PDO

School Newsletter

28th August 2024

Dear Parents,

Many thanks to all the parents who attended the Meet The Teacher session last night in school. It was so pleasing to see so many parents attend the sessions. The key objective was to connect with you all and collect feedback on issues that you wanted to share with us. Many thanks for all your comments and positive feedback. We are all looking forward to a positive year of learning!

The word learning is used in many formats across the school, last week we investigated as a school what good learning looks like in PDO school. It is important that as a community we all understand that this is our core business 'learning'. As we move into the new school year we are reminding ourselves that learning and in particular new learning is key if we are to move forward as a school. At the start of the year, it is a good time to explore how as parents you support your child's learning. As we discussed last night, learning is complex and parenting in a modern age is also challenging; we are here to support and help.

It is so important that as parents you create a strong working dialogue with your child's class teacher. We are in a very fortunate position that our very small classes allow us time to create deep and meaningful relationships with parents. Student success and achievement is dependent on several factors; developing positive parental relationships is key in supporting and enhancing your child's learning.

Ministry of Education Notice ( MOE)

See below a translated letter from the MOE; if you are leaving Oman and relocating to another location, you may require school documents to be attested, see below.

Dear Sirs,

Greetings. Regarding the subject of school certificates (school report) issued by the school, we would like to bring to your attention the following matter. It has come to the Ministry's notice that some parents of students from our school are seeking to authenticate their children's educational certificates for use abroad through the relevant authorities, namely the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the embassies of their destination countries, without obtaining the required endorsement from the Ministry of Education.

Therefore, we kindly request your esteemed intervention to advise parents or their representatives intending to authenticate their children's certificates through the Omani Ministry of Foreign Affairs and accredited embassies to first obtain authentication from the Foreign Schools Office at the Ministry of Education.

Accept our sincere regards,

Director of the Foreign Schools Office

Tim Robinson

Headteacher

Meet the Teacher evening

Please scroll or click on the links below for further information from Tuesday's presentation.

Meet the Teachers - 2024.pdf

FirstDayback.MP4

Early Years

It has been a busy week exploring our new classes and learning environment. The children have been incredible and it is great to hear all about their adventures during the summer. The Early Years Team are super excited about the year ahead and we can't wait to share our learning journey with you all.

Milepost 1

Milepost 1 has enjoyed a stunning start to the new school year. The excited reunions with friends old and new were lovely to hear. The children worked collaboratively to come up with agreements to make their classrooms fun and engaging for learning and played different types of games to get to know their classmates better. The children participated in a road safety talk and completed actions to make sure that they know how to cross the road safely.

Well done Milepost 1!

Milepost 2

Experiencing the corridors alive with chatter has been lovely to see. In MP2 we have been delving into the IPC Brainwave units. Children have been learning about strategies they can use to make themselves better learners.

In a relaxed environment, we have been getting to know each other and identifying different ways to learn. The aim of the Brainwave unit is to get children in the mindset of 'learning to learn'. Year 4 worked collaboratively to make brains and shared facts we knew already and identified what we would like to find out next!

Milepost 3

Who am I (really)?

Inspired by the 'culture transformation' training sessions, Y6 teachers facilitated a 'Who am I really?' session with the children. They made posters to illustrate who they really are and over the week they have been presenting them to the class. The activity helped us to really gain an insight into each other - not only what we like and what is important to us - but also why we are the way we are and what things we find difficult. This activity helped us to get to know each other and build strong relationships! We focussed on how we can support each other in order to feel safe when taking risks with our learning, so that we really maximise our learning this year.

Developing a love of reading

To continue our drive to foster a love of reading we will be starting our library sessions for Years 1-6 next week. The children will have their library day shared with you via seesaw, please look out for this. The children's reading is currently being reviewed by class teachers to ensure that we provide appropriately levelled reading books for each child and next Thursday your child will be given home readers. We truly believe in the importance of home school partnership with reading and will be providing new learning logs to record your child's reading each day at home. In the logs there will be support and advice to help your child with their reading at home.

As a school over the past year we have invested a huge amount of money to boost our books, both within our reading schemes and library, our total expenditure was 34,000 omr. In addition to this we have also purchased: class texts, supplementary materials, Personal Learning Goal library books for corridors and class libraries.

Our most recent order is due to arrive at the end of September. This order will help to boost our Milepost 2 and 3 books and will provide texts that align with our Oxford assessment criteria to help us track and monitor reading.

Why Is It Important to Read to Your Child? - Child Mind InstituteParents hear it all the time: it’s important to read to your kids. But why exactly is that? And does it matter how — or when, or what — you read to them?

Meet our School Counsellor

We would like to welcome Ms Khadija Al-Qassabi who has taken on the role of Student Counsellor at PDO School.

Khadija recently returned to Oman from New Zealand and we are very excited for her to join the team.

