April2013

= = Important Dates: =Spring Break: April 29 - May 3= =Student-Led Conferences for Grades 5-8: May 28-29=
 * Throughout the school year, students have been collecting samples of their work in folders. Subsequently, they have been choosing and reflecting on various pieces that demonstrate what they have been learning in the classroom. Their final collection might include samples of work they are proud of, skills they have been working on, personal goals achieved, progress made, or other items representing their learning during their school year. The student’s collection of work creates a portfolio; a tool used to help students process what they are learning, set their goals, recognize strengths and weaknesses, and develop responsibility for their own learning. Creating these portfolios is also an important element of the IB program, as it encourages students to be effective communicators and reflective about their learning.
 * Letter to parents regarding student-led conferences:


 * [[file:student led conference 2013 letter to parents.docx]]

=Student-led conferences for grade 10 will take place on Thursday 6th June=

= = =MYP 5 Personal Project Presentations: Thursday 23rd May=

=Festival of Art: May 13 - May 16= =Teacher-Only Day: May 17= =Spring Concert Rehearsal: May 9= =**Art Exhibition: May 14 at 16:30**= =Spring Concert: May 16 at 18:00=
 * During the Festival of Arts WIS will celebrate two big events. The opening of the **Art exhibition** will take place on **Tuesday the 14th at 16:30,** in the Theater. The **Spring concert** will start on **Thursday the 16th at 18:00,** in the Gym. We warmly invite you to come! Both events will display PYP and MYP Music, Arts and Design efforts from the entire year.

Important Announcements:

Dear Parents,

Due to rough play and poor sportsmanship, we have suspended soccer until after Spring Break. Upon their return, students will be expected to design a set of rules that will improve the level of sportsmanship and institute consequences for overly-aggressive play. Once they have done so, soccer may resume during one recess per day. Students will choose whether to play soccer during morning recess or during lunch recess.

Sincerely,

Middle School Teachers

= =

=World Studies=

MYP 1: Ancient Greece ongoing reflections

 * [[image:phot 1.JPG width="512" height="382" align="left"]]What is an example of human ingenuity that you have learned about in relation to the ancient Greeks? **

 I learned that the Greeks came up with democracy. We also use it today all over the world. The Greeks gathered on the side of a mountain and discussed what they should do. They usually voted in small groups but if it was very important they would make a slave carry a rope with paint on it and then walk into town and whoever got red paint on their clothes they would have to come to the meeting but if they didn’t they would have to pay a fine. --Simphiwe

MYP 2: The Renaissance ongoing reflections

 * [[image:phot 2.JPG width="518" height="387" align="left"]]Is there any knowledge or skills you have learned during our unit on Renaissance that you could apply to other subjects?**

Yes, we can apply some art knowledge like learning the the difference between paintings from the Middle Ages and paintings from the Renaissance. --MYP 2


 * Have you learned about anyone in the Renaissance who has exemplified the Learner Profile attribute of Communicators?**

Elizabeth I demonstrated that attribute by speaking multiple languages to her people, foreigners, and friends. --MYP 2

MYP 3: Government Systems ongoing reflections


**Have we met any examples of historical people being principled or unprincipled? **

In my current event’s article, there is the story of Mr. Maduro. He’s the new president of Venezuela and he was chosen by election, but the opposition says that this election was unfair. If what the opposition says is true, the president and the president’s party will have behaved in an unprincipled way. --Jimin

I learned that in countries like the USA they have a federal system and in countries like Poland they have a unitary system. This means that in the USA individual states can decide their laws. --Oliver
 * 1) **What’s the most interesting thing you’ve learned so far?**

MYP 5: Introduction to Economics ongoing reflections

 * [[image:phot 5.JPG width="518" height="387" align="left"]]Have you learned about any individual or institution that exemplifies the Learner Profile attribute of Risk-taker? **

The insurance company of AIG showed itself to be a risk-taker. When housing prices decreased, the whole system America had built started to crumble. AIG was confident that Lehman Brothers wouldn’t go bankrupt, and promised it’s clients that they would pay for each individual if Lehman Brothers went down. And it did. I see AIG being a huge risk taker as it was willing to insure everyone. It was a bit rash of them, but they had guts trusting Lehman Brothers in a time of economic imbalance.

