In a school as diverse and dynamic as ours, conflicts are bound to arise from time to time. Whether it’s a disagreement among students, or even issues involving parents, conflict is a natural part of human interaction. The key to maintaining a positive and harmonious school environment lies in how we address and resolve these conflicts.
 
In this edition of our newsletter, we’ll explore practical strategies for conflict resolution that can help us build bridges and strengthen our school community.

1. Open and Respectful Communication
The foundation of resolving conflicts lies in open and respectful communication. I encourage students, staff, and parents to express their concerns and feelings in a calm and constructive manner. This can be achieved through active listening, maintaining eye contact, and acknowledging each person’s perspective. By fostering an atmosphere of trust and understanding, we can pave the way for effective conflict resolution.
 
2. Mediation
Mediation is an invaluable tool for addressing conflicts in a non-confrontational manner. In this approach, a neutral third party, such myself as counsellor, helps facilitate a conversation between the parties involved. Mediators guide the discussion, ensuring that all parties have an opportunity to express themselves and work together to find common ground.
 
3. Empathy and Perspective-Taking
Encouraging empathy and perspective-taking can be transformative in resolving conflicts. By putting oneself in the shoes of others, you can better understand their feelings and motivations. This can lead to greater compassion and the ability to find mutually agreeable solutions. Teachers can incorporate exercises that promote empathy in the classroom to help students develop this valuable skill.
 
4. Restorative Practices
Restorative practices focus on repairing harm caused by conflicts and restoring relationships. Rather than simply punishing individuals, this approach encourages those involved to take responsibility for their actions, make amends, and find ways to move forward positively. It’s a transformative approach that fosters healing and growth.
 
5. Collaborative Problem-Solving
In many conflicts, there is a shared goal of finding a solution. Encourage all parties involved to work together to identify common objectives and brainstorm strategies to achieve them. This collaborative approach can empower everyone to be part of the solution, rather than perpetuating the problem.
 
6. Respect Diversity and Inclusion
In our diverse school community, it’s crucial to respect and celebrate our differences. Encouraging an inclusive and welcoming atmosphere fosters respect among individuals with various backgrounds and perspectives. This, in turn, can reduce conflicts related to prejudice or misunderstanding.
 
By incorporating these strategies into our school’s culture, we can proactively address and resolve conflicts while promoting understanding, empathy, and harmony within our community. Conflict is a natural part of life, but how we deal with it defines the strength of our relationships and our school community as a whole. Let’s continue to build bridges, not walls, in our quest for a more peaceful and united school.
 
I look forward to working together to make our school a place where conflicts are opportunities for growth and understanding.

As one of the Secondary School House Games activities this week, the students were invited to write poems relating to the current Coronavirus pandemic, school closure, and online learning.

Here are just a few examples of the poems submitted.

ZOE P. 8H TRANSILVANIA

School is Closed
Pupils doze
Coronavirus
Please notify us

Homework over
We can pull over
Get a big mac
Now we can kick back

All the suffering is done
Now we can have fun
Teachers, this is our revenge
We will continue to torment

No school food
No more time in the cantine
We feel no gratitude
Now we get more medicine (for cv, not for anything else)

No more algebra
We have more stamina
No more tests
Just give it a rest

KYRIAKI M. Y13 TRANSILVANIA

google meets you’re free.
but yo imagine if we,
graduate through thee.

RUCSANDRA C. 7E TRANSILVANIA

School has closed
A virus is spreading
The streets are deserted
The shop shelves empty

At home I remain
All alone in my room
Trying to find something
For me to do

We still have school
But lessons aren’t the same
instead of a classroom
We have online lessons

Assignment after assignment
Homework is due
I miss school but
We must stop the virus spread

According to clichés, boys and literature do not match together well. But our male students who chose to study German literature at A-Level have proved it is in fact quite the opposite, having enjoyed their experience of reading their first novel in German.

Our boys found out just how seductive German literature can be in comparison with previous reading experiences. From the very first pages read they kept wanting to read more and more, as they could identify themselves with the main character. Who would have thought that a book read at the exactly perfect time could have had such an impact on the students’ motivation and even on their lives.
The book they read is all a boy their age could have wished for from reading. Their eagerness to expand the vocabulary could not have been achieved if it were not for the theme of the novel and for the boys’ open-mindedness. They felt so inspired in fact that they insisted on teaching their younger siblings some of the vocabulary from the novel to be able to better explain it to them.

Radu and Alex S., two of our A Level German students said that they were inspired to want to see beyond the text, to better understand the author’s intentions, picking up on specific details and debating on them passionately in class, whilst filtering the plot through their own perspective and appreciating how much the book has inspired them to develop themselves as people and to analyse their own personality.

This is when and where reading becomes an important life experience in itself, and adding this to the chemistry between all involved parties resulted in their reading experience being truly memorable. The learning process goes far beyond the knowledge of the story itself, which is the one of the wonderful insights gained by reading.

Ioana-Miliana Anghel
A Level German Teacher

Year 8 are an excellent model of self-discipline and proficiency. During the registration sessions, each student in turn takes the responsibility of preparing an activity to engage his/her fellow colleagues. There has been healthy degree of competition in doing this, not only among the students as a group, but also on account of the House Competition, with activities being awarded house points which contribute to whole school house scores, and sometimes even include small prizes for the winners, which makes the competition even more exciting. We should be proud to have such exemplary students in our school who take their role seriously and prepare these activities to the very best of their ability.

When lessons become practical, the learning atmosphere becomes inspirational. Inspiration translates into enjoyment. Enjoyment motivates. And motivated students end up acquiring the knowledge more easily and more effectively. This is what the students in Year 7 and Nina in Year 8 achieved in an applied German lesson, in which they had to prepare a milkshake following a German recipe: wash the strawberries, peel the banana, chop the strawberries, slice the banana, pour the milk, put all the ingredients into a mixer, DO NOT forget the ICE CREAM, then mix. Everything poured in a glass. Crowne your milkshake with cream and decorate it with sparkles. Now it’s time to celebrate and enjoy the reward: The Milkshake.

In preparation for the CAS St Nicholas Christmas Fair taking place this Friday, the primary school charity committee began the week by creating their crafts under the supportive guidance of some PTF parents. Our students designed festive faces and items of clothing to apply on their Christmas themed tea lights. They glued a ribbon to the top of all their crafts which will allow it to be hung on your Christmas tree. All the committee members are really excited to sell these items at the fair in order to raise more more for their chosen charity.

Congratulations to the U16 IBSB Debate Team, Maria, Milie, Kiki, Melissa, Andrei , and Aryan, on making the grand final of the European U16 Public Debate Competition for the second year in a row. A huge achievement!

They debated St George Sofia in the final, and did a wonderful job, narrowly losing, but representing IBSB in the very best way possible showing great poise, sportsmanship, and humility. We couldn’t have been prouder of their performance and their achievement!

Congratulations also to St George for their win, and to all the other teams participating in this year’s competition.

After a great time together last week, Year 5 and 1 decided to come together again and this time for some buddy reading. Year 1’s reading has really improved and they were able to showcase their impressive skills to Year 5. It was then Year 5’s turn to enchant Year 1 by reading a book of their choice and they were mesmerised due to the expressive delivery of the stories.

We are so fortunate to be surrounded by wonderful colleagues here at IBSB. This week, Year 5 and Year 1 came together to start a buddy relationship. They partnered up to work together on a piece of symmetrical art. Year 1 have already studied animals in their ‘Creepy Crawlies and Marvellous Mammals’ topic and Year 5 are looking at the topic ‘Blue Planet’ this term. It was a great opportunity therefore to come together and share some work on the topic. Year 5 were superb at guiding Year 1, sharing what they knew about symmetry. Year 1 enjoyed getting to know their older peers and are looking forward to doing more things together in the final few weeks of school.

Our topic this term is Wonderful World! We have learn so much already this year about the world around us, and now it’s time to continue by looking at plants. Did you know that each part of a flower has its own special purpose? After learning about these we planted our own seeds, making sure the flower had everything it needed to grow. We are already excited to see that some stems are starting to peek through the soil. Like us, the plants grow a little different to each other. Some shoot up quicker than others, but we will make sure they have enough sunlight and water to be the best that they can be. Next week we are going to see what happens to a flower that doesn’t have sunlight or water…we wonder what we’ll see!

It’s Easter! In Year 1, we have been learning about what Easter is all about and why we celebrate it. We have also learnt about some of the traditions. As a treat, our teachers created an Easter hunt for us. We had to use our special Maths skills to solve problems that would give us clues about where to find Easter symbols, such as the cross and tulips. Once we had found all of the clues, this lead us to some chocolate eggs and special Dojo point eggs!

