BRITANNICA INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL Friday 20th January 2017

NEWSLETTER

Upcoming Events

Number 19

Dear Parents Another busy week at Britannica. It was fantastic to spend some time with the year 9 and 11 students and parents as they embarked on the first phase of the options process this week. The students showed real maturity in the discussions they were having with staff and the questions they were rais-ing. As a parent myself, I understand that this process can be difficult and I would advise the students to do their research into the courses they are hoping to follow to ensure they make the choices that are most suitable for them in terms of their interests, abilities and long term plans. We all definitely try even harder when we are motivated and interested in what we are trying to achieve. Attendance In other news, I would like to raise awareness with regards to the impact that attendance has on attain-ment and progress at school. As a community of parents and staff, we all want the best outcomes for our students at Britannica and I understand that at certain times of the year, particularly around holiday periods and during the winter months, it can be difficult to match work and family schedules around the school calendar. Illnesses also do happen and this is a natural problem. However, there is widespread research to suggest that attendance of below 93% has a significant impact on student outcomes in as-sessments and exams. At secondary level this can equate to up to one grade less achieved per subject in IGCSE subjects and at primary level not managing to achieve the two sub levels per year average pro-gress that is expected. Please bear this in mind when booking and planning family holidays and try to support your son or daughter in attending school as much as possible. Primary Assembly This morning’s Primary Music Assembly was certainly one the students and the many parents who sup-ported the event really enjoyed. It was lit up by a stunning individual performance on the Cello by Nan-ami Fukamachi-Jones from Y4 Tees and a great team effort from year 1 (and several teachers!) in their rendition of Bob Marley’s ‘Don’t worry about a thing’. There was fierce competition from all the classes to earn the best singing award and claim the house points on offer. After three enthusiastic perfor-mances Year 3 Stour emerged as the Singing winners. Well done! A recent introduction has been a new trophy for being the best at lining up. After a see-saw battle this week, Year 1 Avon were our first winners of the much sought after silver trophy. Will they manage to keep it next week, I wonder? Have a great weekend Neil McGarry Principal

Jan. - Feb. 2017 Friday, 27th January KS4/5 Reports Issued Thursday, 2nd February Secondary Parents’ After-noon Friday 3rd February PSA Bake Sale

Mr Bruce Mallord ICT Teacher

CyberPatriot Team Compete for the Gold Division, State Finals

Our team of upcoming Cyber Security experts have continued their progress earning a place in

the Gold Devision of the competition! Britannica International School is the first independent

school in the whole of Europe to take part.

Cyber Patriot is the National Youth Cyber Education Program. At the centre of Cyber Patriot

is the National Youth Cyber Defence Competition. The competition puts teams of high school

students in the position of newly hired IT professionals - tasked with managing the network of

a small company.

In the latest round our team was tasked with finding cybersecurity vulnerabilities within Win-

dows 8.1, Windows 10 and Ubunutu operating systems. They also completed a complex net-

work configuration challenge using Cisco PacketTracer.

Our team - Marton Szalai (year 10), Marta Serafinovica (year 10), Aditya Agarwal (year 10),

Aleksei Martirosov (year 11) and David Dzagnidze (year 12) have completed the Gold State

Final round and are looking forward to the results.

Learning to Differentiate

Last Friday, our Y11 additional Mathematics group had their first direct contact with the long ex-

pected topic of differentiation. Differential Calculus is the topic that will be in the focus of their

attention for the coming two years, therefore it is of great importance that, apart from acquiring the

skill to differentiate at master level, to understand the deeper meaning of differentiation both in

Physics and in Geometry.

To have a first experience with the topic, our students carried out an experiment. They measured the time a

moving car would take to be displaced over a given distance. They were asked to measure these times

starting from a displacement of 5m decreasing by 10 cm and represent their results in a

coordinate system.

The next task was to express the average speed of the car between times and ,

and find a geometric interpretation of v from their graph.

By investigating the possibilities to arrive at the momentary speed of the car at time , the

students soon arrived at the definition of the pointwise derivative, .

Now, “all” we need to do is to learn the rules for differentiation.

André Marie AMPÉRE (January 20, 1775 – 1836)

Ampére was a French physicist and mathematician who is one of the founders of modern electromagnetism, also

referred to as electrodynamics, together with Aleesandro Volta, Georg Ohm, James Watt and Charles Augustin de

Coloumb. In recognition of his work, his name is one of the 72 inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.

