ISM Newsletter Lower Campus

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ISSUE 1 SCHOOL NEWSLETTER #03

The Inter national School of Moscow

NEWSLETTER A newsletter for parents, students and friends of our school

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2015 - 2016

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Headteacher’s Message The Moscow Seven Dear readers, As we come towards the end of a very short but eventful term, it is incredible to think about how much we have achieved in such a short space of time since January. From Art Week to Year 1, 2 and 3 Productions to our huge successes at COBIS events and beyond, it has, as always, been an absolute pleasure to witness the enthusiasm, passion and determination to succeed that emanates from our students every day.

Last week, I spoke to students in assemblies about the recruitment process that we have already started in order to recruit and retain the very highest quality teachers at The International School of Moscow. With more and more British and international schools opening up around the world and fewer numbers of young people joining the teaching profession, it is becoming increasingly challenging to recruit high quality teaching staff.

A common question asked of me by potential new teachers at the end of interviews is: “What are you most proud of in your school?” Until this academic year, my answer has always been the same: “Our fantastic students, our dedicated staff and our supportive community.” This year, I have added a fourth element to my answer: “Our PGCE students.”

PGCE stands for ‘Postgraduate Certificate in Education’. It is a one-year course available to graduates who wish to become teachers.

In recent years, many of The International School of Moscow’s best teachers (Mr Chapman, Miss Danby, Mr Davis and Mrs Samarin) have been nurtured following success firstly as Assistant Teachers in our school and then as Assistant Teachers working side by side, on a daily basis, with Teacher Mentors to finely hone their skills on the University of Buckingham’s PGCE course.

This academic year, we have an unprecedented seven Assistant Teachers completing their University of Buckingham PGCEs in our school. This week ‘The Moscow Seven’ have been assessed by their Tutor Mr Peter Kelly. Their progress over the course of this academic year has been staggering. In Mr Thompson, Miss Bantick, Miss Ngcobo, Miss Nugent, Mr Graham, Mr Powell and Miss Reid, we have seven excellent teachers who stand head and shoulders above the majority of teachers who I interview. ‘The Moscow Seven’ will fit seamlessly into our school next academic year. They enjoy working in our school, know our systems and are committed to The International School of Moscow for many years to come.

As we look to offer the PGCE programme to other highly able Assistant Teachers next academic year, one thing is for sure, our students’ futures are very bright in the care of ‘The Moscow Seven’.

Paul Keach - Headteacher

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Head of Lower School Lower Campus Reporting Team Quizzes Mr Noack Our Lower Campus Reporting Team, Serafim Ponomarenko and Sofya Omelchenko, sat down with Mr Noack to talk about the best events of the last half term, what he loves the most about his job and what we have to look forward to.

Q: How are you doing, Mr Noack?

Mr Noack: I am feeling fantastic, because Spring is finally here! In addition, the Year 3 production was amazing.

Q: What is it like to be the headmaster of Lower Campus?

Mr Noack: It is exciting and fun. I can visit any class and join. In addition, you can do whatever you want!

Q: How was the last half term for you?

Mr Noack: It was both busy and exciting.

We had a lot of brilliant performances and a number of competitions.

Q: You and Iliya Rudnitskiy from 3A came up with a competition called “I like Lower Campus�, where children submitted drawings of their favourite thing about school. What is your favourite thing about school?

Mr Noack: My most favourite thing about this job is the people I am working with. The parents, teachers, students - everyone I work with is great! Another thing I enjoy greatly are the performances. Year 4 had an amazing performance last term, and Year 3 were outstanding this term. I also get to watch how people develop, improve and learn and have a part in that progression.

Q: What are you looking forward to next?

Mr Noack: I am looking forward to our Year 2 production. I am certain it would be just as great as our previous two productions. I also cannot wait for outside play. We should start playing football and rugby on the fields really soon.

Q: Thank you very much for your time!

Mr Noack: You are very welcome!

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Nursery Under The Sea This term we have been concentrating on our two topics of “Under the sea” and “Transport”.

The children enjoyed learning about all the different sea creatures that live beneath the depths and for some reason the more teeth they have the more interested they seemed to be?

We then spent the last month looking at different forms of transport and how and when we would get to use them. You would be amazed at all the different types of transport our children have used between them and all the amazing destinations they have taken us to.

We have also been carrying on with our phonics and maths lessons, learning several new sounds and learning all about shapes and positional language.

Hopefully this will keep us in good shape and always on top.

This term has been a very short one, which has ensured Nursery has been full of energy and we have loved the chance to finally get outside and enjoy some proper sunshine after all this winters crazy weather. We hope that this carries on in to the summer term ahead and we cant wait to get started.

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Reception The Three Little Pigs

By Mrs Singh As our topic this term is Traditional Stories and Tales, one of our weekly themes this month was the story of “The Three Little Pigs”. The children really enjoyed this story and have been very busy building houses from straws; sticks and bricks just like the “Three Little Pigs”.

Children explored the materials and loved learning about different textures. They had so much fun making wolf/pig masks and retelling the story using props. We have also explored the story in Literacy by making lists, drawing story maps, story strips and writing keywords as well as sentences. The children have also practiced asking and writing questions to the pigs and the wolf.

Did you know that pigs like to roll around in the mud? Well, the children decided that they would like to pretend to roll in the mud too! The children used brown paint for the mud and then rolled plastic pigs around in it while singing: Roll, roll, roll around, in the mud all day.

