Dear parents,
I hope your children are arriving home full of enthusiasm with all that’s going on this term. I reinforce what I said in my first newsletter – your children are amazing. They have adapted to all that is required of them with respect and tolerance. I am proud of them all.
Support outside school
I continue to ask for your support. Some parents have emailed me personally with the same concern regarding the importance of you too fully accepting your responsibilities in trying to keep your children as safe as possible.
On Wednesday I received the following email (names have been deleted):
Something concerned me today. Aloha is doing a great job of putting the children in bubbles and keeping the conditions safe. And our child has been at home for 10 days because of your safety measures.
In between picking up our children from Primary and Secondary we go to a local café and were surprised to see there is no separation; children of all ages from junior and secondary mingle and it seems to contravene the principles you put in place at the school.
Please, once again, may I ask that all parents wear masks when dropping off and collecting their children. Can you also aim to respect social distancing where possible and not linger outside the gates? I know I am beginning to sound boring about this, but I do so love your children!
Parents may be interested to know that we have had enquiries from families at other schools where fewer safety measures have been taken. Parents from one school said
Safety has not been as much of a priority at our current school in these crucial moments as we wish it would have been and indeed how other colleges such as Aloha have shown to be possible. It is for that reason they would like to have our children start as soon as possible within this term.
Foundation Stage
Although we agreed there would be no additional building works carried out this summer holiday, we did carry out some necessary repairs and maintenance in parts of the building and replaced our Foundation Stage surface with a new astroturf. I am sure you will agree it makes a big difference for our children.
On Monday we welcomed back all of the children who had been quarantined at home. They were greeted with colourful balloons, and were as excited as we were to have them back in school. Thank you to all the parents who supported us 100%.
Arrival Time
Please note that we staggered the start and end of the day for health and safety reasons. Therefore please do not drop off Secondary children prior to 09.20 unless they have siblings in the Primary school. This is causing additional traffic issues, which we had aimed to avoid.
Policia Local
Even though for some of you drop-off and collection is a personal issue and you get frustrated at having to queue, the policia local has congratulated the school on its overall efforts to help ease traffic congestion in the mornings and afternoons.
Public Examinations Results
Although we posted with pride our headline of the IB, A-level and IGCSE results on our social media, here are just a few of our successes for those of you who have missed them:
Our IB Diploma results were outstanding with 100% of our pupils receiving their full Diploma. Most of these pupils are now busily packing to go off to universities all over the world. Sadly some of them will start the new term learning online, due to different countries’ restrictions. We wish them every success.
In our A-level examinations, 83% of our pupils were awarded A*-C grades, with a phenomenal 79% achieving A*/A grades.
Congratulations to all our graduating class of 2020!
96% of all our IGCSE pupils were graded A* – C, enabling all of them to return to Aloha. They are now busily studying in our Sixth Form.
Congratulations to all our pupils.
Head Students
Our Head Students for this academic year are:
Congratulations! I am very much looking forward to working with them.
World Peace Day
On Monday 21 September we will celebrate World Peace Day – please take a moment to think what this means to you.
I wish you all a happy, enjoyable and safe weekend.
Elizabeth Batchelor
Principal
PRIMARY SCHOOL
Dear Parents,
Another successful week back at school for the children. They continue to amaze us with how resilient they are with all of the different routines we need to undertake. This week, we introduced daily temperature taking for all children (and staff). It’s amazing how quickly they adapted to make sure they do this properly, just like the face masks and hand sanitising.
IPC Years 1-2
In Key Stage 1 Miss Liz said she had seen some fantastic IPC Entry Points as she walked around school. The children have been designing their own nutritious and delicious plates of food while working with the IPC Unit called “We are what we eat”. Judging by their work we may have some future chefs and restaurateurs amongst us!
IPC Year 3
Children have been learning all about the human body with the IPC unit called “How Humans Work”. Their Entry Point consisted of some fun online activities to test our hearing, sight and memory; some of these were very tricky. Please have a go yourself!
The Eyesight test
Colour Blindness Test
Quick Memory Test
IPC Years 4-5-6
Following the whole school topic on “Brain Waves” and how the brain works, the children have now started their new IPC units. In Year 4, the children have been learning about the human body (unit “How Humans Work”), focusing on sight, sound and memory in their first week. In Year 5, the children are entering the world of Forensic Science to uncover the culprits behind the “missing” iPad. In Year 6, they launched their unit of rivers “Go with the Flow”. Linked to some wonderful stories, the children will also be creating their own boats in the coming weeks.
Reading – All of the children should now have access to reading material. Some through the school library, others through the school’s reading Scheme and even through the Active Learn websites. It is important that the children engage in their reading as much as possible: aiming for 20 minutes each night. The new “School Handbook” has space to fill in comments about their reading books as they go.
Spelling – The Spelling scheme is also well underway. Please support your child with the activities they need to complete throughout the week. It is important that they do short activities across a number of days, instead of all at the same time, as this helps them to learn the rules and words that we are focusing on each week.
Please check out your class teachers’ videos from Friday evening onwards to get a “round-up” of what has been happening in each class.
Talk Homework – What makes a good friend?
Aloha Value – Effort
Personal Goal – Inquisitive
Yours sincerely
Kathryn Salmon
Headteacher, Primary
SECONDARY SCHOOL
Dear Parents,
I would like to start this week’s newsletter by asking you to take a few minutes to reflect about the photo below.
It is just a handsome young man enjoying his own image in the mirror, isn’t it?
As soon as I saw the photo, the thought that came to my head was self-love. Then I thought further and asked myself : self-love or narcissism?
Before I continue, let me tell you a little bit about the origin of narcissism. In Greek mythology, Narcissus was a hunter from Thespiae in Boeotia, known for his beauty. His punishment from the gods was to fall so in love with his own reflection in a pool of water that he could not bear to leave it. The cruelty of Narcissus’ punishments was that it cut him off completely from other human beings.
From my point of view, small doses of narcissism can be a good thing or at least better than lacking self-esteem. I can think of jobs in the area of politics, banking or finance where a strong sense of self belief can be an advantage. However, there is also a danger that narcissists dismiss other viewpoints or do not feel compassion, empathy or even much curiosity about other people.
Social media such as Instagram have become a narcissist’s favourite place as they often show images of their perfect abs and perfect lives in order to boast about the amount of likes and shares achieved.
Self-love, on the contrary, is the greatest gift we can give ourselves. It lifts us up, assures us of our strengths and carries us through the hard times. One day, we might be our own best friend and feel proud of the person that we are and other times, we come up against self-doubt. Self-love has the ability to help us ride the waves. It emerges when you really take the time to explore and understand who you are, and who you are becoming.
We are sometimes too hard on ourselves, either for the decisions we make or for not following through on our promises. Experts in the field say that we have to be kind to ourselves and remember that the only way we improve our lives is by learning from our mistakes.
I leave you with the following question for you to discuss further with your children:
What else would someone who truly loves himself/herself do?
I hope you have a nice weekend.
Francisco Escobar
Headteacher, Secondary
