News
ICS Secondary School Competes in the UK?s Biggest Environmental Competition
Gearing up for the Climate Week Challenge!
Pupils from ICS Secondary School, London, will compete with tens of thousands of other people from schools, colleges and workplaces across the UK, in the country?s biggest environmental competition.
The Climate Week Challenge will kick off on Monday 12 March, marking the first day of Climate Week, the UK?s biggest climate change campaign. 80 pupils from Middle Years Programme, Middle Years Programme and Diploma Programme Preparation classes will take part in the Challenge which aims to get as many people as possible to come up with creative ideas to help the environment. An all-star judging panel including autumn watch?s Kate Humble, adventurer and TV presenter Bruce Parry and Spooks? star Sophia Myles will decide on the most creative entries.
The Climate Week Challenge is open to everyone and teams of 4 to 6 people compete within age categories although everyone is given the same core challenge. The Challenge is only revealed at 9am and teams have until the end of the day to submit their entry. Winners will be announced on Monday 26 March. Climate Week Challenge - Doc
Walk on Wednesday – 12th October 2011
This Wednesday, the Primary School students took part in another very successful ‘Walk on Wednesday’ and came to school on foot. Not only is this activity helping to encourage students to develop an active and healthy lifestyle, but also helps promote environmental literacy amongst the children. School buses dropped students off at the top of Regent's park so the students, accompanied by ICS teachers, could then walked 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.
Parents/Guardians Social Evenings
In recent weeks the Secondary and Primary schools have hosted Social Evenings for Parents and Guardians to meet informally with the teaching faculty.
Both events have been well attended and have undoubtedly helped the academic year to get off to a very positive start. At the Secondary School campus, there was a musical performance from a combined student and staff band, as well as, a presentation about the planned expedition to Ghana in April 2012. In addition, the evening was also an opportunity to welcome back Head of School, Philip Hurd, who returned to ICS in August after a 12 month sabbatical, that saw him travel around the world.
he next event in the ICS Social calendar is the Coffee morning for Primary School parents that will be held on Friday 14th October.
Booked Up
MYP1 and MYPP1 students have each chosen and received a free book to keep as part of the nationwide 'Booked Up' initiative.
Booked Up was launched in 2007, inspired by the Bookstart and Booktime programmes, which give free book packs to babies and reception-aged children respectively. During the first four years of the programme, Booked Up has given a free book to over 2.5 million children in England. Booked Up is generously supported by children’s book publishers and funded by the Department for Education (DfE). The programme is run by Booktrust, an independent charity dedicated to encouraging people of all ages and cultures to engage with books. Students had a range of books to choose from and watched messages from the books' authors to help them make their decision.
At ICS we see Reading as central to language and personal development. Personal ownership of books is one of many ways we can encourage our students to read.
Parents/Guardians Coffee morning
Friday 16th September saw the first ICS Primary School social event of the year at York Terrace East, with a Parents/Guardians Coffee morning. This informal event provided an opportunity for parents, particularly those that are new to the ICS school community, to come to school and meet the Senior Leadership team, as well as other parents. Stuart Pollard, the Head of Primary said, "it was fantastic to meet so many new parents and also to see some familiar faces after the summer break. We always enjoy welcoming new families into the ICS community and I would encourage all parents to attend one of these informal functions if at all possible during the school year."
The next Primary School coffee morning is scheduled for Friday 14th October. There is also a Social Evening for Parents and Guardians at the Secondary School on Thursday 29th September and a similar event at the Primary School on Thursday 6th October.
ICS are raising money to plant their own tree in Marylebone
On November 4th ICS eco-team attended a tree planting Ceremony on Weymouth Street in Marylebone with Barbara Windsor and the Lord Mayor of London. The ceremony highlighted the plans of the W1W Tree Planting Initiative (a registered charity) to plant hundreds of trees across our neighbourhood before the start of the 2012 London Olympics.
ICS eco-team has joined this initiative and is raising money to plant their own tree on Devonshire Street. To cover the cost of planting a tree, ICS eco-team organised a series of charity events, including a bake sale and a dress up day where students are invited to pay a pound and dress as trees, birds, insects and animals that live in trees.
Green ideas from the eco team have spread around the school and inspired years 4, 5 and 6 students to make their own eco request direct to Westminster council using the Woodland trust website. Furthermore, older year students went to Regent’s Park and investigated trees by measuring their circumference and calculating the their age. They have discovered that some trees were over 100 years old!
If you would like to campaign for trees on the street where you live you can send in photos of treeless streets to the Woodland Trust who will forward your request to your local council.
Fundraising initiatives will continue into the spring when we will hopefully be celebrating our own tree planting ceremony.
International Community School, London will be travelling to Engleberg, Switzerland for its annual ski trip, February 13-20 2011.