That is what the pigs all do, what a way to play!

Roll, roll, roll around, that is how they stay, Oh, so very nice and cool, on a sunny day!

We all got in to a right old mess, but had tremendous fun! We did however have to keep an eye out for the big bad wolf. Every now and then we could feel a strong gust of wind blowing past our ears!

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Year 1 Art Week in Year 1

By Gracie Lawrence Year 1 really enjoyed Art Week! We focused on cityscapes around the world, looking at L.S. Lowry’s artwork in 1A and Stephen Wiltshire in 1B. The children used a variety of ways to create images, including painting, rolling, sticking, cutting, pasting and layering. They also used different materials in their artwork, including charcoal, watercolors, pastels, and many more.

The children were enthused during the assembly at the end of the week where each class got to show off their collaborative pieces and our competition pieces, where we had to create a piece of art using just 2 mysterious items. We were given boot polish and feathers/sparkly pom poms.

The parents were invited into school on the Friday to view, not only our fantastic artwork created throughout the week, but also our optional homework from our Houses and Homes topic. The children had created their own dolls’ houses, made ‘Homes powerpoints’ and created maths word problems all about houses around the world. The children really enjoyed looking at homes throughout history….yet another great topic!

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Year 2 It’s Alive!

Year Two has been learning about living and non-living things. To start off, we started growing beans in cups. It was amazing to see them sprout and grow everyday as we carefully watered them with a dropper. It was exciting to come into the classroom in the morning and see how much they had grown overnight..We are now learning about animal classification, different habitats from around the world and how living things have adapted to their environments. We also examined a real ostrich egg closely. Do you know the ostrich is the largest living species of bird and lays the largest eggs of any living bird? “ Planting the beans and watching them grow has been the best thing I ever did,” said Mathis.

Most of the children agreed with him!

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Year 3 Kings of the Hill During the last half term, Year 3 were not only climbing new academic heights, but learning about how conquer the geographical ones as well. They were learning all about mountains. They braved Mount Everest together with Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary, trekked through the Andes, and even peeked inside of a volcano- all within the safety of the classroom, of course!

During their academic expeditions, they learned about the tallest of peaks, the different types of mountains and the different ways in which a mountain is formed. Parents, feel free to test your knowledge against theirs- but don’t get too discouraged if they teach you a thing or two!

I sat down with Samir Chopra from 3C to talk about his knowledge of volcanoes. “We learned a lot about volcanoes,” he said. “We studied how volcanoes turn into mountains, and we even did our own volcano with Mentos and Cola, but it didn’t work. Then we did it with baking soda and vinegar and that one worked.”

Alice Khilko from 3C talked about the different activities they did related to mountains. “My favourite thing was drawing the mountains, because I like art,” she said. She also shared her ambitions for the future. “I would like to climb Everest one day,” she revealed, “because it is very tall.”

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Year 4 Experiment Extravaganza Vapours coming out of test tubes, liquid spread all across the floor, electricity brimming in the air and... jelly! Year 4’s classrooms were full of excitement last half term as they became scientists. (Not of the “mad” variety, thankfully. ) Children were conducting a variety of experiments to help them learn about electricity, forces, friction and air resistance.

Together, they made series circuits and recognised common conductors and insulators, as well as identifying and repairing errors in a circuit. After their hard work, children were able to solve scientific questions by designing and constructing simple series circuits. Even Tony Stark had to start from somewhere.

The kids had the most fun when learning about friction. They learned about surface tension by putting drops of water on a coin and had a lot of fun try to see who can put the most water drops on their coin. Another experiment involved putting different liquids on the white board and seeing which one would fall quickest. But by far their favourite experiment involved, of course, jelly. Each team had to attempt to pick up jelly between two sticks once, and then try again after they had covered the jelly with water. The experiment concluded that, in the end, the jelly was delicious.

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Russian Enjoying Russia’s Rich Culture In our Russian lessons this term, we’ve been challenging the children to explore more of Russia’s rich culture. Together in classes of all levels we’ve been working on our creative writing – from filling the gaps in a descriptive text top write a small story on a topic given by the teacher. Everyone has dove straight into their extracurricular reading, especially enjoying modern Russian literature.

We’ve also been challenging ourselves with that famous cornerstone of the Russian curriculum - learning famous poems and fables by heart. As well as improving their language skills, it’s been great to see children’s confidence grow as they perform their work in front of the class.

“My most favourite Russian game is “Молодец как-зеленый огурец,” said Leila Levinson.

“Our teacher brings out a hand puppet and we talk to it.

“We have been role playing shopping, and learning about hair, clothes, so we match words to pictures. We write sentences about topics.”

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Music ISM’s Got Talent Ladies and gentlemen, I’m proud to present the Lower Campus Grand Final of ISM’s Got Talent! Congratulations and thanks to all our competitors, selected finalists, and winners; we are proud of all of you and admire your efforts. Throughout the auditions and finals, you kept Lower Campus thoroughly entertained!

We had a panel of 6 independent judges, including three staff members and three students.

Each competitor was marked on skill, confidence and presence, with the winners being decided by totalling all the judges scores. We were very careful to double-check the scores, as the finish was very close indeed!

We started with a special guest performance from our cello teacher Mr. Sam, while the show itself had a great variety of performances: from piano, dance, clarinet and recorder performances, to group singing, magic, drama and even taekwondo. Congratulations to everyone!

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