SEK International School Qatar

Today, 28th of February, WISE@Madrid Forum Imagining the Future of Education takes place to explore new narratives of change, and ways for rethinking tomorrow’s education to better prepare learners as effective, empowered and fulfilled individuals able to contribute to their communities. You  can follow WISE@Madrid on streaming in this link starting at 12:00 Qatar time.

This Forum will deepen in the emerging tools and successful experiences for system level change, the role of higher education in preparing learners for future jobs, and new entrepreneurship and 21st century skills for smarter and happier societies.

WISE@ Madrid Forum brings together leaders in education, business and policy to discuss and debate the future of education. Among them is Ms. Nieves Segovia, the President of SEK Educational Group who will participate in the specialist panel about educational innovation, Redesigning Education Systems for the Future, a round table that will enable participants to exchange their views about the challenges posed by the transformation and evolution of educational systems in a constantly changing world. Experts will debate on the principles, means and innovations necessary to adapt and lead these systems.

Ms. Nieves Segovia has also prepared an article for the Summit, where she states that the time has come for the education system to rise up to the challenge of its own transformation, pointing out the necessity to question the status quo and the determination to act accordingly. The article is in line with the subject matter of the WISE initiative, which is created to further adapt education to the profound changes of the digital age, as now we are exploring further dazzling disruption of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and this sector seems largely disconnected from these dramatic developments.

Educators are aware that life-long learning has become crucial, that technology is replacing human roles, and big data, artificial intelligence and smart living are creating new workforce paradigms and require new skills. Imagining future jobs calls for a reimagined and renewed education today. That is why SEK combine the most up-to-date learning resources and the latest technology, to deliver state-of-the-art student-centered education.

About WISE

Qatar Foundation established the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) in 2009 as response to the necessity of revitalizing education and providing a global platform for the development of new ideas and solution. WISE is an international, multi-sectoral platform for creative thinking, debate and purposeful action, aimed at promoting innovation and building the future of education through collaboration.

Every year SEK International School Qatar develops a varied workshop programme as a part of our ongoing commitment to professional development, sharing best practices in education with our colleagues alongside educators from Qatar schools and other schools within the Gulf region.

This weekend we hosted 160 participants attending 4 different workshops; the inspirational workshop leaders came from the USA, Australia and Abu Dhabi, each one bringing her own passion and wealth of experience to share with the teachers during the weekend.  Most of the attendees were from IB schools, they are life-long learners and want to share, learn and grow as professionals in their field. 

The workshop led by Carol Ann Tomlinson attracted the most participants focusing on Quality Differentiation: what, why and how. Early years professionals had the opportunity to work with Fiona Zinn about Concepts in the Early Years, other educators were interested to learn more about Mindfulness with Elissa Ballard and the last group led by Tanya Elmer focused on Concepts in the Primary and Middle school.  

SEK Qatar will continue to offer such opportunities, our Professional Development programme will be published shortly online via our website.

Our robotic teams spent the weekend of the 11th February in the FLL (First LEGO League) competition. They did a great job and had a great success!

SEK participated with two teams: LEGO Storm Troppers and ZooBots. It is with great pride we can say that both reached the podium! LEGO Storm Troppers ranked first in Core Values and ZooBots ranked third in Robot Game.

But good news don’t stop there. We are very proud to announce that they have been selected to represent Qatar in the regional phase of FLL, in which many teams from different countries from UAE will participate. This event will take place next month.

 Let’s congratulate our teams for all the effort and time they will be investing to achieve this goal and for the enthusiasm they are showing! Keep it up!

Students hit another milestone during Sports Day: they broadcasted the event by radio. To that end, they did some research about running a radio event. Then, they created the scripts and chose the songs. Finally, they were in charge of making the announcements and conducting interviews and quizzes about sports and healthy lifestyle.

Little by little, all together we are improving the Sports Day experience, involving staff and students in different activities related to sports.

Go SEK team!

To find out how good our students performed, check this post for PYPs and this post for MYPs.