At the start of the week we were lucky enough to be visited by Miss Ella and Miss Raluca from ClayPlay (www.clayplay.ro). You can probably guess what activities they brought with them!

With the ClayPlay instructors’ careful guidance, our students were able to fashion objects from red clay which will be delivered to us after they are fired and finished in the ClayPlay kiln. It was particularly thoughtful of the ladies to facilitate creations based on the cross curricular theme in each year group, for example, Year 5 made Ancient Greek cornucopias and hygea vases whilst Year 1 made clay bears to fit in with their theme of toys.

The children discovered that working with clay is fun but requires patience and concentration. Miss Ella and Miss Raluca were very impressed with our students’ artistic skills and are looking forward to visiting us again in the future. If you are a Primary school parent then you can expect a new handmade addition to your mantelpiece to arrive home in the next week or so!

Our topic in Year 5 this term is Ancient Greece.

The Ancient Greeks are well known for their skill in making beautiful pots and vases. The finest pots were made in Athens between 550 and 300 BC. These were famous because of the high quality clay that was used and the reddish brown colour it turned once it was fired. A lot of the pots were made for use in the home but many of them were also exported to other city-states and other countries.

Even though the pots were often made for everyday use, they were beautifully decorated in different styles. Often, black figures were painted onto the pots and vases showing scenes from everyday life and depicting scenes from the myths and legends of the Greek gods and goddesses.

The students decided to take inspiration from these Greek pots to make some Greek pot scratch art work!

They applied their choices of warm/cool oil pastel colours to a Greek pot template.

Then, they painted over the whole pot template we had coloured in with black acrylic paint and allowed it to dry. In a later lesson, they decorated their pots with patterns and a Greek scene by scratching into the black paint with a fine sharp tool to reveal the coloured pastels underneath.

Patterns were very important in Ancient Greek culture and are just as important to get right as the main design. The students looked at some examples and paid attention to where they are usually applied: around the neck, handles, and base of the vase/pot.

After the students had their assessment test, Ms Marascu rewarded the Year 8 group with a fun lesson working on a unique and interesting project called: “Do you have the perfect face?”.

The students had to work in pairs to measure each other’s face to find out which girl and boy are closest to ‘The perfect face’. They used rulers to measure from nose to chin, eyes to lips, etc., calculating the mean of all of our measurements. They wrote the answer on the board and the girl and boy that had the mean closest to ‘THE GOLDEN RATIO’ won. The results showed that people in our class who are the most beautiful/handsome are Alexandra and Haidar.

Getting feedback from the students, they said that they had lots of fun and they hope to have other activities like this one.

“Overall we had a blast and I think that after all the hard work we’ve done, a fun lesson is always welcomed!”

By Ms Cristina Marascu
Head of Math and ICT department

Positive reinforcement can work, especially when pizza is involved! The year 11C class celebrated their A-average results on the Second Language exam on Tuesday with a pizza party hosted by their teacher. Early last year, whilst preparing for the exam, a tradition set by the current year 12 class dictated that if the class could get an A average, multiple pizzas would be involved. (If only it were always that easy!) Congratulations to those students making the grade and now it’s onto First Language and Literature. Andiamo!

The Year 9 Tourism Day was a resounding success. All Year 9 students worked in their groups to create a Market Place to showcase their tours to enhance Romania to tourists. A panel of 5 guest judges visited each market stall and asked a series of searching questions. The students created a whole host of promotional ideas such as websites, mobile phone apps, presentations, flyer, business cards and even their own branded t-shirts! The winning team of Ishika and Melissa will receive their well-deserved cinema vouchers as a prize in the coming days with their Hidden Treasures of Romania Tour. Ronnie, Nanduka and Giovanni were a close second place the NRG Treasure Hunting Tours. Well done to all groups.

The Key Stage 3 students offered a variety of live performances including musical pieces, poetry reading, narrative reading and informative text with live performance entertaining the students, parents and teacher in attendance. It was a morning to celebrate the abundance of talent evident in Key Stage 3. Well done to all the students and thank you to the teachers for support and parents for their attendance.

This project was initiated earlier this year with the intention of teaching informative (expository) writing and having some fun along the way. Each student wrote and prepared their favourite recipe and the class even got to taste test most of them over the course of a few weeks. Delicious! Andrew Long volunteered to design the cover, scan the recipes and get them printed; one book for each member of the class. I can honestly say we all had a great time with this class project and now we will have the memories to savour for a very long time!

As you may have already heard, Cervantes Day is celebrated on Monday, April 23. Therefore, the MFL Department from Primary School has organized events and visits to a Spanish Restaurant to enhance students’ awareness of the Spanish culture and cuisine involving children from the Spanish groups.

On Monday, April 24, we celebrated this special day in Primary School with different activities and workshops with the class Spanish teacher. The children brought some traditional Spanish dishes and had a taste of the Spanish cuisine. All children learning Spanish at IBSB wore a T-shirt with the colours of the Spanish flag or with a message written in Spanish.

On Tuesday, April 23, the Spanish students from Year 3 to Year 6 were invited to Pata Negra Restaurant. They had their lunch at the restaurant tasting some of the most famous Spanish dishes like pan tumaca, chorizo, paella with chicken, sangria without alcohol and crema catalana. Besides the delicious food the children had the opportunity to speak in Spanish with the owners of the restaurant as they have been living in Spain for many years. A moment to remember was the one when Andreea, the owners’daughter, who was one of the persons serving their lunch, explained them in Spanish why she is helping her parents and the children were impressed by her motivation and hard work.

Years 1 and 2 celebrated this event in school. On Tuesday, Key Stage 1 children had some fun activities during the Spanish lessons together with the year 6 Spanish group. All of them loved this activity and we promised to do it more often.

It looks like it was a very successful event and the students have enjoyed this celebration all over the Primary School.

Today the students in year 7 received their well deserved reward for displaying a positive attitude towards each other and towards learning throughout the whole year during the German lessons. They are not only a role model of hard work and dedication in their learning but also they set an example of respect among each other and of efficient collaboration. They demonstrated themselves that they can work together towards achieving a common goal and contributing to create a pleasant and positive learning atmosphere. Apart from the refreshments they brought from home, which they shared together, they watched their favourite German movie series “Muzzy” especially designed with interactive activities to learn languages.

The AS students have been working hard developing their practical skills in preparation for their upcoming practical exams. On this particular occasion, they were investigating the effect of an enzyme on milk; this enzyme curdles the casein in milk helping young mammals digest their mothers’ milk and can also be used to separate milk into solid curds for cheese-making and liquid whey.

Pi Day is always a big day at IBSB. Not only do the students and teachers at IBSB love celebrating PI Day, they also enjoy being creative in the way they celebrate Pi: for example, this year some of our Year 8 students decided to blend Maths with English for a truly unique learning experience, which you can see for yourself below. Happy Pi Day everyone!

PI DAY

“We love PI

like we say HI

Every day and night

we learn to fight

over who knows more

numbers of PI

Pie is a cake

Its not a shake

Pi is made of numbers

We can learn while we slumber”.

We LOVE PI!

In preparation for World Book Day, the students in 7P have been making, what else, books! Their first challenge was to prepare a guide book to a fictional boys’ camp called Camp Green Lake. Inspired by the novel HOLES, the students were asked to design a helpful guide for new arrivals; information someone would find more than helpful in terms of surviving this thinly disguised desert prison for wayward felons. The guide books are colourful and visually pleasing but they also contain advice that could save your life, such as, how to avoid the fatal bite of the yellow-spotted lizard, or the wrath of the greedy Camp Warden. Visit English Room 1 to see the books in real time.

If there is anything we are am proud of at IBSB, it is the situation where we see students teaching students. This is something that is a regular occurrence as IBSB, with teachers regularly peering students together in such a way as to challenge those with the knowledge to share it, with those needing supports, with one receiving support and the other reinforcing their learning. It can also happen in a specific lesson where an entire lesson has been organised to enable the older, more experienced students to share their knowledge and experience with younger students. The later is exactly what happened this week when four Year 10 students, Tamara, Max, Christie, and Milena visited a Year 6 class to share their experiences learning to debate and winning the Silver Plate at the COBIS World Debating Competition this year in Dubai.

The lesson started with a presentation of their trip and a description of what took place, debate by debate, as well as the extracurricular events organised for the students whilst there. The Year 6 students were then divided into four groups with Tamara, Max, Christie, and Milena each working with one group, reviewing a page of possible motions to explain how a team goes about analysing a motion in order to develop a winning team argument- and they should know as they did not lose a single impromptu debate the entire competition. The students really enjoyed this group work session, so much so, that they didn’t want to go on break, which tells you how well this activity went.

