This Week's News from the Lower School

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Friday, 8th September 2017

Lower School Newsletter

Learning in the Lower School

A warm welcome to you all!

It has been great to see everyone this week. I have really enjoyed catching up with the students and parents as we start our new academic year 2017-2018.

It has been particularly exciting to meet the 41 new students that joined us in the Lower School from a variety of different countries including Latvia, Italy, England, Russia, USA, Turkey, Japan, Israel, Poland, Kazakhstan and Portugal to name but a few.

In these first few days of school it has been important to help our new and returning students get into the Dwight routine. The teachers have been getting the students used to procedures and routines as well as getting to know one another. We have also hosted Meet the Teacher and welcome inductions this week to remind the students and parents about what makes Dwight great, what we are going to learn and what our expectations are. Throughout the week we have been encouraging our students to remember and to demonstrate the IB Learner Profile.

I would also like to specifically welcome our new parents. We hope you enjoy being part of our thriving community and we want to remind you that the school has an open door policy which means you can come in and arrange to have a chat with us at any time.

Have a great year everyone and we hope to see all of you at our Dwight Parents Association BBQ on Saturday, 16th September at our sports field.

What the curriculum looks like for your child.
As we start to get into our school routines and procedures it is important for us to share some of the exciting learning activities that are scheduled to take place this term.

Our Curriculum Overviews for each year group detail this information and they can be found on our webiste. For Kindergarten and Reception, please click here. For Years 1-6, please click here.

New Houses Reminder
Your children are currently learning about their new houses. These changed names and colours from last year and so I want to remind you :

Previous Discoverers and Gandhi are now Artists and their colour will be white.
Previous Inventors and Mandela are now Pioneers and their colour will be blue.
Previous Explorers and King are now Visionaries and their colour will be red.

Last year the Inventors won the House competition with the total of 3,021 tokens they will celebrate with a non-uniform day on Friday 16th September. On this day the students can come into school in their own clothes and not wear school uniform.

This morning in the House assembly, Mrs. Hornshaw launched our new Houses. To celebrate the new Houses she has set the students a challenge to design a new logo for their own House. The logo needs to be bold and colourful, it has to have the House name represented, shows the attributes of the House, ie. what it means to be an Visionary. It can either be drawn by hand or produced on the computer. The logo needs to be bigger than A5 size (preferably A4) and can either be handed into Mrs. Hornshaw or emailed to khornshaw@dwightlondon.org. All entries will receive two tokens for their House with the winner receiving 15 tokens and they will have their logo produced on school House banners. The closing date for the logos is Friday, 22nd September.

After School Activities
Our After School activities - also known as clubs - are due to start on Monday, 18th September. We have an electronic sign-up system that will open at 4pm Monday, 11th September. Sign-up is based on a first-come first-served basis. Please take a look at the clubs options here, this is the same link to sign-up on Monday, please limit your options to three.

Year 5 Unit of Inquiry
Year 5 have been looking at values and beliefs as part of their Unit of Inquiry and on Monday, 11th September they are set to visit BAPS Mandir temple. On Thursday 14th September they will visit St Barnabas Church followed by a trip to The New North London Synagogue the following day. To complete their trip itinerary on Tuesday, 19th September they will visit the London Central Mosque.

We wish them well as they inquire about what key values and beliefs different religions have in common.

New staff

We have one new member of staff called Mr. Shew. He will be completing an apprenticeship focusing upon learning and teaching in physical education. He will be shadowing our PE teachers and will be teaching small groups under their guidance. We wish him well with his apprenticeship over the year ahead

Contact Information for School

If you have not yet completed the UK contact information form in your respective campuses kindly contact Javier Dominguez at the Dwight campus to give your UK address and mobile telephone contact numbers.

Reminders

Road Safety: It is particularly important to remind parents to be safe when dropping off their children in the morning. Please ensure that you park in a safe place and that you are aware of other drivers, neighbours, and pedestrians in the area.
Weather: In the Lower School we believe in the phrase there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing. Therefore we want to remind you that our students will go outside when it rains and we ask that they are equipped with a waterproof jacket/coat even though it is only early September !

Key dates for the remainder of this term

Dairy dates for the week ahead....

Year 5 trip to BAPS Mandir Temple Monday, 11th September
Football Trials for boys in Years 3-6 from 3.45-4.45 Monday, 11th September
Year 6 Meet the Teacher - in the Eco classrooms from 8.50-9.30am Monday, 11th September
Year 5 Meet the Teacher in the Year 5 classrooms from 8.50-9.30am Tuesday 12th September
Year 5 trip to St Barnabas Church Thursday, 14th September
Year 5 Trip to North London Synagogue on Friday, 15th September
Non Uniform Day for Inventors Friday, 15th September

Useful diary dates for the half term ahead

For this half term Settling in Reports will be sent out in the week beginning Monday, 16th October.

Super Question and Language of the Week

Our Super Question this week is related to the very recent flooding tragedy in Houston Texas USA -What was the name of the hurricane that caused the floods?

The first student with the correct answer on Monday will get a sparky!

Have a good weekend.

Matt Parkin
Lower School Principal

Dwight Parent Association News and Events

Back to School BBQ

We are looking forward to seeing everyone at the Back to School BBQ, on Saturday, 16th September from 11.30am-2.30pm at the school sports ground on Dale Green Road, N11 1DL.

We will be providing burgers, sausages and vegetarian options on the day and ask that families with surnames beginning A-L bring along a salad or side-dish to share and families with surnames beginning M-Z are asked to bring along a dessert.

Soft drinks will be available free of charge and a limited amount of beer and wine will be available for purchase, families are very welcome to bring their own food and/or refreshments.

There will also be used uniforms on sale on the day and if you have any used uniforms in good condition you would like to donate, please bring it along (laundered) on the day. The proceeds go to the Parent Association.

Remember to bring your picnic mat and any outdoor games equipment your children may wish to play.