The newsletter provides information about upcoming events at Al Yasmina School including dates for class representative nominations, discos, and open houses. It discusses the successful start to the music and choir programs and highlights musicians of the week. The school nurses provide illness guidelines and remind parents to update medications. It also includes information about various primary grade levels' learning activities and highlights 'Stars of the Week' from each class.

1. Al Yasmina School Primary Newsletter
27 September 2012
Issue 03
Dear Parents,
Dates for your Diary
Sunday 30 September - Closing date for Primary Class Representative nominations
Sunday 7 October - Primary Disco
Sunday 14 October - Open House 8 – 9.30am
Tuesday 16 October - Parent Teacher Consultations
Wednesday 17 October - Parent Teacher Consultations
Thursday 18 October - FS1 Theme day
Sunday 21 Oct – 25 Oct - Half Term
From The Music Department
It’s been a brilliant start to the new academic year! There was a turn-out of over
120 pupils for the Junior Choir last week, and a similar number attended
Intermediate Choir this week. The singing was fabulous, with the children full of
energy and enthusiasm. Tuesday saw our first rehearsal with our 180-strong cast of
The Wiz. The atmosphere was electric!
Instrumental lessons have also resumed, and two of our talented brass players Armaan Syed and Ana
Sophia Bustamente played in our primary assembly this morning. We were so proud of them!
Well done to this week’s Musicians of the Week: Nina Schippel (Key Stage1) and Dylan Tayler (Key
Stage 2). Nina (Year 2) composed a beautiful melody on the glockenspiel for our ‘Camel Music’, and
Dylan (Year 6) was super-successful when working on his keyboard skills in class.
For any information about primary music activities, please contact cknapton@alyasmina.sch.ae
Nina on the glock Dylan at the keyboard Musicians of the week
Dylan and Nina

2. Armaan and Sophia in assembly this morning
From the School Nurses
If your child is unwell, vomits, has diarrhea (watery, liquid stool), or has a fever, please keep them at
home. This will give them a chance to recover and also help to prevent the spread of any infection
amongst other pupils. They may return to school once they are 24 hours free of any illness symptoms
and free of fever (without the use of fever-reducing medication).If your child is sent home from
school, this generally means that they should stay at home the following day to fully recover, before
being sent back to school.
If your child had pupil medications kept in the school clinic last
year and you have not yet handed in medications to the
school nurses for this current school year, please contact the
school nurses to update them on your child’s condition and to
inform them if your child no longer requires medications to be
kept in school.
The school nurses can be contacted via e-mail at
nurse@alyasmina.sch.ae or by phone 02-501 4722 or 02-501
4723.
Friend of Al Yasmina (FOY)
Annual General Meeting
Congratulations to Janine Loftus who was voted onto the FOY Committee as Chairperson for a
second year. Also congratulations go to Justine Hughes & Mahra Fares who were voted in as joint
Vice-Chairperson, and Lisa Wall who was voted in as Treasurer. FOY had a very successful first year
last year, and will no doubt continue to do so with the valuable input from this strong committee. The
post of Secretary is still vacant. This is a key role in FOY, and needs to be filled as soon as possible. If
you are interested in finding out more about the responsibilities of this role, or would like to nominate
yourself, please contact FOY on alyasminaFOY@gmail.com.
Second Hand Uniform Sales
These are proving very successful, and the quality of the uniform on sale is very good. A sale will be
held on the last wednesday of each month, so put it in your diaries. The next sale will therefore be on
Wednesday, 31October.
Primary & Secondary Discos :-
These discos are being held on the following dates/times
Years 1, 2, 3 - Sunday 7 October from 4-5pm
Years 4, 5, 6 - Sunday 7 October from 5.30-7pm
Years 7, 8, 9 - Monday 8 October from 5.30-7.30pm
If you are able to help in any way during these times, please contact FOY on
alyasminaFOY@gmail.com.

