December Newsletter 2015 - 2016 From the Principal Dear school community, The year 2015 has come to an end. Again we are looking back on a very positive development in all sections of our school. With the generous offering of the City of Kobe, to rent a big part of our neighborhood land, we could solve our space issue. With this positive outlook we celebrated Christmas and the end of 2015 and we are ready for the year of the monkey. I would like to express my deepest thanks to our school community and friends for the strong support and commitment.
I wish you a sense of togetherness and an encouraging start in to the New Year. Yours Gerhard Lebherz, Principal
Deutsche Schule Kobe – European School 3-2-8 Koyochonaka Higashinada-ku, Kobe 658-0032 Japan Tel.: 078-857-9777・Fax: 078 857- 9775・http://www.dskobe.org/・mail@dskobe.org
Events We finished the year 2015 with our annual Christmas Market. We started with awesome performances from the Baton Twirling Club followed by Early Years and Middle School. Right after that all grades had prepared beautiful gifts to sell at their booths. Finally Santa Claus came by to give each student their Christmas presents.
Deutsche Schule Kobe – European School 3-2-8 Koyochonaka Higashinada-ku, Kobe 658-0032 Japan Tel.: 078-857-9777・Fax: 078 857- 9775・http://www.dskobe.org/・mail@dskobe.org
Student Council
Our Student Council was elected two month ago and started working on their first topics. Currently they are trying to set up new rules for the playground. At the same time they are surveying their classmates about having the school day end already at 3.30pm.
Deutsche Schule Kobe – European School 3-2-8 Koyochonaka Higashinada-ku, Kobe 658-0032 Japan Tel.: 078-857-9777・Fax: 078 857- 9775・http://www.dskobe.org/・mail@dskobe.org
Early Years For our Whole Year Unit: Sharing the Planet, we challenged the children to go outside and find pictures we had hidden of various fruits, vegetables, and animals. Once they had gathered the images, we asked if they could sort them into living and nonliving categories. Animals were easy, but plants needed extra thinking skills! In the end, we concluded that fruits and vegetables on the branch were living, and picked were non-living– meaning we could eat them!
Deutsche Schule Kobe – European School 3-2-8 Koyochonaka Higashinada-ku, Kobe 658-0032 Japan Tel.: 078-857-9777・Fax: 078 857- 9775・http://www.dskobe.org/・mail@dskobe.org
Pre School This week in Language, Preschool got swept away into the magical world of “The Snow Globe Family”. And what a truly magical world! The students engaged their senses, fastened their thinking caps nice and tight and got carried away, imagining what it would be like if they lived inside a snow globe… Miss Michelotti then challenged them all and asked them to write their ideas and I am so proud of all of them, their writing is neater, they are sounding out words and no longer need the Miss Michelotti word machine to help them the whole time. Once they got the tough writing part out of the way then came the fun part, creating the actual snow globes and they look fantastic displayed in the classroom!
Deutsche Schule Kobe – European School 3-2-8 Koyochonaka Higashinada-ku, Kobe 658-0032 Japan Tel.: 078-857-9777・Fax: 078 857- 9775・http://www.dskobe.org/・mail@dskobe.org
Grade 1 During the final few weeks of the year, the first and second grade students gathered together during their art time to make Christmas Tree Ornaments to sell at the annual DESK Christmas Market on December 18. They worked hard, like good little elves and even made signs to help advertise the prices as well!
Deutsche Schule Kobe – European School 3-2-8 Koyochonaka Higashinada-ku, Kobe 658-0032 Japan Tel.: 078-857-9777・Fax: 078 857- 9775・http://www.dskobe.org/・mail@dskobe.org
As our unit with the central Grade 2 idea, "Understanding our place in the world develops our understanding of our personal journeys" is coming to a close, we have been working on our personal learning projects. We all chose a skill or knowledge which we wanted to learn and each thought about the following questions: -What will I learn? -How will I learn? -What will I use? -How can I show my learning?
Deutsche Schule Kobe – European School 3-2-8 Koyochonaka Higashinada-ku, Kobe 658-0032 Japan Tel.: 078-857-9777・Fax: 078 857- 9775・http://www.dskobe.org/・mail@dskobe.org
Grade 3
The students have been working hard to understand the difficult concept of energy including the types, the transfer as well as what it means to use renewable and nonrenewable sources of energy. We made predictions about the end result for varying experiments and we outlined the energy identified in each stage of the experiment to show a change/ transfer in energy forms.
Deutsche Schule Kobe – European School 3-2-8 Koyochonaka Higashinada-ku, Kobe 658-0032 Japan Tel.: 078-857-9777・Fax: 078 857- 9775・http://www.dskobe.org/・mail@dskobe.org
Grade 4
Students witnessed first hand the power of water and air in this activity. Throughout this activity, we discussed the connection to potential and kinetic energy in the rockets. Next steps include the ratio of water/air- how to reach the maximum height.
Deutsche Schule Kobe – European School 3-2-8 Koyochonaka Higashinada-ku, Kobe 658-0032 Japan Tel.: 078-857-9777・Fax: 078 857- 9775・http://www.dskobe.org/・mail@dskobe.org
Grade 5
Students were given the task of building a community with a meeting point (earthquake-safe building made in Art) and a man-made tsunami barrier. They were to use their knowledge from the unit to create the structures and place them strategically within their communities.
Deutsche Schule Kobe – European School 3-2-8 Koyochonaka Higashinada-ku, Kobe 658-0032 Japan Tel.: 078-857-9777・Fax: 078 857- 9775・http://www.dskobe.org/・mail@dskobe.org
Grade 6 & 7
This week, the gravity simulator created by Grade 7 was used by the PYP Grade 3 and 4 students in their Energy unit, further illustrating how tools created by the Middle Years are enriching the learning of the Primary Years children. Acting as the science expert for gravitational energy, Ms. Lee guided the students through a interactive demonstration of the model. The gravity simulator has already made a number of appearances this year at the Middle School opening and in the after school science club.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79uJ0shAT3k
Deutsche Schule Kobe – European School 3-2-8 Koyochonaka Higashinada-ku, Kobe 658-0032 Japan Tel.: 078-857-9777・Fax: 078 857- 9775・http://www.dskobe.org/・mail@dskobe.org