Category Archives: We are IB Learners!

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Grade 6 IB Learner Profile Wall of Honour

In Grade 6 homeroom class, we celebrate our differences and promote the IB Learner Profile attributes by nominating classmates who we think represent the 10 LP attributes best.

We started this activity in September 2020 by reflecting and observing one another during classroom lessons (even during distance learning) to determine who we think deserves special recognition for any of the different LP attributes. It is our responsibility to be fair ensuring that we are not nominating our classmates because we are “close friends”. Then, our homeroom teachers observe the nominated student to validate our nominations.

After final deliberation of our teachers, during one of our Homeroom sessions there will be an announcement recognizing the student who deserves to get their hands marked on the IB Learner Wall of Honour in our classroom. With this activity, we feel proud and successful. Above all,  we learn how to reflect, appreciate our classmates and try our best to achieve the 10 IB learner attributes to inspire others.

Sasha and Maahi, Grade 6

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Chumbe Island

Sustainable Waste Management Campaign

As our activities at H.I.S. begin ahead of Environment Week (14-21 June) with the Environment Week Challenge Punchcards, our connection to Chumbe Island Coral Park, a protected marine area off the coast of Zanzibar in Tanzania, grows.

A chance meeting in the Weststadt, Heidelberg, with the marine park’s founder, Sibylle Riedmiller, has led to a burgeoning collaboration between Chumbe Island’s marine experts and educators, and the students and teachers of H.I.S. Grade 10 and Grade 2 have made contact with the island and have arranged Zoom calls with question-and-answer sessions on sustainable development and marine pollution.

As we prepare to work collaboratively on our most ambitious rooftop Mandala to date (kick off 7th June), with a design inspired by the turtles of Chumbe Island, and as our thoughts turn towards what we can do to reduce our environmental footprint, we have just received information about what is happening in 6 coastal villages close to Chumbe Island.

Chumbe’s Sustainable Waste Management Campaign has been working with 10 Waste Ambassadors from each community, with education and training culminating in 6 beach clean ups and the analysis of waste.The overwhelming majority of marine debris found during the beach clean-ups was degraded plastic and styrofoam. Each village has since been building a sculpture in their village using the waste they collected to tell their waste issue story. Here are some photos from the communities of Buyu, Chukwani, Dimani, KiembeSamaki, Kombeni and Nyamanzi. We thank them for sharing their ideas and photos with us.

For more information on Chumbe Island go to https://chumbeisland.com/about-chumbe/project-history/.

 

NP

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Personal Project 2021-22

Many Congratulations to the Grade 10 students for the completion of their Personal Projects; a milestone that indicates that they have finished an important part of their education.

The Personal Project is a very important aspect of the MYP, and the process the students have gone through these past months has helped them gain skills that will support and prepare them for some of the challenges that they may face in the Diploma Programme.

Despite not being able to have a Personal Project Evening, many students still shared their products by presenting via zoom classes. We were treated to virtual presentations on Belarusian culture and the Holocaust, live music, by a student who wrote and composed his own song as well as a short movie full of suspense and a video on digital art.

Other topics included:

  • Football strategies used by successful football managers,
  • ADHD
  • Fitness
  • Benefits if indoor plants
  • Building a GPS tracking system
  • How idioms reflect our culture
  • How to solve argument-based beliefs and opinions
  • Dyslexia
  • Sustainable architecture
  • Symbolism in art and film
  • Graphic novel writing
  • Cultural cooking
  • Short story writing
  • Mental health in the modelling industry
  • How to create suspense in a short film
  • Performing a song
  • Digital Art

 

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The Journey Of A Particle

Grade 6 Scientific Fiction

Over the long winter break, Grade 6 students worked on a special Science project. Their task was to write a story, describing the journey of a particle through the three states of matter. Many interesting stories were submitted. The students chose the most scientific and creative story. Here is the winning story:

Rain at Last

It all started as I levitated out of the boiling water in the kitchen. I flew out of the window in an incredible speed and raced up towards the clouds. I felt so free and loose. My friends were close behind me. I knew they were, but I couldn’t actually see them since water vapour is invisible. What I could see was small droplets of water around me. Together all of these small droplets formed a stream rising up from the kettle of boiling water. This was visible to the eye.

