VICE-PRINCIPAL’S MESSAGE

NEWSLETTER

ENGLISH INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL MOSCOW EAST

Friday 31st January

FORTHCOMING EVENTS

Computer Science Week

10th February

Valentine’s Day and Parent

Coffee Morning

Friday 14th February

Peter Pan Production

KS2 & KS3

Wednesday

19th February

Learning is a lifelong journey that starts from the day we are born. As a school, our goal is to give our students the skills that they can take with them as they continue on this exciting road of discovery.

We as teachers are also still learning. A number of our team have been taking part in a course called ‘Teaching English as a Second Language in the Mainstream Classroom’ (TESMC). This week our Orbital Education trainer, Zsofia Alibaux-Jakab, visited us here In Moscow. She has been supporting and facilitating this yearlong course, which was completed this week. EIS would like to congratulate those staff members on their commitment and hard work.

Our iGCSE and A-Level mock exams have now been completed. This stage of their learning is important to simulate the conditions that they will experience in the summer examinations and for them to identify where gaps/misconceptions are in their understanding.

This year, ICT and Art practical exams will commence from 20th April and our speaking examinations for the language courses will be from the 27th April. Soon students will receive their statements of entries. It is important that holidays are not booked for these dates (including some bank holidays in May) as the examination boards set the dates and we cannot reschedule them.

Subject Focus

Year 11 The content for the IGCSE course is now complete in Year 11 and the focus is now on reviewing that content and focusing on exam preparation. Last week the students completed their mock examinations. The main aim of these exams is to give the students a fuller picture on what to expect in the summer and to reflect on what went well and what they struggled with in terms of the exam questions themselves. To that end, the Year 11s have spent the week reading through and re writing the parts of the paper where they performed least well. This should set them in good stead moving forward.

Year 10 Year 10s this terms have been continuing the Core Content of their IGCSE course, specifically on the outbreak of the Cold War, analysing different stages of the breakdown in relations of the wartime alliance between the USA and the Soviet Union. Students this week were looking at key moments in the breakdown - from the Stalin's takeover of Eastern Europe to the USA's implementation of Marshall Aid throughout western Europe and analsying the different interpretations of each one from both an American and a Soviet perspective. The aim is to next week produced a balanced answer to the exam question 'Who was more to blame for the start of the Cold War'.

Year 9 The focus in Year 9 this term is on Nazi Germany and what life was like for different groups of people living under Hitler and the Nazi party's rule. This week it was the chance to explore what everyday life was like for young people living in Nazi Germany. This meant focusing on Nazi education and the way in which the Nazi's attempted to indoctrinate young people into their way of thinking through control of the curriculum. Students also explored the role that Hitler Youth played in preparing young boys to be the soldiers of the future. Students produced some original and well thought out diary entries giving their own interpretations of life as a teenager in Germany in the 1930s.

Year 8 This term has been all about the Industrial Revolution in Europe in the 19th Century, from the latest inventions to the changing landscapes to the living conditions of ordinary people at the time. Lessons took a darker turn this week as we investigated one of the most notorious serial killers in history -

Jack the Ripper. Students first learned about the conditions in East London where Jack committed his murders, then looked in detail at the victims themselves - trying to find connections between each one. Finally it was time to look at the most notorious Jack the Ripper suspects and deliver their own interpretation on who they believed the true identity of Jack the Ripper actually was.

Year 7 As part of the Year 7 course on the Medieval period in Europe, this term the subject focus has been on the role of Religion in the Middle Ages and why it held such importance in people's lives. This week the students learned about The Crusades - a series of Holy Wars by European Catholics to recover the Holy Land from the new Muslim empire in the East. Specifically, the students were focusing on the different motivations that Europeans had to leave their homes and risk their lives fighting for Christianity in a faraway land. There were some excellent write ups from students evaluating what they believed to be the most important

factors encouraging Europeans to venture on Crusade.

History

Year 8 researching about Jack the Ripper

Year 7 investigation

reasons people went

on the Crusades.

Pupils Awarded Personal Achievement and Endeavour Certificates this week:

Year 1/2 Ruhan & Kirill Year 3 Asmaa Year 4 Amanda

Year 5 Matvejs Year 6 Sophia & Maarij

Last weeks Star Athlete

Zoe

MATHLETICS CERTIFICATES WERE AWARDED TO:

GOLD Aliabbas

SILVER Matvejs, Rainers, Jayden, Amanda, Asmaa, Aliabbas

Celebration Assembly

This weeks

Star Athlete

Lev

YEAR 8 & 9 DRAMA As well as rehearsals for our upcoming production of Peter Pan, the Year 8 and 9 Drama students are learning to be set designers, builders and painters. They have designed the backdrop for the show and are in the process of putting all the pieces together. It has been a positive learning experience, with all the students working together to create the best set they can. Learning about all

the different aspects of theatre gives the students a wider understanding of the effort that goes in to creating a show. It also helps them to take more ownership of the production. They are, rightfully, very proud of what they have achieved so far. Ahmed and Tigran also used their technology expertise to create a poster for the show. Congratulations Years 8 and 9 for your hard work and dedication to Peter Pan!

Subject Focus

'Today we had calligraphy lesson and we

worked with water

Calligraphy Activity

Colours are a great way to enhance your work, and the gradient effect will take that to the next level. And today students were learning how can add a colour effect to your lettering/calligraphy!

