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The Pelican SPRING TERM 2 • 8th February 2018

I have felt incredibly proud to be part of KCD this week. The children returned from their week off full of the enthusiasm to which we have become accustomed and were keen to tell us all about what they had been up to! On Tuesday, a small group of long standing choir members were invited to perform for the Australian ambassador at an Australian Festival at Lulu. I was not able to attend but know from Mrs. McMorran and Mr. Granger how well they conducted themselves and how much they enjoyed it.

On Wednesday, we had more than 20 parents attending our school tour with a view to their child(ren) joining KCD in September. We already have over 200 applications for next year so we are heavily oversubscribed which is a great position to be in. If you have a child who would be eligible for Pre-School or Reception in September and you have not yetapplied, I would urge you to do so as soon as possible. As I was showing one of the groups around the school I was struck by how grown-up our Pre-School children were while they walked past us to their Sports Day practice in such an orderly fashion.

Our Year 2 pupils were highly engaged making 3-D shapes from nets and were able to describe the properties of a triangular pyramid and a square-based pyramid! Year 4 pupils were waiting in eager anticipation in the Science Lab, about to do their bubble experiment whilst Year 5 were showing empathy, compassion, organisation and leadership skills, helping with the EYFS Sports Day practice.

Then it came to the big event; the actual EYFS Sports Day. I am sure that those of you who attended will agree that it was a great event with the children running, jumping, throwing, crawling etc., with such enthusiasm and thoroughly enjoying themselves. Thank you to all of the parents who supported the event and to the staff who ran it.

You will be delighted to hear that we are almost ready to launch our school app and will do so before the end of this month. The app will be password protected, allowing us to regularly and swiftly share photos of events and of general school life as well as send you reminders, letters etc. There will be all sorts of useful features which we hope will vastly improve School communication. Watch this space…..

Events Week 11th - 15th February Health and Well-Being

WeekAll Week

School Closed for Qatar Nat’l Day

Tuesday13th February

All Day

Class AssembliesPre-D & Rec D

Wednesday14th February

7:30am - 8:00am

Class AssembliesYear 3

Wednesday14th February

2:15pm

This week, you will see that we have included ‘Upcoming Events’ near to the start of The Pelican. This is also an attempt to ensure that you get key information more easily. It has been pointed out that parents do not always have the time to read the whole of The Pelican so we will trial putting that essential part at the beginning. However, I would encourage you to always look at the final page as it often contains important reminders.

Mrs. Marie Sibley

Club News - Choir

This term and next term is a busy and exciting time for our Senior Choir, with many new ventures and opportunities to perform. I am very proud of all the children who commit to singing in the choir, particularly of their enthusiasm and willingness to both learn and improve.

On Tuesday, some children from last term’s choir attended the Australian Festival at Lulu Al Messila, where despite being given less than a week’s notice, they pulled out of the bag a confident and accomplished performance of ‘Cape Cod Shanty’. His Excellency the Australian Ambassador was very appreciative of their efforts and the references in the piece to being ‘bound for Australia’! The children enjoyed performing, and treats provided kindly by the store, including sampling a huge cake in the shape of Sydney Opera House!

We have entered this term’s choir of 29 children in Years 3-5 in the Qatar Primary School Choir of the Year competition to be held between April 15th-17th at the Shangri-La hotel. One of this event’s independent adjudicators is the esteemed choral conductor from the UK, Greg Beardsell, and the choir will get the chance to take part in workshops with him on the first day. This is a wonderful opportunity for them, and an excellent warm-up to the competition. The choir is very excited, and are starting to embed the key disciplines that come with singing in a choir, including listening to each other, watching the conductor, and making a good quality sound together. There are so many key skills that benefit from choral singing - teamwork, presentation, performing, and I could go on and on but the top of the list must be the sheer enjoyment of making music together!

