Issue 10 6th December 2015

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In This Issue Page 1

Our Bows Have Many Strings

Page 2

Foundation Stage Magic Moments

Page 3

Key Stage 1 Magic Moments

Page 4

Key Stage 2 Magic Moments

Page 5

Key Stage 2 Magic Moments

Page 6

Other Magic Moments and Information

Our Bows Have Many Strings Children at MES Cairo lead incredibly busy lives: after school,

many attend sports clubs or have music tuition that adds strings

to their bow and further develops them into multi-talented

individuals. Take Hana, for example; she is one of Egypt’s top

synchronised swimmers for her age-group, winning medals whilst

competing against children from all over Egypt … it’s fantastic!

We know our children work hard to be the best they can be, and

we’re incredibly proud of their achievements wherever they take

place. Read on to see a few more awesome achievements!

…we have been very busy continuing our 'Big Beasts and Mini Beasts' topic. On Sunday morning, we

found some bugs and vehicles trapped in ice! We soon discovered that adding warm water and salt to the

ice would help it to melt more quickly. The children made tally charts and thoroughly enjoyed visiting

other classrooms where they found out which beast or bugs people liked best. Children then added the

totals for each area and we discussed which was most popular and which was least popular. In our

sensory play, we had to rescue bugs from the slimy red spaghetti and sort them by colour. Hania told me:

''the spaghetti, it looks like worms and its

cold and sticky'' … great description,

Hania! Lastly, we were very lucky to be

able to handle a real tortoise this week!

Miss Mona bought in her pet from home

and we were very gentle when handling

it. We enjoyed using non-fiction books to

find information about different types of

tortoise. We found out that tortoises can

live a very long time. The average age a

tortoise can live to ranges from 90 to 150

years … that’s pretty old!

Issue 10 : 6th December 2015 Foundation Stage Magic Moments

In FS1 Violet…

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In FS2 Green…

…we have had an exciting time learning all about animals! This week

we have had some very special visitors. Our outdoor learning space

was turned into a farm and we had real animals visit us in school.

Violet Class was delighted to be able to see, touch and talk about all

the animals. The children took it in turns to carefully stroke the

rabbits and those that wanted to went inside the pen with two

beautiful goats! The children were amazed at the size of the 50 year

old tortoise and nearly all of the children wanted to feel his shell and

get a closer look. We have learned lots of new animal related words

and now have a real understanding of what different animals look

like, how they feel and the sounds they make. We had a great time!

Issue 10 : 6th December 2015

Key Stage 1 Magic Moments

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In Year 1 Yellow…

In Year 2 Violet…

…we continued to look at making addition and subtraction number sentences in Maths. In English, we

started learning about adjectives and we were able to describe some superhero characters and settings;

some of us tried to find the adjective in a sentence. We are still enjoying our Topic, ‘Investigating

Materials’ and will experiment next week with materials that are best for floating so that we can make

real superhero boats. Please continue to bring any objects such as plastic bottles, cereal and other food

boxes, egg cartons, toilet paper rolls, shoe boxes, bottle tops, magazines and newspapers, buttons and

plastic tubs into school. We are very excited about our Year 1 superhero dress up day on December 17th,

and some of us have started making and adapting our superhero costumes already!

…we have turned into Scientists! We have our own Science lab in the pod and have been carrying out

different investigations. We have been learning about living things and their habitats and were fascinated

to find out different facts about bees. We worked in small groups to find out about where bees live, what

they eat and the different jobs that they do. Yes, that’s right, bees have jobs too! When we had found out

lots of facts, we worked in teams to make non-fiction books about bees. Miss Helen was amazed by how

well we worked together and is really proud of our books. If you want to find out about bees, come to the

Year 2 pod and read our books!

Key Stage 2 Magic Moments Issue 10 : 6th December 2015

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In Year 3 Orange…

In Year 4 Violet…

…we have been having lots of fun in the science laboratory, where we have been learning about

sedimentary and igneous rocks. We have been exploring their properties, finding out which are hard or

soft and some of their names. We were very interested to find out how these different types of rock

were made and why some of them have fossils in. If you don’t know, be sure to ask one of Year 3 Orange

and we’ll enlighten you with our amazing rock knowledge!

…we have been really enjoying doing art-based activities connected with our topic on natural disasters.

We worked carefully in groups to create collage pictures inspired by a famous painting entitled Seattle

Heatwave. We used paint, coloured paper, tissue paper and candle wax to give the impression of a whole

city melting; our work is now displayed outside the Year 4 pod. We are now busy designing sculptures

based on a series of natural disasters and will be making these in class this week.

Key Stage 2 Magic Moments Issue 10 : 6th December 2015

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In Year 5 Orange…

In Year 6 Green… …we have taken to our new Talk for Writing text,

‘The Caravan’ like a duck to water. It was written by

Pie Corbett (the creator of Talk for Writing) himself

so it is jam-packed with great vocab and

punctuation and the story is, of course, very

entertaining. This week we have worked in groups

of three to devise actions for each part of the story,

with some impressive results, including a bridge

made entirely of children! We look forward to

‘innovating’ Pie’s text soon and adding in our

own ideas to the story.

…we have had a lot of fun learning the text ‘Gravity’ as part of the

Talk for Writing process. We learned actions and performed them

with many children showing their amazing memories for words.

Some children ‘hot-seated’ the main characters in the text and we

asked them questions about life in space! All this great work can only

mean one thing: our writing next week will be out of this world!

Other Magic Moments & Information Issue 10 : 6th December 2015

Coming Up Next…

Tuesday 15th December Seasonal Concert

Friday 18th December

School Closed: End of Term 1

In PE… App of the Week This week’s iPad App of the Week is a popular one

used across the Primary School called Popplet. It’s

generally known and used as a brainstorming or

mind-mapping tool, where students can use the

web-connected boxes to create maps of ideas, or

even use them for mapping out their writing or research projects. A

student in Year 2 Blue has challenged himself to recall the seven

characteristics of living things in Science last week, and he creatively

used the image and pen tool to label examples of each one! Another

pair of students challenged themselves to learn about the savannah

habitat through research on kidrex.org, and look how ingeniously

they chose to present their findings using the camera, image, and

type-tool; they really enjoyed Air

Serving their work from their

iPad to the class SmartBoard so

they could share with their

classmates - what an incredibly

visual way to bring written

investigations to life!

…we have been focusing on team

building across Key Stage 2. Year 5

and Year 6 have taken part in

scavenger hunts using clues to

find the location of PE equipment.

One member of the team then

had to film the challenges using an

iPad and they were awarded

points for their creativity and how

successful they were. Year 6

Orange have been the most

impressive with their whole class

dance ‘Watch Me Ney Ney’!

In the Library… …this week we have been giving out the Autumn issue of the Baker

Books book club magazine. We are very excited by the new titles

offered by the club. Here are some of our favourites – we will

definitely be buying these for our libraries:

We love the bold and beautiful illustrations of

animals in Marc Martin’s ‘The Curious Explorers

Guide to Exotic Animals.’ This is an alphabet book

with extras; as well as the alphabet children will

learn fascinating facts about curious creatures.

For older children, we are very excited by the first book of a new

series by Rick Riordan (creator of the popular Percy Jackson series)

called ‘Magnus Chase and the Sword of Summer.’ Magnus is a boy

who discovers he is the son of a Norse god and that he has a role to

play in preparing for war in the Nine

Worlds. The story - with Magnus’ search

for a weapon that has been lost for

thousands of years and his adventures with

trolls, giants and other monsters - has all

the ingredients of a fantasy epic that Year

6 will want to sink their teeth into!