After the break the students watched a short video of a WSDC (World School Debating Championship) final between England and Canada, to get an idea of the format and structure of debate, then prepared for their own class debate, which for many was their first live debate. In groups the students worked to prepare their arguments, with one debate on whether capital punishment should be banned and the other on whether football players get paid too much. In both cases it was the proposition that successfully defended their position, but in truth everyone was a winner as all the students had a wonderful time and 3 hours passed by in what seemed like minutes.

At the start of the session three students put their hands up when asked if they were interested in joining the Primary School Debating Club. At the end of the lesson, every single student said they now wanted to learn to debate and to debate in the Key Stage 3 International School Public Debating Competition next year (which IBSB won last year also), so well done to Tamara, Max, Christie, and Milena for successful inspiring the next generation of IBSB debaters. It is clear that the future of debating at IBSB looks very bright indeed!

This week our Modern Languages Department proposed a rich programme of linguistic and cultural activities to celebrate European Day of Languages. Secondary School students engaged in creative activities that enabled them to think creatively and logically. The diversity of activities empowered our students to get more engaged in their own learning and to understand in more depth the language and the culture of European and Non-European countries.

Our KS3 students explored magnificent places in the world and built famous buildings. Thus, they had the ideal opportunity to learn together more about famous sites and cultural facts from Germany, France and Spain. Teachers witnessed a lot of creativity and use of mathematical, geographical and creative arts skills.

Apart from the multicultural dimension, students in Year 7 enjoyed speaking other languages and were proud to share ways of saying hello in their mother tongue.

We can definitely say that our students are WORLD CITIZENS as they showed a great amount of knowledge, curiosity, respect and compassion!

Year 2O were eager to enter their new classroom last week to begin the new school term. Each child swapped beautiful stories about their adventurous summer holidays and were bursting with enthusiasm to speak aloud. We welcomed Teo, a new student, to our class and we played ice breaker games in order to get to know one another. We also played many circle games focusing on developing our listening skills at the beginning of the new school year. We discussed the importance of speaking nicely to others and using kind words. We listened to the story of Chrysanthemum which focused on showing kindness to others. Following on from our discussion, our wrinkled hearts were clear to be seen. It has been a fun start to Year 2O!

This week the Science Department organised some interesting interactive sessions for the Year 6 Transition Programme. We involved students from years 7, 8 and 9 who shared their experience in KS3 Science and who also presented some of the projects they completed throughout the year. We also discussed with Y6 about the types of energy, types of forces, states of matter, chemical reactions, levels of organisation, and use of microscopes in lessons supported by experimental work. Here are a few photos from the sessions – the smiles and facial expressions tell the story best.

Last week, on Friday, all Key Stage 2 EAL groups came together for a culinary journey across five countries: China, Japan, Turkey, Israel and Romania. In EAL we aim to support our students learning English across the four skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking, and are always looking for something interesting and fun to do in the classroom. One of the approaches we use is to create connections to each child’s first language and home culture. Form this we came up with the idea of offering an International Breakfast initiative, I asked the children to each prepare a traditional meal and to present it to their colleagues in the attempt to communicate their cultural identity and share a great time together. We had Mao Tanaka bringing us Temaki from Japan, Zhentai and Tony joined effort to create more than 50 spring rolls, while Aya, Liya, Ariel and Ethan, showed great teamwork spirit coming up with a selection of three main courses and deserts that surprised and enchanted our taste buds. It was a great success – a fun and delightful experience for all the students and teachers involved- one we will surely repeat next year.

With another school year almost over, we decided to take advantage of these last few weeks to plan a very special lesson for the Year 5 students learning Spanish.

On Thursday the 25th of May, the MFL Department invited Milena Vergara, a Year 9 student, who is a native Spanish speaker, to join our Year 5 Spanish lesson. You can’t imagine how excited the students were to talk to her. Milena fascinated them with her origins and they were eager to introduce themselves to her. Since our topic for this term has been I am the music man, it was a great opportunity to have a short introspection into South America and its Spanish speaking countries. During the lesson Milena encouraged them to speak about their favourite musical instruments and their favourite types of music and singers. She did a great job by showing them a map of South America, explaining the origin of each type of music and dance, and the students even discovered a new musical instrument “el flauta pan” and its fascinating origin. We then listened to some beautiful Spanish songs which everyone enjoyed. Finally, at the end of the lesson we all then said goodbye to Milena as she returned to the Secondary School, but are excited as she promised to return to speak to us all again soon.

Year 10 students embarked on a fantastic journey inspired by great French books. With the occasion of the Journée internationale de la Francophonie, our inquisitive French students read French books and created own stories around the characters and plot. The mysterious and fantasy stories transported them to a fabulous world of secrecy, enigmatic clues and vivid descriptions. This was only the preamble of what it was to come: changing identities and becoming detectives or even French spies, reading short riddles and finding clues, looking for missing objects which would save France or a family member! Students seemed to have enjoyed the activities and challenged themselves by creating own treasure hunts. Who knows what will happen in the following lessons?

Year 4O learned all about electrical circuits in their Science lesson this week. In pairs, we looked at the drawings of circuits and decided and explained which will work and which will not. In groups, we made a circuit which worked successfully: we recorded it by drawing and indicated the purpose of each part; for example, we saw that the battery provided the power. We ended our lesson by looking at a short video clip on the dangers of mains electricity and we discussed the differences between the devices which can be run on batteries and those which require mains electricity.

In Year 2, we have just started a unit on plants. In class the children identified the parts of a plant and learned about the life cycle of a plant. We then went outside to enjoy the sunshine and plant some seeds and bulbs in order to do an experiment to see how plants differ as they grow. We divided the children into four groups: each took a plant pot, bedded it with fertile soil, carefully placed their seeds or bulbs in the soil, and then watered them with their hopes and aspirations. The children learnt that some plants need water and light, some plants need water but no light, while others have light but no water, and some plants even have no light at all! In the coming weeks we will checking on our bulbs and seeds regularly to make observations about how plants grow. The children are all very excited are all very excited!

A struggle to survive,
Insects and leaved trees
All wanting to survive…

Having studied the rainforest and growing an understanding of deforestation, our assembly was the perfect time to share this with others.

Deforestation affects animal habitats, unique tribes identity and the possible discovery of new medicines. Each minute an area of rainforest equivalent to 48 football fields is lost due to deforestation. It’s hard to believe! In our assembly we tried our best to represent the ones who are affected the most by deforestation. We thought of many practical things we could do as a class, such as turning off the lights when we don’t need them, reducing waste, and reusing paper in interesting and creative ways before recycling it. What will you decide to change today?

Before the holidays, the year 7 English students had the opportunity to work in pairs and design an original story book for children. They were also asked to create original illustrations to accompany the text and they all did a super job! Stories ranged from “The Pig in a Wig” to “Frenemies” about a cat and a jealous dog. Now they are sharing their work with children in Reception and Primary school. They all agreed it was a fun project as they got to work with their friends, share with others and demonstrate their creativity.

Ms Carman’s year 7 students are writing and illustrating their own stories to share with the children in Primary school. One story in the works is called “The Travelling Goose” and another is about pigs with wigs. No end to the creativity at IBSB!

Cross curricular lessons for year 3 students are always interesting and challenging. This week in CC , year 3B has learnt how to design a puppet.

The students enjoyed to cut out the shapes for the clothes they want their puppet to wear, then they used running stitch to sew clothes to the front and back of their puppets. Sewing around the outside of their piece of fabric was quite challenging for them.

It was a great week and we hope that in the next term we’ll have again an interesting week like this one.

In Year 4O we are studying rainforests as our topic this term. In art lessons, we have studied the work of French artist Henri Rousseau. In groups, children discussed what coloured plants we would expect to see and the different types of animals that live in each layer of the rainforest. We used very simple pure colours in our art work with clear outlines, and following Rousseau’s idea painted jungle animals in the foreground and lush green plants in the background using defined outlines. Here are some photos of our beautiful creative art pieces.

This term Year 2’s topic for their cross curricular lessons is explorers. As part of our literacy lessons they have looked at explorers. First they studied the film “Up” and predicted what might happen after Carl releases the balloons and the house flies away; they then became very creative and thought of many different endings.

In the next lesson they discussed senses and what they would see, hear, smell and touch as the house flew away. Before writing, the students shared their ideas through group work. The students especially enjoyed the carousel activity: they had four stations and at each station they swapped and had to think of just one of the senses and wrote down their ideas. Once they had moved around all four groups, the children then chose their favourite sentences to write in their own literacy book.

IBSB celebrated Martisor, my favourite Romanian custom, in beautiful, warm, spring sunshine. It was as if the sun knew and wanted to play its role perfectly.

