Week Twenty Three - February 4th 2022

Secondary School

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Secondary Curriculum Information

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Dear Parents & Guardians

Congratulations to all Grade 12 students who have now completed their Trial examinations. Many will be extremely pleased with how they have performed. Some, I am sure, may be disappointed. At this stage of the Diploma Programme, we know our students are tired, stressed and ‘over it’. It would be easy to not give that final push; after all the May exams seem so far away! However, having worked so hard for so long, it is vital to sustain the momentum in coming weeks.

Reflecting on how each trial exam was approached is vital. Was your child as prepared as they could be? Did they practice past papers? Did they attend extra study sessions offered by our teachers? Were tasks submitted on time? These are just some questions that we encourage our students to think about. Seeking detailed feedback on exam performance is a must. Understanding where mistakes were made is key (some of our best learning comes from making mistakes!) Knowing where strengths lie is just as crucial, these can be used strategically and to one’s advantage. We are so proud of the effort our Grade 12’s have displayed so far. And as they enter this final stretch, we are here to support them in any way needed!

This week we also held our Parent Teacher Conferences (PTC’s). Similar to the message above, it is hoped that all secondary students considered teacher feedback and what areas may need further dedication and commitment. However, I am also aware that there was much to celebrate with regard to the progress that each student is making. I hope that students are closer to achieving their goals which they set at the start of the year. Thank you to all parents and teachers who participated in the meetings. We hope that you found them a valuable and rewarding experience.

Finally, this week, I had the absolute pleasure to visit each Grade level to award ‘Star of the Semester’ certificates to students for their effort in Islamic. These students demonstrated outstanding results in recent Islamic assessment. Thank you to Ms Nomah and Mr Hussein for organizing these very deserving awards. The students were so proud to be recognized.

Enjoy the coming weekend

Amanda Murphy

Head of Secondary

Feb 18th Last day of term

Feb 11th Semester One Reports published

Feb 24th New term begins

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ISLAMIC STARS OF THE SEMESTER

January 12th - Keeping a Big School Small

January 26th - DP/CP Pathways

While we work to make this available via YouTube, please access this session recording by logging in with your child's gemselearning credentials.

New Classrooms

As of Monday 7th February, there will be changes to students' homeroom/classroom locations. As was the case before the pandemic, students will now be required to transition to different classrooms throughout the day.

Mask wearing and Seating plans are still to be adhered to, with students maintaining 1m head-to-head, in order to reduce the likelihood of being identified as a close contact to a positive covid case.

Students, have received a copy of the revised floor plans (via Managebac), which will help them to familiarize themselves with the location of their teacher's classrooms. To reduce confusion, students are encouraged to study these floor plans carefully over the weekend and to check them between each class, so they know where to go.

Besides the odd case, teachers/classrooms are grouped by subject on each floor:

Ground Floor: Mathematics and Design

First Floor: PHE (classrooms), Science, Music and Drama

Second Floor: I&S, Arabic, English, ACE

Third Floor: Islamic Studies, Arabic, Languages, Art and Textiles, along with some additional DP/CP classrooms

ECAs

Our Student Voice

The Link Magazine is a secondary online school magazine where our students talk about their interests through weekly articles. This includes world news, GIS events and many more thought provoking concepts. Make sure to check out our Website and Instagram!

@gis_elt

@gis__thelink

Pre-order Food Through Slices

Students are encouraged to bring a packed lunch to school - particularly while COVID-19 restrictions are in place - as it ensures that they are able to eat and drink as required throughout the school day.

If you wish to make use of the Slices catering service, please note that:

Food deliveries will not be permitted from external restaurants/catering services.
Food orders must be ordered through Slices in advance by completing this GOOGLE FORM.

Orders for following weeks must be placed by 10am each Friday.
Orders must be placed in advance for the full week (Monday to Thursday).
Same-day orders/deliveries will not be possible.

Food orders will be delivered to the students' classroom.
Students will not be permitted to visit the canteen in order to purchase water or snacks throughout the day.

Please consider an appropriate quantity and variety of foods to sustain your child for the duration of the school day.
Students are encouraged to bring sufficient water with them to school to sustain them throughout the day.

