Dear Parents,

Many thanks to all the parents who have signed up and registered for Seesaw, just to highlight this will be the school communication platform in the future.  It is important that parents please sign up and engage with Seesaw.  Several PDO parents have already highlighted the benefits of using Seesaw, we look forward to all parents signing up in the next week. If in the future you are having problems accessing the application, teachers and the administration team will be there to support you. 

Parent Connect

Thanks to all the parents who have offered to support the school in their role as class parents. We now have a class parent for all classes .

We will now be able to start the Parent Connect Process. I will send a meeting invite to the class parents next week, this will be an initial meeting to discuss the process.

One of the key roles of the class parents is to represent the class at the Parent Connect meeting. Parent Connect will be a question and answer session, class parents will collect questions from all the parents in the class and will then send them in advance to the school . We will then hold a meeting and respond to the questions. The meeting will only be attended by the class parents.

This will be an organic process and we will refine and adapt as the year progresses. The concept is that we enhance and develop our communication channels with all stakeholders. As parents you play a crucial part in your child’s education, we want you to be involved. 

The questions should be generic and not name individual students, parents or teachers. If you have an individual case, we ask that you refer to the class teacher initially. Our aim is to collect feedback from parents and to assess what areas of school we need to develop further. We can also ask some questions to parents and you can help us to formulate decisions in school that has an impact on parents.

I have used this process before in several schools; it works well, it will be a bit ‘bumpy’ at the start as we work through the process. Minutes will be taken and once reviewed by the group, they will be sent to the whole school community.

It is likely that the school team will include Tim Robinson, Claire Richmond and Anre Theron, Anre has the history of the school that Claire and I do not currently possess.

School Holidays

The school calendar currently indicates that the school will be closed on the 27th and the 28th. We will remain with these dates and should the holiday fall on a different day then we will simply exchange our training day to the Wednesday and the holiday will be on the Thursday. The school will therefore be closed for students on Wednesday and Thursday.

Parent Teacher Conferences

These will take place on the 9th and 10th of October. We will be sending out invitations before the end of the month. This is an opportunity for you to talk face to face with your child's class teacher and to discuss how your child has settled into school and how you can support them at home with all their learning.

Tim Robinson

Headteacher

Milepost 1

Year 1

Year One has started reading 'Pumpkin Soup' by Helen Cooper. We listened to the story and decided on the actions and expressions that correspond to each page. Children then sequenced the main events from the story and used this to retell the story to their friends and teachers. Finally, we created puppets to help us role play and act out the story.

Year 2

This week the Year Two children used their collaborative skills to collect data and compare information. They visited the Year One classrooms and interviewed the children to gather data for their unit 'Travel From A to B'.

There were lots of discussions about how the children travel to and from school. The Year 2 children then used this information to record the data in tables and used tally marks to help them count.

It was a great example of collaborative learning taking place in Milepost 1.

Milepost 2

This week Year 4 began their IPC Knowledge Harvest. This is an opportunity for the teachers to find out points of previous learning and plan for misconceptions or unknown knowledge/skills/understanding. The children used their collaberation and communication skills to complete a range of tasks.

Working in groups the children sorted photos of natural disasters into groups and gave reasons. They compared their groupings with the other children's ideas in the class and discussed what they agreed or disagreed with. 

The next step was to work together as a class and discuss their 'NOW' knowledge (what we know now) about volcanoes and earthquakes. They created their knowledge harvests which they will use to add to as they gain more knowledge about this topic.

Milepost 3

BIOMES 

What is a biome? How many are there? As it is amongst leading scientists and scholars, this second question provoked much debate in our classroom with answers ranging from 5 to 17! After a rigorous discussion, as a class, we agreed upon which biomes created the umbrellas under which other habitats could be housed.  We then thought about which of these would be considered an extreme environment and why. These will be the focus of our research and learning in the upcoming weeks. 

I would like to start by introducing myself. My name is Miss Rachel and I am the new Music Teacher here.  I have worked overseas most of my life including Kuwait, Qatar, Thailand, Uzbekistan and Russia and have taught many different nationalities.  I am from the U.K. and  I am very happy to be here in Muscat at PDO School. Here is some information about what each Year Group has been working on in Music.

Early Years have been introduced to a ‘Hello’ song and a ‘Goodbye’ song.  The children have been responding to sounds that describe animals. They have also played some of the percussion instruments.

Year 1 is exploring sounds.  The children have been finding out about Forte (Loud),  Piano (quiet), Adagio (slow) and Allegro (fast).  They are learning to recognise the different tempos and the dynamics that happen in Music.  We started a song this week called ‘Hey Everybody’ and learnt about the didgeridoo.

Year 2 is working on recorders.  I have introduced the notes B and A to the children and we are playing simple tunes. We also have great fun with Music and Movement.

Year 3 is looking at keyboards and playing simple melodies.  We will be looking at ‘Au Clair de la lune’ next week. We are also finding out about music notation and how to put our hands on the keyboards.

Year 4 is learning how to play melodies on the Glockenspiels.  The children are also playing a two part harmony piece of music. Alongside this the children are learning about the notes and note values.

Year 5 is playing guitars.  We are working on 'Martian Boogie' which has different parts going on at the same time. The children have also started learning to play 'Smoke on the Water'. 

Year 6 has reviewed the guitars and has been studying how to play 'Jigsaw Blues'.  They are now starting the keyboard version with a view to performing the piece in small bands where some children play the guitar and some the keyboard at the same time.

Miss Rachel

Music Teacher

Seesaw

Seesaw will be new our school communication Application, it will replace the class pages and will provide an opportunity for students and teachers to share learning with you, it will also be used as a messaging service and will enable parents and teachers to engage in dialogue. We will provide more information in the coming weeks on how parents can use the application.

We are currently introducing it in school and ensuring all staff are familiar with Seesaw, our next step will be to load student profiles on the system this will enable us to communicate directly with parents and provide relevant information. Our target launch date is the end of September for full implementation. As with all new systems, we will experience a few glitches, however the end result will be an enhanced communication system for our school.

Please see the data privacy information in the link below and confirm if you are happy for you and your family to use the application. Please note that you do not need to complete it again if you have already done so:

PDO School Seesaw Consent 

Wishing you a pleasant weekend,

The PDO School Team