For the children, the PTF and school organised Martisor workshops for every child to make something wonderful for the most important women in their lives. We are so thankful to the ladies who ran the workshops, providing our children with opportunities to be creative. Touched Romania made jewellery from beads- I am sure mums and grandmas are already wearing them. Light into Europe had the children sewing lovely Martisoare brooches, learning new skills, such as threading a needle. The ladies from ipaint created mini masterpieces on canvas- my daughter’s creation is already proudly on the wall at home; and finally, Made by You made a variety of impressive ceramic pieces – we can’t wait to see what they look like after they are fired. We also learnt the legend of Martisor, why we have the red and white intertwined threads, thanks to our Romanian department. It was a wonderful day and I wish everyone ‘o primavara frumoasa’.

In Literacy in Term 2a, Year 2D studied Florence Nightingale and other significant individuals. They found out a lot of interesting facts about her, about the Crimean War, about nurses, and about hospitals in those times. During their lessons they wrote a biography about Florence’s life, a non-chronological report about doctors and nurses, and learned about writing formal and informal letters: they really enjoyed writing a letter pretending to be a solider in the 1850’s writing to their parents explaining how Florence Nightingale improved the hospital. They also created a job advert for a new nurse for Florence’s hospital and came up with some very imaginative stories. In the end everyone agreed that they all enjoyed learning about significant individuals from history and learning about different types of writing, and to finish off the unit, they each wrote a persuasive letter to Ms Deeble-Rogers.

While many students were away on the ski trip, those remaining at school had the chance to enjoy a week of lessons with a focus on science.
The aims of Science Week were to encourage our students’ interest in all subjects science and get them involved in demonstrating and experimenting with different phenomena. The students really enjoyed getting involved with hands-on activities in the classroom, with the week culminating in a Science Fair in the school hall.

In Year 5, we explored the idea of spreading weight over many points of contact by using balloons and drawing pins to create a “bed of nails”. We also explored ways of moving liquids by employing our knowledge of different forces, creating a centrifugal pump and a siphon by using drinking straws.

Most Primary classes had a visit to Casa Experimentelor, where the students had the chance to use different equipment to demonstrate various scientific concepts. Casa Experimentelor also provided some workshops in school, giving children the chance to make a battery from lemons and an electromagnet.

The week was full of fascinating lessons and we certainly achieved our aims.

Special thanks must go to Mr Morrison, Ms Andreea Rus, Ms Ana Maria Stere, and all the drivers for organising resources, trips and captivating activities.

This term the Spanish group from Year 5 studied the planets and our Solar System. The students were so excited about the topic that in the last week of this term we decided to find out more about our Solar System. We discussed about the planets ‘names and their meaning. We also talked about the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses and their connection to the planets. The students drew to scale, that is, the relative sizes of one planet to another planet, and wrote the names of the planets and the governing god or goddesses. It was a really exciting lesson and the students seem to have had a lot of fun.

In Literacy this term Year 2D have been studying Florence Nightingale and other significant individuals.
They’ve found out a lot of interesting facts about her, about the Crimean War, about nurses and hospitals of those times.

During their lessons they have written a biography about Florence’s life, non-chronological report about doctors and nurses and informal and formal letters.

Recently they have created a job advert for a new nurse for Florence’s hospital.

They really enjoyed writing a letter pretending to be a solider in the 1850’s writing to their parents explaining how Florence Nightingale has improved the hospital. Some children came up with some very imaginative stories.
After this they then independently wrote a persuasive letter to Ms Deeble-Rogers. They have all enjoyed learning about significant individuals from history and learning about different types of writing.

Do you really know what happens to your teeth when you eat or drink your favourite foods? As we were studying teeth, we decided to investigate and see for ourselves!

First of all, we wanted to find out how much sugar was in some healthy and unhealthy food, so we used our numeracy skills to add, multiply, or divide in order to calculate the correct amount of grams of sugar. We then weighed the sugar and really had a shock with some of the results! It made us think twice about what we were eating. But our investigation didn’t end there.

Our next question was…what effects would the sugar have on our teeth over a period of time? We decided to test it out using eggs. We placed eggs in Coca Cola, coffee, orange juice, water, and milk; some of the most popular drinks we consume. We wanted to see if anything would change over time, and after ensuring we were performing a fair test, the experiment began! We checked the eggs each day for five days. I’m sure you can tell by our faces what we thought of the results! Although some of us had predicted which drink would have the most negative effect, we couldn’t believe how much they had discoloured and changed the shell. Not even toothpaste could erase all of the discolouring! Needless to say, we are excited about next week’s Science Week where we will be able to find out some more wonderful things about the amazing world we live in.

As a school we are implementing a ‘Happiness Project’ this term. In year 4O, as a part of this project, we have been discussing all about compassion and kindness. We have talked about the importance of being able to share other people’s sad feelings when they are having a difficult time. In our assembly practice we have seen how important it is to treat our peers as we want to be treated and to show love and respect to everyone. We have learned a song called Filled Your Bucket which showed us that even though our bucket is invisible and made believe, there is no doubt in what a kind act can do.

This week in our Year 6 Art lessons we’ve been working on how to improve our technical drawing skills by enlarging pictures using a grid. We’ve been learning how to use a grid to divide a picture and then draw a larger image from it. The pictures we chose were of our favourite film characters, including characters like Ironman, Superman, Ana from Disney’s Frozen, and the penguins from Madagascar. If you could choose a favourite character to draw, who would it be?

Happy New Year to everybody and welcome back to school for the start of Term 2A! Both Year 6 classes had a fun Romanian lesson in their first week back, revising some of the language covered in Term 1 using the tablets to play fun educational language games. In pairs the children were asked to solve the grammar and vocabulary exercises, searching for the new meanings of some words, and in so doing enriched their knowledge about synonyms and antonyms. We also used this lesson to review a few important spelling rules. Here are some nice photos with the Year 6 Romanian native students working in pairs.

At IBSB, our students have the chance to enjoy a number of extracurricular activities during club hour from 3.00-4.00pm each day. There are many clubs to choose from, including the Chess Club, with a Chess Club in both the Primary School and Secondary School, offering beginners the chance to learn and the more advanced players the chance to test their wits against each other or the teachers, for those game enough to try. Knight takes Queen – checkmate!

The Science Department has been very busy these past few weeks. All young scientists had a chance to explore and research and present their findings.

Y7 tested the validity of some food labels. They used yeast, yoghurt, and milk to test if the microorganisms stated on the food label are alive and active so…… they found out that they can turn milk into yoghurt in a day.

Y8 students researched the sustainable sources of energy and came up with very interesting projects. Some had the chance to present their findings this week and the others will present their projects next week. We were very impressed with their work, which included making a website, building the models of solar panels, wind turbines, hydropower plants from lego pieces. The best pieces of work will be presented in one of the future assemblies.

Y9 students performed experiments for their half term assessment as their practical skills and understanding were rigorously tested. They investigated exothermic and endothermic reactions, displacement reactions and precipitation.

Y10 and some AL students explored the structure of some vital organs. They dissected hearts, lungs, kidneys and liver and their related their structure to their function. Their enthusiasm was not brought down by the unpleasant smells as they investigated the internal structure in a very professional manner.

In the 21st century, it is increasingly clear that computers play an important role in our lives. With this in mind, our computing curriculum has changed over recent years to encourage us to teach children about programming as early as Year 1!

Every Tuesday, Year 1 have been learning the basics of giving instructions to the computer to make things move. The students are working hard in each lesson, concentrating on every move and having lots of fun, and we are very proud of their work. They tell me it is their favourite lesson of the week!

In their last two Romanian lessons, the children from 3C have been studying the short story “Vizita”, by Ion Luca Caragiale. This was story offered the children an opportunity to become more aware of the language and the expressions that the actors used when interpreting the characters from “Vizita”. Having read and fully understood the story, the children then watched a video with the same story. The children were then split in groups in order to role play their favourite scenes from this story. The role play was a valuable tool for exploring the behaviour issues brought up in the story, making the learning experience memorable, whilst also encouraging co-operation and empathy.

Computing is a new subject introduced in the 2014 curriculum to replace ICT. Year 2 are always very excited and enthusiastic about visiting the ICT room every Wednesday. They love the challenges and opportunities offered by the technologically rich world in which we live.
This year, the children have completed a range of different activities during their computing (ICT) lessons. They are becoming increasingly confident logging on and off the computer. Most can now navigate to different software programs and have started to use Google search to research different topics.
Offline the students have also been working hard creating their own algorithms to direct each other walk in different shapes on the playground. They are also getting to grips with turning left and right and instructing a program to turn left or right 90 degrees. Recently they have started to put all of this information into practise and are now creating simple programs on the computer. Last lesson they wrote a program that made balloons disappear when clicked.

