Dear Parents,

Some of our secondary drama students will be returning from their festival in Lusaka tomorrow, whilst others are preparing for upcoming field trips - see details for the M4 and M1 field study trips and the Model United Nations trip below.

Our M4 students from both campuses will be staying in West Kilimanjaro from Tuesday, 7th February to Friday, 10th February undertaking a field study and looking at the question of whether our actions affect the weather or whether the weather affects our actions.! They are accompanied by teachers from both campuses.

Next week, from Tuesday, 14th February to Friday, 17th February, all the M1 students will be undertaking a field study south of Moshi to camp with the Masaai near and around Lake Nyumba ya Mungu. In particular they will be studying the traditional life of indigenous peoples and how that life is changing.

A group of our older secondary students has been preparing since August to represent their countries at the Model United Nations in Nairobi. Together with hundreds of other students from across East Africa and beyond, they will be debating resolutions on issues of global importance as they model a real UN session of political, economic and social debate. The group will be away from Sunday, 12th February to 18th February.

This year we hope that TEAM ISM will be the biggest ever in the Kilimanjaro Marathon on Sunday, 26th February. Any student, parent, teacher of friend of ISM can join and for only TSh 10,000/- you will get admission to the 5km Fun Run, a special ISM T-Shirt, transport from school to the stadium, and snacks in the stadium. We will also be asking all runners to help to raise funds for the ISM Scholarshop Programme. For every TSh 5000/- that you raise in sponsorship, you will receive an entry in a draw to win one of our seven give-away IPod Shuffles. Full details are given at www.ismoshi.org/marathon.htm where you can also find entry forms and sponsorship forms.

Join us and help to make Team ISM a major part of this year's marathon.

As the national form four examination results are due very soon, ISM now invites applicants to apply for a full scholarship in ISM's diploma programme from August 2012 to May 2014. This programme has been highly competitive in recent years and has attracted the very best Tanzanian students. Full details on eligibility and how to apply are at www.ismoshi.org/scholarship.htm. If you know of a Tanzanian student who has achieved great success in their form four exams, please encourage him or her to apply.

Thank you to all those who donated towards our 'Stop Cancer' campaign in the lead-up to yesterday's 4th February World Cancer Day.

We had a short presentation on the prevention of cancer in our school assembly last Monday morning, followed by students laying down coins onto the STOP CANCER sign in the breezeway. Primary children have been discussing the topic in an age-appropriate manner with their teachers. Donations are still coming in (pass to Ms Cindy or Mrs Aris) and the final total will be announced in the next newsletter. We hope to use the money to buy some equipment for the cancer ward at Mawenzi hospital.

Check out the World Cancer Day website for more information.

Today, Sunday, 5th February is Maulid - an Islamic holiday to celebrate the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed. Although it is also a national holiday in Tanzania, Monday 6th February will be a normal working day.

In February, students in the P4 to M1 and M3 classes will particpate in the International Schools Assessment (ISA) tests set by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). The ISA provides an insight into students' proficiency in the areas of Mathematical Literacy, Reading, Narrative Writing and Expository Writing and provide us with one set of data to help evaluate and review our teaching programmes. This will be the fifth year that we have taken the tests in February and results of previous years can be viewed at www.ismoshi.org/isaacer.htm. These tests will take place on February 10th and 13th. Because they are designed to assess students' proficiency, there is no need to practise for these tests in advance. Students did sit for trial tests last week.

This coming Friday and Saturday, 10th and 11th February ISM is hosting a basketball tournament. We expect many local teams to attend in addition to teams from Arusha. We wish our own students luck in this tough competition.

A number of teachers and other staff will be undergoing intensive first aid training on 18th and 19th February. This will help us to provide a higher level of care on school trips and at other events.

Our annual International Festival will be taking place in Arusha Campus on Saturday, 3rd March. If you would like to join in, help in a tent or be on stage, please contact Sue Jones on .

Click here to see a poster for the event.

