1. Al Yasmina School Primary Newsletter
20 September 2012
Issue 02
Dear Parents,
From The Music Department
It has been a very exciting few weeks in the Music Department as we kick off the new academic
year. On the Junior choir front, we have managed to attract over 100 keen students. We know that
we will have the same level of enthusiasm for the Intermediate Choir which starts this Sunday. Our
team of talented Instrumental teachers have been doing demos this week and last week, which
positively encouraged the students.
The Wiz – KS2 Production
More excitement this week as well over 150 children attended a
meeting about The Wiz! Children who are interested should sign
up for Key Stage 2 Production when they choose their ECA’s.
The Wiz will be on Tuesdays, and children will also need to
commit to signing up in Term 2 as the performance will be in
May. It will be amazing!!
Natasha Willsher, FSI Blue, Caoimhe Dooley Cullinane, a
sang a solo in her class this Year 6 pupil, sang ‘Someone
week. She has the voice of like You’ by Adele in this
an angel morning’s Assembly
From the PE Department
Swimming
Please ensure that all students bring a towel to swimming lessons, for hygienic reasons we will not
allow the sharing of towels. If students forget a towel, they will not take part in that swimming lesson.
All girls must wear a swimming cap during swimming lessons, this rule also applies to boys who have
long hair.

2. Reasons for hair to be in a swimming cap during swimming lessons
Hair Placement
One of the simple advantages that a swimming cap can provide you is the
ability to keep hair away from the face. When in the water, hair can fall in
front of your eyes and face, distracting you and possibly blocking your vision.
Hair caps are especially important for those with longer hair that is more likely
to be an interruption.
Hair Protection
A secondary function of a swim cap is the protection it provides for your hair,
especially if you are swimming in chlorinated water. Chlorine's main action on hair is a drying effect.
Chlorine dries the hair both from removing the protective layers of oil from the hair strand, as well as
getting deep inside the strand, drying it from the inside out. The salts in chlorine can also damage
your hair. As chlorine infiltrates the hair strand and dries, the chlorine salts crystallize and expand,
weakening the structure of the hair and causing damage. The swim cap keeps the chlorine away
from the hair by providing a protective barrier.
Cleanliness
Keeping your hair securely under a swim cap means you won't shed any hair during your swim. This
can help keep a pool clean. When hair falls out in a pool, it often ends up in the pool's filters. The hair
may clog the filters or make them dirtier.
Primary Swim Team for 2012-2013
Congratulations to the following boys and girls who were chosen for the Primary Swim Team this year.
6 girls from Year 6 were chosen as two of them had the same number of points. Well done!
Training will begin on Monday, 24 September at 2.30pm.
Year 6 Year 5
BOYS GIRLS BOYS GIRLS
Kyle Groh Tanami Loftus Thomas Clifton Isabella Palmer
Robert Matchett Mette Den Haese Aidan Ball Gabrielle Loftus
Alexander Darling Clara Kamel Riley Forbes Halle Evans
Kareem El Zeftawy Megan Rees Luke Jones Nora Wall
Nor Asyraf Nor Azhar Emmanuelle Vuilleumier Thomas Jelliman Eve Miragliotta
Hannah Burns
Year 4 Year 3
BOYS GIRLS BOYS GIRLS
Hayden Woodrow Isabelle Darling Luke Gillroy Sara Wall
Christian Willsher Taylor Pharoah Sonny Matchett Sydney Venus
Marcus Kelly Rebecca Gillroy Callum Dooley Cullinane Stella Da Silva
Buttkus
Mohamed Al Nowai s Olivia Williams Julian Leruth McKenzie Kenyon
Tom Johnston Mckenzie Venus Adam Joumma Libby O’Sullivan
From the School Nurses
We all know the saying, that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
Sometimes, though, parents are too busy, in the mornings, to prepare a good,
healthy breakfast for their children, before they come to school. However, it is
so important that they eat something at breakfast time. Here are a few ideas for