Last week, during Maths time, Year 6P learned about quadrilaterals and 3D-shapes. First of all, the students remembered the notions that they learned in previous years. Ms Punt explained that there are many types of three-dimensional shapes. The children talked about spheres, cubes, prisms, pyramids, and other three-dimensional shapes whose faces are polygons. They solved many exercises involving 3D shapes. Then they were given some printed 3D shapes with basic, artistic, and fun designs to cut and paste. By folding 3D paper models, colouring and creating different patterns, sequences on their shapes, Year 6P has come up with a wonderful geometrical collection. It has been a very interesting and relaxing lesson learning the 3D shapes. Here are some photos with our beautiful Math crafts.

On Wednesday, during their Spanish lesson, Year 3 had some special guests: ghosts, witches, and pumpkins. They were very excited about it! They learnt the new vocabulary through mimio and powerpoint presentations. The different games we played helped them to get used to the new words and to have fun. In fact, the time went by so fast and they enjoyed it so much, that they decided to invite their new friends to our Halloween party in Baneasa. Happy Halloween!

On Wednesday, during their Spanish lesson, Year 3 had some special guests: ghosts, witches, and pumpkins. They were very excited about it! They learnt the new vocabulary through mimio and powerpoint presentations. The different games we played helped them to get used to the new words and to have fun. In fact, the time went by so fast and they enjoyed it so much, that they decided to invite their new friends to our Halloween party in Baneasa. Happy Halloween!

This half-term, the students in year 4 are learning all about insects. Following our visit to Cișmigiu Park, where we acted like real detectives and spied on some very interesting minibeasts, the year 4 learners were thirsty for information.
Using tablets and working in pairs, the students chose their favourite insect and did some research on it. They found some very interesting facts and they were excited to play the teacher’s role and share the information with everyone. Well done, Year 4!

This Term Year 1 started their first Art lesson by painting beautiful pictures which they used to decorate our reading house made out of cardboard.
The students had a lot of fun when they discovered that by mixing primary colours you can create new ones. They discovered how to make green, yellow and purple and they enjoyed using them in their art work.
After painting the pictures, the students cut and glued them on the walls of the house. They were very excited to see the results of their work and now they are happy to spend their reading time there.

Last week the children from Year 3 really enjoyed listening to fragments of the BFG story by Roald Dahl, as well as watching the film at the cinema. They used their imagination writing descriptions of the giant, creating pictures of their own dreams and writing details about them. Therefore they chose to have their assembly about their dreams.

We used our cross curricular lessons to discuss about our dreams and aspirations and write together the script of our assembly.

Students enjoyed dressing up as the job that they dream they can do in the future. At the end of our performance we impressed everybody when dancing and singing “Reach for the stars”.

Last week Year 2 went on the Hop-on – Hop –off Bucharest City Bus Tour. They really enjoyed the trip and discovered Bucharest’s most important tourist attractions all in one single journey.

During our tour the students found out more about the city they live in and its wonderful surroundings. They looked at different types of buildings and landmarks in the city, talked about the difference between old and new buildings and discovered some of many building styles from around the city. They all spotted the Arc de Triumph which is famous in our classroom because they all drew it as part of a F.A.I.L (First Attempt In Learning) activity. In the F.A.I.L activity the children learned how important it is to keep trying and their first attempt can always be improved in time.

The children loved being on the top of the bus while seeing Bucharest from a different perspective. What a brilliant day out on a Thursday afternoon!

This week students from year 10 performed a Chromatography experiment during the Chemistry lesson that was designed to transform the theoretical concepts into practical ones. The Chromatography Technique involves a multidisciplinary approach and has applications in different research areas, criminology, drug development and many others science areas. Our students extracted chlorophyll from leaves and pigments from different coloured petals. The chromatography paper revealed that nature mixes different colours in its pigments in order to enhance life. The students learned that a simple technique, that uses basic materials, can help us discover a lot of hidden information about our surroundings.

In Year 6, we’ve been looking at light-related phenomena such as light refraction and light reflection during our Cross- Curricular lessons. Since it’s such a fascinating topic, we decided to carry out an experiment in order to better understand how light changes from medium to medium.

For the experiment we needed a glass recipient, filled with water, pencils and paper. We put the pencils inside the glass recipient and noticed how refracting light changed the way we saw the pencil under water. It looked larger and the contour was blurry!

We can’t wait for our next experiment!

Welcome back to a new term and all the exciting English Challenges ahead! Well done to those students who performed brilliantly in public examinations over the Summer but particularly the Lower Sixth who scored 100% A-C grades. They are all back for A2 and studying hard Shakespeare, Miller with dear old Jane Austen to come. Keep talking in English everyone and set yourself the target of learning a new word every day! The English department wishes you a successful and rewarding term. Go for it!

In Years 7 & 8 we concentrate mainly on life before the 20th Century. Whilst the books have an Anglo-centric slant, we will concentrate on events that had consequences in Europe, such as life in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. In Year 9, we look at the two wars that engulfed the world in the 20th and the consequences of these two wars on Europe and the world at large. At IGCSE level, the students will look at Twentieth Century events such as the reasons for instability in Europe during the 1920s and 30s and the superpower rivalry between the USA and the USSR. All our teaching aims to inspire the students to deepen their knowledge and understanding, as well as to further their skills in assessing the value of evidence and understanding continuity and change as well as cause and consequence. History maybe a study of the past, but it influences our present and should help to shape our future.

On Tuesday, Ms Carman’s Year 7 English class spent some time using colourful adjectives in a bit of a different way. They were required to study and describe a rather bizarre creature/man by the name of Skellig, as part of their introduction to this popular KS3 novel. They were asked to draw a version of the projected image into their notebook in an effort to improve their skills of observation, then have some fun coming up with suitable adjectives to describe various parts of his face. The adjectives were colourful indeed, with such contributions as “ghostly white skin” to “oily strands of cobweb covered hair.” The final assignment is to put all the possibilities together and describe Skellig in a full paragraph. Ms Carman is looking forward to reading what the kids have come up with and hopes they will enjoy the writing process all the more.

Children in EYFS enjoyed the good weather and they spend a lot of time in the open. They were involved in curricular and extra-curricular activities which made them happy and gave them confidence. The last term of school has been very engaging and fun. They took part in educational visits like the one at the farm, where they fed the baby animals. They discovered the world of circus and tried their first tricks. Related to our overarching theme “Water”, children experimented blowing bubbles and they had amazing time learning about Pirates. Everyone was involved and happy!

Last week, during Maths and Art time, Year 6 learned about tessellations. First of all, the students found out that a tessellation is created when a shape is repeated over and over again covering a plane without any gaps or overlaps. Mr Ennion explained and showed how to form or arrange small squares, triangles, hexagons, and other shapes in a checkered or mosaic pattern. The children also learned to draw fractals and natural spirals by using reflection, rotation, and translation; things that are extremely useful in Maths. Later on the students started painting all these geometrical shapes – here are a few photos with our wonderful tessellations. As you can see, it was a very interesting lesson.

The Year 10 Historians are, to use a suitably historical term, a horde of History mad youths full of questions and usually come up with the correct answers! Their interest in the subject rather wonderfully goes beyond their curriculum, which is Cambridge Modern World History, but with quite a sharp Western European focus. Therefore, the historically thinly-populated and pastoral country known as Romania, and it’s rather over-sized geopolitical significance is neglected on the course, and Romania is reduced to a mere paragraph in the otherwise outstanding CIE course textbook.

This is not lost on our young historians, many of whom have been giving me a year-long refrain on the lines of ‘why don’t they talk more about Romania?’, for example when we did a brief segment on the Treaty of Trianon, the key post world war one peace treaty that led to full international recognition of Romanian Unification in 1920. Or during Stalin’s Takeover of Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the second world war, Romania is given a brief paragraph concerning the underhand and unscrupulous means the Communist Party maneuvered itself into the position of power.

My own knowledge of Romanian history is embarrassingly poor. Therefore, when I recently read a wonderful book I am sure a number of IBSB parents and teachers have either read or are aware of, For Two Thousand Years, by the author Mihail Sebastian, newly released in English by the famous Penguin Classics publication, and translated to great international acclaim from the London Guardian to the New York Review of Books, by the internationally award winning Irish and Bucharest-based author, Philip O’Ceallaigh, who is in the line of great Irish expat authors such as Samuel Beckett and James Joyce, I saw an opportunity!

I jumped at the chance to get in touch with him, especially as the book is a crucial account of interwar Romania and the experience of Bucharest’s minority of Jews and the growing anti-antisemitism of both the intellectual and state spheres, something linked to the Year 10 Depth Study on Nazi Germany. He very generously came to the school at short notice, having just come back from a lecture tour in London, to give his time and wealth of knowledge from his 15 years research and writing about Romania to the Year 10 class last Tuesday, period 6.

