Primary Learning Without Walls

Primary School Home Languages Event

ICS teachers, students and parents took part in our Home Languages event on Thursday March 18th. Students focussed on translating the Learner Profile into their home language and also shared experiences of times when they displayed one or more of the Profile words. Students with English as their home language did another activity based around the Learner Profile. These groups made a ‘Y’ chart and thought about what different Profile words look like, sound like and feel like. The students’ work will be displayed around the school so please come in and have a look.

We all had fun as students taught some of the teachers words in their language and had a good laugh at our attempts to pronounce them correctly! At the end of the session we came together as a school and reflected on how it felt to speak our home language at school- ‘weird’, ‘natural’, ‘fun’ and ‘happy’ were some of the responses!

Year 3 visits Royal College of Music

This term students in Year 3 engaged in a challenging interdisciplinary theme ‘How do we express ourselves?’ The central idea for students to explore was that beliefs and cultures may be expressed in a variety of ways. Students researched world religions and identified similarities and differences.

Students also investigated how different views are expressed in subjective cultural forms such as music and dance. They listened to music from around the world, as well as watching and trying dances from different cultures.
As an in-depth research exercise, Year 3 used Indonesia as a case study. The appropriate place to explore Indonesian culture further was the Royal College of Music where pupils sang folk songs in Indonesian, played with traditional shadow puppets (Wayang Kulit) and tried classical dance themselves. Students were truly inspired by tales from the Hindu epic the Ramyana and Hanuman and, as their teacher testifies, the ‘monkey god’ is their new super hero.

ICS Adopts a Polar Bear

After discussing several environmental issues during the units of inquiry, the Student Council decided to do additional work to address the climate change issues caused by global warming. Following research into the subject, they chose to adopt an animal from the One World Wildlife Organization, a British-based conservation charity. The Student Council put together a survey and collected data from the rest of the student body. ICS students chose to adopt a polar bear. The adoption donation will be used to help climate change research for the arctic areas. ICS Primary will receive monthly updates about their polar bear together with photographs of the wild creature. This endeavour by ICS students proves their initiative to help the environment and the future of this endangered animal.

Pizza for ICS, made by ICS

Our students are cooking their own school lunches on Fridays!
A food survey was completed by all students at Primary to determine which foods were popular and those that were disliked. Pizza, hardly a surprise, was deemed to be their favourite by far.

For students to become more involved in cooking and play a role in the food served at ICS, all classes will take turns making pizza for the rest of the school year on a weekly basis.

From Nursery and Reception up to Year 3 this will involve adding toppings to plain bases. Students in Years 4 through 6 will have the responsibility of making pizza bases so that no one at ICS misses out on developing their cooking skills and contributing to the school community.

Food preparation is a great way for students to be resourceful and also to learn more about healthy eating whilst gaining some essential cooking skills.

Eco-team update

Eco-team has had a very successful term and here are some of things they have achieved:

They have put ‘Hippo’ water saving devices in the cisterns of all the toilets in Primary School. This will significantly reduce the water being wasted every time we flush.

Another great achievement is that Eco Team has created an ICS Eco-Code and are proud to present it to the world.

The green team did an audit of which classes turn off their lights and which leave their lights on when students leave to go to break. They did audit before and after awareness was raised in an assembly. The team issued ‘Switch off’ stickers to the classes if they always turned their lights off. Their audit showed that now more classes are remembering to save energy.

Eco-team also entered their audit onto the ‘Join the pod’ and updated their blog with eco-teams progress and some photos. They have also added their eco-code, the schools environmental audit and their action plan to their homepage. Have a look at www.jointhepod.org and search for International Community School. In the plan for the next term Eco-team will monitor our waste and recycling and aim to improve biodiversity in our garden.

Walk on Wednesday

ICS Primary has started ‘Walk on Wednesday’ once a term in order to promote a healthy life style as well as helping our environment by reducing CO2 emissions. School buses drop students off at the top of Regent's park so the students accompanied by ICS teachers then walk to school. This activity supports the ICS Travel Plan (in co-ordination with Transport to London) to encourage more students to walk, not just to school, but in their daily lives.

The International Community School (ICS) Supports the Greening of Marylebone

Marylebone, 5 June 2009

Children from the International Community School recently joined local residents to celebrate the completion of the first phase of the W1W Tree Planting Initiative with the planting of forty chanticleer pear trees. The trees now line the entire length of Hallam Street up to the BBC’s new Broadcasting House facility. This success is the result of a partnership between Westminster City Council, Westminster Tree Trust, and local residents and businesses.

Green Street The occasion was marked by the unveiling of a commemorative plaque by Deputy Lord Mayor Councillor Alan Bradley and the ceremonial planting of a tree by Matthew Wright of Channel 5 TV and the BBC on Friday 5th of June. The planting was made with the help of children from the International Community School (ICS) before a large group of well wishers from the local area.

ICS students are well versed in environmental matters, a consistent curricular theme running throughout the school’s curriculum (the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme, IB PYP). Dr Caroline Fowler, the school’s Field Studies Officer who works tirelessly to provide local practical activities and experiences for the students, joined the children on this project. The children were very proud to take part in the tree planting event and to learn from Paul Akers, the borough’s chief tree specialist, about the type of trees that had been selected and the importance of this project from both a local and global perspective. As the children prepared the soil around the tree roots, they learned about the chanticleer pear trees which are well suited for their new home on Hallam Street as they have an excellent leaf retention span, retain their compact shape and do not encroach upon buildings.

Green street ICS thanks Mr Mark Gazaleh for inviting the School to participate in this significant local environmental event and the children will visit the trees regularly to monitor their growth.

