MIDDLE SCHOOL

Dear DAA Middle School Families,

It has been a great couple of weeks as students have had high-achieving academics on display with their MAP tests.  Preliminary numbers across all subject areas are very encouraging, and we know this is because of our students’ hard work and the support of our families!  Throughout the spring semester, our departments have strategized in order to find ways to individualize student growth and inspire students to do their best as we wrap up the year!  Kudos to everyone for the effort in having students #ShowWhatTheyKnow!

As we head into our final weeks of the school year, we are engaging our students in high-level, exciting activities!  This week, our grade 7 students got the opportunity to see how lungs work by pumping air into a real set of lungs!  In an assembly on Wednesday, the first Arab woman to climb Mount Everest came to talk to our grade 8 students to show them their potential is limitless.

A self-driven and self-motivated group of Middle School students have taken it upon themselves to start a Middle School newspaper. For two of their initial stories they felt it would be important to interview our incoming Superintendent/CEO, Dr. Ethan Hildreth and our current Superintendent/CEO, Ms. Tammy Murphy.

They asked insightful and personal questions and are so excited to write up their articles. What an impressive and organized group of middle school students!

This is a very special tradition in our middle school and I’m glad we could all come together to celebrate the very important people at our school, the true VIP’s, that make our community safe, clean and ready for learning every day. Whether it is a bus driver, a bus helper, a security guard, a cleaner, a maintenance person, a landscaper, a room fogger or any of the other incredibly valuable roles at our school, today is about making them feel special, important and valued. Having them know that we see them, care about them and respect them. It was wonderful that they were able to come to CREW classes and students got to interview them and get to know them a little better, getting to know the person behind the uniform. These interactions and opportunities to help build relationships is what makes our Culture of Kindness a reality here at DAA. We see it on the pitch, in the hallways, and in every exchanged smile we give to each other while at school. It’s what makes us proud to be leopards. 

To sum up, I’d like to share how much we were able to raise… drumroll please… 

The middle school raised over AED 16,500 to show our appreciation for our support workers! And with this we have been able to say thank you to each and every one of them with a personalized gift for the wonderful work they do at DAA. 

It is essential that your child misses as little class time as possible every day. We understand that anybody could be late on a given day. However, we must avoid our students being persistently tardy to school. From Monday, 23rd of May any student that accumulates three unexcused morning tardies (Block 1) at any time until the end of the school year will serve lunchtime detention on a date and location specified by the Middle School office. Three further tardies, you will serve after-school detention until 4 pm. Your family will receive communication from our attendance secretary, Ms. Agha in both cases as outlined above. 

Would you like to contact a middle school teacher or staff member?  Please see the list of email addresses here.

If you are still having technical troubles, please make sure to raise a ticket if the teacher is unable to help your child with a fix.  Send an email to studenthelpdesk@gemsdaa.net and they will help resolve the issue.

On Sunday, May 28th, our Middle School Student Innovation Team members took part in the Dubai Regional First Lego League (FLL) Challenge.  The scenario this year was to create a robot to complete 17 challenges related to Cargo.  Students had spent the past 2 months working in teams of 5 each in order to design, build, code, and test their robotic solutions.  We had two teams competing this year- Planet Cargo and Robozon.  The competition consists of 4 rounds including a Robotic Challenge,  Robot Design Presentation, An Innovation Project, and A Core Values Challenge.  The competition was strong from Dubai schools, many of whom had started way earlier than our teams.  And although our teams placed just outside the top 10 for Robotic Challenge, we are very proud of the amazing robots these students built and coded.  Our students didn’t leave empty handed and were awarded medals, certificates, and we also picked up 2 trophies in the Judges Award (for the Innovation Project) and Core Values Categories.  I would like to personally thank their coach Ms. Mandy Gintaut as well as all the students that took part :- Planet Cargo Team (Gio Haddad, Christian Denis, Ahaan Mehta, Ruhaan Sahi, and Yash Mulik), and Robozon Team (Shanaya Ailsinghani, Soyoul Yoon, Yaming Zheng, Ryan Benraouane, and Gabriel Tan).  Well done MS DAA FLL Teams!

Learning values through our curriculum is one great thing... applying them into our lives is EVERYTHING! This is how our MS Islamic Education students are celebrating their creative projects at the Values Project Exhibition! 

This year the Annual Holy Quran Competition was held during the blessed month of Ramadan. On this occasion the Islamic Education Department at DAA would like to announce the winners from all divisions. Congratulations to the winners and participants, you did an amazing job! Bless you all.