Moreover, Philip not only shared his knowledge and passion for contemporary Romanian history and the writers who made up Romania’s considerable intellectual circles, but his skill at story-telling really came through too. The students were rapt at how he explained the rise of the fascism in Romania through the prism of Mihai Sebastian’s almost tragi-comic life (his closest friends became the Vanguard of intellectual fascist Guardism). Moreover, as part of a trio of evil sisters plaguing Interwar Europe, with Romania and its Iron Guardism, Philip succinctly showed how the rise of Mussolini in Italy and the Nazis in Germany had overshadowed the importance of fascism in Romania to the overall European political context, as shown by its neglect as a topic on the CIE course that the students follow. Philip also passionately deconstructed some of the students’ popular misconceptions around the Holocaust in Romania, leaving some students with much food for further thought.

Student feedback was overwhelmingly positive and made me realise the importance of outside expert speakers. An afterword must be said about my colleague, Dr Silviu Nastase, resident Chemist, teacher and Photographer…in short a Polymath. Dr Silviu, himself from Braila, presented Philip with a painting from the author’s hometown of Braila. The painting showed a building that is presented as the first image of the protagonist in the novel, as a present for Philip’s work in publicizing the work internationally of Braila’s famous son. Philip said he was ‘overwhelmed’, at the gesture. So was IBSB at his great gesture in coming in to contextualize and consolidate the Cambridge CIE course with a local, native insight, a key aspect for furthering commitment and knowledge as UK educationalists have recently acknowledged.

Any student interested in reading For Two Thousand Years, I have donated a signed copy to the School library. Alternatively, it is available to buy from Carturesti and Anthony Frost bookshops.

This week we continued our learning with a new weekly theme: “Under the sea”. The children learned about sea creatures; we worked on extending children’s vocabulary and supporting them in making logical connections related to sea life. They discovered the many different kinds of sea animals, drew and painted sea creatures, read books related to the theme like “Commotion in the Ocean ”, “Winnie under the sea”, “Don’t eat the teacher”, and Fidgety Fish”, and sang songs related to the theme: “I’m a Little Fish” and “Five Little Fish”. We encouraged the children to investigate and record SINK and FLOAT items in this order- we had an experiment. They were also involved in different hands- on activities, like modelling shells in playdough, shell printing on tissues, and they also enjoyed it when they painted the rainbow fish.
Another funny activity was when they fed Mr Shark- and they really loved fishing.

Every Thursday afternoon, during club time together with a group of enthusiastic children, we learn about photography, about how to fill the frame, how to balance a picture using the rule of thirds, and other interesting tips. When the weather is nice we usually go outside armed with our cameras ready to put into practice what we’ve learned. It’s great fun to be a photographer and we learn to observe and wonder at the smallest details of our world.

What an exciting Assembly it was! The Year 4 children were the directors, producers, and actors of the five different plays performed this afternoon at school. After two weeks of studying plays, the children had to write, rehearse, and organize props and the stage for their plays. It always amazes me how talented my children are and today was no different! I am a very proud teacher right now! As I said, I am flabbergasted Year 4! Well done!

Art lessons for Year 5 students are always interesting and creative. This term our students have been learning all about Vincent van Gogh and Henri Rousseau-both post-impressionist artists- focusing on an important piece of work from each artist, namely Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” and Rousseau’s “Jungles”. The children thoroughly enjoyed learning about these artists as well as recreating their work, which you can see in the colourful photos attached.

Oxford University Press hosted a book writing competition to commemorate the Oxford Reading Tree’s 30th Birthday! As a part of this celebration the children in Year 2, who all enjoy reading about Biff, Chip, and Kipper’s adventures and where they might go when the Magic Key glows, have been writing and illustrating their own Stage books. We then passed all their books on to Mr Peet and Mr Cornish to help choose the best books, and they said they really had a very difficult time judging the books as we have so many amazing authors and very imaginative stories in both classes. Finally, on Wednesday during our assembly, certificates were given out for Best Story – 1st and 2nd place, Best Handwriting, Best Illustration, and Most Creative Idea. Well done to everyone for creating the best stories they could!

On their last term of the year, the Year 1 French group is really excited to be learning all about toys.
They’ve been learning how to name different toys and how to describe them as well. Now, the students are able to name the toy’s colour, the type of material is made of, and describe its shape . On our last lesson we even learned about different patterns a toy can have. The students showcased their creative skills by creating their own pattern on a plain teddy bear. They really know all about toys!

This year 2C have focusing on having a growth mind-set. This means not giving up, encouraging each other, trying your best, and learning from your mistakes. In class we have been learnt that the word “yet” is a very powerful word. We don’t say “I can’t do it” we say “ I can’t do it YET!” Last week we worked very hard to make an assembly teaching the rest of the school this powerful message. We performed a story called “Giraffes can’t Dance” and had great fun inventing our own dance moves to the song “Try Everything.” Today we went to watch the movie “Zootropolis” where a little bunny follows her dream to be a police officer. We are keen to follow our dreams, try everything and learn from our mistakes- maybe you can try something new too.

This week, in Romanian, the students from Year 4H studied some of Caragiale΄s short stories: “Vizita”, “Dl Goe…” and “Bubico”. We read the stories, watched the movie based on “Vizita” and then it was time for the children to act! They were divided in 4 teams- each group had to distribute the roles, discuss the acting strategies, and practice the plays. They showed great team-working skills, creativity in interpreting the script, and impressive drama skills. Next week, we are looking forward to presenting our shows in front of the class!

Over the past term, Year 5C learnt about Stone Age: how people lived then, what tools they used to hunt, to cook or to farm and many other interesting facts that amazed everybody. We have evolved so much!

In Art lessons, children got to experience charcoal pencil, and graphite and chalk in order to produce cave art. In other Art lessons the children painted prints of fossils using water colours, sponges, and pastel crayons, or they made fossils out of salt-dough.

They then quickly travelled forward in time and are now studying Van Gogh’s painting ‘Sunflowers’ as part of the cross-curricular topic Weather and Climate. Over the next few lessons, the children will reproduce paintings of the nature from various artists.

Watch out, Monet! We have some future artists in our class!

Last week in Year 3 we were looking at how to write poems using rhyming couplets. First we studied the work of great children literature writers, such as Robert Louis Stevenson and his poem ‘The Land of Counterpane’. Then we decided to give it a try ourselves and we began our own poems taking care to use words that rhyme. Using rhyming dictionaries we had fun discovering that many words with such different meanings sound the same- English is such a funny language! In the end, we typed down and decorated our poems and displayed them in our classroom for everyone to read and enjoy!

This week the year 8C group practiced their process writing skills in a new and delicious way. They first used ICT to research their favourite foods including desserts. Then they were required to create a recipe along with a guide to making and serving it. Once this was effectively accomplished complete with illustration, the learning began in earnest. Students tested their recipes by making them, bringing them to school and sharing samples with their fellow classmates. Some of the delights included Milena’s Chocolate Balls and Selin’s strawberry jelly cake. Perhaps the class favourite was Gili’s two colour chocolate cheesecake swirl. Not to be outdone, Matei chose to concoct his grandparent’s own syrup for making naturally flavoured fruity soda water to savour with our tasty treats. Well done, Year 8!

Over the end of Term 2 break we all had, the children in Year 4 became artists, making amazing dioramas depicting rainforests. Their creativity is never ending and the result of their efforts can be seen in the pictures below. After studying the rainforest, its layers, and its inhabitants, the children went home with enough information to create their mini worlds, and they faced the challenge with great enthusiasm. Well done, Year 4!

During Book Week the Year 4 students were very busy writing books to share with their Reading Buddies in Year 1. The subjects were extremely varied, from robots to fairies, and the illustrations were carefully created. Initially the children had to plan their story, focus the writing on their very specific public, and then create it. It was a very successful exercise and the Year 1s thoroughly enjoyed the present of being allowed to be the first ones to ever read those books!

This term the Secondary School Student Council in collaboration with the Sixth Form CAS Programme raised funds to deliver 250 new books to the Constantin Teodorescu School in Şoldanu Village, Calarasi County. Senior Prefects – Andrei Dogaru, Matei Surdu, and Kevin Zhan joined Valentina Roman – the Executive Director of the Curtea Veche Association, Smaranda Nicolau – Educational Coordinator, Alexandra Zegrean – Assistant PR, to deliver the books to the pupils who were eagerly expecting them. Upon arrival, our students received a heart-warming welcome from over 100 young members of the reading club, their teachers, and members of the village community, who had prepared a delightful reception, including drama, singing, and dancing. Deeply touched by the pupils’ gratitude and desire to learn, our students left the Constantin Teodorescu School excited to continue their work with the Curtea Veche Association offering reading workshops, and delivering books to the communities that most need them.

