6th November 2024

Dear Parents

Student wellbeing continues to be a significant focus for the school and this will continue in future school planning. As educators we often deal with anxiety in our children, this can become exacerbated as they grow older and this can have significant impact as children grow into young adults. It is important that the foundation for managing anxiety and dealing with stress is approached when children are younger; good habits in childhood often transfer into adult life.

We have held several sessions in the past few weeks with Al Harub, the aim is to support parents as they help their own children develop and to know the strategies that we can use to support our children. As parents we often focus on school reports or on academic outcomes, as we perceive that will be a key area to focus on. However I encourage you all to ensure that you also support your children in developing their life resilience.

I was reading a recent article by Dr Beth Mosley, who has an MBE for her work in mental health education. Mosley, who is the author of the recent book Happy Families: How to Protect and Support Your Child’s Mental Health, says techniques to help children manage anxiety are worth investing in at any age, she then provided a very powerful quote.

“The best predictor of success in life, and life satisfaction, is emotional health — over intellectual ability or academic attainment,”

I also wish to emphasise the importance of following road safety rules when dropping off and picking up students from school. If you have family members, friends or drivers who drop off or pick up your children, please make sure that they comply with the PDO safety rules and regulations. It’s important that everyone follows these guidelines to keep all our students safe.

Thank you for your help in keeping our school community safe.

Tim Robinson

Headteacher

PDO Education Assistance Policy

Following the recent information concerning the review of non PDO core assets, there has been a very small amount of interest shown in applying for places at alternative schools in Muscat. It is important to note that there has been no change in the PDO Education Assistance Policy. The School Admissions and Transfer Policy can be read here.

PDO's language of learning

During the first half-term of this year, the staff at PDO School worked hard to come up with a creative, shared language of learning to use consistently with children throughout the school.

Because learning is at the heart of everything we do, it is important that adults and children are able to talk about and reflect on learning using language that we all understand.

After sharing our expertise, experience and creative inspiration, we have agreed on the following four posters to describe these four states of learning.

Please look out for these symbols in school and see if your child can use them to reflect on and talk about their learning with you.

PTA Meeting

A gentle reminder that tomorrow at 0800 is our first PTA meeting of the year. The agenda will include; welcome and introductions, decision making, PTA Support Team, common requests and then a focus on potential events. Our PTA policy is linked below for awareness.

PDO School PTA Policy

Celebrations

Many of our families were celebrating Diwali last weekend and it was wonderful to hear the children coming in to school on Sunday sharing their news about how they celebrated. The beautifully lit houses around camp have been lovely to see in the community. We wish all of the families that were celebrating a Happy Diwali.

Children across the school took part in halloween customs last weekend around camp. It was great to hear their enthusiasm for their costumes from those who celebrated.

It is so lovely to see and hear about the different festivals that are important to each of us and we look forward to learning more about festivals from our diverse community during our International week in January.

Child Development Parent Workshop

It was great to see parents join us for the Child Development workshop. We learnt the importance of the different areas of development from ages 0-5. Thank you for coming and we look forward to supporting you further.

World Nursery Week - Poetry Week

Next week, children in Early Years and MP1 will be participating in World Nursery Rhyme Week, while MP2 and MP3 students will be involved in a week of immersion in poetry.

Our aims are to spread a love of poetry and to expose children to a wide range of poetry from all over the world. Parents are invited to share their favourite poems with their child's class - please see the Seesaw post from your child's class teacher to sign up. We would also love the children to learn at home, share their knowledge and perform a rhyme or poem to their classmates in their home language.

Congratulations to our Learners of the Week

Lots of Personal learning Goals achieved this week, well done!

Early Years

As part of our Animal Rescuers unit we have travelled into the Deserts of Oman! This is going to be linked in with our Oman National Day week.

We are learning about animals that live in the deserts of Oman, like camels, scorpions and lizards. There is a big focus on how these animals manage to survive in this harsh habitat. It's been a great opportunity for children to talk about their camping trips to the desert. The story focus has been 'The Camel who had the hump' which has got us all thinking about how we can try to smile and laugh our way out of feeling a bit grumpy!

Milepost 1

It's been an exciting start to this new half-term in Year 1 as we are learning all about: Animals in Oman...

To become explorers and to help decide which animals we thought we might find in Oman, safari hats were a must. After making our hats, we sorted animals into ‘lives in Oman’ and ‘does not live in Oman’. Then, we used lots of different materials to create the landscape and thought about how these different terrains might determine which animals were best adapted to live here. We have so much more to find out about animals in Oman and we have started asking some excellent questions to drive our inquiry. Did you know there are honey badgers here and that Oman is home to arabian wolves, leopards and hyenas!? Where do they live? What do they eat? How many are there?

Milepost 2

This week in Milepost 2 the children in Year 3 have been junior palaeontologists!

As part of the IPC unit 'Footprints from the Past', the children in Y3 have been developing their research skills in order to gain knowledge about the different types of fossils: trace, mold, whole body and cast. They then used this knowledge to help them to create some of these fossil types which they are excited to share with parents at our Exit Point next Thursday at 1.15pm.

Milepost 3

In Year 5, we have been using AI to test how evocative our descriptive writing is.

As part of our IPC unit Existing, Endangered, Extinct, we designed apex predators that would thrive in extreme environments. We linked this learning to the writing we are doing in Literacy, using a range of complex sentences and adventurous vocabulary to describe our apex predators.

Our aim was to evoke a clear picture in our reader's mind and we used an AI image generator to see how successful we had been. Take a look at some of the incredible creatures we have created.

Toddler Hut

This week at Toddler Hut, our little explorers dove into all things autumn! They scooped out pumpkin flesh, painted their very own Jack-o-lantern and discovered the fun of pretend play. From washing babies to whipping up treats in our play kitchen, it was a week filled with sensory fun, creativity and imaginative play!

PDO's very own Karate Kid

Last week, Dhairya won two medals, gaining first and second place in Kumite and Kata respectfully. This competition was held at Bowsher Stadium where Dhairya competed with other schools to secure himself a spot on the Oman National Team! He now has his eyes set on gaining his black belt and competing at a national level. Well done, Dhairya and good luck!

Lost and Found

If you recognise any of these items please come into the main reception to collect.

PDO School Newsletter