October2013

= Welcome to the October Edition of the WIS MYP Newsletter =

= Important Dates: = =1/2 Day: Friday October 25 = =Fall Break: Monday, October 28 - Friday, November 1 = =End of Trimester 1: November 29 (Report cards go home) =

= =

=Science NEWS:=

MYP1: Current Unit: Scientific Method
The students have been studying how to correctly perform scientific investigations. In the pictures below you can see examples of some of the experiments the students have completed during this unit. The first one shows the students trying to answer the question: How many rubber bands are required to safely bungee jump a stuffed animal in the stairwell? In the pictures that follow the students created a container to safely allow an egg to be dropped from the roof.

MYP2: Current Unit: Body Systems: Skeletal System
The students have been studying about the skeletal system. Here you can see the students working together analyzing different x-rays. The students also know the names of all the major bones, joints, and fractures.

MYP 3: Current Unit: Natural Disasters: Earthquakes
The students are currently studying plate tectonics and earthquakes. The students participated in several different lab activities such as: creating a seismograph, what does the plastic solid rock of the asthenosphere, and using crackers to demonstrate the three different types of plate boundaries: convergent, divergent and transform. In the pictures that follow you can see what the students performing such lab activities.







MYP 4/5: Current Unit: Chemical Reactions: Lewis Dot Structure
The students are currently working on how elements bond with each using the Lewis Dot Structure model to verify they predictions. Furthermore, the students have been studying the following: Mole calculation, ionic and covalent compounds naming requirements, and electron configuration. We will continue studying so that they will have a better understanding of how chemical reactions work. Next month the students will participate in several laboratory experiences where they will see first hand how the different types of chemical reactions occur.

=Language A=
 * MYP 1**

'I really loved this unit. It was very fun writing reviews, blurbs, book talk and reading logs. I really like to do reading logs because I can tell Mrs. Craig about books I read. I am also looking forward to the book talk. (Jaqueline)

'Writing the book talk was really hard because it has to be 4-5 minutes long. Even though it was hard, it was fun to write it, but it's really scary to present.' (Amelia)

'I enjoyed the reading journal because when i write reading journal, I can ask, did I read well? so I like it. I also like the book talk. I think to show my book to everyone is a little hard, but it's also fun.' (Jun Soo)

'I've enjoyed the book talk and presenting in front of class, because I like presenting. (Sae Rim)

'In this unit we learned how to write a blurb, review and a book talk. I have learned how to do all these things. The things I have enjoyed were doing blurbs and book talk. I didn't enjoy doing reading journal because it was annoying to do it every week.' (Otto)

'My favourite part was the reading journal. In the reading journal we need to include a summary, response, predictions and connections.' (Hyoungmin)

The students gave their book talks to the grade 5 students on Friday 25th October. They practised their presentation skills and they did a great job of drumming up interest in their books - I think there will be a waiting list for those titles for a while!






 * MYP 2**

'In this unit, we have been learning about Creative Writing.' It was awesome to learn creative writing. For example, we have to look at some photos and describe them. we used the five senses: taste, feel, sound, sight, smell and also synonyms to create setting. In this unit i enjoyed reading some stories and writing. I really liked 'The Vanishing Hitchhiker.' (Ho Jung)

'I learned how to make a better journal entry by using Mrs. Craig's tips and taking them into consideration and then apply them to my entry next time so I can get a better entry. I have enjoyed doing my journal entry. I also like reading books. (Simphiwe)

'Our unit was marketing and advertising. We learned how to make a good name and a slogan for a product. In this unit we practiced persuading skills and presentation skills. We made two small presentations and presented in front of our class. I liked everything that we did in this unit so far. Our final assessment is a presentation about our chocolate and persuade the audience to choose our product and marketing campaign.' (Hyoung Jun)
 * MYP 3**

'I learned how marketing works and why companies spend so much money on it. I never really thought about how many ads we see every day until this unit and that we can only see none when we are sleeping. I thought that was interesting.' (Robert)

'We have learned about presentation skills. I learned that I must improve my eye-contact.' (Jure)