This term Year 2 have been learning about pirates. They have enjoyed discovering facts, learning about countries around the world as well as reading lots of pirate related stories. Wednesday was Pirate Day for the children and they had great fun dressing up as pirates. The children could explain why pirates wore their clothes and what a day in the life of a pirate might be like. They became authors and wrote their own exciting pirate adventures and enjoyed acting them out. In the “Arggfternoon” they decorated their teddy bears, making hats, eye patches and beards. The “Arrght” was one of the favourite parts of the day as well as reenacting a pirate battle. A great time was had by all.

This week in the Science labs, the Y8 students carried out two types of experiments: the first involved precipitation (copper sulfate with sodium hydroxide) and then filtering the solid product; the other experiment was a neutralisation reaction between sodium carbonate and hydrochloric acid. Carbon dioxide was given off and lime water was used to demonstrate its presence. Everyone agreed it was a great lesson.

Cross Curricular lessons in Year 5 are always interesting and challenging. This term in CC our students have learnt about the Stone and Ice Ages and how animals and people have evolved over time and adapted to their surroundings. As part of their learning they visited the Antipa Museum where they learnt many things about this time and even got to see real fossils! They also created their own cave paintings. It was a great day and we hope that next term they’ll have more interesting trips.

The Year 5 French students have been learning about the four seasons and how the weather changes through the year. And there is so much to talk about! In this unit the children learnt how to describe seasons using a poem, ‘Le retour du printemps’, and the music from Vivaldi’s ‘The Four Seasons’. It is always interesting to find out why students like the different seasons and all the fun things they can do as the year goes by.

The Year 3 non-native Romanian students have been learning about how important it is for our bodies to exercise and to eat healthy food. The students were very involved in the topic and very serious about what we should or shouldn’t eat. As a group, they sorted out the healthy food and spelled it in Romanian and were very happy to plan their own healthy meal as well.

The Year 4 German students went on a field trip throughout the school after having a lesson about different places in the school. They received a set of questions related to places in the Secondary School and had to write down the answers using the prepositions of place (recently learnt) and a description of their location. On our tour we visited all the rooms in the Secondary School and talked to some teachers who were very kind enough to receive us in their rooms. The art room and Mr Hewett’s office made a big impression to the children- the first one because it offered a variety of drawings and colours and the second one because the children were curious to see how a director’s office looks like. It was definitely a lesson in which the children were fully engaged from the beginning to the end and challenged to apply their German knowledge.

World Book Day 2016 was officially on Thursday 3rd March, but at IBSB we celebrated it on Friday 11th March. The day itself was a very enjoyable experience for Primary School students, thanks to events organised by our staff and PTF.
One of the most memorable features of the day was the visit of British author Stan Cullimore, who visited each class for some singing, storytelling, poetry and art. Stan is the author of more than 120 books for children, and he was very happy to meet our students to discuss their ideas. Stan ended his two days with us by signing copies of his books, some of which he left as prizes for our World Book Day costume competition.

Students were invited to dress up as characters form famous books, and they did not disappoint! Across the school, Mr Cullimore noticed a Mad Hatter, a Pippi Longstocking and a Harry Potter. There was also a lot of princesses, a few princes and knights, one bouncy tiger and an Aladdin among the wonderful costumes on display.

Another exciting activity for Key Stage 1 was the visit of Mrs Carmen Tiderle and Mrs Claudia Marinescu (who also happens to be a teacher in our Year 1 class), both of whom have recently published children’s books here in Romania. The two authors read from their books and talked about their ideas and inspirations for writing.

World Book Day was a lot of fun for our students, but there was also a serious aspect to our celebrations. Key Stage 2 students took part in a sponsored Write-a-thon, which involved writing a story based on The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. They had previously arranged sponsors who would donate a small amount of money per word, so when the stories were completed the students could count the words and collect the money for charity. Similarly, Key Stage 1 students took part in a sponsored Spell-a-thon, for which they had to learn a list of challenging vocabulary and again collect sponsorship money for each word they could spell correctly on World Book Day. The money raised was donated to Cartile Copilariei, a charity project which aims to supply children’s books to the poorest communities in Romania.

It was a very busy but enjoyable day for all involved, and we must give special thanks to our PTF, Mr Paul Jennings, Mr Stan Cullimore, Mrs Claudia Marinescu and Mrs Carmen Tiderle for making it such a successful event. We are already looking forward to next year!

Last term Year 2 students learnt about people who made significant contributions to their lives both nationally and internationally. The students had the opportunity to identify the key role of a monarch and learnt about these fascinating people through a range of exciting and interactive activities. We compared the lives and reigns of Elizabeth I and Queen Victoria and placed significant events within a chronological timeline. We also found out about the life and work of some famous artists who inspired us to create our own drawings and paintings in their style. Our classroom turned into an impressive art gallery where the children admired their amazing work. It was so fantastic we decided to display their work outside our classroom for everyone to see.

For their half term homework the children were asked to research a famous person and organize the information as a nonfiction poster. The children enjoyed sharing their project with the rest of the class and some had chosen some very interesting people including a ballerina and Mr Dumitru Prunariu who was the first Romanian to go into space. I think we all learned something new including Ms Oana and Ms Deeble-Rogers!

Year 4 students have been learning about the Romans. They investigated important information on different sites for children and worked in groups to create posters that they presented in front of their colleagues. Also, they had to create a full size 3D Roman shield as their term project; they then made swords out of newspaper and simulated a battle on the football pitch. We all had great fun and, most importantly, nobody got injured! Apart from Ms Hewett who had to wear ear plugs during the fight!

Just before the mid-term break, in Year 5 we were busy with experiments, investigating Science. We layered colourful liquids with different densities, we floated metal paper clips on water, we pushed pins into balloons without bursting them, we pumped water uphill against gravity, and we watched pendulums do very strange things. We also been learnt why huge and heavy aeroplanes can take off and fly, why a candle can suck an egg into a bottle, how sound travels through the air, and how your eyes don’t always see what’s in front of them.

During term 2A the Year 6 students had many enjoyable lessons on The Demon Headmaster, the great book of Gillian Cross. The title character is a strange being with the powers of hypnosis and a desire to take over the world, as he believes it will be better under his ordered rule. He has piercing light green eyes, which he normally hides behind his dark glasses- removing these in order to hypnotise his victims. After reading the 16 chapters of this fascinating book and answering lots of comprehension questions, the students had a role play. They had to imagine a dialogue between the main characters and pretend they participate in parents’ evening. Later on Year 6 children had the pleasure to organize a press conference, then they wrote a newspaper article about the Demon Headmaster who disappeared at the end of the book. All students were extremely creative when asked to write a story of the headmaster as a child and how he discovered his powers and became evil.

On Tuesday, February 9th, IBSB celebrated Safer Internet Day 2016. Year 3 began by telling their peers what they love to do online. The children were shown examples of some comments which had been posted online and they decided to go and stand next to the emotion they felt when they saw it. As a class we spoke about how it made them feel and whether they think the post was kind to the person it had been sent to. Many children questioned, why would someone send a message like this? Could it make that person feel bad?

The children in groups then spoke about what they would do if they found themselves in a difficult situation while online. In pairs, the children presented to the class rules they would follow when using the internet. At the end of the day, every child made their one wish for a better internet!

This half-term the Year 5 students learning Spanish had a lot of fun learning all about the ‘Planets of our Solar System’. Their curiosity and thirst were piqued not only by finding out new information about our planets in the solar system, but also about other possible worlds. The highlight of the lesson was watching a short video in Spanish with lots of explanations regarding all the planets of the solar system- in fact the students like it so much they watched it at home over and over again, listening in Spanish and revising at the same time the vocabulary that describes the characteristics of different types of planets. The students also enjoyed using their imagination to create another planet themselves, which they then named and described.

Later, reading a story in Spanish about how life on the Earth is in danger because of actions of mankind due to pollution and other issues, the students realised that it was not just a story of fiction. In the story flowers could only be planted on the Moon because Earth could no longer sustain life. It led all the students to talk about the serious problems we face and solutions which are desperately needed for future generations of children to survive.

