Cycling Events in Doha Qatar Pearl

Excitement is in the air as the World Cycling Championships took place in an Arab country for the first time. Our city, Doha, has been the host of this incredible event. Approximately 1000 cyclist were racing through the streets of the Pearl. This event has had a wide impact of the residents of Qatar. It has caused roads to close and traffic jams to increase. From October 8th to 16th, residents found a solution by parking vehicles at Katara. For ten hours a day the completion forced people to take boats, buses and golf carts to get to their homes. The total distance of all races has been 626.26 km.

Some of the problems that have occurred are the temperature is too hot and the traffic jams have increased, greatly.

By Phoebe Jewell-MacGregor, Chiara Pelliteri, Moises Simpino and Laura Freitas.

DP Students Meet Volunteering Teams

On October 12th, DP students visited the Qatar Foundation HBKU Student Center to talk about volunteering opportunities with ROTA and Orbis.

Reach out to Asia (ROTA) is a volunteering organization based in Qatar. It contributes to saving lives in Asia and some parts of the Middle East by rebuilding schools and training teachers so that helpless children can have quality education and get back on their feet. Students in need of volunteering opportunities for CAS can address this organization, and give a step forward in helping the world little by little. DP students were very interested in what the head of the organization had to say, and on how one can find ROTA on many different social media.

Similarly, Orbis changes lives of visually impaired people in poverty. Additionally, they train doctors to become professional eye surgeons to spread the importance of vision, with over 30,000 trained doctors to operate on patients across the regions. The devastating number of visually impaired/blind people really opened our eyes to the world, and prompted us to help out other people by volunteering too.

The 11th graders were inspired by the effort and hard work ROTA and Orbis have put into aiding those in need. You can also help out by visiting ROTA’s website: www.reachouttoasia.org and Orbis’s webpage: www.orbis.org

By Lama Abbas and Afnan Tag (Grade 11)

 

Hispanic Culture Day

Last Wednesday, October 12th, we celebrated Hispanic Culture Day. On this occasion, some of the students in Grades 6 and 7 went to Preschool and helped the teachers to perform some activities in Spanish, such as story telling & playing songs and games. After that, all the MYP & PYP teachers collaborated to make different activities for all the grades such as Kahoots, paper flowers making, watching an educational video in Spanish, playing “El pañuelo” and playing a game with Tagalog and Spanish words. The students had to rotate from class to class with their tutors to attend each activity. It was a fun learning day that all students enjoyed.

By Angela Arlati

Book Week

Last week  at SEK we celebrated book week, not only with students but with staff and parents as well. On the first day of book week the D.E.A.R time concept was introduced to students and staff to be practiced throughout the whole week. D.E.A.R time stands for drop everything and read time and this happened everyday between 8:00 to 8:20. Each grade had different activities throughout the week. On the first day grades eight, nine and ten visited the college of North Atlantic to have a tour of their facilities and their library. Meanwhile the grades six and seven had an author visit by Mr Khalid Al Obaidan (Arabic poet). The students were fascinated by the elements of Arabic poetry. On the second day of book week the whole MYP was lucky enough to have the author Mrs. Mohana Rajakumar go through the process of becoming an author. She highlighted important aspects such as the difference between writers and authors and also focused on the importance of time management, an ATL skill we are encouraged to develop. On the third day of book week we were honored to have Mrs. Justine Jewell visit our school and give us a very motivational speech about finding our passions and how that helps us to follow dreams. As you can see MYP had a lot of fun during this week just like the PYP did. They had the opportunity to have a mystery event. These mystery readers were varied from parents to teachers and they would read in multiple languages. The PYP also had the chance to dress  up as their favorite book characters in the last day of book week. In the main hall there a was book exhibition available to all grades and their parents. Book week was a great experience for all of us and we would like to thank the book week committee.

By Claudia Montalvo

A special school visit from Marc Prensky

 

On Tuesday April 5th our school was honoured with Marc Prensky’s visit and both students and teachers had a chance to talk to him. For those who don’t know who Marc Prensky is, he is a writer and a speaker in the field of learning and education. Before his arrival, students had the opportunity to discover Prensky’s thoughts and beliefs through two of his most relevant articles: “Real World Accomplishment Based Education” and “Our new Global Empowered Kids”.

Students were fascinated and showed great enthusiasm to what Prensky was proposing, especially because they felt that someone was on their side, they felt appreciated. The students asked him questions based on the articles we read. Marc Prensky spread his positive and innovative thinking around the room, for example he said “The Internet is so powerful not because of its efficiency, but because of the things that it allows us to do and we couldn’t do before.” Marc Prensky motivated all the students to make a change with our passion and, most importantly, to make a change together.

We appreciate your time and thank you for introducing us to new ways of perceiving learning.

By Lafan Hasan

Our Sports Day

What is Sports Day? To most people it is a day in which we celebrate our health and fitness, but here in SEK Qatar it is much more than just that. It is a day in which we teach and are taught about teamwork, and it is a day full of fun activities enjoyed with people and friends from our community. The PYP’s Sports Day was held on Tuesday, January 26th and the MYP’s Sports Day was on Thursday, January 28th. Both students and school staff were divided into four houses, Scorpions (yellow), Oryxes (green), Falcons (orange), and Stingrays (blue) and all the different age groups had to do a series of athletic activities in order to win points for their houses. In the end, the house with the most points won, but as Mrs. Vivian said, “We are all winners”, because everyone did their best and everyone helped to win points. This was an exceptional day and I deeply believe we all look forward to the one next year.

By Claudia Montalvo & Lafan Hasan

The cafeteria finally opened!

 

Last Sunday the 17th of January the SEK cafeteria finally opened. A lot of you might have witnessed teachers, students or even adults purchasing food from there by using a white card. This white card is the only way to purchase food from the cafeteria and it can be obtained from the cafeteria itself. However it requires an adult in order to receive and charge it. The canteen serves a variety of provisions, mainly categorized into cold and hot food. There are different options within the cold food selection which includes all day snacks, salads, wraps and sandwiches. A small reminder to all students: hot food can only be purchased during second break. Whilst lining up, be sure to queue on the left hand side when ordering cold food and on the right hand side for hot food. Different people were asked for their favorites and recommendations. Grade 10 students especially liked the Caesar salad and the Zatar Fatayer, which can be found in the cold food section. Some grade 9 students enjoyed the grilled meat from the hot food section. As you can see most students really liked the food offered in the cafeteria so don’t forget to try it sometime!!

By Claudia Montalvo & Lafan Hasan

Photos by Arwa Shokair