'The most interesting part for me in this unit was learning the techniques that are used in a product’s slogan and creating them using those skills.' (YeIhn)

'I really enjoyed this unit, because I made a logo when I was in Japan, but I’ve never made the whole product, so that’s why I’m so interested in this unit. The final unit assessment task is to make a chocolate bar for the age of 9-16 year olds. We need to make the whole chocolate and the advert. Then we need to present it in front of the whole middle school. Me and Liina finished writing the investigation, but we didn’t finish the other parts. We’re in a hurry.' (Chiharu)

'In this unit I learned how to make a good slogan, name and effective advert. Honestly, I found everything interesting. I learned that I need to explain my ideas in more detail when presenting.' (Dhaya)

These pictures show the students working collaboratively on their marketing presentations:



MYP 4&5
‘During this unit I’ve learned a lot of things about travel writing and how to make our piece interesting. I’ve liked how we composed different types of writing, including brochure style writing, travel journalism and a guide book type writing. We’ve also learned a bit about humour and how to implement it into your writing.‘ (Alex)

‘I think I really enjoyed making the persuasive presentation because I like to talk about my country in front of people. The test was quite hard. I thought it would be easy but it wasn’t. I think I have to improve studying and reviewing. I liked this unit very much and the final assessment is to write a piece of travel journalism.’ (Ji Min)

‘I learned many things like how to structure sentences better (front-shifting), what to include when you entertain, how to describe a place well and how to persuade people to go… I didn’t like analysing all the texts we were given. However, I did like some of the activities we did like the powerpoint and the Warsaw trip writing.’ (Hania)

Our unit was about travel. Generally I learned so much English and many new words. About our subject, I learned different writing styles like travel journalism, guidebook and brochure. I enjoyed doing the practice about Finland. Everything felt good, but the hardest was understanding what I have to do.’ (Jessica)

‘This unit was about travel writing. I learned that there are 3 types of writing, brochure, travel journalism and travel guide. I enjoyed probably nothing and I didn’t like anything.’ (Seoung Woo)

=VISUAL ARTS news:=


 * MYP 1 & 2**

MYP 1 has map drawing almost finish. All October they were working on The World Map. Each student create different continent (except for Antarctica) 6 Graders were exploring many possibilities of artistic cartography and applied all this skills into their own map Grade 7 is about finishing The Roman Empire Mind map. After in-depth research they were able to create an interesting source of knowledge. Mind Mapping ability has developed their approach to learning.

An ambitious project – transferring one of the light mood from Claude Monet series of Rouen Cathedra paintings into outline draft of Colloseum. Each student has different painting of Monet cathedra and tries to implement colors, shadows and lights to their own application, which main theme is The Roman Colloseum.
 * MYP 3**

Grade 9 was creating paintings, which describe our modern society. The constrain is to use as much characteristic features of Marc Chagall works as possible. The picture should be a visual chronicle, telling next generation how our life looked like.
 * MYP 4**

Jessica and Alex are working hard upon their standalone project – History of Art Time Line. Alex is doing computer designed Time Line, while Jessica is doing handy design. She had great idea to show history of art as a big octopus with many arms.
 * MYP 5**

=DESIGN TECHNOLOGY news:=

Grade 6 and 7 envelopes project is completed. We can enjoy plenty of beautiful envelopes made by them. Every envelope is created using recyclable paper. Grade 7 has been assessed on different criteria than Grade 6, but both groups could learn how to use design cycle effectively. For Grade 6 it was very first time with The Design Cycle as a creative mind tool to develop designs.
 * MYP 1&2**

Grade 8 is working in pairs on advertisement company of chocolate bar. This is combined unit with LA. The final product will be a presentation of marketing campaign, which include name, logo, slogan, form of the chocolate, packaging, radio podcast and magazine advertisement.
 * MYP 3**

The travel guides (Grade 9), which describe difficult history in children friendly way, as well as a graphic novel(Grade 10) are in progress of work. Students go through all design cycle to create an interesting solution and to meet the goal – inform children about dramatic historical events, but do they no harm.
 * MYP 4&5**