Our school is participating in the largest learning event in history for the 3rd time: The Hour of Code, during Computer Science Education Week (Dec. 5-11). More than 310 million students worldwide have already tried an Hour of Code and the number is growing every minute.

If you want to work on it with your children, feel free to try some of the tutorials at home.

You are welcome to try them in our Foyer where we have installed 4 desktops with access to the tutorials.

Tutorials/activities https://code.org/learn

Hour Of Code main website: https://hourofcode.com

Find below some pictures of our students during different sessions running The Hour of Code at SEK-Qatar.

Start coding!

On Thursday 23rd June we had the pleasure of celebrating the graduation of our Pre 5, Grade 5 and Grade 10 students. Our school community united to look back over the special moments that were shared. We wish them well and look forward to the new stages ahead of them.

This year for Arts Night we turned SEK-Qatar into a big Arts Festival. As well as enjoying the exhibits of all of our students’ artwork, visitors had the opportunity to engage in all kinds of Art-making activities: there were percussion workshops, interactive art galleries, finger-weaving, colouring stations, drama and many more.

To complete the artistic experience everybody gathered around the stage to enjoy the multidisciplinary-interactive show “Lost in the Jungle”, in which students displayed their abilities and talents in varied arts disciplines: script-writing, drama, dance and music.

The audience also played an important role by joining in through the use of musical instruments. It was a memorable night, and a great example of how Arts can be used to build Communities.

SEK Qatar celebrated and showcased their very first PYP Exhibition on Monday 9^th and Tuesday 10^th May 2016. Our Grade 5 students were excellent ambassadors for our school and the IB education that we afford them. They made us very proud and as our school’s pioneers they have set the standard extremely high for next year’s students. This student led event was the culmination of a long process of work which began in early February.

Monday’s performances catered to three different schools from Doha. We had the pleasure of hosting groups of students from Qatar Academy, ACS and ISL. The visiting students were very interested in the research and information on display. It was commented by all how impressive the final products were and how evident the learning process was on the boards. In particular, it was noted that our students work was comprised of three languages: English, Spanish and Arabic. Group presentations took several creative formats, for example videos, brochures, information pamphlets, surveys, data analysis, interviews, poetry, mini books. SEK students answered questions confidently and enthusiastically and were eager to share their knowledge with all of our guests.

Tuesday heralded the long awaited performance for parents. It was a truly wonderful experience for all involved. Our students relished the opportunity to display their talents to our senior leadership team, teachers, mentors, parents and families. The excitement was palpable and the evening was a complete success. Parent feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Witnessing our students display the IB learner attributes and attitudes in such abundance was heartwarming. They were well equipped to answer people’s questions about their chosen topics and displayed true communication skills as well as being highly knowledgeable. The creativity and integrity on display was amazing.

Congratulations to everyone involved in this rewarding process. This was collaboration at its finest and was a huge team effort. We are already looking forward to next year’s exhibition.

On May 6, 2016, five students from SEK Qatar participated in the THIMUN Middle School Model United Nations Conference. Students had spent the previous term researching information on topics ranging from “The Recruitment of Youth by Terrorist Organizations” to “The Role of Sports in Society.” The students then developed position papers from the perspective of the member state of Canada and collaborated with students from schools all over Qatar to develop resolutions that would attempt to solve these global issues. The hard work of the students paid off; it was truly a rewarding day for the students.

SEK-Qatar librarian, Mr. Virgilio Medina Jr, was one of the speakers at the Metropolitan Libraries Conference organized by Qatar National Library at Qatar National Convention Center.

He presented a research paper on Digital Literacy and discussed how this could empower young learners to become competent users in a digital world.

With this project, he is working with his research collaborator, Professor Ross Todd, who is an internationally recognized school library educator at Rutgers University USA. The two of them are working on digital literacies and its role in improving school library services.

According to Mr Virgilio, “this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to inform people on what libraries can do in educating students to live and work for a global networked digital environment where information is continuously growing”.

The METLIB conference 2016 under the theme “Pearls in the desert: unleashing potential” is host to librarians and educators from around the world and is taking place until 28^th April.