5th November 2025

Dear Parents

A reminder that the school will be closed on Thursday November the 6th as all staff will be attending the ISCO conference. School opens as normal on Sunday 9th November.

New staff member- we have a new staff member who will arrive next week. Mr. Robert arrives next week, please see his Bio below. This is a planned recruitment from June of last year, Mr. Robert will be a cover teacher.

A Warm Welcome to Mr. Robert Cloutman

Please join us in giving a very warm welcome to our new staff member, Mr. Robert Cloutman, who joins us this term.

Robert brings a wealth of international teaching experience to our school, having taught in a variety of settings, including Shell international schools in Nigeria and Gabon. He most recently spent nine years at Hadlow Preparatory School in New Zealand, where he was a highly respected leader and teacher.

While Robert taught at PDO School over a decade ago, he is excited to return to Muscat and reconnect with our vibrant community. He is looking forward to working with everyone to help our students thrive.

We are delighted to have Robert on our team and know his extensive experience and dedication will be a great asset to our school. Please welcome him back to PDO School

Tim Robinson

Headteacher

Computing Years 5&6

This term the children have been learning to use two different languages to code web pages: html (the builder) and css (the artist). As part of that learning they explored how colours are made by mixing red, green and blue light, so that they can define colours in their code.

Try this color matching exercise to see if you too can create the correct code for each color.

To make an exact match you need to think about hue, brightness and saturation.

Hue - What is the main color? Is it nearer Red, Green or Blue? Or is it nearer Cyan (blue +green), Magenta (red + blue) or Yellow (blue + green).

Brightness - Is it bright or dark? Higher numbers mean more light and therefore brighter.

Saturation - how grey/washed out looking is it? Increase the colour(s) that don't make the colour, to make it greyer/paler.

Maths Passport

Thank you to the parents who joined us for the MP1 Maths Passport workshop this week. Please find the link to the slideshow here. It is also available on the Learning Portal in the Maths section.

For the other Mileposts there is also an information slideshow here.

You are an essential part of your child's Maths Passport learning journey. Please use the resources to support their achievement of each Maths Passport target. We recommend practising the Maths Passport targets for 10 minutes every day in order to support your child's progress. The target card is in the back of their learning log, where you can see which targets have been achieved and ones that still need more practice. Thank you for your continued support.

Miss Liz

BSM Collaborative Music Event.

Around 150 children form across six Muscat schools attended the BSM Music Collaboration Event on Friday 31st October. Nineteen children from PDO School participated across both choral and instrumental workshops. In the afternoon, parents were treated to a wonderful concert that included a 120 piece choir, wind band and string ensemble. All of which demonstrated the fantastic results that had been achieved during the morning sessions.

Many congratulations to all of the PDO children who attended. It was a busy and tiring morning but the end results were outstanding. Also, a big thank you to Miss Dawn, Miss Marie and Miss Danni for there invaluable support during the day.

Mr Gary

Early Years

We celebrated the end of our Powerful Plants unit! The children proudly shared their learning and discoveries with great excitement.

Throughout this unit, the children explored how plants grow, what they need to stay healthy and why they are so important to our world. They enjoyed planting seeds, observing changes over time and learning how plants can help, heal and feed us. The children also discovered the importance of trees and created beautiful art inspired by nature. Their curiosity and sense of wonder blossomed as they made connections between their learning and the world around them.

Thank you to all parents for your support and collaboration throughout this learning journey!

Milepost 1

This week in Milepost 1 the children worked collaboratively to find out information about animals that live in the sea.

The children in Year 2 investigated a set of statements about marine life as part of their knowledge harvest for their new IPC topic. They looked at statements such as 'Sharks kill more people than cows,' and had to decide if that statement was true or false. Once the activity was completed the children then decided if they wanted to change any statements around before the big answer reveal! Next they thought of questions that they would like to investigate during the journey of the new IPC unit and made connections to their English unit on nonfiction text features.

Milepost 2

This week in Milepost 2, our learning focused on understanding how people can have an impact on places even when they are not physically there. The children became Agents of Empathy as we explored what it means to show empathy and to consider the feelings and needs of others.

To bring this concept to life, we played a thought-provoking game inspired by Monopoly, where children faced a series of moral dilemmas. They had to decide how best to use their resources to support communities recovering from a natural disaster. The activity sparked meaningful discussions about fairness, compassion and global responsibility, encouraging students to think about the power of their choices and how small actions can make a big difference in the world.

Milepost 3

The children in Year 5 have thoroughly enjoyed bringing iconic river moments in history to life through animation as part of our Go With The Flow unit.

Working in small groups, the children demonstrated excellent collaboration and communication as they researched, planned and animated their chosen events. The next step will see them preparing voiceovers and editing their animations to complete their projects. We look forward to proudly sharing their creative work during our Exit Point celebration.

Congratulations to our Learners of the Week!

A huge congratulations to our newest Learners of the Week! This award recognises the incredible effort they put into their learning and the excellent ways they are putting their personal goals into practice. It's fantastic to see them growing and becoming such dedicated and confident learners.

PDO School Newsletter