BGE Gardener-Term 1 2016-2017

DECEMBER 2016 / ISSUE 05BY PUPILS, FOR PUPILS

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Extended Essay Competiton - Page 6 Sports Day - Page 8

A CULTURAL KALEIDOSCOPEBGE Celebrates Its Diversity In Annual Cultural Day

www.gardenestate.braeburn.com

News from the BGE Grapevine

A celebration of different nationalities, a day that we embrace who we are and where we are from and a day full of delicious mouth-watering food;

that is what cultural day is all about.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 4

On Friday 14th October Braeburn Garden Estate celebrated its annual cultural day.

Universities Fairs - Page 4 Trips - Page 7

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Meet the team who’ve planted The Gardener’s News

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A letter from the Executive Head

This academic year brought us many events, trips and sports activities, and as a result the newspaper team have had to work hard to cover as much as they could in the short time they had before the paper had to go to the printers.

With the new KS3 crew joining our team, we have had some great new journalists getting involved and making their way through primary, middle school and secondary to find out how students thought and felt about what had been happening in the school.

This first term found the journalism team still looking for the best way to get everything covered and reported in both words and images, but we managed and learnt new skills as we progressed! The result of our hard work is what you are currently reading and looking at.

We hope you will enjoy this brief look back at term one and we are looking forward to bringing you more news in the next two terms.

Have a wonderful Christmas holiday!

DECEMBER 2016 / ISSUE 05

From the editors

Ms Mbuvi & Mrs Laboso

John Herbert

[email protected] 03

During the first six weeks of this academic year, the IBs had numerous universities from around the world come and share some insight on various topics to do with the universities that they represent. They also got lots of general information that would allow students to get a

glimpse of what to expect as they transition into university, such as the application process, available courses and employability.

One of the first universities to come and one that stood out to be one of the most informative was the University of Southampton from the UK. Three individuals came to represent the university, a student and two lecturers. Each of these representatives would talk to us about an element of Southampton University that would be helpful for us to know about. The students were divided into three groups accordingly, with each one going to one of the three representatives and rotating after each session. One of the representatives was a neuroscience lecturer who had graduated from Oxford University. I personally found myself learning a lot from that brief period that we had with her. She talked about what neuroscience comprised of, the research that they were currently doing on Parkinson’s disease and she gave us some tips on what to consider when choosing a course at university.

The other lecturer that had come also talk to us about what we could expect if we decided to apply to the University of Southampton. This included some general information about the city, the weather, campus life as well as the fees. The student from the university also had a session where she gave us a glimpse of a typical biology experiment that would be done in the biology course that she was taking. All of this made for an extremely interesting and informative fair that sparked an interest in science for many and shed some light on the process and transition to university.

There were also two university fairs in a period of three days. The first one was held at school where a range of different universities from the UK, including the University of Brighton, Leeds University, the University of Edinburgh among others, came to inform us of their respective institutions.

The other fair was held in Premier Academy with 47 Universities and various international schools from around Nairobi in attendance. Each university had a stall with a number of representatives to talk to students about the university, the grade requirements, the application process, campus life and to answer any queries that the students had. After this, a private session was held in different classrooms where accredited individuals would talk about the courses that they taught, their experiences with taking the specific course at the university and advice that they would give to individuals who were interested in taking that course.

In addition to this we were visited by other, smaller scale, universities from Canada and Australia to introduce and offer some general information supplementary to what was learned from the other university fairs.

Overall, the many university fairs that we have had over the last six weeks have been greatly inspiring and edifying as we have not only eased ourselves to the idea of university but have gained a lot of wisdom and insight into what courses each of us are most interested in, what we should do to expand our qualifications for universities while in school, and how we can start investing on our future today.

The children in EYU have had a busy and very varied term. The EYU team did their best to have the kids learn and play in as many

different ways as possible. Apart from the pool party on Saturday, which offered an opportunity for both parents and kids to spend some relaxing time on a Saturday, the EYU students had a wide range of special days during school time as well.

The first special day was superhero day, but this was quickly followed by bedroom visits (where the kids showed the rest of the class where they live, play and sleep), bike day, trips to the farm, teddy bear picnics and colour day.

I think we can conclude that in EYU no day is the same and the students learn about themselves and the world in a great many different ways.


BY LYDIA GHIRMAYUniversity fairs at BGE

No grass, no theater roof and no compound wall. That was the first impression of the year 7, 8 and 9

students first entering the newly built block, at the end of the newly built bridge over the lake that you will probably have seen flooding onto the road.

The Key Stage 3 block, still a ‘work in progress’, is an exciting yet challenging piece of news for the KS3 students. Exciting as it’s a new building, new everything, and everyone is anxious to have a feel of what it is like being the first in a new school building. It is also challenging as the boundaries are very restricted; to let the grass grow the students had to keep strictly to the paths, a challenge for KS3 at times. This was even more challenging when the weather let us down as the path is not covered.