The Si unit of measurement of electric current is named after him.

Ampére was born and raised in a small town near Lyon. His studies of Latin enabled him to study the works of

Euler and Daniel Bernoulli at an early age.

In the course of the French Revolution, his father, who was a justice of peace, was guillotined in 1793. He was

married twice and had two children, both of whom he had a difficult relationship with. After the death of his wife

in 1803, he moved to Paris, where, despite his lack of a formal education, he was appointed a professor of Mathe-

matics at the Ecole Polytechnique. In 1824, he was elected the chair of Experimental Physics at the College de France.

He laid the foundations of electromagnetism by describing the behaviour of two parallel wires carrying electrical current. In Mathe-

matics, he worked with – and also competed against – Laplace, Cauchy and Poisson. One of his students was the famous Mathemati-

cian Liouville.

He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1827 and a foreign member of the Swedish Academy of Science in 1828.

Quote of the week

The future science of government should be called "la cybernétique".

Andre Marie Ampére, 1770 - 1836 Mr Andor Spisák Head of Science

In 3 Stour we have been learning about friction. To investigate the affects of friction we

decided to carry out an investigation using our toy cars. We measured how far the car

travelled on different surfaces.

We made our predictions and then off we went!

Ms Katherine Webb Year 3 Stour Class Teacher

The last day before half term, on the 17th of February, we will organise Farsang activities for

Primary again!

Farsang is a festive period between Vízkereszt (Epiphany, 6th Janu-

ary) and Hamvazószerda (Ash Wednesday, 46 days before Easter),

before the Lent starts in Western Christianity. Farsang is the time of

fun and feast, traditionally aimed at chasing winter away and invite

spring with laughter and joy. Hungarians eat a

lot of doughnuts and have fancy dress parties

in this season!

On the day of Farsang, Primary students can dress up

as anything they want to. Traditionally Farsang is

about being creative and making your own surprising

and funny costume. It is not just story characters you

can think about: you can be a balloon, a túró rudi or an

ice cream! You can even pair up with a friend to create

a co-operative costume with two people inside! Every-

body can show their costumes at the Assembly, and our jury will give priz-

es in the following cathegories:

The tallest costume

The best co-operative costume (with two or more people

inside)

The best costume made of recycled materials

The best disguise (noone can guess who’s inside)

The best traditional Hungarian costume

The best traditional British costume

The best object costume

The best animal costume

The best Kiliki costume (Kiliki is a character in the Hungarian as a second

language coursebook)

The costume with the longest nose

In the afternoon we will have fun activities and a disco!

Hope to see you there!

Ms Bori Dinnyés Teacher of Hungarian

SCHOLASTIC BOOK CLUB

20-31 JANUARY 2017 Dear Parents, Britannica International School would like to offer you to participate in Scholastic Book Club. Scholastic has hundreds of books that will inspire a lifelong love of reading in your child. You can find classics, latest popular series and award-winning books for all the age groups represented in our school. You may browse the leaflets online for three age groups: 0-6, 7-11 and teenagers: https://eu-shop.scholastic.co.uk/leaflets/mini

https://eu-shop.scholastic.co.uk/leaflets/xd

https://eu-shop.scholastic.co.uk/leaflets/teen

How It Works You need to use our school’s special web-link to select and purchase books:

https://eu-shop.scholastic.co.uk/schools/britannica-international-schoo The deadline is 31 January, after this date the group order will be closed. Our library will earn £0.20 for every £1.00 spent online; it will go towards free

books. The school will receive all of the pupil’s and school books via DHL within 7-10

working days after the group order is finalized. Books will be sorted out and distributed from the school. Each child will have a

printed bookmark listing their name, class and book titles ordered together with their books.

I hope you will take an advantage of this opportunity. I would be happy to answer any questions you may have, please do not hesitate to contact me. Zsuzsanna Kerekes Librarian

Open Days for Prospective Parents and Students

Britannica International School will be holding introductory Open Days on the

following dates:

Primary School Open Day Thursday, 9 February 2017

Secondary School Open Day

Thursday, 16 February 2017

The event will take place from 8:45 to 12:00 and will not interfere the usual life of the school.

If you have any friends or relatives interested in visiting the school on the Open Days please feel free to pass on

this invitation and both parents and children are welcome to attend.

Information and Registration:

http://www.britannicaschool.hu/Open-Days

Clubs at Britannica