In the meantime, we have plenty of new music to work on for events like our Spring Fayre, the KCD Year 1-5 concert in May and, further down the road, Prizegiving at the end of the year. In addition to the after-school co-curricular rehearsals on Mondays, this will also involve some lunchtime practices once a week to learn the music and polish the performances. The children are very committed which is fantastic to see, and it is very important that they attend all rehearsals. We have no doubt the children will be stretched and challenged, and that they will raise themselves to achieve the best they can in these coming months.

Happy singing!

Mrs. Stacey McMorran

English lessons at King’s College Doha aim to develop an active and creative learning environment, providing appropriate levels of challenge.

In line with our sister school in the UK, KCD follows the Wordsmith planning scheme, Nelson Handwriting and Nelson Spelling scheme. It has been a pleasure observing the progress that children have made across all of these areas of the English curriculum.

Across each year group, texts from classic to current authors have been selected to ensure that pupils experience a wide and rich reading curriculum to promote a life-long love of reading. Similarly, a range of poetry is fully integrated. Grammar work is clearly identified with all grammar being taught purposefully, in context so that it can be used in the identified outcomes.

In Reception this term, children have been focused on reading and writing their tricky words and blending skills while reading Guided Reading books. In handwriting, Reception have been using capital letters, finger spaces and full stops. They have been writing sentences about their weekends and trying to write these sentences independently.

In Year 1, children are learning about the different aspects of a good fairy tale. They have been looking at the characters and identified their characteristics. Year 1 are writing full sentences that use adjectives and wow words to describe specific characters. Some children have even started to write reasons for the character’s behaviour!

In Year 2 children have been working on ‘uplevelling’ their writing - trying to extend sentences with conjunctions, such as: and, because, so, then, but, then, etc; using interesting adjectives and thinking of starting a sentences in different ways, not always with a noun. Children enjoyed reading their favourite fairytales, drawing and annotating story maps and then writing the known story, trying to apply their ‘uplevelling’ skills in independent writing. We had a lot of fun working on our class performance, reading the script, learning the lines and songs and, most importantly, performing in front of an audience. What a great start of the year!

Year 3 have mainly covered report writing in the first half term. They learned how to research different topics in non-fiction books. They had to identify relevant information from the texts and then write their reports from this.

Year 4 have been focused on their fiction writing based around the quality text ‘The Iron Man’. This book provides children with ample examples of interesting description using adjectives, similes and metaphors. Year 4 used these excellent paradigms to develop their own narrative writing, providing further interest for the reader. They have now begun to expand their sentences, using appropriate punctuation and more mature and ambitious vocabulary. It is also a pleasure to witness some Year 4 children gaining their pen licenses as they advance through the Nelson Handwriting scheme. Children will now move on to develop their non-fiction writing skills focusing on a key question: What is the world’s most incredible sport?

Using the quality text ‘Friend or Foe’ by Michael Morpurgo as a basis for their fiction writing, Year 5 have developed their understanding and inference of a text. The children thought carefully about how the author built tension as the book progressed. Year 5 looked closely at each character and focused on how they were feeling at different stages of the novel – they were expected to demonstrate their understanding of the story by inferring information from the text, rather than being told directly. Year 5 shall be answering the question ‘What makes a great explorer?’ to develop their non-fiction writing skills.

I look forward to observing the inevitable progress that the children shall continue to make, over the remainder of the spring term.

Ms. Claire Fletcher

Academic Life Curriculum Corner - English

Below are a few examples (Google can provide many more!) to provide some fun inspiration.

Children are welcome to begin submitting their Extreme Reading photographs at any time and the deadline will be Wednesday 28th February.

www.kingscollegedoha.com • Al Thumama, Doha, Qatar • +974 4496 5888 • info@kingscollegedoha.com

Important Messages

Pastoral CareHealth Week 2018

Health Week 2018 will be held next week, 11th-15th February. The week will include a fun and educational series of events and activities for all children. We would love families to support their children by asking them what they learnt about health at School and helping them to complete their ‘healthy homework’. Please see a separate email detailing the schedule and requirements for the week.

Extreme Reading!