When completed though, we will be able to pass around the theater (which is covered), taking out the large detour that students have to take now to get around it. Another challenge is the scraps of building materials all around, coming from the theater that has not yet been completed. The building of the theater is yet another challenge, causing many distractions as pieces of metal are being hoisted or workers are clambering on the metal frames and waving in through the windows.

Although displaying a lot of troubles and new responsibilities, the KS3 block is an exciting thing for the students of KS3 and they can’t wait until it is completed. Hopefully this will be, at the longest, the beginning weeks of the upcoming Term 2.

BY TOM VAN AAKEN

Trials and tribulations in the new KS3 block EYU activities

this term



At around 12 the real festivities started. First we had our annual parade around the field wearing our national attire; there were lots of large flags that everyone was proudly showing

off. Following that there was the official opening and then a chance to wander round and taste different delicacies from around the world.

As we drifted between the stalls the high school band began to play; they were fantastic!! Some stalls that we had were: the Dutch stall with their chocolate sprinkle bread, the Belgian stall with their chips, the Italian stall with their much wanted pizza, the Malaysian stall with lovely delicacies, the Pakistani stall with some food we had never tasted before and many many more.

After we had eaten our share of yummy food, we went into the atrium to watch performances by years 3 to 13. All of them were amazing and we had a great time!

After a final performance by the amazingly talented acrobats, Mr Herbert thanked everyone who had helped to make cultural day the success that it was. It was then that everyone began to mill around and look for their parents as half term began.

BGE can now add cultural day 2016 to its list of successful cultural days.

BY REBECCA WHITE 2016

BGE can now add cultural day 2016 to its list of successful cultural days.

Cultural Day



MSMUN / EAMUN mock debates

The EE celebration, celebrating the completion of the challenging Extended Essay by the IB2s, took place in the

afternoon on 28 October. This celebration and the accompanying presentations by IB2 students made a big impression on the IB1s and helped them get started finding the perfect topic for their future essay. It also gave them lots of information on how to approach the EE research and how write an EE successfully.

The first part of the afternoon consisted of an introduction to the Extended Essay and presentations that IB2 had made for IB1. Those presentation were about what to do and what not to do. Many of them stated similar things such as: ‘Do not do maths or sciences' and all of them said that you should start now and not do it the last minute. It was helpful, but also intimidating for IB1 students. They were very interested and when they came downstairs started reading through the sample essays of the past year and thinking about what they could do.

After this the IB1s went to the library to look for some inspiration and ideas for their extended essay. The CP students were given separate information from the DP students since they needed to be told about their Refective Project, which is the CP variety of the extended essay.

The celebration lasted for about two hours and it really helped and encouraged the students.

The main message: Don’t waste your time and choose what you are passionate about!

The Extended Essay Celebration

Week 4 of the first term, throughout the week, piles of drawings and coloured-in sheets came in from primary students

that wanted their drawing in a swarm of others, to then be displayed in the school. A drawing from everyone, all placed together with the other drawings on one titanic-size collage: it was the time of the Big Draw.

This fun lunchtime activity for students from years 1-6 (the primary school) took place in the atrium of the primary building. The 5 ambassadors (Emmanuela, Unami, Joy, Mitalee and Tom) were responsible for running the event throughout the week, running on a rough schedule developed with Mr. Moffett.

At the start of the week, the students had templates to colour in or plain paper to draw something for themselves that was linked to the theme: the Big Five. In the last three days of the week, finding the templates an unoriginal idea, the ambassadors decided to print off pictures of the Big Five and then let the students only colour/draw their own.

In the end, the big draw was a big success as we had a lot of drawings coming in from nearly all the children. Very soon these will be put together in one huge collage, which will be displayed in the Primary. Another great artistic addition to the school

BY MITALEE SUSHAK

On 19 October it was bonfire night, but just before that there was the FROGS family fun day! It wasn’t just for fun, because with all the fun BGE made lots of money that went to

charity. When we interviewed Beha, he said that he liked the bouncing castles the most, but the older children were more impressed with the music, the snacks and the fireworks.

The band that was playing was really lovely and played on no matter what the weather tries to do and in spite of the occasional technical problem.

At the end of the day, everyone spent some time around the lovely, warm and rather HUGE

bonfire that was lit. Everyone loved it! The day really ended when all of a sudden there was a loud noise…and there were fireworks!

There were different shapes and sizes and there was a range of bright colours. On talking to Rebecca White we heard that she was really surprised to see such big , bright fireworks. She also admitted she was a bit scared, because she really did not expect the fireworks to be that BIG and LOUD.