ISM D2 students resumed a regular class schedule on Tuesday following six school days of mock exams. DP subject teachers have provided feedback on the results. Grades will be sent imminently via email to D2 parents.

On top of normal schoolwork demands, D1 students focused as well this week on their Extended Essay (EE) and most met with their proposed subject/supervisor. Most students will now write their EE research question and present it to their EE supervisor whose role will be to constructively criticize and facilitate the research and writing process in the coming half year.

D1s will have a "University Application Process" briefing this week from our University Counselor Daryl Rustad who will also meet with D2s on an individual basis to assist each student to move further with his/her next step vis-a-vis post secondary education plans.
Unfortunately I must address now the issue of Academic Honesty at the Diploma level. I will preface this by referring to one line of ISM's mission statement. We are committed to developing balanced global citizens who are empowered to act responsibly in a complex world. Responsible actions logically require honesty. ISM has an Academic Honesty Policy that all DP students read (hopefully carefully!), discuss with the DP Coordinator and agree to with their signature in their first month as an ISM DP student. It sets out the aims of the Academic Honesty Policy, its procedures as well as the consequences of any infraction. It accords and has been designed to accord with the IB's policy on this topic.

ISM's Disciplinary Committee has sadly been forced over the last year to respond to a handful of incidents of academic dishonesty among DP students. Each case is handled on its own. No two are alike. A team of ISM's professional educators using the Academic Honesty Policy as the guide meets promptly (and often for several hours) to adjudicate after each incident and after listening to each student present his/her case and present a written statement. All of the cases had some things in common. None of the students expected to be caught and all were unaware of the seriousness of the sanctions despite the fact that they all had read, signed and (supposedly) agreed to the ISM Academic Honesty Policy! Sanctions varied depending on the severity of the violation, any precedents and whether it was a repeat offence. As a consequence of their poor judgement and academic dishonesty, several students were suspended (for varying periods of time), one was removed from the Diploma Programme, another lost their IB Diploma in that exam session and one young man left the school. All had this incident noted on their record that then forms an indelible, negative mark on the university application portfolio. ISM cannot afford to be lenient with violations of academic honesty as the university and professional world is even more unforgiving. An IB DP education is about learning and growing, including developing as a person whose character values make a difference. ISM's statement of Beliefs includes this line:
"Being responsible involves having attitudes and undertaking actions that are socially and ethically sound."

Integrity remains a highly valued attribute of today's successful global citizens and to which we aspire in preparing the DP students under our care. We know that Africa's most famous citizen - Nelson Mandela - earned his stars, in large part, for embodying what it means to live out integrity. Watch the movie Invictus or read his bestseller Long Walk to Freedom or his new book Mandela: A Conversation with Myself, to understand Mandela and how he has lived integrity and, in my view, when he passes and his funeral is held, it will be among the greatest of our lifetimes, so have your sons/daughters learn from it!

At ISM we try to role model integrity, honesty and responsible living. Please find more time, if you can, to address the importance of academic honesty and ethically sound living. If you as parents and we as faculty do better at this character education, then the ISM Disciplinary Committee will likely not have to conduct more of these unpleasant meetings related to Academic Dishonesty. We dislike having to dole out severe sanctions for poor ethical choices by DP students.

In conclusion, we know that success in today's world, as our mission statement highlights and Mandela shows, requires doing the right thing day after day, and for a lifetime. Cognitive psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg's well-respected Stages of Moral Development asserts that this imprinting of a system of character values occurs now (so in these IB DP years!) in the latter years of adolescence when one's cognitive schemata for choices (in terms of right and wrong) is at such a critical formative stage.

We welcome any suggestions on this or any other aspect of our ISM DP education of your children.

Sincerely, Rick Fitzpatrick - Diploma Coordinator - ()

After a very eventful week in the whole school, we are looking into another busy week: First I would like to commend all the middle school students for their excellent attendance at the swimming gala. This is the spirit we want to see in our school. However, it was noticed that 4 day students did not attend the gala: we would like to remind those students the importance of working as a team, whether they are participating or not, they have to be there to support their house. I hope that this will not happen in future and that we will have 100% turnout in our school events.

