Friday, 17th November 2017
Upper School Newsletter
Upper School News
Student Talent Show
Thursday evening will definitely be one of my highlights of the first term. The Upper School students had been asked to produce their own Talent Show event with minimal help from school staff. A small student committee was formed weeks ago and this dynamic team of all ages gathered at break and lunch times to make it happen. Their creativity and management skills rose over the weeks as they motivated students to come forward, designed a promotional campaign, arranged parent support for refreshments, liaised with the arts staff, set up the front of house and finally hosted a super evening where the adults and their peers sat back to be entertained with an amazing array of talent. If you missed the evening you can find the video on our Facebook page as we streamed it live! It would never have worked so well without the sensitive leadership and organisational abilities of Mira in M5 and Teodor in D1. They hosted and arranged the whole evening and we were very proud of them and their team. Perhaps more importantly, thanks to your generous donations on the evening, we raised £127.29 for our three House charities. Well done to the Artist House team for scoring the most points and to all the performers and everyone involved! We look forward to seeing the three top acts performing again on Tuesday at our International Evening (see below).
IB Diploma Drama Evening - Tonight 6.30pm in Jubilee Hall
As this newsletter goes to press, the D2 Theatre students are putting the final touches to their IB Diploma Assessment plays for this evening. They are original pieces written and performed in two groups. Doors open at 6.30pm and everyone is invited! Ms. Kennedy is hosting the evening which has refreshments and an opportunity for audience feedback. We will have photos and reports next week. Good luck to the students!
IB Diploma Options Evening for M5
An important evening of IB Diploma information was held last Tuesday for students and parents and was very well attended. This year all IBDP teachers had time with the students to give greater detail about the course content and Ms. McCaffrey gave a detailed presentation on how to come to the right decisions for next year. If you missed the evening, please contact Ms. McCaffrey with any questions. The presentation for the evening can be downloaded here.
RNLI Campaign
Today the campaign closed for RNLI set up by a group of M1 boys with a bake sale. They achieved their H2O challenge of only drinking water for 10 days and the cakes, collection boxes and online donations reached a grand total of £143.67 for this cause that saves many lives around the UK every year. Well done to Sammy, Jasim, Herbie and Zyan for their initiative.
Service Learning
Ali in M5 is doing a fantastic job for MYP Service as Action through dance. Every lunchtime on Mondays he has been giving up his free time running Breakdancing clinics for our M4 students for their IB MYP Dance unit. Ali joined the school in September and the students have been getting a lot from his particular spark of genius. These student initiated service projects are what we are aiming for rather than teachers leading service projects. We are proud of Ali, well done!
French Trip
On Tuesday, M2 students who study French took part in a Bread Making Workshop in Borough Market. They got their hands dirty with sticky bread dough! They started by shaping ready made dough, learning how to use a scraper and their hands to work the dough. Once their bread was in the oven, they got to prepare dough. They went home with their freshly baked bread (though we suspect not very much reached home) and some dough to bake in the evening. Thanks to Ms. Villatte and Ms. Rodrigue for taking the students on such a fun day out.
Inter-house General Knowledge
This week Ms. Veschi organised and Mr. Turner hosted another event to foster House Spirit and create a thirst for knowledge. Selected House teams with audience participation answered tough questions set by our subject leaders. It was a fun release of energy and the House Captains once again stepped up to help arrange and run the event.
It was great to bring the whole Upper School together to tax their brains and cheer for the students who demonstrated that knowing key pieces of subject knowledge is still one vital part of learning! Thanks to all involved.
Spark Tank
Mr Turner and his team are coordinating a new whole school initiative this year. It has been running very successfully in Dwight New York for three years now and its aim is to encourage and develop an entrepreneurial mindset within Dwight as well as nurturing innovators. We need your help and support to ensure the project is a huge success. Specifically we need some judges and mentors to help the students.
Do you know someone who meets these following criteria?:
- Is London based
- Is either an entrepreneur or marketing professional or someone who has direct links to industry with a substantial amount of business experience
- Can spare some time over the course of six months to mentor students in developing their ideas by being part of three evening events spread across the spring and summer terms (as a judge)
- Is available to provide direct mentoring to successful students
- They do not have to provide any financial backing at all.
Many thanks in advance for your support and of course Mr. Turner will be happy to answer any questions you have about the project by email. Here is a link to the message from Dwight Chancellor Stephen Spahn about the initial launch and the Dwight New York Youtube channel has 8 short episodes of previous Spark Tanks.
