Foreign language

“Foreign language” is a 40-minute class that the American school of Doha provides for the students, who want an additional language to learn, like Arabic, spinach and ESL.

The foreign language classes are provided starting from lower Elementary to Upper Elementary.

Arabic classes that spouse to be an important subject like math, science and social study. Unfortunately, the school gave it to the student just because their parents want them to keep their mother language.

There are three levels of Arabic classes, beginners, middle and advanced. However, the advanced student takes the Arabic Alphabet that the student in beginners supposed to be taking.

Students in grade 3 should know how to read Arabic alone, also to write long sentence, but In  American school of Doha  (ASD), students they cannot read or spell some Arabic words.

The teachers are very careless and do not take it seriously, they let the children choose what ever they want from the book shelf to read, so the students choose the one with more pictures and less words. Therefore, they talk about the pictures without reading any word. (This is from my experience).

When the teacher wants to grade the students, she asks them one question without paying any attention to listen to the student’s answers and give any grades she wants.

My suggestion is that the American school pays more attention to the Arabic classes, also, to put more effort on it. Consequently that children can take both the good education from them alongside they can keep their language and do not destroy. In addition parents would like them to get more educated Arabic teachers.

Science fair

Science fair is a competition between all 5^th grades students held by the science school department. The Science fair is a project where students are in groups of 3 to create an experimental question.  

A science fair project does not have to be expensive or even time consuming. However, it does require some planning and careful thought.

THIS Competition not only in American school of Doha, It is around the world. The winner teams in ASD will compete with other teams from different schools.

The main aim of this competition is not to prove a science fact. It is to let the children explore what will happen if they put different substances together, and experience teamwork. However, the judges focused were manly on teamwork. The science fair teacher said to get the highest scores, the students needed to work as a team, and every student had a part to work on.

 The goal of the science fair was to build the students strength in writing data tables, procedure, a hypothesis, variables, a conclusion and how to contact high scholars in the united state (E-mentors), and finally to ask them questions about how they can improve their work.

The ASD 5^th grade students ended up with a smile on their faces, explaining their hard work and coming up with accomplishments.

I suggest all school in Doha to focus in science, so they grow with good experience in experimenting things around them and knowing how to find answer to questions. 

A festival of music

    “A festival of music” is a music performance hosted by the American school of Doha in which the students participate it.

American school of Doha (ASD) offers music classes as core subjects. Students starting grade 1 to grade 12, all students attend Music Classes, where they learn music concepts and apply this knowledge in many activities, listening and performing. Every year the school gathers the parents and the teachers in order to show them what the students had been learning.

“A festival of music” is a concert that the student sings songs from around the world, and focusing on playing instruments.

There were 7 different classes participating in the concert, each class had to play a certain instrument, like Recorder, Xylophone, Gaiters, Piano, Drums, Violins, Glockenspiels. Also, each class had to sing a song from a different part of the world. The ASD community, music teachers and other 4th graders parents volunteer to set up for the concert and make different costumes.

The music teacher leads the children by hand motions, to inform the students when to start playing and when to stop. The music teacher focuses on how much effort the students put into performing in the concert.

This kind of concert helps students practice their instruments, which will lead them to develop skills and allows students to build their ability to present and perform.

The teacher did not give the opportunity to some students to participate in the concert, and the student did not get the choice to choose the instrument they want to play. Some kids say that “ its not fair that some students play an instrument and some not, also, some students sing solo while others sing with a group.

My suggestion is the student should chooses what they want to do in concert, like if student want to sing alone they get the opportunity to practice to get stronger. Also, they get the chance to choose the instrument they want to play.