Al Yasmina School Primary Newsletter

20 September 2012

Issue 02

Dear Parents,

From The Music Department

It has been a very exciting few weeks in the Music Department as we kick off the new academic

year. On the Junior choir front, we have managed to attract over 100 keen students. We know that

we will have the same level of enthusiasm for the Intermediate Choir which starts this Sunday. Our

team of talented Instrumental teachers have been doing demos this week and last week, which

positively encouraged the students.

The Wiz – KS2 Production

More excitement this week as well over 150 children attended a

meeting about The Wiz! Children who are interested should sign

up for Key Stage 2 Production when they choose their ECA’s.

The Wiz will be on Tuesdays, and children will also need to

commit to signing up in Term 2 as the performance will be in

May. It will be amazing!!

From the PE Department

Swimming

Please ensure that all students bring a towel to swimming lessons, for hygienic reasons we will not

allow the sharing of towels. If students forget a towel, they will not take part in that swimming lesson.

All girls must wear a swimming cap during swimming lessons, this rule also applies to boys who have

long hair.

Natasha Willsher, FSI Blue,

sang a solo in her class this

week. She has the voice of

an angel

Caoimhe Dooley Cullinane, a

Year 6 pupil, sang ‘Someone

like You’ by Adele in this

morning’s Assembly

Reasons for hair to be in a swimming cap during swimming lessons

Hair Placement

One of the simple advantages that a swimming cap can provide you is the

ability to keep hair away from the face. When in the water, hair can fall in

front of your eyes and face, distracting you and possibly blocking your vision.

Hair caps are especially important for those with longer hair that is more likely

to be an interruption.

Hair Protection

A secondary function of a swim cap is the protection it provides for your hair,

especially if you are swimming in chlorinated water. Chlorine's main action on hair is a drying effect.

Chlorine dries the hair both from removing the protective layers of oil from the hair strand, as well as

getting deep inside the strand, drying it from the inside out. The salts in chlorine can also damage

your hair. As chlorine infiltrates the hair strand and dries, the chlorine salts crystallize and expand,

weakening the structure of the hair and causing damage. The swim cap keeps the chlorine away

from the hair by providing a protective barrier.

Cleanliness

Keeping your hair securely under a swim cap means you won't shed any hair during your swim. This

can help keep a pool clean. When hair falls out in a pool, it often ends up in the pool's filters. The hair

may clog the filters or make them dirtier.

Primary Swim Team for 2012-2013

Congratulations to the following boys and girls who were chosen for the Primary Swim Team this year.

6 girls from Year 6 were chosen as two of them had the same number of points. Well done!

Training will begin on Monday, 24 September at 2.30pm.

Year 6 Year 5

BOYS GIRLS BOYS GIRLS

Kyle Groh Tanami Loftus Thomas Clifton Isabella Palmer

Robert Matchett Mette Den Haese Aidan Ball Gabrielle Loftus

Alexander Darling Clara Kamel Riley Forbes Halle Evans

Kareem El Zeftawy Megan Rees Luke Jones Nora Wall

Nor Asyraf Nor Azhar Emmanuelle Vuilleumier Thomas Jelliman Eve Miragliotta

Hannah Burns

Year 4 Year 3

BOYS GIRLS BOYS GIRLS

Hayden Woodrow Isabelle Darling Luke Gillroy Sara Wall

Christian Willsher Taylor Pharoah Sonny Matchett Sydney Venus

Marcus Kelly Rebecca Gillroy Callum Dooley Cullinane Stella Da Silva

Buttkus

Mohamed Al Nowai s Olivia Williams Julian Leruth McKenzie Kenyon

Tom Johnston Mckenzie Venus Adam Joumma Libby O’Sullivan

From the School Nurses

We all know the saying, that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

Sometimes, though, parents are too busy, in the mornings, to prepare a good,

healthy breakfast for their children, before they come to school. However, it is

so important that they eat something at breakfast time. Here are a few ideas for

very quick and easy breakfasts, which can even be grabbed on the way out of the door and eaten

in the car, or prepared the night before!