The students will be staying with Thabea and family at the Hotel Crystal. The trip is a great opportunity for students to develop their skiing and snowboarding skills, whatever their level. In addition, they will enjoy ice skating, rock climbing, sledging and other outdoor activities, as well as developing their confidence and skills as their teachers set them a number of challenges.
For further information about this trip and others, please visit Skola Travel and Learn.
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 word.
>> More about the Primary School Home Language Event . . .
Helping the Homeless
As part of the ICS Community and Service programme, students have been working with a charity called "North London Action for the Homeless".
>> More about Helping the Homeless . . .
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.
>> More about the visit to the Royal College of Music . . .
Home Languages Week
ICS Home Languages Programme is based on the belief that the native or mother tongue plays a very important part in a young people's identity and self-esteem. Furthermore, the mother tongue provides the basis for the student’s ability to learn. Therefore our ultimate goal is developing students’ bilingual identity and proficiency.
Here at ICS we share this vision with a wider global community and were happy to take part in UNESCO’s global celebration of the mother tongue language by marking 22nd February as the Home Language Day.
>> More about Home Language Week . . .
Paper free day at ICS
The fact 2.5 million tonnes of paper and cardboard are used annually in the UK and It takes 24 trees to make 1 ton of newspaper is something that calls for an action in opinion of ICS community. We decided to challenge ourselves by declaring the 26th January Paper-free day.
>> More about Paper Free Day . . .
The Soup Kitchen Challenge
As part of our Community Action module, Life Skills class decided to take part in the Salvation Army’s Soup Kitchen Challenge on the 27th of November. The Salvation Army is a charity that aims to help people in practical ways through its social service centres and community welfare programmes. Life Skills students worked extremely hard to make the event a success making fresh soup and bread and selling it to students and staff at lunch time.
This experience was an opportunity for our students to reach out to a community that has enriched the educational and social well-being of so many families in need; a societal ethic and accomplishment that Life Skills supports and works hard to sustain. Life Skills raised more £60.00 and they are very pleased with the support they received from the student body, faculty and staff.
Travel and Learn trip ‘The history and geography of ancient Egypt and the Nile’
This November ICS Secondary and Primary students went to a journey to discover the history and geography of ancient Egypt and Nile. As we combined learning with an expedition we visited ancient temples, saw Tutankhamen’s mummy, went inside a pyramid, rode camels, visited a school in a Nubian village and had time to take in all we saw whilst sailing down the Nile. Egypt has a fascinating history, and our guide Saleeb, an expert Archaeologist, was able to bring all the stories alive for us. Egypt proved to be an incredible country with an overwhelming history which made this Travel and Learn trip very special.
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.
Community and Service Day at ICS
ICS 15th of October 2009
Community and Service day is held annually and is one of the most important parts of the ICS Community and Service programme which encourages the development of the qualities of empathy, citizenship and responsibility amongst our students. The ICS Community and Service programme requires students to take part in activities which benefit and help their community and this is why one school day per year is devoted to projects of benefit to our school community.
This academic year the ICS Community and Service Day was held on Thursday 15th of October. Students participated in several projects which were of benefit to our whole school community such as preparing for the annual school production, reorganising classrooms and the resource centre, producing a school newsletter and making delicious desserts to feed the hungry workers!
Middle Years Foundation classes took upon themselves the project of translating general school information into the different languages spoken at ICS. By doing this, our ICS language pioneers helped not only linguistic diversity to flourish, but they also helped students whose English is not their first language.
Community and Service Day proved to be a great opportunity to give back to the community where students study and develop interpersonal skills. It was also a day when all school members worked as one big team.
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.
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.
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
Outdoor School in Bawdsey
This May, ICS Secondary students had an opportunity to attend ‘classrooms without walls’ in the ICS outdoor campus in Bawdsey. We decided to make our own patches a stimulating laboratory for fun and learning. More about Outdoor School in Bawdsey . . .
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! More about Green Projects . . .
International Day
Traditionally ICS Secondary annually dedicates a day to celebrate the internationalism and diversity, using our own experiences and knowledge as resources. This year International Day focused on exploring the theme of Identity. More about International Day . . .
Life Skills Pottery Exhibition
Life Skills Pottery Exhibition is the second major Life Skills exhibition this year which took place on Friday 19th of June, 2009. This event brought together not only secondary students but also the members of the whole ICS community- parents, teachers, former students , school leaders. More about Pottery Exhibition . . .
ICS takes part in the Big School Birdwatch!
ICS Secondary took part in the RSPB Big School Birdwatch at the Regent's Park Wildlife garden. This is an annual event that happens all over the UK to find out which bird species are increasing and which are decreasing. More about birdwaching . . .
EXCITE: Life Skills holds first photography exhibition
EXCITE is the first major photography exhibition ever to be held by the Life Skills Team. It takes a unique look at the journey of the life skills students. More about Photograpers . . .