3. Festive Fair
This event will be held on Saturday, 8 December. This was a great success last year, and with your
help could prove to be equally successful this year. FOY need volunteers to help with the
organisation and also on the day itself. If you would like to help, please come along to the first
planning meeting which is being held this Monday, 1October at 6.30pm in the Conference Room.
Class Representatives
The closing date for Nominations to be a Primary Class Parent Representative, is Sunday
30 September 2012. Please return your nomination forms to your class teacher. If you haven’t
received a nomination form, please collect one at Primary Reception. You are welcome to
nominate yourself.
Foundation Stage 1 (FS1)
We have had another busy week this week in FS1. Everyone is settling in well and we’re getting into
routine. We have had lots of fun in our specialist lessons and we are getting used to moving around
the school to our different classrooms/ learning areas. We also got to take our mascots home this
week. The Stars of the Week were so excited, they had great fun and took lots of photos to show
their class when they came back on Sunday morning.
We had lots of fun in the shared area this week too. We are learning about each different area and
enjoyed all coming together, to play and learn, using many different materials, toys, construction kits
and games.
Next week
As we are learning all about our families next week; could we please ask that parents e-mail us some
photos of your family? Thank you. Please email them to your child’s class teacher, all parents should
now be aware of their email address. As well as talking about our families, we will be doing some
number matching, shape pictures and learning new songs. Help at home by looking out for shapes in
everyday life and by practicing counting.
Could we ask that if you have some empty cereal boxes at home (large or small) that you bring them
in next week as we are going to make some 3D houses for our classrooms? Thank you.
Key Date:
Theme Day 18th October, don’t forget dress up day!

4. Last week the Stars of The Week were:
Quinten Groen from Yellow Class, Maryan Khan from
Blue Class, Oscar Backhouse from Green Class, Rania
Dudhia from Gold Class, Charlie Young from White
Class and Kayla Follows from Red Class
Foundation Stage 2 (FS2)
It’s been a great week this week for FS2 - we have had so much fun talking
about our family! We made our own family trees and labeled who the
people are, we have designed our own family crest and we have made
delicious plates of food for our family to enjoy.
In Maths, we have been doing LOTS of counting. We have counted our
toys, counted fixed objects on the IWB and we have counted how many
people are in our family. We have also been looking at who is the tallest
and shortest person in our class – we extended this by talking about who’s
the tallest and shortest person in our family too.
We would like to say a BIG well done to all the boys and girls for being so independent in the
morning, and coming in to school by themselves this week. We really do appreciate the mum’s and
dad’s support at dropping them off at the classroom door – let’s keep it up  Thank you.
Thank you also to all the parents who came to the FS2 PIM on Monday, it was great to see so many
faces! By now, you should have received a copy of the presentation and the feedback letter. If you
have not received them, please speak to your class teacher.
Next week
Next week our mini focus is ‘Our 5 senses’. We have got some GREAT activities planned including a
‘We’re going on a Bear Hunt’ feeling walk, a sound walk around the school, tasting and sorting and
making our own tactile tree. In Maths we will be continuing to look at numbers, searching for missing
numbers and practicing our number formation.
You could help at home by:
 Talking about our different senses – touch, taste, sight, hearing and smell
 Find different items that you can touch, taste, see, hear and smell
 Find the missing numbers from a number line (e.g. numbers hung on a washing line)
 Practice writing numbers to 10 correctly