3. very quick and easy breakfasts, which can even be grabbed on the way out of the door and eaten
in the car, or prepared the night before!
- Single servings of whole-grain, low-sugar cereals
- Yoghurt and drinking yoghurts
- Fresh fruit
- Whole-grain muffin or bagel
- Trail mix of nuts, dried fruits, pretzels, crackers and dry cereals
- Wholemeal toast, with cheese / peanut butter / nutella / marmite / mashed banana /
chopped boiled egg / baked beans
- Mix together fruit and milk / yoghurt for a tasty smoothie
- Arabic bread and hummous
- Crackers and cheese
- Even last night’s left-over pizza!
NB: Nut and products containing nuts to be eaten at home, as these are NOT allowed in school.
Useful websites to check out are:
www.kidshealth.org/kid/stay_health/food/breakfast.html
www.eatwell.gov.uk
www.5aday.nhs.uk
Friend of Al Yasmina (FOY)
Welcome Picnic
FOY would like to invite Al Yasmina parents and students to our FOY Welcome Picnic this Saturday,
22 September from 4pm – 6pm. Please see attached flyer for more details.
Disco
Please note the change of date for the Primary Disco. This is due to the School Inspection the first
week in October. The Disco will be for all children in Year 1 – Year 6 and will be held on Sunday,
7 October in the Primary Sports Hall.
Year 1 – Year 3 will be from 4pm – 5pm (15dhs includes snack and drink)
Year 4 – Year 6 will be from 5.30pm – 7pm (20dhs includes snack and drink)
Tickets will be available at the door.
Any information or to volunteer, please contact Gaynor at alyasminafoy@gmail.com
Second hand uniform sale
There will be a second hand uniform sale this Wednesday, 26 September from 1pm - 3pm at the main
atrium.
Foundation Stage 1 (FS1)
We have had a busy week in FS1 meeting our specialist
lesson teachers and continuing to settle into school. We
are doing such a great job of learning the school
routines during the day using the shared and outdoor
areas too. As well as meeting our specialist lesson
teachers, we also met our very own class mascots. It
was lovely to say hello to them in a circle and we are
all very excited to see who will be taking our mascot
home on Thursday. At the end of the week we had lots
of fun dressing up as a character from the dressing up
box. This was great practice for PE, as next week we
will be changing into our PE kits at school.

4. Next week, we will be having lots of fun making hand prints using paint. We will put them above the
sink to help remind us to wash our hands after going to the toilet and before our snack and lunch. We
will also be looking at ourselves in a mirror to identifying and describe our facial features. You can
help your child at home by naming parts of the face and continuing the good habit of hand washing
to develop independent personal hygiene.
With the outdoor area up and running, could we ask all parents and nannies to ensure that their
child/ children do not play with the equipment (such as sand, water tray) after school? Thank you.
Key Dates
Parent Information Meeting- 25th of September – 8am.
Foundation Stage 2 (FS2)
This week the children have been talking non-stop about themselves! We’ve drawn and labeled
pictures of ourselves, talked about who is special to us and even made self portraits on the
Interactive Whiteboard! We wowed the teachers with our ICT skills even Mrs. Abraham couldn’t
believe what we were capable of doing!!
In Maths, we made birthday cakes and drew the correct number of candles depending on our age
and we made our own pictograms showing the different eye colours in class.

5. Next week FS2 are going to be big boys and girls and come into class on their own. Please can you
drop your child off at their classroom door and leave them to get sorted (both the class teacher and
TA will be around to help the children if they need it). If you need to speak to the teacher, briefly
speak to them in the morning or if you think you’ll need longer,
then wait until the end of the day.
Congratulations to last week’s Stars of the Week
Mikey O’Sullivan from Ruby class, Sukie Crowter from Purple
Class, Sammy Al Qaimi from Orange Class (who was
unfortunately absent when the photo was taken), Aisha Obaidli
from Jade Class and Lucy Greenhill from Amber class. Well done
guys, we’re so proud of you!!!
Next week
Next week our mini focus is ‘My Family’. We will be talking about the different members of our family
and where they all live, designing plates of food for our family and in Maths we will be doing lots of
counting and discussing who is the tallest and shortest person in our family. You could help at home
by:
 Talking about special events that have happened in the family
 Find the flag that is associated to your family’s home country
 Practice counting lots of objects e.g. the number of sweets in a smarties box
 Order items from biggest to smallest e.g. toys
Phonics Focus:
Revision of Phase 2 sounds: i n m d
Continue playing on these fab websites:
http://www.letters-and-sounds.com/phase-2-games.html
http://www.familylearning.org.uk/phonics_games.html
http://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/Phase2Menu.htm
Key dates
Monday 24th September – FS2 Parent Information Meeting at 8am
Tuesday 25th September – The children will be making their own family tree. From Sunday onwards,
the child are allowed to bring in some photos of family members. These will be cut up so please don’t
send sentimental pictures unless they have been scanned.
Wednesday 26th September –The children will be making their own family crests. If you have anything
from the list below that will support your child in the making of their crest, please send them in as soon
as possible.
 Flags that represent the countries his/her family comes from
 Pictures/photos of foods that are commonly eaten at home
 Pictures/explanations that represent their first or last names
 Photos that show family celebrations
Year 1
It’s been an exciting week in here in Year 1! We are all
adjusting nicely to our new classes and routines. In Literacy
this week, we have been reading the story ‘Here Come the
Aliens’. We have focused on adjectives this week and using
them in our sentences. We loved deigning our very own