- Single servings of whole-grain, low-sugar cereals

- Yoghurt and drinking yoghurts

- Fresh fruit

- Whole-grain muffin or bagel

- Trail mix of nuts, dried fruits, pretzels, crackers and dry cereals

- Wholemeal toast, with cheese / peanut butter / nutella / marmite / mashed banana /

chopped boiled egg / baked beans

- Mix together fruit and milk / yoghurt for a tasty smoothie

- Arabic bread and hummous

- Crackers and cheese

- Even last night’s left-over pizza!

NB: Nut and products containing nuts to be eaten at home, as these are NOT allowed in school.

Useful websites to check out are: www.kidshealth.org/kid/stay_health/food/breakfast.html

www.eatwell.gov.uk

www.5aday.nhs.uk

Friend of Al Yasmina (FOY)

Welcome Picnic

FOY would like to invite Al Yasmina parents and students to our FOY Welcome Picnic this Saturday,

22 September from 4pm – 6pm. Please see attached flyer for more details.

Disco

Please note the change of date for the Primary Disco. This is due to the School Inspection the first

week in October. The Disco will be for all children in Year 1 – Year 6 and will be held on Sunday,

7 October in the Primary Sports Hall.

Year 1 – Year 3 will be from 4pm – 5pm (15dhs includes snack and drink)

Year 4 – Year 6 will be from 5.30pm – 7pm (20dhs includes snack and drink)

Tickets will be available at the door.

Any information or to volunteer, please contact Gaynor at alyasminafoy@gmail.com

Second hand uniform sale

There will be a second hand uniform sale this Wednesday, 26 September from 1pm - 3pm at the main

atrium.

Foundation Stage 1 (FS1)

We have had a busy week in FS1 meeting our specialist

lesson teachers and continuing to settle into school. We

are doing such a great job of learning the school

routines during the day using the shared and outdoor

areas too. As well as meeting our specialist lesson

teachers, we also met our very own class mascots. It

was lovely to say hello to them in a circle and we are

all very excited to see who will be taking our mascot

home on Thursday. At the end of the week we had lots

of fun dressing up as a character from the dressing up

box. This was great practice for PE, as next week we

will be changing into our PE kits at school.

Next week, we will be having lots of fun making hand prints using paint. We will put them above the

sink to help remind us to wash our hands after going to the toilet and before our snack and lunch. We

will also be looking at ourselves in a mirror to identifying and describe our facial features. You can

help your child at home by naming parts of the face and continuing the good habit of hand washing

to develop independent personal hygiene.

With the outdoor area up and running, could we ask all parents and nannies to ensure that their

child/ children do not play with the equipment (such as sand, water tray) after school? Thank you.

Key Dates

Parent Information Meeting- 25th of September – 8am.

Foundation Stage 2 (FS2)

This week the children have been talking non-stop about themselves! We’ve drawn and labeled

pictures of ourselves, talked about who is special to us and even made self portraits on the

Interactive Whiteboard! We wowed the teachers with our ICT skills even Mrs. Abraham couldn’t

believe what we were capable of doing!!

In Maths, we made birthday cakes and drew the correct number of candles depending on our age

and we made our own pictograms showing the different eye colours in class.

Next week FS2 are going to be big boys and girls and come into class on their own. Please can you

drop your child off at their classroom door and leave them to get sorted (both the class teacher and

TA will be around to help the children if they need it). If you need to speak to the teacher, briefly

speak to them in the morning or if you think you’ll need longer,

then wait until the end of the day.

Congratulations to last week’s Stars of the Week

Mikey O’Sullivan from Ruby class, Sukie Crowter from Purple

Class, Sammy Al Qaimi from Orange Class (who was

unfortunately absent when the photo was taken), Aisha Obaidli

from Jade Class and Lucy Greenhill from Amber class. Well done

guys, we’re so proud of you!!!

Next week

Next week our mini focus is ‘My Family’. We will be talking about the different members of our family

and where they all live, designing plates of food for our family and in Maths we will be doing lots of

counting and discussing who is the tallest and shortest person in our family. You could help at home

by:

Talking about special events that have happened in the family

Find the flag that is associated to your family’s home country

Practice counting lots of objects e.g. the number of sweets in a smarties box

Order items from biggest to smallest e.g. toys

Phonics Focus:

Revision of Phase 2 sounds: i n m d

Continue playing on these fab websites: http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/phase-2-games.html

http://www.familylearning.org.uk/phonics_games.html

http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/Phase2Menu.htm

Key dates

Monday 24th September – FS2 Parent Information Meeting at 8am

Tuesday 25th September – The children will be making their own family tree. From Sunday onwards,

the child are allowed to bring in some photos of family members. These will be cut up so please don’t

send sentimental pictures unless they have been scanned.