5. Phonics Focus:
Revision of Phase 2 sounds: g, o, c, k
Phase 2 tricky words: I, no, go, to the
Helpful websites:
http://www.familylearning.org.uk/phonics_games.html
http://www.iboard.co.uk/iwb/Blast-Off-High-Frequency-Version-211
Congratulations to last week’s ‘Stars of the Week’…
Rebecca Richmond from Jade class, Faith Sherwin from
Amber class, Sophie Kay from Orange class Elijah Youlten
from Ruby class and Al Waleed Khoori from Purple class. Well
done guys, we’re so proud of you!!!
Year 1
Year 1 have been very busy learners again this week! In literacy this week
we have been reading the story ‘Alfie’s Feet.’ We have used time words
such as ‘first’ ‘next’ and ‘finally’ to sequence the story and we’ve tried to use
them in our own writing too!
In numeracy we have continued to
practice forming all our numbers in the
correct direction and have learnt what
each digit represents in a 2 digit number.
We made towers of tens and units to
help us.
Next week
Year 1 will be discussing healthy foods and investigating their own lunchboxes as part of our literacy
learning. Get ready to see what they bring home for you next week!
Reminder- please return permission slips so that children can take part in our taste tests for Science
next week.
Well done to our Stars of the Week
Sama (Cuckoos), Sari (Robins), Omar (Larks), Tarik (Doves), Alya (Sparrows)

6. Year 2
WARNING! Icky Doo Dah has been up to mischief at Al Yasmina School and all of
Year 2 have been helping the police to catch him. Keep any eye out for our
fantastic WARNING posters around the school.
We have had lots of fun listening to the ‘Icky Doo Dah’ stories by Simon Murray to
help us learn that characters can appear in more than one book. We did Hot
Seating to share our ideas about what Icky Doo Dah would do if he visited our
homes?!?
In Maths we have been doing lots of work to help us add on 10 more and 10 less. We used number
flowers to help us with this.
We have been comparing the weather in the UAE to other countries around the world. We used the
information we have learned to make our own weather forecasts.
Stars of the Week:
Spoonbills : Fons Vanswijgenhoven, Sandpipers: Sara George, Storks: Yehia Said,
Herons: Maya El Zeftaway, Flamingos: Barry Priestly
Year 3
Our trip to Café Ceramique was declared a success. Thank you to all who offered to help and a
special thank you to the parents who did accompany us to Dubai this week. The children had a
great time and we will collect the ceramics sometime next week (after they have been fired).
We have been working hard on our note taking this week and have started to find out about our
teeth.

7. In preparation for next week’s maths lessons we have been finding out about partitioning numbers
into hundreds, tens and units.
The children have enjoyed cracking Hieroglyphic codes and will be producing some beautiful
hieroglyphic work in art next week.
Next Week’s learning focus will be:
Literacy- Researching for more information using ICT, understanding the difference between fact and
opinion, sentence construction and writing an introductory paragraph for our Egyptian reports.
Numeracy – Learning to double and halve numbers
Science – Planning a fair test to find out about the effects of different liquids on teeth.
ICT – Editing text, finding errors and making corrections in Microsoft Word.
Topic- We will be learning about the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb.
Unwanted fiction/nonfiction books
If any parents have any unwanted fiction/nonfiction books that they could donate to our Year 3/4
shared reading area we would be most grateful.
Well done to our stars of the week for week 2.
Malak Nafie – Ravens, Libby O’Sullivan- Cormarants, Christy Arikieh – Terns, Sara Wall – Buntings,
Sydney Venus- Curlews
Year 4
It has been another busy week in Year 4. Everyone has been working incredibly hard and producing
excellent work! This week in Literacy we have been focusing on the structure of a story and what
elements need to be included in each section. We had a go at writing story openers that grab our
reader’s attention. We have some budding authors in Year 4 because their amazing openers
certainly got their teachers attention!

