it from different heights to investigate the relationship between the height and the size of the blood splatter. Hopefully no one walked in the room as this was happening and thought a gruesome crime had been committed!

Another technique used by Forensic Scientists is chromatography. Although in the lab filter paper is usually used, the students used tissue paper and different solutions that they found in the kitchen. One way scientists use this is to analyse the ink or dye found at a crime scene, or finding it which pen was used to write a ransom note.

Separating mixtures is a process that has many real world applications, including obtaining safe drinking water which is one of the most valuable resources we have to combat disease and maintain health. The Year 9 students got creative with the mixtures that they separated and produced some excellent results. The experience of using limited equipment and resources to obtain good scientific results will stand them in good stead when they return to doing science in the school laboratories.

In their study of A-Level Physics, students are required to produce results that have high precision and accuracy. However, this does not always mean having expensive technical equipment. Sometimes a methodical and careful approach can yield excellent results. In this experiment, students were asked to find a value for ‘g’, the acceleration due to gravity. This is known to be 9.81 m s^-2, and students were trying to find this result to the greatest degree of accuracy.

One method used by students was to drop a ball and time how long it took to reach the floor from various heights. Some choose to do this in their homes, while others dropped a ball from their balcony. Although the greater height might have reduced the uncertainty in their timings, the effect of air resistance as the ball fell through a greater height being more of a factor. Other students used a more high-tech approach, by videoing the ball falling on their phones. When they slowed down the footage, they could use the frame rate of their camera to determine a very accurate measurement of the time taken.

Regardless of their approach to data collection, the students all used laws that Newton developed from Gallileo’s ideas (who legend has it investigated this by dropping balls from the leaning Tower of Pisa) to analyse their results.  The most accurate result was obtained by Peter, whose result was only 1% higher than the accepted value.

Year 8 students have been studying War Poetry and gaining an understanding of poetic techniques. They produced their own poems on the theme of Shell Shock; it was hard to select just a few for the newsletter, but read on.

Well done Year 8!

The Bombardment

Men marching tiredly

Hands swinging softly

Falling to their deaths

Slowly but steadily.

They marched. More fell of hunger, thirst, exhausted.

We saw the camp; we can finally rest with peace

As if we are closing into heaven

Hope starts to rise.

When we are closing in

We hear a death-hooting sound

Men suffered, men died.

Looking at the skies of no man’s land, we were carried away.

Most suffered from shell shock

Can’t walk. Can’t talk.

People who cheered when lads marched by

Who make boys proud if ever went to war

Who makes a forever regret.

A Poem

Past the wave of gun fire,

Sat a shivering, sobbing boy.

All he wanted was to fly higher

And to reach a place full of joy.

Not able to walk, not able to see.

He felt like the world was dying.

He tried standing up and attempting to flee,

Falling each time but he kept trying.

It was like a newborn puppy that had been lost,

Crawling its way into no man’s land.

He wanted to run away no matter the cost-

Fearing a monster was reaching for his hand

He saw light, he saw people, and he reached out a hand.

If I Don’t Make It Home

Shock by exploding shells and weird

Limping, dragging for help

Treated as deserters.

Soldiers blind, deaf and ill.

Couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep.

Screeching like owls for their life back

One after another, each one shell shocked

Couldn’t return to their duty

Never-ending victims

Each one suffering, every second, every minute, every day

Nothing could bring them back

Shamed by their own people

Screeching like owls for their lives back

A Poem

Trembling like children left without a blanket on a cold night

We took them. Laid them on stretchers, their twitching

In time with the deathly, chaotic melody of guns and grenades

From behind, and carried them to tenuous sanctuary.

Curled like infants barely a year old, these pitiful once-men

Lie in their beds, row after row. Some are awake and talking

To the nurses civilly, and some are asleep. Some

Are whimpering and shaking as though in pain, some

Are jumping out of their beds to hide underneath them like

Schoolboys in a game. More are wailing incomprehensible things and thrashing like

Toddlers in a tantrum.

These are the worst ones,

The ones whose minds could not cope with the shock of the shells.

The ones who bought the Lie, went to war and came back broken,

Like the shells that were said to have shocked them,

Echoes of the men they used to be.

Mrs Knight asked Year 7 to complete a Science project ‘Regrowth v Germination’ during the holidays. Read all about how Tiggi managed the project, working like a true scientist using lots of careful planning and patience to achieve her goal.

Well done Tiggi!

“I really enjoy seeing things grow in my garden. Last year I planted some passion fruit seeds that I scooped out of a fruit and I now have a passion fruit vine growing in the garden and they are delicious. We also have coconuts, mangoes, jackfruit, bananas, chilli peppers and pineapples in the garden. Things grow so quickly in Sabah compared to the UK.

For the science project I tried to grow a few different seeds. On the 4th April I tried germinating watermelon seeds by putting them in a tray covered in damp kitchen roll but a mouse ate them and sadly the papaya seeds went mouldy as did the vegetables and then ants attacked them as it’s just too humid!

To be able to continue with the science project I used some seeds that I already had. I dug up some mud, put this into some recycled plastic containers and then pushed each seed in individually by using a wooden skewer and spaced them apart from each other. I chose tomatoes, cucumber, strawberries and the herb rosemary as they are all very English.

After only a couple of days the little green shoots were sprouting which was very exciting.

On the 10th April I dug up the shoots and put them into bigger pots so they could grow even more. On the 14th April I put sticks in to the pots so they could climb up and makes them more stable. By the 18th April all of the seeds were growing well and climbing higher!

This week the cucumber shoots are about 6inches tall, tomatoes about 2 inches and the rosemary about 1 inch. When they are much bigger I will transplant them in to our vegetable patch and hopefully I will have fresh vegetables and herbs. Unless the monkeys eat them!”

Tiggi Mornington-Sanford Year 7