TKS

Rick Fox – NBA player for the LA Lakers and Boston Celtics, actor in many films and television series, e-sports innovator, and founder and CEO of Partanna – visited The KAUST School as part of a partnership visit to the KAUST university.

The Elementary students gave him a great welcome in the school gymnasium and Rick talked to them about how the disciplines and team-nature of basketball, are aligned to the character traits required to be successful in your life and career.  This was followed by an equally energetic welcome by the Secondary Students, where he talked through his journey into basketball… and beyond.

The Edible School Garden Project was launched in 2020 as a collaboration between TKS and the Plant Scientists in the Biological and Environmental Sciences & Engineering (BESE) academic division of the University (led by Professor Rod Wing and Anna Rautek). The Edible School Garden will enable our students to develop a deep understanding of sustainable agricultural practices, food production, the environment, healthy food habits and living, and the study of plant science, and will offer learning across many curricula areas, including culture, history, math, chemistry, physics, biology, engineering... to K-12.

The students at TKS are working with plant scientists and garden designers to design and build the physical school garden, and TKS educators and the University faculty are working together to develop curricula. The project is on track to deliver the physical garden in August 2022, and it will be an embedded part of the curricula for the 2022/2023 school year. Phase 2 of the project will then look at building a TKS shade/greenhouse facility including a biology lab which can be used to undertake hands-on experiments, which will be led by the University’s students and postdocs.

Once up and running, Secondary students will also have the opportunity to take part in research projects that are being carried out at the existing KAUST research field site and greenhouse.

The Grade 11 students engaged in this challenge as part of their Group 4 project – a collaborative and multi-disciplinary activity that encourages IB Diploma Program (DP) science students to appreciate and investigate the environmental, social, and ethical implications of science. Engineering Design students in Grades 9-12 also took part as part of their final project.

Kindergarten students used their knowledge of geometric shapes to create a garden layout for the garden that will be created at the Kindergarten.

The designs were judged by TKS faculty, staff from the Center for Desert Agriculture and Plant Scientist, and prizes were awarded in the categories of Best Overall Design, Best Research, Most Sustainable Design, Best Individual Submission and Best Kindergarten Submission.

Congratulations to all the participants. The top designs will contribute towards the overall final design for the Edible School Garden.

The Red Sea Decade Expedition is an ambitious project, led by the National Center for Wildlife (NCW), to deliver an end-to-end inventory of biodiversity and habitats in the Red Sea, involving a large-scale collaborative effort including KAUST, KAU, KFUPM, OceanX, The Red Sea Project and NEOM.  The expedition set off in February 2022 and will last for four months.  The project will also deliver education and outreach materials to inform on the unique biodiversity and conservation importance of the Red Sea.  To this end, TKS is working with the university researchers (led by Distinguished Professor Carlos Duarte) and project team to develop content for weekly ‘live’ classroom sessions, recorded sessions and other challenges/experiments.  Lessons are being offered to all ages across TKS (from K-12), and will include live lessons, project-based activity, and co-curricular groups.  TKS students are not only participating as learners in the sessions, but some are part of the panel and are able to ask questions/pose challenges to the on-board researchers directly.

Live lessons began in March, 2022 and will continue for the duration of the expedition.

Grade 4s have recently completed their learning unit about living things and adaptations.  This fitted well with the Red Sea Decade Expedition classrooms being delivered live from the OceanX vessels.  In addition to the OceanX team, Lyndsey Tanabe – a Marine Science student in the Red Sea Research Center presented to the TKS students about turtles in the Red Sea.  The students learned about the downstream effects of rising water temperatures on sea turtles.  The students also studied reports about how lawn run-off (full of fertilizer) is effecting manatees in Jacksonville, Florida and developed a cause and effect model to illustrate this.