KISU Secondary Newsletter

On Saturday 14th May from 10am-2pm we held our first Art Jam since 2019. The event was incredibly successful and really brought the KISU community together.

The preparations for Art Jam started during the first week back of Term 3. Although the event only lasted for four hours, the Art Jam Committee held several meetings in order to organise every aspect of the day.

On the morning of the event, some staff members were at school from 7am in order to ensure the campus was clean and to provide support. During the day, we had several activities, vendors and entertainment. Below, I have listed what was on offer:

• Secondary, Primary and Early Years Art Exhibitions

• Secondary and Primary Music performances

• Clay workshop for both adults and children

• Observational drawing/mixed media workshop for both adults and children

• Arts and crafts workshop for ages 3-9

• Poetry recital by Ugandan poet and writer: Beverley Nambozo

• Bouncy castle, merry-go-round and mascots.

• Various food vendors

I would like to extend a HUGE thank you to all of those who were involved with the organisation of Art Jam.

Here are some of the images that were taken throughout the day.

These are the highest merit award winners for this week;

Year 7 - Tanish & Sofia

Year 8 - Seren, Alena, Shona & Doreen

Year 9 - Leesean & Andrianina

Year 10 - Nkunzi

Year 11 - Exams

DP1 - Yasmine

DP2 - Exams

The most merits this week were awarded to Nkunzi

The KISU Music Recital is scheduled for Wednesday 8 June starting at 4.30pm with the Primary section and 5.15pm with the Secondary section. The recital will take place in the Secondary Music Room featuring a cross-section of students performing individually on a selection of instruments including violin, cello, guitar, piano, drums, recorder, voice, drums and many more. All are welcome to attend.

The Music Night is scheduled for 15 June 2022 at the Main School Auditorium. The concert will feature mainly group musical performances reflecting some of the practical aspects of our music program. The concert will start at 5.30PM. All are welcome!

As a student teacher, I often heard the phrase ‘information age’ in relation to the heralded paradigm shift in work and study at the turn of the last century/new millenium - for someone with the IT skills of a cricket bat (at that time), the consequences of our imminent arrival at the gates of the digital world had little meaning. It was only when I completed a postgraduate qualification and investigated AI that I began to grasp the real implications of our union with data. Teaching research skills here at KISU has only confirmed the importance of acquiring the ability to process information correctly and efficiently. However, for students coming to grips with the planning, format and content of research writing, considerable time and reflection is needed before they fully understand what this actually means. It is also important to stress to learners that research is rarely final - much like mining for commodities, the world keeps dredging, analysing and evaluating data in the quest for new profits, enlightenment, and security.

Definitions

As is often the case with new learning, it is worthwhile reminding ourselves what the definitions of research, data, and interpretation are. Research means ‘to study a subject in detail, especially in order to discover new information or reach a new understanding’[1] Data refers to ‘information, especially facts and/or numbers, that helps us solve a problem.[2] Finally, interpretation is ‘an explanation or opinion of what something means’[3].In other words, if we combine the three definitions we should see that a summary of previous study on a topic is not research, because a summary without the writer’s personal interpretation does not prove understanding ( if you want to challenge the premise that repeating information isn’t evidence of understanding, have you ever wondered why budgies can be taught to repeat words but not produce original sentences? FYI, during my research for this article I discovered this record- breaking bird as well as proof, yet again, that investigating can often lead us down the most unexpected paths!)

Cognitive Processes and Research

From the point of view of how our brains work, the difference in ‘thinking effort’ between repeating (remembering) information, on the one hand, and interpretation (evaluating), on the other, is mirrored in Bloom’s taxonomy - a glance at the hierarchy below shows that the latter requires completion of at least 4 successive cognitive levels (remembering to evaluation), whereas summary writing is, perhaps, even less taxing on the brain than taking notes (seeing as it often involves little more than the parroting of facts and opinions).

[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/research

[2] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/data

[3] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/interpretation

Interpretation is the provisional nugget of gold

If we are looking for a shorthand for interpretation, we could say it is the learner researcher’s opinion about the information they have found while reading/researching the topic - having reflected on the raw data relating to the topic, interpretation is the stage where students decide and state how relevant that raw data is to their main research question. Much like mining for gold, however, our raw data will often produce nothing valuable in this regard and we will need to look elsewhere for new source material that can help us find answers relating to the causes and effects of our issue. In those fortunate instances where the researcher finds what seems to be a significant fact or set of facts that may explain (some of) the crux of the problem and/or answer the hypothesis, ‘learner researchers’ will need to justify this claim by helping the reader to see the connections between what the writer judges to be key data and their research question.

[1] https://bleuwire.com/5-biggest-big-data-challenges/

[2] https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/

Beyond beginner’s level, learners will be introduced to more complex forms of data analysis, but for now, we want students to practice finding useful source material relating to the topic, scanning it for relevant facts that help answer the research question, and, finally, explaining how these facts help or don’t help answer that question. Much of this justification will require reference to statistics and other facts, which is why it is a good idea to encourage our students to practice analysing graphs and other charts (in class we regularly work on finding key trends from these kinds of diagrams - Statista is a very useful tool for such purposes[1]).

Conclusions

In addition to the often hit-and-miss nature of the research process itself, students are also conditioned by their cognitive development, which means that we shouldn’t expect our learners to be able to engage with the mental processes required for research until they are ready - it is unrealistic to expect children to be able to find possible causes and propose possible effects until the later stages of Key Stage 3 and/or the beginning of Key Stage 4. It is also important not to give students the impression that research findings are definitive - the data mining never ends, it merely updates!

[1] https://www.statista.com/

A different week, a very different game. Despite conceding an early goal, the U13 boys rallied back to comfortably beat 7 hills 7-1. With Benji Toth claiming the equalizer followed by a quick brace from Kevis Mwunvaneza put us in control of the game. Kyorwa Kiwanuka had a chance to make it 4, but hit his penalty straight at the keeper before Yoab Yonas successfully slotted home the spot kick he had won. Peterson Inhensiko then picked the ball up in the centre circle and went on a dizzying run to make it 5 before half time.

The second half saw several changes from 7 Hills who began playing good football and putting us under a lot of pressure. The boys defended well repelling the attacks before Hamoudy made a break forcing a save from the goalkeeper which was then turned in by Musab El Fatih from 2 yards out.

It was then end to end stuff with both sides creating chance and Ian Mwangi again making some good saves.

As both teams were getting tired El Fatih latched on to a loose ball before gliding past a defender and firing the 7th into the far corner with the final kick of the game.

This weeks MOTM was Benji 'the engine' Toth who ran his socks off and broke down as many attacks as he made. Well done to him and the whole team