8. In Maths this week we have continued our number work.
One of our focuses has been multiplying and dividing by
multiples of 10, 100 and 1000. It was tricky to begin with but
we persevered and are now experts! Our weekly
multiplication missions are continuing and this week we
have students striving to complete their mission to Mercury,
Venus or Earth, in just 3 minutes!
Year 4 has proved to be a very artistic
year group and this has become
evident during our ‘fruit landscape’
project. We continued on from our
work on perspective and this week
learnt all about the layering in a
landscape. Children experimented
with the idea of a foreground, middle
ground and background and
produced some impressive sketches!
Next week we are looking forward to beginning some research about important people from
medical history, as well as doing our first science investigation of the year! In Literacy we will be
focusing on the use of direct speech and paragraphs in our writing which will hopefully result in an
amazing piece of big writing! In Maths we will be using division to help us solve our times tables,
investigating number patterns and sequences and solving 2-step problems.
A big well done to all the children that applied
to become the Student Council Reps for Year 4.
These children showed they had what it takes to
be a member of School Council and gave a
short speech to their class. It was a close race
but in the end we congratulated Mishkat
Usama, Marcus Kelly, Christian Willsher, Anna
Rayner, Noemie Queromain, Moodi Rashed,
Molly Barber, Archie Backhouse, Erinn Ashdown
and Devon Den Hertog.
Congratulations to the Stars of the Week
Charlotte Richardson-White (Warblers), Rhianna McPherson
(Wheatears), Hannah Tlemsani (Pipits), Anna Rayner
(Wagtails), and Becky Gillroy (Sandgrouse).

9. Year 5
We have had a very exciting week in Year 5 this week. The children have been learning about
various different artefacts such as the Zoetrope, Marey’s photographic gun and the
Phenakistoscope; these were used to create film and animations in the early years. The children
found out information on who invented them and what they actually do.
Children have also had the opportunity to create their own mini flip book which they have really
enjoyed; they will be using these to create animations in ICT next week.
In our Science lesson we have been finding out about how light travels and have been looking at
how shadows are formed. In Literacy children have been watching short animation clips and
identifying the directors’ perspective.
Next week we have a busy and exciting week ahead. In Maths we will be working on multiples of
numbers and number sequences. In Literacy we will be creating storyboards which include a
flashback memory and looking at ways to direct individual scenes. In Topic we will be taking part in
our own ‘Antiques Roadshow’ showcasing the items we have already researched. In Science we will
be taking a closer look at the eye and its key features. This will link in with Art work on drawing and
designing our own eye which will incorporate shading. In ICT we will be using the Pivot software to
make a short animation of stick men.
These are the stars of week 2.
Well done to Holly O’Sullivan (Parakeets), Marta Angelone
Lopez (Nightjars), Edmund Chung (Sunbirds), Thomas
Jelliman (Swallows) & Alice Wright (Mynahs).
Year 6
Year 6 have been reading and analysing a variety of Traditional Tales this week in literacy. They have
been able to define what elements combine in order to create a traditional tale. We have looked
closely at traditional tales from the Caribbean and have focussed on a particular tricky character
called Anansi. The children have written a tale of how things came to be, some children focussed on
Turtle, and how he came to have fins after many unfortunate accidents which
resulted in the poor turtle’s legs being flattened!
In numeracy the children have continued to develop their understanding of
counting, partitioning and calculating, also looking at multiplying and dividing
by base 10.

10. Next week we shall be looking at the genre, ‘mystery’. We shall be breaking down the elements that
are needed to write a story, and analysing these each day. By the end of the week the children shall
have written their own mystery story.
In numeracy we shall be focussing on data handling and analysing and interpreting graphs. The
children will be using their data (collected as part of their homework last week) from their own
country, and representing this is a variety of ways. They will then be able to compare to other
countries and make comparisons to what is shown.
Student council representatives were chosen this week, well done to all of those of put themselves
forward for the position. Please don’t feel disheartened if you weren’t successful this time round -
Year 6 teachers will always be looking for responsible children to carry out jobs and I know we have
125 very responsible children to choose from!
Classes have now purchased all the items for the credit shop!
The children are working really well, and demonstrating how they
play their PART in school. Keep collecting the credits as more
credits = bigger rewards!
Presenting the Year 6 Stars of the Week.
Sierra Hedges (Kestrels), Caitlyn Gill (Falcons), Nithila
Kalawila Karunatileke (Ospreys), Jimmy Alley (Owls) and
Saif Al Suwaidi (Eagles)
Well done to all of you!
Al Yasmina School
Tel: 02 5014888
email: primarypa@alyasmina.sch.ae