Newsletter 01.11.2024
Last Saturday's Fun & Run 4 Street Children event was a success, full of energy, enthusiasm and community spirit! Thanks to the wonderful collaboration with Chance for Children and the support of our students, parents and staff, we were able to raise an impressive 57,000 cedis for Chance for Children, which will help provide educational opportunities for children living on the streets.
Our teen club had an incredible time at Bliss last Saturday afternoon! We started with a few games in the park, then spent an hour chasing each other around the trampoline park at Bliss and finished the day with snacks, drinks and one last game. We're already looking forward to the next activity at Kokrobite, where we'll be surfing and having a great time on the beach!
This week, the class representatives decided which pictures the school would like to enter into a Christmas card competition. Good luck to us all!
A head boy and a head girl were also elected: Congratulations to Canice and Imra. The Parents' Council has also been restructured following the personnel changes caused by the board elections.
Our four-hour long educational boost, in all primary school classes, offers us the opportunity to provide children with targeted and individual support. Whether difficulties in math or German or special talents and strengths - we try to keep an eye on the children individually! Last week, Emma (Class 3) and Julina (Class 4) proudly submitted stories to a writing competition organized by Mildenbergverlag. Fingers crossed for our Stark-mach stories (https://www.stark-mach-geschichten.de/schreibwettbewerb/)!
At the end of the week, the extended school management, all-day coordinator Sara Debackere, daycare centre manager Rudi Boakye, his deputy Juliet Nettey, deputy headmistress Deike Akorful and headmaster Rainer Kropp-Kurta, joined by PQM officer Ramona Klaes and German as a foreign language teacher Benjamin Akrong as well as administrative managers Katrin Krüger and Katharina Kaufmann, spent two days in the mountains of Aburi. They brought back numerous ideas for school development, from possible mother-tongue lessons, boarding, cooperation, motivation and much more.
On Monday, 4.11.2024, we have the honour of welcoming a four-person delegation from our cooperation partner, the University of Potsdam, with President Prof. Oliver Günther.
We are delighted to invite you and your children to our St. Martin's Lantern Walk next week on Thursday, 7 November 2024. The event will start with a cosy get-together from 4pm to 5pm, where you can enjoy coffee and cake and socialise with other families. This will be followed by the lantern parade from 5pm to 7pm, where we will celebrate the tradition of St Martin with a beautiful display of homemade lanterns and a walk around the school neighbourhood. We look forward to sharing this special evening with you and your children!
At the same time, a dinner will be held at the Swiss Club in cooperation with the AHK and the GIZ in honour of the Gerald Asamoah Foundation and the doctors and medical staff who will be performing life-saving heart operations on children next week.
The North Ridge Café presents its new menu for the month of November. As a special offer, the first 10 parents who pay the full monthly fee for school meals will receive a voucher for 50 GHC.
The winners of last month's special offer are the Huber, Nwaeze and Krafft families, congratulations!
As always, you can find the prices per child, the MoMo account and the meal plan on the website. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Kindergarten and Nursery:
In the nursery, we prepared for the upcoming St Martin's festival. We talked again about who St Martin was and why he is so special. From Wednesday onwards, we got creative: the children eagerly made their own lanterns. They designed their individual works of art with colours and lots of enthusiasm. We also sang our St Martin's songs, which added to the anticipation of the festival. On Thursday, the children had the opportunity to have their faces painted. That was great fun!
Preparations for the St Martin's Day festival in the kindergarten have also kept us busy this week. We have been busy making lanterns, practising the St Martin's songs and rehearsing for our little St Martin's play.
During learning time this week, we learnt about different instruments. The children were able to explore and try out drums, rattles, tonewoods and triangles. We repeated our word cards on the theme of autumn and clapped the syllables. We also took a closer look at the numbers, some children played a number memory game and the others learnt the number pictures up to 5. The preparations for Reading Aloud Day also continued and we worked hard to create wave pictures.
In the ‘English Club’, we looked at word cards with the beginners on the subject of clothing and then made sentences to go with them. Afterwards, we looked at the phonics A-F again and matched them with picture cards. The advanced children were allowed to watch 2 short stories (Tom and his pets, The ugly duckling) and then reproduced the content in their own words.
On Friday, one highlight followed another. Our day began with a sports session on the sports field together with the nursery children. Then it was time for the next party break, where we were able to sing, dance and run around the school playground together with the school children. As the perfect end to the day and to cool off, there was also an exuberant water fight in the garden.
Primary school:
In class 1/2, the children have discovered physical forces through play - they have pushed, pulled, twisted and stretched. They have learnt about different shapes with kites, and next week they will be able to fly the kites. They will be able to experience first-hand how these forces work and what it takes to keep the kites in the air. One of the English groups in class 1/2 focussed on animals this week. First vocabulary and names of animals were learnt and the children created interesting and individual posters about their favourite animal.
In maths, the children continued to work with numbers, differentiating between predecessors, successors and neighbours.
This week, class 3/4 wrote a test in German. The German teachers have been looking at St Martin's.
In Maths, Russell Adu, along with trainee Lennard Brodner, engaged the learners with algorithms, with the pupils carrying out a practical activity with robots. In doing so, the children learnt that robots cannot work independently unless they are guided by humans with clear and precise instructions. The third and fourth graders really enjoyed this activity and later continued their lesson on natural numbers with Patrick Blanke-Schelle and Russell Adu. In Cambridge, the Leaners were recognised for their outstanding performance during their first test.
Otherwise, the children organised the party break completely on their own - they wrote a speech, made a poster and made flowers for the party break organisers. What a great experience!
Secondary school:
Both Year 5 and 6 have been working on grammar in their German lessons this week.
In HTW we are continuing to create our ‘sharpening robots’. Many pupils have already worked with different machines last year and are operating them with dexterity. They are sawing, hammering, drilling and sawing.
In ethics, we try to gain as much real-life experience as possible. This week we decided together who would stay in which room during the school trip. We took great care to ensure that nobody felt excluded and that all wishes were taken into account. The class did a marvellous job of solving this together under the leadership of the class representatives. Another discussion will be the rules on taking and using mobile phones.
The fifth and sixth graders also took part in the lantern walk and made their own lanterns based on their individual experiences, some of which they have had for years. The subjects of geography and history came together at the Roman Empire, where the aim was to trace the Italian peninsula and the history of colonisation on the map.
The seventh-graders have been doing a series of maths activities this week in preparation for their exam. The results will be announced on Monday. In Cambridge Science, they looked at materials and substances that change state.
Students learnt about the differences and similarities between two materials. They carried out a practical exercise on boiling, melting and freezing different materials which broadened their understanding of the subject.
In geography, the most famous volcanoes on earth were analysed in more detail, and in history, the thousand-year period of the Middle Ages was defined with its eras and the events that defined them. Two pupils from Year 7 were honoured by the SMV in the school's internal Christmas card competition.
Outlook:
Thu, 07.11.2024 St Martin's lantern walk
Fri, 15.11.2024 Reading day/reading competition
Sat, 23/11/2024 Christmas market
Thu, 05/12/2024 Father Christmas
Fri, 06.12.2024 Farmer's Day - no lessons
Fri, 13/12/2024 Last day of school before the Christmas holidays
Mon, 16/12/2024 -
Tue, 07.01.2025 Christmas holidays
Mon, 16/12/2024 - Fri, 20/12/2024 Holiday care
Wed., 08.01.2025 first school day after the Christmas holidays