A great day that ended in an equally great way. Hopefully the weather will be favourable again next year so we can, once again, enjoy this much fun and wonderful fireworks.

BY ADRIANA HAYDAROVA

BY SOFIA BENEVOLENSKAYA

BY TOM VAN AAKEN

On Monday the 31st of October, the inter-Braeburn mock debate took place. Students from across Braeburn came

to BGE in preparation for the annual MSMUN conference for the following year.

Much was achieved as students exercised their skill of debate. Also, the interaction with other students was a very valuable experience. One of the students said: “it was a great learning experience and I am very glad I came, let’s hope there’s more food next time”.

Mock debates always serve as a way for delegates to perfect their written resolutions, including adding missed information or simple grammatical errors. ‘Constructive criticism is always needed’ said Mrs Mitema as we walked over to the lunch hall for snacks.

Moreover, delegates, securitaries and junior chairs receive an allotted time to experiment his or her role which made their jobs for the coming debates easier.

Overall students from across Braeburn had a chance to converse with fellow delegates which resulted in the forming of many alliances for greater purpose later on during the conference.

Overall, they all familiarised themselves with the general procedure of debate which was a good outcome of this inter-Braeburn round of mock debates.

BONFIRE NIGHT

THE BIG DRAW



BY ADRIANA HAYDAROV

BY KHALEEL LALJI

BY MITALEE SUSHAK

BY UNAMI HIKWA

Who has heard of Karen Blixen? Well the year 2 have!!!

They went to the Karen Blixen museum on Wednesday the 21 of September. It matched their topic that half term, which was to compare old and new houses.

They were learning about her life and where she lived. Her house is over 100 years old, isn’t that amazing? Sadly she is dead, but she left us with a great museum to marvel at and learn from.

The year 2 and the teachers even met the former vice president on their trip, so the trip became even more special!

When asked about his trip, Haydarjon Haydarov said in a happy voice: “It was a best day ever, in my entire life! It was really fun! We even got to see her coffee machine that she used to use and the bed she used to sleep on those days!!!” The trip was really exiting for all year 2 students.

On the 14th of September the year 3s went on a super exciting trip the Nairobi National Park where they learnt about the wonders of the animal kingdom while doing a safari walk!

The trip started off with the students going on a very long journey to get there. Getting to the park on a weekday gives you lots of traffic, so they went the long way round. Dylan Okanda told us: “It took super long to get there, but it was way worth the wait!”, showing that the day at the park must have been very cool.

When they reached there the fun started immediately when they got the chance to meet some Masais and jumped and danced with them.

Seeing all the animals and learning about nature and culture in Kenya was fun and educational. A great trip for year 3!

Like in many other other school trip, children enjoyed nature in its many forms on this year 4 trip to Paradise Lost. The year 4 students had the pleasure of visiting one of the most famous gargantuan waterfalls and the historical caves in Paradise Lost on Monday 31 October.

During this, somewhat tiresome, day trip the student became more aware of their surroundings here in Nairobi and the nature around them.

Paradise Lost consists of numerous caves which act as homes for clusters of fruit bats. The students

explored these caves during their visit. The students told use the following about this: “they were very noisy and scary because it was dark”.

During their break for lunch, the children extended their exploration by talking small walks, finding horses on the way.

At the end of the day, the students were exhausted by running around all day and they returned back to school ready to share their crazy adventures of the day with their family.

No, we weren’t going to where there were only posh people wearing ballgown dresses but to a time when there was fantastic art and culture and…

The African Railway!The year 9s trekked back in time when

they visited the Nairobi National Railway Museum on Thursday 22nd October. They had a wonderful arts and history trip that began with a long monument scramble.

The Year 9s had to run through the

museum searching for answers to the questions in a booklet that was given to them by the teachers.

They then proceeded to do a few art tasks that required searching inside old trains and running above them too.

The students worked hard and they couldn’t help but run up and down the train parts and jump from cart to cart!

All in all, the trip was a lot of fun and educational as well.

Year 2 tip to Karen Blixen

Year 3 trip to the National Park

Year 4 trip to Paradise Lost

Let’s take a trip back in time!



Braeburn Garden Estate had a great start with sports this academic year. Different sports were played across the different

year groups and many trophies were won, records broken, tactics and games improved. The main focus of the terms was athletics with BGE going to multiple tournaments, ending in Kasarani on Friday 25 November.

The Braeburn Sports Festival took place this term and was a big success with everyone trying different sports. There was amazing team spirit and lots of good achievements were made.

As usual there was also the ever successful BGE swim team that went to Mombasa during half term and that came back with a number of medals including two bronzes for the U19.

There were many other sports played during the term with the boys’ focus being on cricket. Unfortunately for the U19 boys, who played well and had improved from last year, results were not too good.