M1 students will be busy getting ready for their exciting field trip to stydy the Masaai culture and do some community & service :Ms Garbett has already communicated all the details to the parents and boarding parents.

M4 students will be undertaking an educational trip to West Kili - we are trying our best at ISM to give the students the opportunity to apply the knowledge they have gained in class to real life situations. During this trip they will be looking at the environment of West Kili and reflect on the guiding question: Do our actions affect the weather or does weather affect our actions? Mount Kilimanjaro was declared a World Heritage Site in 1989, this means that this is a precious environment and any human activity can trigger change. We want our students to address the concepts of change and sustainability while studying the environment of West Kili. This trip promises to be very exciting in terms of the findings that the students will make. Back to school, they will be required to give a presentation to our M3 students who will be going on the same trip next year. Details of the trip have been sent to parents by Mr Mark Dombkins who will be leading this trip.

M5: Last week, I mentioned how important this quarter and the next are for the M5 students and that they should be able to prioritise their time in order to meet all the deadlines. Unfortunately, it has been brought to my attention that many of them are not taking their work seriously. My request to parents and boarding parents is to ensure that they show their homework diary to you everyday so that you can follow them up. I will be sending a mail of the names to boarding parents and parents of day students so that they can support these young people who many a time lose motivation. In our recent workshop, it was mentioned that this is a very delicate age where the temptation is to procrastinate. Consequently we should give them as much support as possible.

A humorous quote I came across:
A student flipped a coin and said: "Heads, I'll go to sleep - Tails I'll watch TV - if it stands on the edge I will study"
S=Sitting
T=Talking
U=unlimited
D=Dreaming
Y=Yawning,

An excellent week to All!

J. Quinlan (MYP Coordinator)

Parents' Evening: 15th February at 6.30pm in Room 16
No child is the same. Teachers will share information and strategies on how to meet a child's learning needs.

Primary Interschools Swimming Gala and Football Tournament
Saturday 25th February.
There will be ten international schools from all over Tanzania participating in this event. A large proportion of our primary students and some of our M1 students will be taking part. Please mark this date in your calendar as a day to come and support our children! The PA will be selling goodies to fill your bellies.

P5/6 Camp
P5/6 students are starting to get "psyched up" about their two night camp to West Kili to study weather on the 21-23rd February.

Have a great week ahead!
Miss Cindy

Early Childhood Week Preview

Language Focus for the Week

• P is the letter of the week - we will make popcorn of course!
• ABC book - P page
• Journal Writing
• Guided reading
• Shared Reading
• Writing for a variety of reasons is one of our EC curriculum goals so I will be encouraging the students to write Valentine Cards
• Read words and point to each word as we read to demonstrate one to one correspondence between spoken and written word
• Question Marks - We finished our watercolor question marks. They look great! We will hold them while asking good questions to the teachers and to each other
• Finish our "Owls" collage and handprint project

Math Focus for the Week

• Number Stories with ladybugs and butterflies (not live ones don't worry).
• Continue with sorting and classifying including games to tell what goes together
• Use 'Numicon', number cards and play dough together to develop number sense
• Counting forward and backwards using our T-shirt cards
• Addition and subtraction word problems

UOI (Unit of Inquiry) Focus for the Week
Current unit: "Life Cycles".
PYP Trans-disciplinary theme: How the World Works.
Central idea: All living things change over their lifetime.
Act out Frog and Butterfly Life Cycles and do butterfly art with our feet! Use our Life Cycle felt board to talk and investigate different life cycles.
Yeah! We got tadpoles! Sahil brought 4 tadpoles and so far they are doing fine. They are tiny, cute and swim very fast.

