This week I was sent some photographs that reminded me of a quote from Maya Angelou - “If you don't know where you've come from, you don't know where you're going.” The background to this Newsletter is an aerial picture of our fantastic campus. But if we go back 25 years things were very different!

The two years of IGCSE for our year 11 class of 2021 was not the educational experience that they expected. They had 2 terms of normal teaching before we had to move online. Term 2 of year 10 and half of term 1 in year 11 were online. They then returned to socially distanced lessons and were unsure if they would take examinations or not. In the end they did sit nearly all their examinations, only 2 papers having to be cancelled due to schools being closed. Added to this, 40% of our IGCSE students only studied at KISU for one year having joined us at the beginning of year 11. With all of these disadvantages we would easily be able to explain why our IGCSE results were not up to our usual high standards. To the students and their teachers' credit, the results were remarkable given the difficult circumstances. IGCSE statistics have not yet been released but if we compare our results to the record breaking results from the UK which were based on teacher assessment rather than examination:

Grades A & A* UK 28.9% KISU 30.5%

Grade C or above UK 77.1% KISU 85.4%

If we look at just the students who studied for both year 10 and 11 at KISU the results are even more impressive.

The following have gained the most merits in the last 7 days.

Year 7 - Benjamin Toth-Nagy

Year 8 Liwalam Gangi

Year 9 Eynaas Gubara

Year 10 Dominic Wise

Year 11 Munenyiwa Munaka and Elizabeth Kilonzo

DP1 Joan Kirui, Arav Agarwal, Kartikey Jain, Nzime Kamunta and Aron Kidane

DP2 Lucy Kebirungi

The highest number of Merits across the secondary school were awarded to

Benjamin and Eynaas

To recognise the contribution that our ancillary staff make to the running of KISU we reward 3 employees each month.

Daniela Adamcova (Y3 Teacher) would like to introduce Amani Maria who was born on Sunday 22 August at 11:37 in Nakasero Hospital. She weighed 3.3kg. Mother and baby are doing really well.

With online learning in full swing, it is important to remember that virtual learning follows the same rules and principles as physical learning. At KISU, we are all valued and our uniqueness is celebrated. Our community cares very much about each and every child and staff lead by example to develop empathy, compassion and respect in all students.

Our ‘Super Learners of the Week’ for demonstrating great care towards others are:

Year 6: Areen Shamsy

Year 5: Nampoina Rakotondrabe and Samwiri Karugire

Year 4: Daniella Nabogala

Year 3: Zeinab Charara

Year 2: Elizabeth (Maggie) Forbes

Year 1: Krishay Patel and Amaanya Sachdeva

Rec: Rayan Fazeli

KG3: Samantha Amolo (Sammy)

KG2: Edwin Waru

Teachers, Teaching Assistants, Learning Support and Specialist Teachers have sent you ‘Meet the Teacher’ videos along with a presentation that provides you with useful information. Please contact school if there is anything else you wish to know or discuss. The Primary Office, Class Teachers and the Head of Primary are happy to help in any way they can.

By now, all Primary children should have been sent their class username and password so that they can access the Oxford Owl ebook library. Please look on your Google Classroom Stream for the link and log in details.

This week children have had fun engaging in different 'All about Me' activities. They have explored different aspects of themselves: their characteristics such as their hair, skin, eyes as well as their differences and similarities. They explored their feelings and emotions, talked about likes and dislikes, and their future aspirations.

In Year One English we have been exploring imperative/command sentences.

We practiced using a “bossy” tone of voice when reading the text “Not a Stick” by Antoinette Portis. We then orally composed, refined and rehearsed our own appropriate sentences.

Finally we composed some signs to highlight pertinent information using command/bossy sentences.

We had to use correct punctuation and neat handwriting to write each sentence.

Can you guess where our signs would be most suitable?

Year 2 Artists have entered the world of Pop Art and have been exploring the features of this art movement through looking at the work of Andy Warhol and other famous pop artists. Pupils identified some of the common features of Andy Warhol’s work and then produced a piece of work in their sketch books to practise applying these features through their own context. Children traced a pattern onto repeated tiles, then used complementary colours to colour in each tile (Year 2 pupils will tell you that complementary colours are opposite colours on the colour wheel!)

The second week of online learning flew by as the class got back into routines and shed the last of our summer break rust. Students impressed with online presentations of their work this week and got artistic acting out scenes from our class reader in the live meets. Power outages and internet issues can get us down sometimes, but the year 5 learners have shown resilience and humour when facing these obstacles and continue to persevere in online learning.