Wednesday 26th September –The children will be making their own family crests. If you have anything

from the list below that will support your child in the making of their crest, please send them in as soon

as possible.

Flags that represent the countries his/her family comes from

Pictures/photos of foods that are commonly eaten at home

Pictures/explanations that represent their first or last names

Photos that show family celebrations

Year 1

It’s been an exciting week in here in Year 1! We are all

adjusting nicely to our new classes and routines. In Literacy

this week, we have been reading the story ‘Here Come the

Aliens’. We have focused on adjectives this week and using

them in our sentences. We loved deigning our very own

aliens and writing descriptions about them including adjectives. Do you like the display we made?

In Numeracy we have been busy counting forwards and backwards to 20. We have enjoyed

ordering numbers correctly and practising our number formations.

Well done to all our Super Stars of the Week

Zack (Sparrows), Noor (Larks), Sheikha (Cuckoos),

Dalal (Doves), Sari (Robins).

Next week in Literacy, we will be focusing on the story ‘Alfie’s Feet’. We will be retelling this story and

sequencing the main events. In Numeracy we will be looking at place value and counting in

multiples of ten. In Science we will be learning about our five senses and exploring how we use them

every day!

Year 2

Year 2 have had an extremely busy and productive time

this week. We have loved spending time in our fabulous

new and improved shared area. We particularly like our

Bedouin reading corner.

In Topic this week we have been learning all about

Bedouins and in Art we have been making our own

Bedouin lamps to decorate our tent in the shared area.

In Maths we have been learning about odd and even numbers and

place value.

In Literacy we have been reading ‘The Desert Leveret’ by Kathy Hoopman and writing our own

acrostic poems. Here are a few snippets:

Dazzling deserts cover the world

Energetic camels race

Scary camel spiders sneak out at night

Eerie night swoops down

Rocky mountains reach up high

Tough sand stings my feet

I’m sure you’ll agree that Year 2 have some very talented poets!

In social studies we have been learning all about spiders in the U.A.E. We created posters to warn

people where they might be hiding and what they look like. Did you know that camel spiders are

attracted to lights? Beware and remember to turn your lights off when you go camping!

Next week:

In Literacy we will be reading the story ‘Icky Doo Dah’ by and creating our own news reports. In

Maths we will be learning about finding 10 more or less than any given number up to 100. We will also

begin number calculations by learning to understand that subtraction is the inverse of addition. In

topic we will be creating our own weather reports and in Art we will be creating some camouflage

desert creatures!

Congratulations to our Stars of the Week

Lojain Bassiouni, Hannah Crighton, Harvey Redfern,

Joseph Schumaker and Meera Ghanem.

Year 3

Year 3 children have been producing some great

Egyptian art work this week. We have been

identifying key features of non-fiction texts and

making notes from them.

In our topic we have been using an atlas to locate Egypt and the river Nile. In Maths we have been

learning our number bonds to 100.

Next Week’s learning focus will be:

Literacy- Making notes from texts and broadcasts in readiness to write a report; and highlighting Key

features of reports. Numeracy- The children will be learning to partition numbers up to thousands,

hundreds, tens and units. Science- identifying the different type of teeth we have e.g. molars, incisors

and their purpose.

Topic- We will be learning about Ancient Egypt writing in the form of Hieroglyphics.

Trip information

Just a reminder of our trip to Café Ceramique in Dubai next week and that children are in school

ready to leave at 8am.

Unwanted fiction/nonfiction books

If any parents have any unwanted fiction/nonfiction books that they could donate to our Year 3/4

shared reading area,we would be most grateful.

Congratulations to our Stars of the Week

Katherine Vandy Zoha Ali Boodi Al Riyami Ummehani Ghadially Ali Khan

Cormorants Buntings Curlews Ravens Terns

Year 4

Year 4 have been very busy this week investigating what our skeletons are made up of and trying to

name some of the bones in the body. In literacy the children have been excited about reading

‘George’s Marvellous Medicine’ - the teachers are constantly being asked to read more! Along with

this the children have been working on their use of descriptive language and are inventing their own

‘marvellous medicine recipes’.

