June 2012

In this issue:

Arabic Activities Parle Vous Francais? Oui a Uptown DEWA Awards Uptown Conservation The Grade 3 Concert Calendar

June 2012

Upt

own

Upd

ate

Dear Parents

This will be the final newsletter for the year. I thus would first like to thank you for your support of the school over the past ten months. Your positive involvement as partners with us in the education of your children is just so critical to ensuring that they are able to achieve the best of which they are capable. To those leaving us, we wish your families well for the future. To those remaining, as the advent of a new purpose built campus looms very real in our vision with each passing day, we look forward to you joining with us on this exciting journey to the new campus over the next twelve months. It is hard to accept that a year has passed. So many things have happened in what seems like such a short space of time! One thing for sure is that all your children have grown over the period. As a community, we enjoy a very positive and productive environment. The openness and sense of enthusiasm for life, spirit of inquiry and fun that comes from all our young people is enormously encouraging. They are why we are here and it is their spon-taneity and energy that makes each day special in this place. I trust you will enjoy having them for the next 2 months as much as we have enjoyed their company for the past school year. We will post updates during the break of arrangements for the start of next year. They will obviously be somewhat different, in terms of locations for some, to the normal but never-theless, they bring with them all the excitement that comes with a new year at school, al-beit split over 2 campuses. We are planning hard in an effort to ensure all goes as smoothly as possible. I am pleased to be able to report that the school has been awarded Candidacy for the in-troduction of the MYP. The process towards authorization does take a few years so we will be putting all the necessary requirements and processes in place to achieve this within that time frame. As you are aware, we are already a World School for the delivery of the PYP. Staffing wise, we are virtually completed. The great challenge about International School-ing is to maintain a sense of continuity. Circumstances always seem to arise which lead to either current staff needing to move on for one reason or another at short notice – this inevitably is brought about by a spouses employment prospects and is simply a fact of life in this part of the world. I, however, am always confident in the knowledge that no mat-ter how disruptive these sorts of occurrences may appear, the children are rarely, if ever, disadvantaged by them – it is the adults who tend worry, unnecessarily in most cases. So, in bidding farewell to those staff that are moving on and thanking them for their serv-ice to Uptown, I wish you all a wonderful break as well. To those leaving us, I hope it all works out for you and I particularly look forward to welcoming back those who are return-ing for 2012/13. It promises to a fascinating first year in the establishment of the new Up-town School and one that will put us on the road towards becoming the pre-eminent school of choice in the Dubai. With best wishes

Tim WaleyPrincipal

Structural work is complete on our early years buildings and the parapet panels that sur-round the rooftop have been hoisted into place.

Test paint sample colours have been on the exterior walls for some weeks. Parents at the monthly on site tour view the interior accent colour samples that are under review.

Exterior and interior infrastruc-ture has also been completed with ductwork, plumbing, elec-trical wiring installed. Pictured below, the foundation pits for the surrounding wall are dug in preparation for our high exte-rior barrier wall. The KG pool is underway and the sidewalks are being poured and overlaid with walking tiles.

Next up will be enclosing the building as doors windows are tested on site and go into place to prepare for Pre-k and KG orientation on September 3.

On our new campus

Grade 3 Concert Each class presented their findings in a creative way, including poetry, drama, song, dance, sign language, art, mathe-matics and music to name a few. The stu-dents also presented a number of songs they had been learning in Music lessons and every Grade 3 student played the violin to demonstrate the skills they have acquired throughout the year.

Some of our students who learn the piano played one of their favourite pieces and we had presentations in Arabic, French and German to support what the students have been learning in these classes. We are all very proud of how the students presented their learning and their ability to share that with an audience.

Additionally, we had two groups of in-vited guest performers at the concert. The Uptown School Choir and the Up-town School Violin Ensemble performed two items each sharing their talents with the audience. The Choir was invited to sing because there are quite a number of Grade 3 students in the Choir and it was exciting for them to show their parents what they have been learning. The Violin Ensemble is the only one of its kind in a primary school in the GCC countries and it is therefore unique to our school. These musicians were able to show the parents of the Grade 3 students the direction they have gone in with their violin playing since they were in Grade 3. Some of our Grade 3 students have been invited to join this group for next year. All of our students performed with credit and represented their school with pride, confidence and a huge amount of enthusi-asm. Congratulations to all who took part and to all of the teachers who helped to make our concert a success.

On Thursday 7th June 2012 the Grade 3 students presented a wonderful concert for an audience of family and friends. The theme of the concert was ‘How We Express Ourselves’. Grade 3 has been inquiring into different signs and symbols used around the world.