6. aliens and writing descriptions about them including adjectives. Do you like the display we made?
In Numeracy we have been busy counting forwards and backwards to 20. We have enjoyed
ordering numbers correctly and practising our number formations.
Well done to all our Super Stars of the Week
Zack (Sparrows), Noor (Larks), Sheikha (Cuckoos),
Dalal (Doves), Sari (Robins).
Next week in Literacy, we will be focusing on the story ‘Alfie’s Feet’. We will be retelling this story and
sequencing the main events. In Numeracy we will be looking at place value and counting in
multiples of ten. In Science we will be learning about our five senses and exploring how we use them
every day!
Year 2
Year 2 have had an extremely busy and productive time
this week. We have loved spending time in our fabulous
new and improved shared area. We particularly like our
Bedouin reading corner.
In Topic this week we have been learning all about
Bedouins and in Art we have been making our own
Bedouin lamps to decorate our tent in the shared area.
In Maths we have been learning about odd and even numbers and
place value.

7. In Literacy we have been reading ‘The Desert Leveret’ by Kathy Hoopman and writing our own
acrostic poems. Here are a few snippets:
Dazzling deserts cover the world
Energetic camels race
Scary camel spiders sneak out at night
Eerie night swoops down
Rocky mountains reach up high
Tough sand stings my feet
I’m sure you’ll agree that Year 2 have some very talented poets!
In social studies we have been learning all about spiders in the U.A.E. We created posters to warn
people where they might be hiding and what they look like. Did you know that camel spiders are
attracted to lights? Beware and remember to turn your lights off when you go camping!
Next week:
In Literacy we will be reading the story ‘Icky Doo Dah’ by and creating our own news reports. In
Maths we will be learning about finding 10 more or less than any given number up to 100. We will also
begin number calculations by learning to understand that subtraction is the inverse of addition. In
topic we will be creating our own weather reports and in Art we will be creating some camouflage
desert creatures!
Congratulations to our Stars of the Week
Lojain Bassiouni, Hannah Crighton, Harvey Redfern,
Joseph Schumaker and Meera Ghanem.
Year 3
Year 3 children have been producing some great
Egyptian art work this week. We have been
identifying key features of non-fiction texts and
making notes from them.

8. In our topic we have been using an atlas to locate Egypt and the river Nile. In Maths we have been
learning our number bonds to 100.
Next Week’s learning focus will be:
Literacy- Making notes from texts and broadcasts in readiness to write a report; and highlighting Key
features of reports. Numeracy- The children will be learning to partition numbers up to thousands,
hundreds, tens and units. Science- identifying the different type of teeth we have e.g. molars, incisors
and their purpose.
Topic- We will be learning about Ancient Egypt writing in the form of Hieroglyphics.
Trip information
Just a reminder of our trip to Café Ceramique in Dubai next week and that children are in school
ready to leave at 8am.
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.
Congratulations to our Stars of the Week
Katherine Vandy Zoha Ali Boodi Al Riyami Ummehani Ghadially Ali Khan
Cormorants Buntings Curlews Ravens Terns
Year 4
Year 4 have been very busy this week investigating what our skeletons are made up of and trying to
name some of the bones in the body. In literacy the children have been excited about reading
‘George’s Marvellous Medicine’ - the teachers are constantly being asked to read more! Along with
this the children have been working on their use of descriptive language and are inventing their own
‘marvellous medicine recipes’.