The boys’ teams also played a lot of football with some good results, such as a 2-2 draw against Braeburn Gitanga road.

On the girls side there was some rounders for some age groups. Other girls played football but the real focus was on netball with the under 19 girls playing different matches against other schools. Some od the results were really very positive.

As mentioned before, the main focus of the term was athletics. We had different disciplines from both track events and field events.

Throughout the term each key stage had their sports day; the reports of these can be read in separate articles in this sports section. These sports days were an excellent way to, once again, realise how many great athletes BGE can be proud of. There is lots of potential in the school and during sports day we can all witness this first hand.

All in all, the sports year is off to a good start and we are looking forward to many more great events!

n September 14th the under 13s played Gitanga road at home. After the coin flip

won by Gitanga, BGE started by fielding/balling, while Gitanga started by batting.After the field was ready and the batsmen

alert, BGE started their balling with Ubaid, who, after a few balls, hit the middle stump with a ball and took out the first of the batsmen.

For a while after, the play was uneventful, with little batsmen taken out. The last ball was played and Gitanga ended up with a score of 137 runs, one batsman having scored over a

half century. There was a short break and BGE was to bat this time, opening the batting with Ubaid and Mazin. A few batsmen were taken out from the BGE team, resulting in a loss of runs.

Unfortunately, the match had to be stopped early as the Gitanga driver had misunderstood and had driven the opposition to Peponi first making them arrive here late, so the final results could never really be made.

Nevertheless, the team enjoyed their first cricket match and started working on the improvements Mr. Rock gave them.

Lots of activities, exercise and obviously fun for the KS1 students of our school were a clear sign that the KS1 sports day

was happening on 12 October 2016. The sports day itself did not have the usual

field and track events but some slightly different activities for the small students to enjoy more. Some examples include: shooting a football in a goal, throwing a ‘Nerf Vortex’, mini long jump, and many others.

The event was mostly run by the Primary prefects, who helped the children in every event, as the students went round from activity to

activity, like all the other sports days for other key stages.

The final event, though, was the ‘big race’, a 50-meter sprint, completed by all students present. As the cherry on the cake, to add to the final excitement for the students, the ‘big race’ was completed by some parents who kindly volunteered (by that we mean the kids dragged them to the starting line).

All in all, the KS1 sports day was a fun filled exciting day for the students and parents alike, who can’t wait to be present at the KS1 sports day next (academic) year.

Sports at BGE this term

KS1 Sports Day Inter-house Track and Field Events

U13 cricket vs Gitanga rd.

BY TANCREDI KORSAK

BY TADELLE GIRMABY ANDREW WAIREGI

BY TOM VAN AAKEN

The Inter-house athletics took place on the 11th of November following a cross-fit training session at lunch time, which was an advantage for some as they joined to warm-up for their events but a disadvantage for others since

they were already a bit tired. Generally this raised the already high atmosphere for everyone. This was added to by the changes in the track events with

shorter races (e.g. 400m to 300m) that appealed to more students and increased competition between the houses. The limited spaces per house for each event also made competition grow.

Most events were completely filled and performed to their best by those trying to improve and maintain their standings. They were motivated by the rest either with words, singing or encouraging looks. The school’s new addition of Hassan in the 1500m race led some to believe that Hassan would win while others believed more in Louis. Hassan did well and came in second, but Louis won the race with a very good time of 5.07.90s. In the under 15s Dele met the expectations of those who were supporting him and came 1st with a time of 45.68s. While in the Javelin throw Michael was believed to do well, and he was able to come in 2nd with distance of 16.69m.

Each of the houses had their own advantages with Poseidon having a team spirit, highly motivating their teammates. Athene were really focused on the team wins by choosing to take part in events willingly, while Artemis’s team did their events with a good attitude. Zeus’s team had devotion for their events and did well in the relay. Everyone cheered for others regardless of the house which shows the school spirit is even stronger than the house spirit. The Athene and Artemis house captains both said that their houses had performed well, and some believes that the final winning results would either be for Artemis or Athene. Well, wait no longer and find the results below.

Athletics Points Added House Points

1st Artemis 1479 300

2nd Athene 1425 200

3rd Zeus 1345 150

4th Poseidon 1155 100

Artemis won both the combined (U19+U17 teams) as well as the U13 with a total of 54 points. This was seen a close race with Athene for (U19+U17) when looking at the races. Mr Jackson’s thoughts on who he thought would win were: “Artemis from looking at last year, though it does appear that the gap is closing”. So, the competition is on and we wonder: will other teams be fighting amongst themselves for the swimming and music awards next, or will we have double awards from Artemis? Only time will tell. Good luck to everyone this year on all other house events!

BGE Gardener-Term 1 2016-2017

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