Khadija obtained her qualification at Auckland University of Technology and holds a Bachelor of Health Science with a major in Counselling. She has extensive experience working with children in New Zealand, including as a school counsellor for Northcote Primary School and New Lynn Primary School. In addition, Khadija has worked as a mental health counsellor for AUT University, a wellbeing student adviser for the student association AUT and served as a Children's role model advocate for Inspiring the Future Aotearoa Campaign.

Khadija is a member of the New Zealand Association for Counsellors NZAC.

Introduction message from Ms Khadija

Hello Parents and Guardians,

I am MS. Khadija Al-Qassabi and I am excited to introduce myself as the school counsellor here at PDO School. I grew up here in Oman, and I live with my two lovely (always hungry) cats: Karak and Lulu.

I love travelling and lived in New Zealand for five years, where I completed my counselling studies at AUT University.

My role involves creating a space for our children to express themselves and their feelings and explore their resilience strategies for any challenge they are facing.

In my spare time, I enjoy doing Karate, and for quiet times I do expressive writing.

I am thrilled to join this amazing school community and to work closely with both children and families. Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions, or concerns. I look forward to meeting you all.

Kind regards.

Khadija AL-Qassabi

PDO School Uniform Shop

We are pleased to announce the opening hours for our school uniform shop during the academic year. No booking is required; simply visit our main reception desk.

Opening Hours:

Days: Sunday to Thursday
Time: 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM

Please note that your children can try on uniform samples at the shop. Alternatively, you may bring their current t-shirts, shorts, or skirts to help us match sizes without needing to try them on.

Exchange Policy: We appreciate that sometimes you may wish to exchange items that you have purchased. To ensure that we can assist with your exchange please note that we are happy to exchange within 3 working days including the day of purchasing. The exchange can be done only once for the same item. All exchanges require a receipt as proof of purchase. All exchanges require items to be in AS SOLD condition (unworn and unmarked).

Student Council Elections 2024 - 2025

Firstly, we would like to say a huge thank you to last year's enthusiastic and dedicated Student Council members.

As we embark on a new academic year, it is time to elect our new Student Council representatives from Year 1 up to Year 6.

In Mileposts this week, Ms Nivine, Ms Naomi and Ms Hayley shared a presentation about the roles and responsibilities. It was great to see so many children expressing their interest and already sharing ideas! We can't wait to see who applies and announce the new Student Councilors in next week's newsletter.

Please see the attached poster on how your child can apply for Student Council. Please note, that this year, the session will run as an after-school club.

Ms Naomi, Ms Nivine and Ms Hayley

Road Safety Initiative

Dear School Community,

Welcome back to the start of a new school year. With the roads busier, and some children being allowed to travel to and from school independently, it is a good time to remind the children of road safety.

This week, the children will have a short assembly to introduce our road safety initiative, whereby the children will have a talk about road crossings. This will then be followed up with activities.

As part of the initiative, there will be a road safety display in the corridors. Please can you send in photos of the children demonstrating how they cross the road safely. This can be on scooters, bikes, walking, etc. This should be completed under adult supervision as per health and safety guidelines. Alternatively, the children can draw or create a poster or picture on how to cross the road and bring it to school.

Please send your photos to your class teacher.

Many thanks,

Ms Arlene, Ms Amy and Mr Mohsin

TERM 1 ENRICHMENT

We are pleased to announce our Term 1 Enrichment programme will be sent out tomorrow via Seesaw. We have created a new website to make the information more easily accessible by mobile devices and hopefully easier to navigate.

We have many new exciting Enrichment clubs on offer after school as well as many lunchtime clubs which are open for children to drop in too. We hope this allows our pupils to participate in activities with friends during the day to have fun, develop their skills and increase activity time throughout the day. We are also pleased to announce that Orion Gymnastics will be back with us offering specialist gymnastics sessions and Coach Zander from RAHGC will return offering SNAG Golf for our pupils. We have also added a Robotics Club offered by Robothink. The new program will run for 10 weeks and we are very excited to see the creations. All of these additional paid enrichment clubs have limited places so we encourage anyone who is interested to sign up tomorrow. More information about these clubs can be found on the website tomorrow.

EXTERNAL PROVIDERS

Robotics Club

Orion Gymnastics

SNAG Golf

Wake Up Wednesday - Seesaw

Since Sunday there have been 149 student posts and 219 family logins. Every child in the school has at least one connected family member. What a great start!

If you have more than one child in the school and you are not currently connected please send me (Ms.Kirsty) a message via Seesaw stating your email address and name and class of your child.

Top tips to stay up to date!

Update your app regularly - you may not be able to access Seesaw if you don't update

your app.

Enable notifications - you will not know you have received a notice from the school if you don't enable this.
Ensure you have a stable internet connection - we send out whole school messages at the same time, however you may not receive them at the same time. Reasons for this could be devices, networks, connections and the app.

If you think you have not received a post/message from Notices, please contact Notices via Seesaw.

Dates for your Diary

w/b 15th September - Enrichment Activities Start
Wednesday 4th September- Parent coffee morning @ 8am in the staffroom - all welcome!

Wishing you a pleasant weekend,

The PDO School Team

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