**Mathematics:**
Amelia: This month i learned a lot about roman numerals. We also learned about orders of operation for example what goes first in math (- + x and division). We also did some fun activities for example crosswords and word search. Mr.Ewa is a really good teacher because before we do anything she explains it to us that’s why math is getting easier than it was before.
 * MYP 1 **

Hania: In math our teacher has been sick so for the past month we have been having lessons with many different teachers. Some teachers were really good at teaching however some a bit worse. Because of this I think I didn’t learn as much as I could’ve if Mrs. Ewa. Now that Mrs. Ewa is here I am happy to learn Math again because I think she explains things that I don’t understand the best. During this time our unit was revision of Algebra. I mostly found this easy because it was just revision and I remembered everything from the years before. However I did find some things hard like the investigation because I didn’t understand how to calculate this and I didn’t understand some math vocabulary. However, overall I guess these past 2 months of Mathematics were good and I’m happy to start learning more and more during this year.
 * MYP 4 **

Jessica: In math our teacher has been sick so long and we had many different teachers. And every lesson we learn different thing than last time so it was difficult. I did power-, square, surface area and volume calculation. When Mrs. Ewa came back it was easier learn because Mrs. Ewa explain better if I don’t understand.
 * MYP 5 **

**Language B Polish**

**Phase 1** Students are doing "Me and You" unit. During it they will learn how to describe themselves and others. They will tell about their interests and likes and dislikes. Students will be also expecting to questions others about their likes and dislikes as well as about someone's interests. As a formative assessment students will be supposed to create the poster of famous person they would like to introduce, write the script the role play scene and present it. At the end this unit every student will prepare and present 3-5 minutes presentation about themselves.

Students are finishing their first unit about spending free time. They learned and practice a lot dialogs in the restaurants and shops. Currently they are learning how to make an appointment using time in Polish. At the end of this unit students will write the script of long role play, about spending free time in Wroclaw.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 13px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Phase 2 **

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 13px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">**Phase 4-6** <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 13px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Students are in the middle of unit Second World War in Polish literature. Currently they are watching movie "Pamiętnik z Powstania Warszawskiego". At the end of this unit students will write kind of their own journal from the war.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 13px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">**CARDS FOR OLIWIA** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Oliwia is 6 year old girl from Zielona Góra fighting with cancer. She has birthday in October 24th. Her biggest dream currently is to get a lot of birthday <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 13px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">cards. So all MYP students made her a lot of birthday cards. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 13px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 13px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> =**<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 13px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Integration Workshop Krzydlina Mała **=

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">October 2-4 our MYP 1-3 students together with ATUT students participated in Integration Workshop in Krzydlina Mała. Students prepared and participated in activities which helped to build our school community. <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The second goal for students was took care of from „Wiosna” which is also placed in Krzydlina Mała. During fun activities designed for both our students and kids from orphanage we learned about Firefighters work and about middle age traditions and games. It was challenging for us but excited and fun as well. <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">All the students did an amazing job helping the orphans, but two of them deserve special recognition; Simphiwe in MYP 2 and Jure in MYP 3 because you could see that their efforts were really coming from the heart. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; font-size: 13px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">

<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">

UN Day Assembly On Thursday 24th October, we celebrated UN Day at Zielinskiego Campus with a special assembly organised and hosted by the MYP 3 students. Photographs and reflections will be in next month's newsletter.

=Language B French=

<span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 14.6667px;">MYP 1 Phase 1
We are on our way to finish our second unit about the classroom presentation. learned about the different instructions they can hear/read during the French class, the material they use and the starting routine they need to follow. They created a memory game about the material.



MYP 3/4/5 Phase 1
<span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 14.6667px;">We are in our unit about the classroom, speaking of the material we use during the class. A grammatical work was make on differentiating the gender of the nouns and map mind are created to remember the vocabulary.



MYP 3/4/5 Phase 2
<span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 14.6667px;">We add a short unit on our revisions because of the difficulties to remember most of all grammatical structures seen last year. This is a unit about our schedule and after the break we will finish it to start a unit on someone’s portrait.