Swimming Competition 2019

The SEK Qatar swimming team has just finished their participation in the Qatar Foundation Inter-School Invitational 2019 with great results!

Last Friday December 13th at H2O Swim Club students Riad Harfouche (G10), Syed Hamza Salim (G9), Leonardo Bettoni (G8), Margherita Mino and Omar Salim (G6), Matilde Bettoni and Madison Smith (G5) competed in backstroke, freestyle and butterfly.

Our team conjunctly won 9 podium medals, including one first place medal for Margherita in 100m backstroke, along with other 17 medals that account for their team work and efforts.

A special congratulations and thank you to each swimmer who represented our school against 8 other school teams. We’re proud of you!

Qatar National Day was a celebration of joy

Surrounded by traditional music, sweets, flags and artwork from our students depicting iconic Qatari scenes, students, families and staff celebrated the most important day in the country at SEK Qatar.

Pupils from all grades were involved in making today special, and showcased their talents in a heartfelt way to really convey the love we all feel for Qatar as our home. Whether we were born here or live here as part of the expat community, we can all agree that we get excited every 18th December -ever more so since we have the opportunity to fully enjoy it with our children!

The event gave a little bit of everything you can expect to truly experience a bit of the Qatari culture. Poems, traditional songs and dances that stated “I love you, Qatar!”, a play that helped understand Qatari customs and traditions, the folkloric and admired sword dance performed by PYP boys, and a beautiful rendition of the National Anthem with MYP students playing the music and grade 4 students singing it in sign language.

After the show, parents enjoyed the different exhibits from MYP and PYP students. Some of them had fun with face and henna painting, others admired the artwork in the main hall, and we can say almost everybody visited the traditional food stations.

We want to show our appreciation to the teachers that were in charge of putting everything together as part of the QND committee, thank you for your hard work! And of course a big praise to all the students that performed today and got our hearts filled with pride and gratefulness for living in this wonderful country.

Hour of Code 2019

Hour of Code  just finished in our school and we couldn’t be more excited about all the things our students, teachers and staff learned about the basics of coding. If you have never tried coding, we promise that through their easy-to-follow exercises you can understand the first steps of building a game, a program, a software or any other digital platform -which comes in really handy when your kids are so immersed in technology. You can visit their website anytime during the year and learn along with your children.

From December 9th until the 15th we got to demystify code through Hour of Code activities, which provide a simple, fun and creative introduction to computer science that shows anybody can learn the basics. It is accessible for all ages regardless of previous coding experience, and one of the best parts (aside from the good laughs you get with their activities) is the skills you gain while practicing: problem-solving skills, logic and creativity to mention just a few!

This worldwide event is an initiative created by Stephen Curry and code.org, and takes place each year during Computer Science Education Week, held annually in recognition of the birthday of computing pioneer Admiral Grace Murray Hopper.

We hope children and adults alike get involved in this great learning experience and discover how computer science can enrich life!

SEK Qatar introduces virtual reality into its classes

With the surprise of looking at a very real human heart up close, our students experienced this week the wonderful world of virtual reality (VR). This was the first time the school implemented this technology, with hopes of extending its use to many different classes -like biology, physics and math.

The students no doubt will take advantage of having access to the VR devices and software, for it has been shown to have many benefits in education. Making contents more fun creates a different kind of interest in the students, thus increasing their engagement and involvement in the class and the topics. It also provides with visualizations that would otherwise be impossible in school -talk about seeing a human heart!

But not only that, VR can be used for teaching social and emotional skills like empathy and self-regulation, as it allows for the creation of different environments -which definitely rings a bell in an international school such as ours, with so many different cultures intertwined in our classrooms.

Using VR also opens the dialogue of interacting with technology from a young age, allowing for discussions like the importance of human connection and real-life experiences, or how to avoid addiction to technological devices, a conversation that is so important not only for younger generations, but for adults as well.

We’re proud to continue growing, and excited to see all the amazing things that we will be able to learn together with this new technology.