--Minhae

**Mathematics**

MYP 1

Simphiwe:

In this unit we learned how to divide decimals and add and subtract and multiply. I liked all of the unit. I didn’t like that domino game because it was booooring.

Hojung:

In this unit I enjoyed it because it was fun. It was fun because I learned some new things for example I learned how to divide with the decimals and multiply. I didn’t enjoyed working with the book solving the questions and copy it down to my notebook. I would like to know more about some more divisions.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Vuyo:

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This unit I have learned how to use addition, Subtraction, Division, and Multi Locations. To use decimals. It was easy with the first few. But after the addition. It was hard for me.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Dhayah:

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I learned a lot about how to add, subtract, divide &multiply decimals. I liked how we were playing games. I think we should have played some more games. Learning to multiply and divide with 10 s was very easy.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">MYP 2

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Chiharu:

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In this unit, we learned about graphs. Firstly, we drew a lot of graphs on computer. Then, we went outside to count a type of car to draw a bar graph. We did it in a grope, I was with Victoria and Chai Hyun. We also drew the sector graph about student’s nationality. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It was easy for me to draw graphs, and I liked to draw the sector graph the most, because I liked to find a degree of sector graph and I also liked to calculate things. The hardest thing was to remember the name of the graph. We learned so many type of graphs.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Hyoung Jun:

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This month, we have been learning about different types of graphs and how we use them. First, we learned about column graph. Then, line graph and some other. I don’t like graphs but by doing this unit, I like them now. But I sometimes didn’t like it. Anyways, I learned a lot in this unit.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Andrea:

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In this unit we studied and learned about how to do results, numbers, surveys easier, using Graphs. We learned a lot of types of graphs: column, bar, pie, line, dot graphs. I think this unit was very easy, was one of the easiest and coolest unit we had in Maths. We first did a quiz in which car was most popular in Poland, we went to the parking place outside the school and we had to see the brands of the cars and make a bar graph out of the information that we had. Then we did a pie chart of what was the most popular country in our school (how many kids of which countries were more in school) the result was Korea.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So yeah I found this unit very easy to make and fun too, even if some graphs were just harder that other ones and hard to make and to make the result but in general the unit was easy and cool!

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">MYP 3

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Jimin:

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In this unit, we started to learn graphing relationship. It’s kind of similar to function. We were starting this unit with basic level which was very easy. For example, drawing straight line and drawing many parallelograms in one coordinate plane. However, the unit was getting harder and harder. The unit became difficult. In this terms, I tried really hard to solve problems myself but I asked questions a lot. Most students asked lots of questions and I realize that I must work harder so I will try more to solve problems myself. This unit is quite hard but it’s not bad maybe this unit can be my challenge :))

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Shivangi:

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So far in this unit we have learnt how to draw a scale and graph the points on them. We have also learnt about y-intercept and gradient. We have also learnt how to make formulas to plot the points and then connect them to make a straight line. The other thing that we have learnt is if the line is not straight after connecting the points then that means we have done something wrong. So far I’m enjoying the part to find the formulas because the only thing which I like the most in Maths is to find the formulas, so that is why I like the formula part of this unit. The part which I find tricky is to find the formula for the y-intercept and the gradient. Otherwise I like this unit.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">MYP 5

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Unna:

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In this Unit we learned about functions. More specifically about quadratic equations and now to draw graphs of the functions. I found this unit quite hard because there were a lot of things to learn and we did it in such a short time. Also drawing graphs was hard for me because I wasn’t always able to visualise how it should look like. Overall, This unit was enjoyable even though it was hard.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Emmi:

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In this unit we learned about graphs, quadratic equations and functions. This unit was complicated because there were many formulas and things that you just had to remember out of memory.


 * <span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 24px;">Science NEWS: **


 * <span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">MYP1: **<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;"> We are finishing our unit on chemistry. The students completed a lab where they burned wooden sticks dipped in different chemical to see the color of the flame. The students then predicted what chemicals were present in different fireworks.




 * <span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">MYP2: **<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">We are continuing our unit on Energy and Electricity. The students were able to design a skating track and determine how PGE and KE were affected. The unit will now focus on circuits and electricity.




 * <span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">MYP3: **<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">The students wrapped up their unit on simple machines. Each student will design their own simple machine and create presentation about how it works and why simple machines make our lives easier.




