Student - Parent - Teacher Conferences November 9-11

Please note an important email in your in-box regarding Student-Parent-Teacher Conferences sign-ups. Here is an article indicating how your engagement with your child’s education can make a positive dramatic difference. We look forward to zooming with you on Wednesday and seeing you face to face at GAA on Thursday and Friday. Please note, your secondary student is required to be at the conference with you.

Dress Down Days

The 5 aed donation for dress down days are voluntary. Thank you for your understanding.

Volleyball Teams Travel to Kuwait

We will wish our Varsity Volleyball teams best of luck next Wednesday as they head off to Kuwait to participate in the NESAC Volleyball tournament. Go WildCats!

GAA Swimmers host NESAC Meet

Our WildCat swimmers will be in the pool next weekend competing against 5 different NESAC schools. Drop by the pool next Friday and Saturday to cheer them on!

Enjoy your weekend,

Garth Wyncoll

Secondary Principal

Dear GAA Families,

We are quickly moving towards Parent Teacher Conferences. This is a great time to partner with your students and their teachers to achieve academic success. Mr Wyncoll has sent you all a letter that offers details about how to register (scheduling link) and research that supports how to make our time together impactful. Teachers will be available in designated areas based upon the discipline of the course.

Our PTCs will be both virtual and face to face: Wednesday and Friday are face to face and virtual is Thursday. All bookings can be made through the link shared with families.

Celebration:

The UAE celebrated Flag Day on 3 November. GAA’s amazing band played the UAE National Anthem as the flag was raised and students waved the UAE flag. In the classrooms, students were able to connect the rich history of the UAE Flag in the classroom with engaging activities that were designed to enrich the day.

Our Pink team created fun activities throughout the month of October to honor that it is Breast Cancer month. Faculty and students were encouraged to wear pink, door decorations were completed all culminating in an opportunity to host a Bake Sale offered to grades 9-12 to donate funds to Red Crescent on behalf of GAA students:

Counselor’s Corner

Counselors seek further means of communication with our stakeholders. To this, students have access to the google classroom and will now offer a newsletter that will be updated with new information as it is populated. Please access Counselor Corner of the GAAzette for additional information around how counselors are supporting our secondary students. This edition features relevant information for High School students grades 9-12.

Bus Departure and Lates

From our Transportation Department:

It has been observed that the students often get on the bus late during the afternoon dispersal trips. Due to this, the departure of the bus is delayed and all students on the bus are dropped off later than their mentioned time.

This has been the cause of a lot of complaints from affected students and parents and affecting the overall trip timing. Bus company SST must complete the trip within 75 minutes as per the ITC rule otherwise they get a penalty.

• Our buses depart from the school parking at 03:15 pm on normal days and 12:15 pm on Fridays.

• Ahead of the departure of the school buses, gate 4 will close at 03:14 pm on normal days and 12:14 pm on Fridays for the safety of students and to perform the safety check.

Please note: If they do not reach the bus before the departure time, the buses will leave at the stipulated time leaving them behind.

As in the past three years, GAA students will have a chance to participate in the CEMS math competitions organized by University of Waterloo.

This is a great opportunity for our talented young Mathleets to enrich their school experience and to earn valuable points for their university applications and letters of recommendation. Each participant will receive a certificate of participation. Students who meet contest cutoffs marks will also receive a certificate of distinction. The best GAA student in each contest will also receive a School Champion medal.

The first competition of the year, the Beaver Computing Challenge for G6 and G7 students will take place at GAA on Monday November 14th. We have ten young students who registered for BCC. Registrations for BCC are now closed. The other CEMS contests will take place after winter break. For details see the attached poster or visit https://www.cemc.uwaterloo.ca/contests/our-contests.html.

Parents can register through THIS FORM.

Registration fees will be collected after registrations are closed on December 1st.

Dear GAA Community,

Over the last week our Middle school, Junior Varsity and Varsity swimmers participated in 2 swim meets.

On behalf of all Secondary Swim Team Coaches, we would like to congratulate swimmers for their amazing achievement at ASD on Friday, 29th and Saturday, 30th of October.

We have 10 new broken school swim records and they belong to;

• Junior Varsity Boys, 200m. Medley Relay - Gabriel Figueroa, Hatim Sakni, Hamza AbdElHady, Mark Gavitt - 2:18.84sec.

• Varsity Girls, 200m. Free Relay - Yuseline Larrouilh, Manaka Yamakawa, Camila Carrasco, Paige Oben - 2:18.85sec.

• Junior Varsity Boys, 200m. Free Relay - Gabriel Figueroa, Mark Gavitt, Hamza AbdElHady, Hamza Hatim - 2:08.40sec.

• Junior Varsity Boys U16, 200m. Freestyle - Gabriel Figueroa Gr.8 2:26.34sec.

• Varsity Boys U19, 200m. Freestyle - Santiago De La Flor Gr.12 2:31.18sec.

• Junior Varsity Girls U16, 200m. Freestyle - Mishka Ramirez Gr.10 2:53.02sec.

• Junior Varsity Boys U16, 100m.Backstroke - Hussein Ayyad Gr.9 1:16.36sec.

• Under 14 Boys, 100m. Free - Seth Bryant Aborot Gr.7 1:05.82sec.

• Under 14 Boys, 50m. Butterfly - Seth Bryant Aborot Gr.7 32.70sec.

• Under 14 Boys, 100m. IM - Seth Bryant Aborot Gr.7 1:12.17sec.

On Tuesday, 1st of November the Wildcats Swimmers competed with Amity School, Brigton College and Al Bateen Academy, overall we finished in 2nd place.

Varsity boys; Hatim Sakni, Hussein Ayyad, Riley Oben and Santiago De La Flor broke 2 new school records for 200m.Freestyle Relay and 200m.Medley Relay.

Congratulations to all our fantastic Wildcats Swimmers!

Coach Jackie, Coach Nadia & Coach Iliana.

• November 7: Introduction to Unifrog for parents (Grades 9-12) 18:00 GST (45 mins) via ZOOM LINK.

• November 9-11: Parent-Teacher-Student Conferences (no classes in session)

• November 14-18: Great Kindness Challenge

• November 14-18: Little Thinker Book Fair

• November 25: Pizza and Popsicle Day by GAAPA and Booster Club

• November 26: Fall Family Fun by GAAPA

• November 29: UAE National Day Celebration at GAA