As we flew further up,  it began to get colder and colder. We tried to get warm by hugging each other, instead we turned into a little, tiny droplet of water. I began to feel dense and compact now. More and more of our friends flew toward us. We grew bigger and bigger the more time we stayed in the clouds. The cloud flew from Denmark to Germany. As the cloud was passing through Germany, I started to cough. It had become all dark around us. I looked down and I saw a factory right below us. I started to smell a strong scent of Sulphur dioxide in the air. I licked myself over the lips and surprisingly I could taste sourness. I had become an acid rain drop!

As we flew over Slovenia the air started to clean. Still, I was still very acidic. As we flew over Italy the next day,  I started falling away from the cloud. I had become so heavy the cloud could not hold me up anymore. I had never been moving this fast. I bolted down towards earth at an unstoppable speed. It was like parachute jumping without a parachute. It was only about two hundred meters to fall. Finally, I fell into a large forest. It was winter here and as I landed on a leaf; I began to feel extreme coldness in me.

I started to become more solid bit by bit and I could feel myself expand a little since I was turning to ice. I felt myself get separated from my friends a little bit. As we stopped separating there was a little bit of air between us. Even though we were stuck together, I didn’t feel at all dense, I felt freer than when I was even still liquid water. We would be able to float on water now because the air between us would hold us. I was about to fall off the leaf and I froze completely. I felt the two hydrogen atoms in my body tug together with the oxygen atom. They were stuck together so hard that I couldn’t move anymore. I was stuck. The slightest breeze swept by and I fell down. I hit the floor and burst into a million pieces. We rolled into a puddle and we didn’t sink.

This was the end we all knew. Then everything froze around me, and I was stuck in a big frozen chunk of ice. Forever. I was wrong! The sun came out and heated us up. We started slipping around each other. I went down a mountain and then joined a larger stream. Finally, we splashed into a lake. This is when everything started over again.

Author: Aron, Grade 6

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Starfish And Tornados

This week, our younger primary students expanded their social emotional learning by having a “Mindful Monday”.

They learned how to know and sense when their feelings were energetic like a tornado or needing to wake up like a starfish. All of them found ways to calm down through deep breaths, counting to 10 and jogging in place. Our little starfish practiced stretching their muscles, splashing cool water on their faces and eating a healthy snack to wake up and be ready to learn.

Our little starfish are, most importantly, expressing how they feel and learning what to do to feel happier while learning from home.

And they created a rainbow display of feelings they can talk about and manage.

text: LF

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World Food Day

​Thank you everybody for supporting World Food Day!

In the last week students in both the PYP and MYP had learned so much in class about issues concerning the distribution of safe food, the work of the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the UN and how everyone of us can be a “food hero”!

Grade 8 joined the World Food Day Ceremony on Zoom.  They listened to several speakers including Pope Francis, and several heads of the UN, who discussed work being done across the world and current problems in ensuring distribution of food for everyone.

Many students brought in local and seasonal food for their snack and lunch.

Many thanks to the PTG who supplied local apples to each class. They were big and crunchy and tasted delicious! This was much appreciated by the students and all of the apples were eaten.

Please remember to do your bit – eat seasonal and local and don’t waste food!

Thank you

JK

Grade 8 Homeroom Teacher

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International Performing Arts Event

H.I.S. student represents her home country

On the 25th of September, the international Stuttgart Consulates hosted a night in which performers of various cultures held the stage to represent their country’s performing arts.

This included a variety of events such as fashion shows, dances, music, among others. The night also had stalls set up around the hall for people to go around and learn about the culture. The stalls involved food as well as information about the country and the respective Consulate of that country in the region. The event was funded by the ”Justizministerium Baden-Württemberg”.

I was lucky to be a part of this event and represent India through my dance known as Bharatanatyam. This is a storytelling dance form, used originally as a form of prayer, but now as a way of sharing Indian history and culture. Having been taught the importance of cultural awareness, I thought this would be a good opportunity to help others understand the origins of Indian culture through India’s oldest dance form. Through this event, I also learned a lot about different cultures such as Hungary and the Philippines, who had also partaken in the event.

It was a good experience for me as a dancer because it gave me more stage experience. Having prepared for this event for months, it felt very rewarding to get a positive response from the audience. Though there were a couple of mistakes, this only added to my strengths as I improvised a lot better during this performance than I had on the ones prior. This also served as motivation and inspiration for me to keep continuing to dance because I want to continue performing.

Eshal