CONTACTS:

Mark Gazaleh
The W1W Tree Planting Initiative Co-ordinator
E-mail: w1w.trees@live.co.uk

Westminster Tree Trust
www.westmtreetrust.org
Julian Maslinski
Telephone: 020 7828 2161
E-mail: julianmaslinski@gmail.com

Westminster City Council
Paul Akers
Telephone: 020 7641 6096
E-mail: pakers@westminster.gov.uk

The New Green Projects from the ICS Eco Team

Thanks to the good weather eco-club meetings take place in ICS green garden. Unlike other typical board members, our eco team got down to the action straight away and spent most of the time in the garden getting muddy! During the first meeting they planted vegetables that ICS community hopes to have for lunch very soon. They have planted carrots, peas, courgettes and potatoes. Our close inspections showed that these are all starting to grow. They have also tried to grow mushrooms but since they only grew one large mushroom, we have to give up on our hopes for mushroom risotto for lunch!

Each member of the club had the opportunity to grow something they chose in their own pots. Many of our young ecologists could see the results very soon as some plants, especially the sunflowers, grew very fast.
Whenever eco club has an opportunity to leave the garden it gets busy with the list of other green projects. These included visiting Regent’s park pond to identify birds and conducting a worm survey. The team was assigned to count the worms in the school garden. Eco club reports that only six worms have been found and identified. However, they are happy to contribute with this information to the UK wide study led by Imperial College and the Natural History Museum.

A Successful Term for the Parent-Teacher Organisation

The Parent-Teacher Organisation (PTO) offers a way for parents to become more involved with the daily activities at ICS. Our aim is to engage the diverse talents of our parent community in order to enrich our children's learning experience, while also helping parents to meet and to get to know each other.

This term PTO has participated in several events. In response to parental request the school organised an Internet safety workshop. The workshop was conducted by a specialist charity and took place at the ICS Secondary School at Star Street. Afterwards, the participants agreed that they had gained some valuable food for thought from the workshop – although it became clear that working out how our children can use the internet in a safe manner is something for each family to do gradually and individually. For some parents this may mean involving their children in the process through communication, while for others it may mean learning how to use technical means to restrict internet access for their children, or a combination of both.

Parents with Children The next successful event this term organised by the PTO was Teachers’ Appreciation Day. This year the PTO decided to give the children a lot of space to express thanks and appreciation to their teachers. The children wrote and decorated cards at home and on the day one parent went into each class to assist the children. Some parents were even so inspired that they initiated a game on the occasion. Overall the feedback was that it was quite touching to see how eager the children were to thank their teachers for their consistent and various efforts. On behalf of the parent community the PTO bought National Book Tokens for the teachers. Snacks and cake were set up in the staff room so that bus drivers and non-teaching staff would also feel appreciated.

Finally, there was International Day. The school community organises this event and everyone makes a big effort every year. The PTO’s contribution is to organize an international lunch. Every year we are surprised by how many parents contribute amazing dishes from their home countries. International Day seems to be the most popular event of the year with the highest rate of parent participation. Thank you to everyone who contributed to make this day special again this year!

Love Life, Live Sport, Practise Capoeira

This school year a new activity is added to ICS Primary diverse range of after school clubs. Every Monday from 3.30 – 4.30pm a group of students at the ICS primary school learns about Brazilian Martial Art that combines self-defense, acrobatics, music, singing (in Brazilian Portuguese) and afro-Brazilian culture into one unique art form. Students learned that Capoeira originates from the Brazilian-African slave trade, where slaves were banned from practicing self-defense and therefore hid it with fluid, graceful, dance-like moves.

Students are being taught by a genuine Capoeirista from Goiania, Brazil - Graduado Polegar. He is part of the international group Capoeira Nago and has been practicing Capoeira for 17 years. Graduado Polegar says, “For those of us who practice Capoeira (Capoeiristas), it becomes more than a sport or a hobby, but a philosophy by which we live our lives. It helps keep me mentally balanced, my body fit and healthy, gives me discipline and a sense of achievement in my life. It is also a great way to enjoy meeting people from different walks of life as Capoeira embraces diversity and prides itself on an ethos of tolerance, acceptance and respect.” The International Community School also strives to attain a “Celebration of Diversity” and through Capoeira, the students are learning more about how to be part of a diverse community.

Children in class Over the weeks our students at ICS have been knowledgeable by learning about how to warm-up their bodies properly through fun games and they have been risk-takers by trying new moves with their bodies, open-minded when learning about and experiencing things from a different culture and caring by supporting each other to achieve new moves and songs and to become Capoeiristas.

For more information on Capoeira please visit www.nagouk.com

VICTORIAN DAY

As part of Year 5’s ‘Past Lives, Past Times’ unit of inquiry, the students were able to get a small taste of a Victorian day classroom through drama. The classroom walls were covered up on the day in order to create a sparse and rigid atmosphere. Ms Sarah, being of English descent volunteered to be the Victorian teacher. It took some time for ICS members to recognise that the person behind the pale face, glasses, an old blouse and long skirt and boots was Ms Sarah. Year 5 girls had to wear dresses and the boys looked smart in trousers, shirts and stuffy suits!

To set up the tone of discipline, obedience and duty, the children were lined up before entering the classroom. Ms Sarah started the lesson in a very repetitive way– for example year 5 recited tables. The new ‘Victorian teacher’ was fairly mean and very strict (although Ms Sarah admits ‘it was quite hard not being able to crack a smile’) and may have temporarily upset a couple of students. However, she was forgiven at the end! The children participated wonderfully.