As part of this year’s World Book Day celebrations at KCD, we shall be launching an Extreme Reading Competition across school. Extreme Reading encourages children to have a photograph taken, while enjoying their favourite book in an unusual location. Please encourage the whole family to get involved as it would be great to receive photographs of people reading in locations all over the world! We plan to display these photographs around school and there will be prizes up for grabs, for the most extreme (but safe!) photograph.

World Book Day

Once again, we shall be celebrating World Book Day on Thursday 1st March. World Book Day is a celebration of authors, illustrators, books and, most importantly, it is a celebration of reading. In fact, it’s the biggest celebration of its kind, marked in over 100 countries all over the world. We shall be providing a number of events throughout the day to encourage the children to choose to read, share their favourite books and discover new ones.

We will be enjoying fancy dress on this day, so now is the time to start thinking about those costumes! The Friends of KCD will be providing some activities based on the Wizard of Oz, should your children wish to dress accordingly. However, this is not essential and any book character costume will be welcome.

MUSIC LESSONViolin Lessons

We are delighted to announce that Violin lessons will be commencing in the next couple of weeks with our accomplished teacher, Mrs. Helen Granger.A number of parents and students have previously expressed an interest in children learning this instrument, which would be suitable in most cases for children in Year 2 and above. The lessons will be charged at the normal private tuition rates. There are a few instruments available to hire from school for a small fee with a returnable security deposit until the child is sure they wish to continue learning. The School can happily advise on a suitable instrument to purchase in Qatar. Please complete the music tuition form on the KCD website to request lessons and return to Mrs. McMorran.

Mrs. Stacey McMorran

Visitors’ Passes

A reminder that ALL parents and caregivers coming to the School to both drop-off and pick-up their children should have a red King’s College lanyard. At pick-up in particular, we have to be certain that we are handing over the children to the correct person. Anyone unable to identify themselves will be asked to go to the Reception where they will be required to hand over their RPs and given a white visitor’s badge. To avoid this inconvenience we ask you to respect the School’s policy to ensure we are all doing our part to safeguard our children effectively. Our Security team have been instructed not to let anyone in through the gates without a Visitor’s Pass. Should you be asked to walk around to enter via the Main Entrance, please acknowledge that is, once again is to ensure we can be confident that the children are handed over to the correct adult. We will be sending a reminder home next week and enforcing this request more rigorously from Sunday 18th February. Members of the Senior Management Team will, as always be on hand should you have any concerns. We thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Mr. Myles Granger

Buildings Update

As you will be aware there have been significant delays to the progress of the swimming pool. Over the past few weeks the pool failed a series of waterproofing tests which set back its completion further.

However this week the pool finally passed all of its testing and the contractor can now progress with the final backfilling around the pool, together with the tiling and finishing works. Assuming we have no further delays we anticipate the pool being handed over around 22nd February and our swimming programme will start very shortly afterwards.

Meanwhile our new Year One play area will be completed by the end of next week, and will mark the completion of the classroom extension that we opened in December.

We have also transferred power from our old substation, over to the new substation. Over the next couple of months the old transformer will be removed and we will complete a small extension to the rear of the Reception Foyer that will provide us with additional office space and visitors’ toilets.

Mr. Graeme Fisher

Stars of the Week

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EYFS Sports Day

What an active morning!

We are all immensely proud of the Early Years children today - they exceeded our expectations and raised their game, naturally coerced into the competitive spirit that Sports Day is all about. Events included Trike-racing, Water-filling, Sprints, Egg & Spoon to name a few. We are very grateful to the parent helpers for their support in preparing oranges, as well as so many spectating parents who had almost as much fun as the children themselves! Every child who took part received a medal and the final totals were as follows: Byerley (Blue): 130, Darley (Green): 147, Godolphin (Red): 140 & Markham (Yellow): 174. These House Points were added to the overall scores. An enormous ‘Thank you’ to everyone who took part and helped to make the event such a success.

Mr. Stuart McMorran

Thank you to the Year 5 helpers for their outstanding support with the Early Years children.