Special Messages

• On February EC will lead the whole school assembly. The assembly happens first thing in the morning. It would be great if all EC students could arrive at 7:20 so we could get organized. It would also be great if the children could wear green or brown, but it is not comppulsory.
• Last week we had a very special 'living thing' visiting our class. His name was Fluffly and he is Amy's new puppy. We all fell in love with him!
• We planted our beans, one jar/cup per student and we planted sunflowers outside close to the playground wall. Now we will observe them growing.
• Cristobal has arrived! Welcome to EC Cristobal and family! Bienvenidos!
• We celebrated the Japanese holiday SETSUBUN (Bean Throwing Festival) with Nina and Mie. Mr. Woods, our school director, was Oni. The kids had so much fun and thanks to Nina and Mie we will have great luck on the New Year. I have a post on my blog about it. Check it out at http://mrsameliapreschool.blogspot.com. If you subscribe to my blog you can post comments. You just need to click on 'Join this site'. If you want to receive an email every time I have written something new on the blog, you need to enter your email on the box 'follow by email'.
• Swimming groups:
  THURSDAY
  9:35 - 9:55 - Delhem, Isaac, Jay, Jelte, Dominic, Cristobal
  9:55 - 10:15 - Sahil, Edvin, Jabari, Jemima, Imani H., Fredy
  FRIDAY
  9:35 - 9:55 - Marika, Amy, Nina, Carlotta, Shose,
  9:55 - 10:15 - Milla, Louisa, Hannah, Imi, Larissa

HOME SCHOOL CONNECTION
Bring something that starts with the sound 'P'.
Have a great week ahead.
Mrs Amelia

P1/P2 Week Preview

Maths Focus for the week:
P1s:

• Uses vocabulary to show understanding of: day, week, yesterday, tomorrow
• Recognises features of an analogue clock (e.g. hour and minute hands)
• Counts in 1s, 5s, 10s, to 100

P2s:

• Names and sequences 7 days in a week and 12 months in a year
• Recognises features of an analogue clock (e.g. hour and minute hands)
• Counts in 1s, 2s, 5s, 10s, to 100

Language focus for the week::
P1s:

• Is able to write simple sentences and elaborate on them orally
• Relies on the sounds that are most obvious in a word
• Hears, isolates and identifies all letter sounds
• Gives simple instructions, directions and follows them as well
• Identifies vowels in CVC words correctly

P2s:

• Predicts what may happens next in a story and revises or confirms predictions
• Use a bank of words that are consistently spelt correctly.
• Organises thoughts and feelings before speaking
• Uses correct vowels in CCVC and CVCC words

Unit of Inquiry (UOI) focus for the week:
This week we will look at our community and what other communities we think are around us; how they are similar and different to our own and why.

Information for Parents:
A reminder that we will have swimming on Tuesday & Thursday in preparation for the International school swimming gala at the end of the month on February 25th.

Tuesday: Library

Wednesday is our 100th day of school! We will be doing projects with groups of 100. Please send your child to school with 100 of the same item that we can use for this project! Asante
Ms Lindsey

P3/P4 Week Preview

The term is well underway and all the students are settled and back into our class routines. We really do have the loveliest class!
This is what our learning will look like this week:

UOI - We will begin our new Unit of Inquiry: The World We Live In.
Central Idea - There are a wide variety of environments on our planet made up of living and non-living elements.
Lines of Inquiry - Types of biomes
        Location of different biomes
        Interaction between living and non-living things
        Human responsibility to share resources
        Preservation of natural environments.
Teacher questions that will drive these inquiries:

• What is a biome?
• What are the characteristics of each biome?
• Where are biomes located?
• How do living and non-living things interact within a biome?
• How can humans share resources responsibly with other living things?
• Why do we preserve and protect environments?
• How can we preserve and protect environments?

Reading - We have been reading some works by Roald Dhal and have been looking particularly at scripts and drama. This will culminate in our summative assessment on Monday for our Setting the Stage Unit of Inquiry into The Arts. The children have been learning about narration, expression, voice projection and fluency, as well as presentation, props and performing in front of an audience. Each group had to work cooperatively to produce a short play, deciding on rolls, set, props, costumes etc. For the rest of the week, we will be returning to our reading groups, working through the levelled readers and aiming to read fluently, with expression and comprehension, as well as extending our word knowledge. We should also complete our shared book, James and the Giant Peach.