Stay Drive Stay Alive
Our students this week have attended Safe Drive Stay Alive: a live event with powerful personal testimonies designed to make the audience aware of the tragedy and suffering a road traffic crash can cause. This innovative road safety campaign is aimed at young people, aged between 16 and 18, who may be new drivers, about to learn to drive or passengers in cars driven by their peers. Thanks to Ms. Veschi for arranging this important course to keep our young drivers safe.
Upper School Service Project with Nepal
On Thursday four of our students, Tara, Judy, Teador and Ishani from DP, rose early in the morning to participate in an interactive Skype call with students from Nisarga School in Nepal. They had an animated exchange about themselves, their respective schools and expressed enthusiasm to keep in touch with each other. Students of both sides were pleasantly surprised about the similarities in their school lives and were keen to understand differences by developing further ties.
This video call marks our first student exchange with our Nepalese friends and is the start of a unique partnership programme with schools in Nepal, one of which is Nisarga Batika school in Kathmandu. Partnerships with schools in Nepal will be aimed at not only developing learning, through an inter disciplinary theme on sustainable environment but also will endeavour to strengthen our service learning.
Upcoming Trips
Diploma Psychology Trip - Monday, 20th November (10.00am - 4.00pm)
Psychology students will be attending a series of lectures by various researchers across the country. The students are able to find out what is happening at the forefront of what they are studying, and explore career options with some of today's leading scientists. There are no additional fees for them to attend, but your child will need an optional packed lunch (or money for lunch) and their oyster card for travel to and from the centre. They will need to make their own way from home and meet at St James's Park underground station at 10.00am.
Where: Emmanuel Centre, 9-23 Marsham Street, Westminster, London SW1P 3DW
M1 Gamelan Workshop - Royal Festival Hall, Thursday, 23th November, (10.30am - 12.30pm)
As music from around the world forms a very important part of our music curriculum, the M1 students will be focusing on gamelan music in their music classes after the half term break. This genre of music originates from the Indonesian islands of Java and Bali. We have booked a workshop for our M1 students during which they will deepen their cultural understanding of the gamelan and learn to play basic patterns on these beautiful original instruments.
Students should bring a snack and packed lunch; there's a cafe at the Royal Festival Hall but it is pricey. Students must also bring a sufficiently charged Oyster card. Free travel not available due to early departure time.
M4 English Trip - Friday 25th November (9.00am - 1.30pm)
The M4 students will be going on an English A trip to the Charles Dickens Museum. They will attend a workshop from 10.30-12.00pm and will be back in school by 1.30pm. The purpose of the trip is to learn about the life and times of the author and to find inspiration for their upcoming English project.
Students must bring a sufficiently charged Oyster Card for travel from and to the school and they should bring a snack and packed lunch for the day.
Student Photos next Wednesday, 22nd November
Next Wednesday classes will be taken by rota to the library to have their individual school photos taken. You may like to ensure they are looking their best if you want to get copies for family and friends. If you have any questions about this, please contact Mr Dominguez in the Dwight office.
Staff IB Training
Students and parents will have noticed that many of our teachers have been out for a couple of days and their weekends to attend important IB training courses in both IBMYP and IBDP. I am aware that this has created more cover classes than usual but I want to assure parents that this has been arranged well by the team to ensure continuity of learning and the investment in our staff will reap many benefits for students in the longer term. Staff return from these courses after having networked with colleagues from all over the world which builds knowledge and understanding of IB programmes as well as renewed enthusiasm for the latest teaching practices. Thanks to our teachers for giving up weekends to be upskilled!
Have a great weekend everyone!
Andy Atkinson
Upper School Principal
Dwight Parent Association News and Events
On Tuesday, 21st November, Dwight Upper School and the DPA will be hosting our annual International Evening from 6-8.30pm in Jubilee Hall.
This is a fantastic community event where we celebrate the internationalism of our school, and sample foods from around the world.
It is a real family night out, where parents are asked to donate a dish from their home country, which would serve about 8 to 10 people. It's also a great opportunity for you and your children to dress up in your national costumes - or wear your national football team top! You can decorate your table with pictures or fun memorabilia from your home country too.
Come as a family, donate a dish and sample foods from around the world! Wine and soft drinks will be on sale. We'll also have performances from the winners of the Dwight Talent Show, and some great Dwight musicians.
There's no entrance fee, but we'll be taking donations on the door for the Nepalese Schools Project, chosen as this year's Upper School charity by the students.
If you can donate food or decorations for International Evening, we'd be grateful if you could let us know what you'll be bringing, and from which country, so that we can set up accordingly. If you'd like us to connect you with families from your country, you can indicate that on the form. Please click here to complete the form.
We look forward to celebrating our internationalism with you!
Dwight Upper School and Dwight Parent Association
UPCOMING EVENTS
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