Weekly Update
18th May 2023
A message from Mr Sibley
Good afternoon everyone,
The PE department has had another busy week. Our year 3 to 6 boys swim squad took part in the QPPSSA swim gala held at Doha College. The team performed brilliantly picking up many individual medals and finishing 2nd place overall as a team. All of the squad have shown superb commitment to the team training by attending swim squad sessions for the whole of term 2. This week the PE team also took a group of year 3s and 4s to Sherborne for a friendly dodgeball game. All of the pupils performed superbly and represented the school fantastically making the accompanying staff very proud. Well done to all of the boys and girls involved.
Our Foundation Stage 2 students enjoyed their Splash Day this week. The children were able to enjoy moving around some inflatable water obstacles and used their experiences as some wonderful writing prompts when they were back in class.
Yesterday the whole school enjoyed Charity day. We are delighted to announce that over 32,486.50 QAR was raised for our Qatar Charity Red Crescent. The children thoroughly enjoyed the day. Their activities involved leading the different stores and promoting the activities around school to fellow students. Thank you to our Student Management Group who helped to plan the whole event. Thanks also go to Mrs Rinaldi who supported them with this.
On Sunday evening we invited our current Year 2 parents to a Chrome book evening. Mr Berry, our Computing teacher, Mr Burgess, our IT Systems Manager and Mrs Vaid, our Computing Higher Level Teaching Assistant all helped to present 2 workshops on security and also on what our students use their chromebooks for. We were also lucky to have some Key Stage 2 students who kindly gave up their time to present to the audience. I would like to thank the staff and students for a well organised and informative evening. I know I certainly learned a great deal. Thank you for the positive feedback we received from the parents who attended.
Our year 8 students have had some useful sessions with our school nurses - Mrs Parry and Mrs Reid. They have been learning how to implement safe and effective CPR which I know will be an important life skill for each of them. Research shows that 80% of sudden cardiac arrests that happen in the community occur at home, and that learning the basic principles of life support in school can significantly improve survival rates from a cardiac arrest (up to 3 times greater). Students learnt vital life-saving skills such as dealing with choking, CPR (Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation) and how to use an AED (Automated External Defibrillator) and were able to demonstrate their skills on practice mannequins and defibrillator training demos. The sessions were a huge success and the skills learnt by all the year 8 students could one day potentially save someone’s life.
Enjoy your weekend.
Charity Day
This was an excellent opportunity which enabled our students to give back to those in need while learning about the important work that this charity does.
The children ran their own stalls and activities for a small fee and some were free of charge. There was a huge list of activities for everyone to enjoy including: Karaoke, Mario Kart with trikes, Board games, Football, Dodgeball Juice bar, Disco, Cinema, Chess, Archery, Face painting, Book sale, Toy sale and Tuck shop to name but a few!
This was an occasion for our students to learn about the importance of giving back to the community and making a difference in the world.
DESS HAS GOT TALENT FINALISTS
The finalists for DESS HAS GOT TALENT have been selected and can be viewed below. This year we've had over 190 entries at an extremely high standard. This has been over 9.5 hours of video footage and selecting our finalists has been no easy task! If your video has not been selected as a finalist - it will still be featured in the montage at the beginning of DHGT and will also be shown separately by the class teacher to the class after the event. Well done to everybody who has taken part this year and congratulations to our finalists. Dess has got talent will take place on May 25th in school at 11:30AM - students will watch the entries in their class and vote on the winners - we're looking forward to a very fun afternoon!
https://sites.google.com/dess.org/desshasgottalent/home
- Mr Woodhouse
Sports news
Netball: The year 7 and 8 netball teams had some friendly matches against ACS this week. This is in preparation for the tournament next week. The Year 7 girls lost their match and the Year 8 drew their game. Well done to all the girls that took part!
Dodgeball: This week we took a group of Year 3s and 4s to Sherborne for a friendly dodgeball game. All of the pupils performed superbly and represented the school fantastically and very proudly! Well done to all of the boys and girls involved.
Visiting author
Children's author Kayla Diamond will be visiting the library on Monday, 29th May 2023. She will be giving a presentation and reading her picture books to FS1, FS2, Year 1 and Year 2.
Parents are able to pre-order the books before Sunday, 28th May and they will be delivered on the day of the reading.
Please click here to access the pre order form.
A 2nd Green Flag award for DESS!
DESS footballers join the All Stars team
Congratulations to two of our students who have been selected to play for the Qatar All Stars football team. Dexter Parry (6D) and Cameron Clark (8A) of Lusail Football Academy have been chosen to represent the ‘All Stars’ U13 team. A select team of footballers from 4 football academies in Qatar (Lusail, Evo, PSG and Icon) were chosen to form the hybrid team named ‘All Stars’ who will go head to head against the Qatar National Teams (U11, U13, U15 & U17 categories) who train permanently at the Aspire Academy in Qatar.
It is an incredibly exciting opportunity for those participating to play against the best junior footballers in the country. Well done to both boys.
Policy spotlight
Every few weeks, we will 'spotlight' a different school policy from our school website. This week's policy is our Safeguarding policy. This policy has been developed in line with the guidance set out in the Every Child Matters Framework, the Working Together to Safeguard Children document 2018 and Keeping Children Safe in Education 2022.
Staff vacancies
We are recruiting for the following positions:
Dates to remember
28th May - Swim gala/ house competition week
25th May - DHGT & Pizza day
4th - 7th June - Celebration of Success evenings. (By invitation only)
Doha English Speaking School
Email: secretary@dess.org
Website: dess.org
Location: Al Maarri Street, Doha, Qatar
Phone: 44592750
Facebook: facebook.com/DohaEnglishSpeakingSchool
Twitter: @DessDoha