'Today we were working with watercolors brush pen on our Calligraphy club. It was fun!

We were trying to make gradient' - Melisenta,Y9

Everyone in the stop motion movie club has been very busy over the past few weeks. They have experimented with different stop motion effects using characters, objects, sound effects, filters and even whiteboards! Students have now created their backdrop and their characters for their movie. Their current task is to put their movie together by moving their characters around the set slowly and carefully. They found out that the bigger the movements, the less effective the movie isA. After the movie has been created, students will make their own voice overs to narrate their movie. We can't wait to watch them! Did you know that it takes one full week to create one-two minutes of footage for a movie?

Stop Motion Movie Club

Nursery and Reception

Year 1 & 2 During English lessons, Year 1&2 enjoyed reading different books and testing their comprehension skills. It's great to see the reading progress and everyone becoming more fluent! Please continue to support your child at home by reading every evening with them for 10-15 minutes.

In Maths, children have started to learn about fractions. They are beginning to understand the concept of half and quarters and had a great time colouring different fractions of shapes. Year 1&2 were also able to label different fractions and put them into different categories based on if the shape was divided into half or into quarters.

During Topic time, the children have been continuing with their War and Remembrance unit of work, and completed different activities based on Remembrance Day including cutting and making their own poppies!

This week has been super exciting for early years children as they learned rainbow colors and everything they did in their writing, counting, colouring, painting and playing was full of colours. They learned the letter J and spoke about people who help us in every day life inside and outside the school setting. They enjoyed playing dressing up and danced.

Science :

Learning about light and shadows

Year 4

Year 3

In Maths, we have learnt about factors and products - finding factor pairs to help us with multiplication and division.

In English, we studied prefixes and how they change the meaning of words. We started to play our new Chose Your Own Adventure game "War With the Evil Power Master." It was a bit scary, but a lot of fun! We continued to write our persuasive texts. We have an exciting range of topics being written about from "we need to study the past to work for a better future" through to "happiness is much more important than money". It is exciting to see the students grow as aware and socially conscious members of society.

In Topic, we continued to research about the damages that plastic is doing to our world, and how we can make positive changes. The students are planning to drive a school wide campaign to cut down on plastic use.

In Science, we looked at the beginning of the food cycle (did you know that when we eat meat, we are eating our vegetables too?!). We learnt that plants eat air, which helps them to put on weight. We designed an experiment to weight air in order to test this hypothesis. We create mold terrariums to help us understand what happens when living things die, and to show how the food cycle becomes an endless circle.

In English, we have developed our knowledge of how to write super sentences this week. We have focused on work level work, particularly speech. We have learnt how to use speech marks and how to describe speech, other than using the word 'said.'

In Maths, we have been focusing on adding three digit numbers using partitioning as well as speeding up our mental calculation skills by applying strategies such as rounding to the nearest ten, finding near doubles and partitioning tens and ones.

We have enjoyed exploring our Science topic of light and shadow with some surprising sunshine this week! We were able to use the sunlight to make animal hand shadow puppets and learn about how light travels and is blocked to create shadows. We then went on to make shadow puppets and to tell the story of the Three Little Pigs using the light from the projector lamp. We also investigated how light travels through some materials and not others, depending on whether they are transparent, translucent or opaque.

Creating mold terrariums

Telephone: +7 (495) 301 21 04 Facebook: EIS Moscow East - Website: englishedmoscow.com

Year 6 Year 5

Over the past few weeks Year 5 have been reading My Mum’s A Pirate during Guided Reading. The class have enjoyed discussing the story, characters, learning new vocabulary and wondering what sea monster soup tastes like!

In English this week, student continued the unit of reference texts. Having researched their own topics of interest, Year 5 have planned, drafted and edited their own non-chronological reports. They discovered that writing without opinion and bias is a difficult process but is important to show impartiality.

This week in maths, students learnt to rehearse mental addition strategies for decimals and whole numbers; use rules of divisibility to find if numbers are divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 9 and 10; identity prime numbers; and revise finding factors of numbers.

Tim wrote his own rap song called ‘School is the Best’ and he performed it to the Primary school at this weeks assembly . We totally agree Tim - school is the best!

It has been another productive week in Year 6 with lots of excellent learning going on. In English, the children enjoyed reading a scary short story called The Curse of Cogston House. They learned about inferring characters' feelings, creating tension and writing effective setting descriptions. Next, they will try to use all of this when writing their own short stories.

In Maths, the focus has been on shapes. The children worked on perfecting their use of measuring equipment, particularly focusing on protractors to measure angles. They practised drawing shapes with specific lengths of sides and angles as accurately as possible. They also studied reasoning problems involving shapes.

In Topic lessons, Year 5 and 6 are nearing the end of their focus on South America. This week the children have been working on an individual research project in which they are producing their own information booklet on a South American country of their choice. Their work covers areas such as location, landscapes, language, culture, food, religion, climate and industry.

In Science, the children took on the role of engineers for an exciting group project. Their task - to make a plan to keep a coastal town safe from potential hurricanes. After learning about how hurricanes form and their often devastating impact, the children learned about different methods used to protect settlements. These included building sea walls and levees as well as planting wetlands and raising important buildings onto stilts. With a budget of only $1,000,000 each group had

to devise a plan of action that would protect as much of "Beachtown" as possible. After great teamwork, each group was able to produce a workable plan within the budget. Well done, everyone!

Year 5 & 6 Topic

Year 5 & 6 Science