9. In numeracy the children have been looking at place value
and negative numbers. The children have been improving
their artistic skills looking at perspective in preparation of
making their own food landscape picture.
Next week the children will be building on the number
knowledge we have revised this week in numeracy and in
literacy the children will be looking at story structure and
creating their own beginning and endings for stories.
Well done to last week’s stars: Amelie Prideaux, Christian
Willsher, Ashley Miragliotta, Taylor Pharoah and Nora AL
Braiki.
Year 5
It’s been another busy week in Year 5, with everyone starting to get to grips with new timetables and
routines. We’ve been analysing silent animation films and identifying how they impact the audience
by looking at emotion, camera angles, music and lighting. We have also been investigating how
they made moving images back in the 1800s. Ask your child about a thaumatrope – perhaps they
can make one at home with you.
Thank you to all the parents that were able to come to the Parents Information Meeting on Monday.
For those that couldn’t make it, the handouts are going home with your child today and the
presentation power points should have been e mailed out to all parents.
Next week in Math’s we will be working on adding and subtracting decimal numbers, this will
incorporate ‘money’. In Literacy we will be creating conversations in a film by adding speech and
developing a storyboard with flashbacks. In Science we will be planning and carrying out an
investigation to look at how light passes through certain materials. In Art & DT we are creating
silhouettes. In ICT we will be making a flipbook. Finally in Topic
we will be collating and completing our research on our
artefacts
Congratulations to our the Stars of week.
Well done to Eve Miragliotta, Jana Al Armouti, Adrian Martin,
Poppy Smith and Max Palmer

10. Year 6
What a wonderfully inquisitive week we have had in Year 6. In literacy we have been finding out
about different types of fiction genres and revealing our favourite one. We have identified the key
features of various genres and have used these to help us write our own short stories in a specific
style. We have a lot of budding, talented authors out there! Science lessons this week have informed
us of how green plants make their own food during a process called photosynthesis. Test our
knowledge and understanding by asking why the leaves of a plant are green. Continuing with our
‘There’s No Place Like Home’ topic we have started to create brochures that will provide each other
with amazing information about our home countries and will hopefully inspire others to visit there.
Next week we shall be starting to compare our home countries to the countries of the Caribbean! In
literacy we will be focusing on the fiction genre traditional tales, stories which are passed down orally
relating to traditions of people and culture. The traditional tales we will be reading will be from the
Caribbean. In numeracy lessons we will continue focusing on place value. However in the following
week we will move on to data handling and will require some information about the climates of our
home countries (please see the homework tasks for more information). May I please ask that you
continue to send in as many spare or unwanted magazines as possible, which will be used to help
the pupils create a mood board during art lessons.
Congratulations to our Stars of the Week
Well done to all of you!
Tarik Kurkcu, Jo Vanden Auweele, Tanami Loftus, Conor
Gammell and Ashlyn Martin
May we present the 2012-13 House Captains and Vice Captains. Well done to all of you in making an
outstanding presentation which led to your appointment.
Voyager Discovery Challenger Endeavour
Abigail Stanley (C) Sandali Weerasekera (C) Eoghan Cumbers (C) Ana Sofia Bustamante (C)
Ronan Greene (VC) Omar Zeidan (VC) Layla Jawhari (VC) Aine Griffiths (C)

11. Dates for your Diary
Saturday 22 September - FOY Welcome Picnic (see attached flyer for more details)
Sunday 23 September - Year 3 Café Ceramique (Curlew and Ravens)
Monday 24 September - Year 3 Café Ceramique (Buntings and Terns)
Monday 24 September - FS2 Parent Information Morning at 8am
Tuesday 25 September - Year 3 Café Ceramique (Cormorants)
Tuesday 25 September - FS1 Parent Information Morning at 8am
Wednesday 26 September - MARHABA Open House Event 5pm – 6.30pm
Wednesday 26 September - Second hand uniform sale in atrium from 1pm – 3pm
Sunday 7 October - Primary Disco
Al Yasmina School
Tel: 02 5014888
email: primarypa@alyasmina.sch.ae