In numeracy the children have been looking at place value

and negative numbers. The children have been improving

their artistic skills looking at perspective in preparation of

making their own food landscape picture.

Next week the children will be building on the number

knowledge we have revised this week in numeracy and in

literacy the children will be looking at story structure and

creating their own beginning and endings for stories.

Well done to last week’s stars: Amelie Prideaux, Christian

Willsher, Ashley Miragliotta, Taylor Pharoah and Nora AL

Braiki.

Year 5

It’s been another busy week in Year 5, with everyone starting to get to grips with new timetables and

routines. We’ve been analysing silent animation films and identifying how they impact the audience

by looking at emotion, camera angles, music and lighting. We have also been investigating how

they made moving images back in the 1800s. Ask your child about a thaumatrope – perhaps they

can make one at home with you.

Thank you to all the parents that were able to come to the Parents Information Meeting on Monday.

For those that couldn’t make it, the handouts are going home with your child today and the

presentation power points should have been e mailed out to all parents.

Next week in Math’s we will be working on adding and subtracting decimal numbers, this will

incorporate ‘money’. In Literacy we will be creating conversations in a film by adding speech and

developing a storyboard with flashbacks. In Science we will be planning and carrying out an

investigation to look at how light passes through certain materials. In Art & DT we are creating

silhouettes. In ICT we will be making a flipbook. Finally in Topic

we will be collating and completing our research on our

artefacts

Congratulations to our the Stars of week.

Well done to Eve Miragliotta, Jana Al Armouti, Adrian Martin,

Poppy Smith and Max Palmer

Year 6

What a wonderfully inquisitive week we have had in Year 6. In literacy we have been finding out

about different types of fiction genres and revealing our favourite one. We have identified the key

features of various genres and have used these to help us write our own short stories in a specific

style. We have a lot of budding, talented authors out there! Science lessons this week have informed

us of how green plants make their own food during a process called photosynthesis. Test our

knowledge and understanding by asking why the leaves of a plant are green. Continuing with our

‘There’s No Place Like Home’ topic we have started to create brochures that will provide each other

with amazing information about our home countries and will hopefully inspire others to visit there.

Next week we shall be starting to compare our home countries to the countries of the Caribbean! In

literacy we will be focusing on the fiction genre traditional tales, stories which are passed down orally

relating to traditions of people and culture. The traditional tales we will be reading will be from the

Caribbean. In numeracy lessons we will continue focusing on place value. However in the following

week we will move on to data handling and will require some information about the climates of our

home countries (please see the homework tasks for more information). May I please ask that you

continue to send in as many spare or unwanted magazines as possible, which will be used to help

the pupils create a mood board during art lessons.

Congratulations to our Stars of the Week

Well done to all of you!

Tarik Kurkcu, Jo Vanden Auweele, Tanami Loftus, Conor

Gammell and Ashlyn Martin

May we present the 2012-13 House Captains and Vice Captains. Well done to all of you in making an

outstanding presentation which led to your appointment.

Voyager Discovery Challenger Endeavour

Abigail Stanley (C) Sandali Weerasekera (C) Eoghan Cumbers (C) Ana Sofia Bustamante (C)

Ronan Greene (VC) Omar Zeidan (VC) Layla Jawhari (VC) Aine Griffiths (C)

Dates for your Diary

Saturday 22 September - FOY Welcome Picnic (see attached flyer for more details)

Sunday 23 September - Year 3 Café Ceramique (Curlew and Ravens)

Monday 24 September - Year 3 Café Ceramique (Buntings and Terns)

Monday 24 September - FS2 Parent Information Morning at 8am

Tuesday 25 September - Year 3 Café Ceramique (Cormorants)

Tuesday 25 September - FS1 Parent Information Morning at 8am

Wednesday 26 September - MARHABA Open House Event 5pm – 6.30pm

Wednesday 26 September - Second hand uniform sale in atrium from 1pm – 3pm

Sunday 7 October - Primary Disco

Al Yasmina School

Tel: 02 5014888

email: primarypa@alyasmina.sch.ae