Writing - In spelling we will be focusing on words that have "ea" in them as in head and pleasant.
Our grammar focus will still be on pronouns.
Cursive writing using the Nelson style -our focus will be on joining letters that finish at the "x height" e.g ow, fo, ov etc.
We will also be starting to do some factual writing.

Maths - P4 These students will be working on representing the structure of 3-digit numbers as being composed of 100s, 10s and 1s, solving addition problems with 2 and 3-digit numbers up to 400 by breaking apart and recombining them and representing addition strategies. They will also add and subtract multiples of 10 and 100, read, write and sequence number to 1000 and recognise and represent the groups of 10s in 3-digit numbers.
P3 These students will be assessed on the strategies they have learnt for solving story sums. They will then move on to a new investigation - Counting by 2s, 5s and 10s. We will investigate numbers that can and cannot be made into groups of two or two equal groups, learn that any number that can be divided into groups of two, can also be divided into two equal groups (and vice versa) and characterise even and odd numbers as those that do or do not make groups of two (partners) and equal groups (teams). We will also be looking at patterns and developing fluency with skip counting by 2s, considering the relationship between skip counting and grouping and noticing and describing a 2:1 relationship e.g. there are 2 legs for every one person.

Homework - reading, spelling and Maths and language worksheets will be sent home on Monday and are due in on Friday. Don't forget that as part of each night’s homework, students should be reading for at least 10 - 15 minutes. Reading should be recorded in the reading log which comes home every day in the reading folders/book bags.

Reminders:
School Polo Shirts should be worn every day.
Swimming: Please bring swimming gear to school on Mondays and Wednesdays for PE for the next two weeks, as we are using these classes to provide extra training for the Inter-Schools Primary Swimming Gala which takes place at the end of the month.
Library - on Thursday.
Overnight Camp - more details will follow soon, but in the meantime, please mark March 7 and 8 in your diaries as the dates for this exciting event. The camp has been arranged to coincide with our unit on biomes.

Best regards,
Miss Jann

P5/P6 Week Preview

Mathematics Focus for the week
Orange group will be describing and classifying 2-dimensional figures. They will be defining polygons as closed figures with line segments as sides, and vertices. They will be classifying polygons by attribute, including number of sides, length of sides, and size of angles.
Purple group will be comparing the perimeters and areas of rectangles when the dimensions are multiplied by given amounts. They will be using numerical and geometric patterns to describe how perimeters and areas change. They will be creating different rectangles with the same area but different perimeters.

UoI Focus for the week
Wild Weather: Central Idea: Weather changes as a result of environmental factors and human influences. We will continue to look at the first line of inquiry: How Weather Changes. We will be studying about wind, clouds and students will rotate through a natural disaster lab. We are still looking for any guest speakers and or connections to the Moshi airport.

Language Focus for the week
Students will continue to work with root words, prefixes and suffixes in homework and morning work this week. Students are looking at the genre Science fiction. Students have received a reading challenge to try to read as many science fiction or fantasy books as possible and complete a basic book report by the end of February. Students may work towards their personal reading challenge goal at night at home and during school. Students will also practice working with pronouns in their homework and morning work.

Specialist Teacher information:
Swimming - Tuesdays
ART - Wednesdays
PE - Fridays
Library - Friday

Interesting tidbits

• P5/6 Camp will be on February 21-23 in West Kilimanjaro. Arrangements are still being finalized with Arusha campus.
• Saturday, February 25, Primary Interschools Swimming Gala and Football tournament here at ISM!
• Sunday, February 26th, Kilimanjaro Marathon, Half-marathon, and 5-k Fun run! We had excellent participation in P5/6 last year. Let's see if we can repeat that same enthusiasm and participation this year!
• ISA testing will be on this Friday, February 10th, and Monday, February 13th. Please be sure that your child arrives to school on time these days with a full stomach. The testing will begin promptly at 7:35.

Have a great week!
Mrs Marlaina