From the Classroom (and beyond)

Please find results, scorers, action photos, match reports, Sports News and much more on our Jaguar Sports website

You can also read reviews of the latest GIS sporting action via the GIS PHE site, curtesy of our Head of Sports Committee, Cigdem Kavcar

Stars of the Week!

Nelia Mjanger, Sultan Alqaizi, Milena Flores-Benita, Fayroz Mohamed, Afra Saiyara, Carl Zaky, Joaquin Barrionuevo, Andre Sousa, Maya El Sherbiny, Zain Ibrahim, Vasiliki Chrysochoou, Moonkang Cho, Kaylee Neves, Manal Kazi, Ahmed Ayman, Chahine Ouchari, Sakhi Doshi, Rohan Jani, Nilma Al Moneer, Efrit Rashiduzzaman, Alice Funari & Cadence Pillay

Visual Arts

Students are at the halfway point of grade 10 visual arts and are finishing off their first unit, PORTRAITURE: BEFORE & AFTER. After week 10, students displayed their finished BEFORE portraits that represented their daily life, at the beach, in a cafe, in their garden, in graphite. For their AFTER portrait, we explored WATERCOLOR & SURREALISM as they took their imagination to another level. Take a look at some of the WIP (works in progress) featured below and keep an eye out for the full display at school coming soon.

Devika Menon

Daniela Franquet

Lina Badawi

Students have been working on their collaborative projects that feature work from PYP, MYP, and DP students in a long, 19 week display of outstanding communication skills. Being assigned a randomly selected drawing from a PYP student, the G9 students had to create a MONSTER PROFILE by the visual cues given in the drawing (textures, colors, environment, etc), without having any discussion with the student who created the original work. After this profile was created, the G11 students were randomly assigned a MONSTER PROFILE created by the G9 student and they were required to create a monster that fits the profile, without ever seeing the original PYP drawing. I was impressed by the sophisticated level of communication and collaboration skills as the transfer of information was…interesting…and the creativity and skill development was, and still is, exceptional in its continued progress. See below a couple examples of the communication process and be sure to keep an eye out for full exhibition details coming soon.

Monster Profile

Creative Media

Our CP Creative Media students have elaborated short music clips with techniques that they have learned in their specialization so far with Mr. Lewis Griffiths. You will see high quality audio and video, the use of professional transitions to communicate a storyline developed by our students.

Please check out Yonden Frank and Kabir Kantharia’s productions below. Our students would like to give a special thanks to Claudia Marin and Bhavna Windra for their artistic voice collaboration in the music videos.

Yonden Frank: Click Here

Kabir Kantharia: Click Here

Science

Students have been looking at the periodic table and the electron- configuration of an Atom. Students were randomly assigned an atom and they had to show how the electrons orbit the nucleus using the 2,8,8,8,.. Electron configuration. Students could use any household objects to represent the electrons. Students were very creative with their representation of electrons.

Mathematics and Islamic Studies (Interdisciplinary Unit)

The idea of an Interdisciplinary Unit (IDU) involving Mathematics and Islamic Studies is quite strange in the first place if you look at this superficially. With Islamic Studies we have a religion that involves trust, faith & love and mathematics can surely hardly be associated with faith or trust. Right or wrong - black or white - FULL STOP. So what do both subjects have in common? What could be interdisciplinary here?

It does not come with a surpise that many important developments were done based on Islam. Think about navigating to Mecca (Hajj) in earlier years when google maps was not even invented, think about calculating moon phases to determine important dates for muslims (ramadan, etc,...), think about the beauty of Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Zayed Mosque and its geometrical perfectionism

In GIS the Islamic and the Math Department agreed on the statement of inquire that “Geometry is evident in multiple forms in Islamic cultural expressions” and we are proud to let all of you know that this IDU was fantastic and our students truly embodied the traits of the IB learner profile.

Our grade 10 students not only analyzed calligraphy, demonstrated creativity by producing islamic art, constructed polygons that often occur in islamic patterns and did some serious math to even mathematically calculate or construct key features of these shapes, but they also learned about the pillars of Islams and how mathematics influenced the development of islamic patterns. We are proud that this week was such a success, to see how engaged and passionate our students were, how they challenged themselves to explore these interesting connections and we are looking forward to the second week of our IDU in June.