As the academic year draws to a close and we look for-ward to next year, we would like to encourage students to read in Arabic over the summer, a book list will be sent home before the end of school and information for summer reading is also on the following page of this newsletter.

And lastly, thank you to our parents who always sup-port us especially in the Eid celebration and on National Day.

With this year’s challenges came great achievements as demonstrated by our strong showings in the Arabic Speech Competition and the Taaleem tal-ent show “I Have Talent” performed in Arabic. Our Uptown students also participated in the Taaleem Hadith competition.

In Islamic studies, we were very pleased with the number of students who completed the requirements for participation in the Quran competition held at Greenfield Community School. Join us for the awarding of certifi-cates during the annual prize-giv-ing assembly, 24 June at 1:30pm.

This spring we have had a number of special celebrations, trips, storytell-ing, and authors visits in addition to our Arabic Day festivities on 1 May, when both Arabic A and B showed their fluency in song, dance, acting, poetry and speech. The show reflected the progress we have achieved over this year. Grade 5 Arabic B students choose to present an Arabic language component at the annual G 5 Exhibi-tion night with a debate in Arabic.

News from the Arabic Department

Award Winning Arabic Writer visits UptownIn May, Rania Zaghir, the third in a program of visiting Arabic au-thors, captivated Uptown Primary students reading from her one of her own works, ‘Cici Malakit’. Rania says of her work, “I write to encourage children to dream, to be free thinkers and to have im-aginations”. ‘Cici Malakit’ won the prestigious Al Sabil award.

G4-5G1-3

الحائزة على جوائز لمدرسة أبتاون االبتدائية زيارة المؤلفة

برنامج المدرسة ضمن كانت زيارة الكاتبة رانيا زغير في شهر مايو هي الثالثة من نوعها

.كتاب ومؤلفي القصص الستضافة

." من لحس قرن البوظة" استمع طالب أبتاون بشغف لرواية أحد أعمال رانيا القصصية وهي قصة

وألساعدهم على ، خيلوا وليت على أن يحلموا، عن أعمالها: أنا أكتب ألشجع األطفال قول رانيات التفكير الحر.

لكتب السنوية معية السبيل ( أصدقاء المكتبات العامة)جائزة جنالت الكاتبة والناشرة رانيا زغير

( دار الخياط الصغير). سيسي مالقط تلبس خروفًا ودودتين"، عن كتابها "2009األطفال

م النفس ـا مستوحاة من الحياة اليومية، وبأنها أصبحت كاتبة بعد دراستها علـــــذكرت رانيا أن أعماله

التربوي بالجامعة.

عوا لرواية قصتها.ملطالب الصف األول والثاني الذين استكانت كتب رانيا مصدر اإللهام

DEWA’s conservation competition “How we can reduce electricity and water us-age within the school” aimed to produce measurable results for education fa-cilities. With guidance from Mr. Syed, we took the program to the UPS student body.

As a result of Uptown’s conservation campaign, UPS saved 6% of total electric-ity usage and 41% of total water usage. The first step in our winning plan was to engage students and class teachers in the conservation issues suggested by DEWA which generated many good conservation tactics from our Uptown stu-dents.

With our plans made, we then put them into action. To achieve this reduction Mr. Syed put into place guidelines for air-conditioner thermostats, set switch off policies for air-conditioning units, lights and other electrical devices at the end of school day and audited the UPS water usage. Monitoring usage over time, UPS students were able to produce their award winning results.

DEWA Awards Uptown for Conservation Uptown School received 3rd place in the DEWA

Energy Competition among Dubai Schools.

Representing Up-town at the DEWA awards ceremony: Grade 5 students Emily England, Simone Noorali, Barbara Burkus, Alia Ibrahim, Abeer Ladhani, Grade 4 and Mr. Fawad Syed, Uptown School Pur-chasing and Facilities Manager

We met DEWA VIPS, we met the press and we met the green man!

La Semain de la Francophonis

This year Uptown School celebrated Francophonia throughout an entire week, joining millions celebrating Francophonia worldwide. For Grades 1 to 4, we celebrated through games created by Grades 3 and 4 for Grades 1 and 2. Grade 5 participated in an inter-national invitation issued by the International Organisation of Francophonia, “Dix mots qui te racontent (10 words that talk about you).

Everyone had a lot of fun expanding their language skills with our Francophonia experi-ence. Special thanks go to those French speaking parents and staff who joined us in this endeavour.

French Workshop at Uptown Primary School

Our French teacher and team leader, Mihaela Sirbu with Nexha Sahran from Sharjah International school lead the second in a series of work-shops held at Uptown Pri-mary School.

The two hour workshop was attended by 20 Dubai based French teachers on the theme of Open Question-ing and Global Simulation in language learning.