 * <span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">MYP5: **<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">The students started their new unit on REDOX reactions. The students have learned how to balance REDOX reactions, and have started to answer the question of how much money does oxidation cost in industry.

<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">

<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; line-height: 24px;">ANNUAL WIS FESTIVAL OF ARTS IS COMING: <span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">VISUAL ARTS & DESIGN TECHNOLOGY NEWS: **

<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">MYP 1 <span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">In Visual Arts MYP were finalizing their theatre posters on "Theatre in Painting Unit" <span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">In Design their were completing their autobiography book publishing.

<span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">MYP 2 <span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">It was a very busy month for Grade 7. They had a long, challenging, cross subjected unit. Illustration <span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">book for children. They wrote stories in Launguage A, did illustrations in Arts and published the books in DT. We are ending this unit now. Below are the examples of Chiharu's published pages. <span style="font-family: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">

=Language A=

MYP 1
We finished our autobiography unit this month and the students are now putting all their writing together in DT to create their own autobiography books.

Here are some of the student reflections:

I liked ‘//w////riting about what has happened in our lifes and// //sharing it with people around us and hearing what has// //happened in their lives. It is a nice way of understanding// //what a person has in their life.’// (Vuyo)

‘ // I have improved in L.A with using paragraphs and having less and less run on sentences. My //

// writing is more engaging now. I made it engaging by adding dialogue //// … //// I liked writing my autobiography. It was a long process but i lived through it and had fun at the same time. I also liked drawing Mrs. Pratchett because she is really challenging to draw. //// ’ // (Simphiwe)

// ‘ //// My writing became more //// engaging because I added dialogue //// and similes more often. I think I //// should work on learning more //// advanced past tense forms. My //// favourite part in this unit was //// presenting my timeline, because I //// was able to decorate it with my //// imagination. //// ’ // (Dhaya)

We have now started our unit on Greek Mythology. We read about how the ancient Greeks believed the world was created and we are looking into creation myths from our own cultures. We will share our findings after the spring break.

MYP 2
In MYP 2, we have started our unit on Shakespeare ’ s Romeo & Juliet. As well as reading extracts of the play, we will be watching different film versions of the play so that we can answer the unit question ‘ How can the same text be interpreted in different ways?

This is a very hands on unit that will focus on collaboration. The students will work in groups to come up with their own interpretation of a scene from the play.

At the beginning of the unit, students conducted research into Shakespeare, Shakespearean theatre, Elizabeth 1 and her connection with the theatre and Elizabethan England. The students worked in pairs, creating a powerpoint and presenting their findings to their peers.

‘ // I found interesting things from my topic //// “ //// William Shakespeare //// ’ //// s biography //// ” ////. I learned so many things from my research, for example Kristian found that Shakespeare was using 29000 words in his plays //// … //// The most interesting that I learnt from my classmates was from Victoria and Robert //// ’ //// s presentation, because there was so much information and the life in Elizabethan was quite interesting for me. //// ’ // (Chiharu)





MYP 3
We finished our unit on speechmaking when the grade 8 students presented their speeches to the grade 5-10 students.

//‘I felt really nervous when I presented my speech. The difference from practice to the actual presentation// was //that there were more people listing to it that made me nervous. I think that stressing the words was good but I still have to work on my pace. I spoke too fast when I presented it. I think the activities in this unit were helpful because I can use it in different subjects when I present.’ (//Oliver)

//‘Our unit title was speak for yourself. I really enjoyed this unit because this was the second time me writing a speech, and I like presenting speeches in front of my class ONLY. I learnt the literary tools like metaphors, power of three, alliteration, and much more. I think that my speech was good but it could still have been better because my speech was shorter than everyone else in my class, but I think that my content was good. I had few points but I think I explained them more clearly that is why my speech seemed to be interesting. I think that my speech was well organized and had good paragraphs. In my opinion I used most of the literary tools to make my speech more persuasive, I used Power of three, I used Repetition, I also asked many rhetorical questions.’// (Shivangi)







MYP 5
The MYP 5 students have begun a new unit. They are reading the novel 1984 by George Orwell. They have to read a section each week, keep a reading log and participate in student-led discussions on the key areas of the novel.

They are also in the process of preparing for their Personal Project presentations. The presentations will take place on Thursday 23rd May from 18.00-20.30. There will be a rehearsal in the theatre in front of the grade 5-8 students on Wednesday 8th May.