KISU Newsletter

Welcome to the start of a new academic year. As you will have gathered from the Presidential Address we will be starting the year online. This is not what any of us would have wanted but the safety and health of our school community always has to be our first priority.

When we were online last year a group of International schools worked closely with the Ministry of Education and Sport and the Ministry of Health to set a range of SOPs that allowed us to reopen our schools. Once again we will be working with both ministries to see if we can agree on conditions by which we be able to restart face to face teaching. I will keep you informed on a regular basis as to when we may be able to reopen.

On behalf of the Primary team, we welcome families back to school and we welcome new families to KISU. We hope you had a restful break and are refreshed and ready for the fun-filled exciting challenges that Term 1 will bring.

The new school year brings with it a few differences and changes to note.

Our fantastic, experienced and knowledgeable Primary teaching team is as follows:

KG 1&2: Ms Dakik, Ms Nalukwago (Class Teachers)

KG3: Ms Thompson (Class Teacher and Early Years Co-ordinator)

Reception: Ms Busiinge (Class Teacher)

Year 1: Ms Nsherura (Class Teacher and Key Stage 1 Co-ordinator)

Year 2: Ms Holmes (Class Teacher)

Year 3: Ms Adamcova, Ms Ssanyu (Class Teachers)

Year 4: Ms Nakalembe (Class Teacher)

Year 5: Ms Haskins (Class Teacher)

Year 6: Mr Polan (Class Teacher)

Our Primary Specialist Teachers are:

French: Ms Orihuela, Mr Kalala, Ms Amaniyo

PE: Mr Kimoto, Mr Kaggwa

Music: Ms Musinguzi

ICT: Mr Nsimbi

Art: Mr Nsimbi, Mrs Wise.

Our Teachers are well prepared for the new term and excited to meet their new classes of children (albeit online for the first few weeks). Teaching and learning will be via Google Classroom and communication with parents will be via email. Class Teachers will make contact towards the end of the week to share all necessary information to enable day 1 of online learning to run as smoothly as possibly.

With teaching and learning starting online initially for the first part of Term 1, teachers will collate resources to support children’s home learning. The Primary Office will send parents an email to say when your child’s reading book, reading diary and any other helpful resources can be collected from school.

Please also look for your child’s class timetable which Class Teachers will send to parents on Friday 13th August in advance of day 1 of online learning (Monday 16th August). Curriculum newsletters will be shared on Monday 16th August with teaching and learning information for Term 1.

Online learning begins at 8am on Monday 16th August. Morning sessions will involve ‘getting to know each other", sharing expectations, ice breaker activities etc. and the afternoon will follow the class timetable.

Our Secondary school welcomes a number of new teachers this year:

Mr. Fryett who will be joining the Secondary Leadership Team and teaching Global Perspectives.

Ms. Toth-Nagy who will be leading our Learning Support team.

Ms. Dankjaer who will be teaching English.

Ms. Orihula who will be leading our MFL department and teaching French and Spanish.

Ms. Amaniyo who will be teaching French.

Mr. Vaskco who will be teaching Mathematics.

They have really added to the international nature of our staff as they represent 4 different continents!

Staff are currently putting together resources for students and a schedule for their collection will be sent home in the next day or two.

We had planned to run some examinations in the first week back. However with us having to return to online learning we have decided to cancel these.

Timetables etc. will be given to students on their first day back (Monday 16th) and over the coming few days students will be receiving invitations to their google classrooms.

Now on a different note - Our IB results for this year were very good with our highest score being 41 points and an average score of 32 points which is above the world average. Our IGCSE results are out this week and we will give more information about both our IB and IGCSE results next week.