The workshop was a continu-ation of the courses Mme.s Sirbu and Sahran attended last summer at the Univer-sity of Nantes, France. A life-long learner herself, Mihaela was granted the study schol-arship by the French Embas-sy in Dubai to participate in the month long course, join-ing more than 400 French teachers from around the world at the university. The course program investigated the challenges facing teach-ers adopting new teaching techniques in language in-struction to provide an excel-lent learning experience.

Top Activities to do during summer break

Sing a song

Some ideas from the K1 Team.

Maths• when shopping tick things off a list, write down

cost, use calculator at shops, calculate how many

things they can buy using vocabulary more, less,

all together, etc

• spend 20Dhs at diaso and work out amount

required, change needed etc

• look at licence plate and add two numbers on it

while at traffic lights

• use everyday Mathematics vocabulary when

comparing items (more, less, same, equal, bigger,

smaller, taller, shorter, medium, heavier, lighter,

etc) Reading• when reading mum/dad to stop story and they

can design their own ending to the story

• find sounds and familiar/high frequency words

in stories

• find sounds in stories and think of something

else with the sae stories

Writing • Keep writing

• write shopping lists, notes to different people,

office documents

• create their own stories

• write about their holiday adventures or keep a

holiday journal

Whatever you do with your children should be fun

and through play!!!

From the French teamSi vous souhaitez apprendre le français pendant les grandes vacances ou tout simplement perfectionner vos connaissances dans la langue, voici des options à prendre en compte!

Et n’oubliez pas notre blog! Beau-coup d’informations, des jeux, des histories, des chansons et des vidéos attendent d’être découverts! http://lefrancaiscestsuper.edublogs.org/

Essay aussi le site de TV5http://www.tv5.org/tv5Site/ensei-gner-apprendre-francais/accueil_ap-prendre.php

1. Go for a swim at the beach or fly a kite if you don’t like swimming.2. Learn to count to ten in another language.3. Go and look at the fish at the Dubai Mall Aquarium.4. Do a 500+ piece jigsaw puzzle.5. Play with the toys for free at Hamley’s Toy Store.

If you are staying in Dubai

If you are anywhere in the world

7 Grade3Concerts

withmusicalguests:

ViolinEnsembleand

UPSChoir

احتفال الصف الثالث

10 StudentCouncilCollectyourJunk,

BakeSale,FreeDressDayin

supportofDubaiLaborCamps

مجلس الطلبة مشروع إحضار مقتنياتك الغير مهمة - -

بيع المخبوزات يوم اللباس الحر. -

11 LastdaytoTurninFlickFlak

drawings

.فليك فالكرسومات اليوم األخير إلعادة

17 IsraWalMerajDay

SchoolClosed

اجازة اإلسراء والمعراج

20 Semester2Reportsissued تقارير الفصل الدراسي الثاني

20 Grade5ValedictoryDinner

6‐8:00pmstudentsonly

احتفال الوداع للصف الخامس

6الساعة /للطلبة فقط مساء 8 -

21 KG1and2lastday‐1:00pm –آخر يوم لصفوف الروضة األولى والثانية

ظهرًا 1الساعة

24 AnnualPrizeGivingAssembly

1:30pm

ظهرًا 1.30تجمع الطلبة السنوي النهائي الساعة

25 LastDayofSchoolforGrades1‐5

Noonpick‐up

آخر يوم دراسي لصفوف األول وحتى الخامس. .ظهرًا 12الساعة

13to

28

ShoesandUniformdriveDonateyourolduniformsandshoesto

studentsinAfghanistanandSouthAfrica

‐dropboxesinsidethegates

تبرع (بالزي المدرسي واألحذية) لصالح الطلبة في أفغانستان وجنوب افريقيا.

21 Pick‐UporPurchaseyour

2012UPSYearbook!

2012الكتاب السنوي لعام

JULYThe Administration offices will remain open throughout the summer. Note summer hours are 8 - 4:00pm;during Ramadan hours are 8 - 2:00pm.

AUGUST22 August Open Day at the new Uptown School campus, located at the corner of Tripoli and Algeria Streets.

SEPTEMBER3 September New Student Orientation 8 - 10:00am4 September First Day for all students 7:45am G1-6, 8:00am Pre-K, KG-1 and 25 September Open Day at the new Uptown campus11 September Pre-K, KG-1 and 2 Meet your Teacher12 September Grade 1 to 6 Meet your Teacher17 September Information Morning 8:00am

Dates to Remember in June

JULY, AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER PREVIEW

21

20

Dates in July, August and September are subject to change, please go to the Com-municator and our website, www.uptownprimary.ae for the most current schedule.