Children in EYFS have been busy learning about Jungle Animals. They learned to differentiate jungle animals from others and also learned about patterns: spotty, stripy, zigzags, circles, and spirals. They investigated animals that use camouflage to protect themselves from danger and role-played with jungle animals (lions, tigers, zebras, giraffes, rhinos, parrots and leopards). They were also involved in many hands on activities, like counting jungle animals and writing the correct number, sorting jungle animals, ordering them according to height, matching number sets, counting set-jungle animals. The teacher then read them some books related with the theme like: ‘Walking through the Jungle’, ‘Deep in the Rainforest’, ‘A busy, busy day in Tinga Tinga’, and ‘Wild Cats’. Now who wants to go on a safari?

This week during EAL we have been reading ‘The Rainbow Fish’, a lovely story about a beautiful fish. The Rainbow Fish is the loneliest fish in the ocean who becomes happier when he shares his beautiful scales with his friends. The story was a great opportunity to learn new words but also to enhance social and emotional skills. The students in Year 1 read the story, pointed at different words and pictures and talked about the rainbow fish’s feelings. The students predicted what would happen next in the story and acquired new language by labelling the parts of the fish. They enjoyed sharing and sequencing the events from the story, emphasising that stories have a beginning, middle, and end. We also made a Rainbow Fish book about friendship where we wrote what things a good friend might do. The children really liked the story and the various activities and are looking forward to their EAL lessons next week.

During the school holiday the students from 2C had to make their own shoe box diorama of a scene from a story. They had to use paints and different materials to create the scenery and the characters.

When the students returned back to school they were very excited to present to the teachers and colleagues their homework projects. We, along with year 2D, were invited to see the world of Narnia, the story of Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Little Pigs, Princess Sofia, and many more wonderful stories.

Everybody was very curious and asked a lot of questions about their colleagues’ scenes, but they were also very happy and proud to present their own. The students explained which story the scene is from and which materials they chose to make it and we were all very impressed with the end result. Well done Year 2C!

In November, the Preschool and Reception children learned about the night and day cycle/light and dark (black and white), investigating different sources of light, such as flashlights, natural light, candles, and lamps. Related to this theme, we then organized a pyjama party on Friday afternoon as a nice way to end a busy week. After lunch all the children changed into their pyjamas and then had fun eating popcorn and other treats brought in by the parents, and playing games, including musical chairs and other popular party games. In fact, the children enjoyed the afternoon so much that we are already planning our next party.

During Term 1b, Year 6 had the pleasure to study some great plays of arguably the most famous English writer: William Shakespeare. First we read from Macbeth- the best known scene with the three witches, after which we wrote and performed our very own magic spells. It was a nice moment because we worked in groups of three and used lots of props for our performance. Later on we began writing our own biography of William Shakespeare, but before that we searched in many books and on the internet for information about the writer’s life. We also studied the poem ‘All the world’s a stage’, which was both interesting and challenging, and from this poem learned a lot about figurative language; especially metaphors and personification. The hardest part was writing our own scripts at the end for the four Shakespearean plays (Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, The Winter’s Tale) that we performed this week. Here are some photos from our wonderful and unforgettable performance.

On the 3^rd of December the Year 1 children went on a visit to Merlin Book and Toy Store. They had the opportunity to meet a children’s book writer and an illustrator and had lots of fun listening to stories, and used their imagination to create their own stories. The children were interested in the books around the store and discussed what the stories may have been about, based on their covers, and then had the chance to choose books to buy to take home with them. All in all, a fun trip for the children and great learning experience.

This half term, Y3 students have learnt language relating to the celebrations of special occasions and of their achievements in activities and games. They have also learnt to say the name of the month in which they celebrate their birthday. The topic has provided opportunities for children to say more about themselves and they simply love that. Children add to their repertoire of games to play in French and here is a free website to try at home: www.french-games.net/.

In Year 3 we have been discussing different types of rocks that can be found at school or in our homes. We even carried small experiments in the classroom, testing their properties and answering questions like “Does it float?”,” Is it permeable?” or “Does it split?”. The children acted out as real scientists completing charts, making predictions and finally testing rocks such as marble, slate, granite and others. We made some interesting discoveries: Did you know that slate is impermeable and does not split easily although it’s quite thin? Or did you know that chalk is type of rock?

This term, the Romanian Non-Native students are introduced in a magical world. Together with the Year 3 group, we spoke about Cinderella. We read the Romanian version of the story and had fun learning some new words and expressions. The students loved the topic so much that we decided to make our own story book. Working in teams, they matched the Romanian paragraphs with the images and they put everything together on coloured cardboard.

From flaming tornados to DIY lasers, nothing was missing from the 1^st Annual IBSB Science Fair. With many aspiring scientists and meaningful projects ready to be demonstrated, the Science Department started their fun and exciting event planned for the students.

Indicators were glowing, sodium carbonate and tartaric acid was making scientific clouds, potatoes were powering whole LED clocks and many more note-worthy projects were on display that day.

Since many participants had been working on their Science Fair projects for a long time everyone was ready to share and amuse their spectators. Even our helpful teachers were all very excited throughout the whole day.

Once we were all set up and ready to share our knowledge, our audience started piling in. Demonstration after demonstration, we were finally done with this stirring event. Something we would later look back to and remember as an event you wouldn’t want to miss.

At the very end we all packed away our well-rounded projects and headed home to share parts of our tiring but lively day to our friends and family.

It was certainly an event that students were thrilled to have participated in.

By Kyriaki, Yr9

Last term Year 2C studied a topic about healthy living called ‘Staying Alive.’  For the half term holiday the students had a homework a project where they were asked to show their understanding about the topic. They worked very hard in making the projects and were proud to present them when school started. They enjoyed explaining that it is important to eat the right food, to have enough sleep and to exercise to keep your body healthy. The children were very creative and used different methods to show what they learned during term 1a: a PowerPoint Presentation, a poster, a collage and an interactive notebook. With a big excitement about their own project but also with the curiosity of seeing the presentations of their colleagues, Year 2C had a great time learning together the importance of living healthy.

This week was Year 2D’s assembly. Their Cross curricular theme this term is “Stories”. This week they have been looking at Michael Rosen’s story ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt.’ Through this story they have found out about different bears and where they live in the world; for example, a polar bear lives in Antarctica and a brown bear lives right here in Romania. They sequenced the story, described each scene adding lots of creative adjectives. They have also created a story map, which you can see around their classroom. They have enjoyed making collages representing each setting from the story: mud, trees, grass, storm, and cave. The children really enjoyed acting out the story, so much in fact that they decided to perform ‘We’re going on a Bear Hunt’ this week in the assembly to the rest of the primary school. The children were very excited to participate in the assembly and hopefully everyone enjoyed it too!

Today Y5 students explored a text about how autumn changes nature, but also children’s lives. Once summer is over and school starts, two friends in the story have to sadly say good bye to each other and accept that they will be apart until the next holiday.

Y5P students read the text and identified the different techniques used by the author to show the characters’ feelings. They discovered words and expressions with a powerful, emotional impact on reader, interpreted the subtle gestures, the actions of the characters, and created connections between the changes in the nature and those from the two children’s hearts.

In order to better understand the message of the story, the children then role-played a few scenes, showing the characters’ gestures and emotions.

The next step for them is to continue the story, using the same strategies they learnt about. We all worked hard, but also enjoyed the lesson!

Citizenship Day is a day when the students come off the normal subject timetable to work together in their houses lead by their team captain and progress through a variety of tasks and activities. The purpose of Citizenship Days are to build community and team spirit, but also to focus student attention on community issues. On this particular day the focus was on the refugee crisis currently facing the EU and surrounding countries.

The morning was spent investigating the current mass movement of people and the refugee crisis. There were videos, talks, and discussions which culminated in students coming up with their own ideas of how to tackle the problems and present them later in the day. It was nice to see most of the students in house colours and really immersing themselves in the conversations. The middle part of the day was aimed at having fun and activities will lots of funny, ridiculous, and also challenging competitions for the houses, including buckets full of water, water art, and balloons (of course) filled with water. The final part of the day was the assembly and the chance for students to feedback about what they had learnt, as well as some ideas of how to tackle today’s problems.

A special thank you to Ms Jane Broadhurst, Pastoral Care Coordinator, and Katie Bickell , the Key Stage 3, CAS, & Charity Coordinator, for putting together a fun and challenging programme for our students. Thank you also to all the staff involved in running the day. We look forward to Citizenship Day next term.

The students in Year 3D had a great time learning about shapes this week. We started our topic by talking about different shapes such as pentagons, hexagons, and even octagons. During the lesson the students had the chance to create their own shapes and share their work with the rest of the class. Everyone was excited to work in teams in order to sort several shapes into different categories. Using scissors and glue, the students were able to establish their own criteria and form groups of shapes, as you can see in the photos.

This term Year 2 are studying a topic all about healthy living called ‘Staying Alive’. We have learnt that we need to exercise to keep our body healthy, we need a lot of sleep, and to eat the right food to fuel our body. As part of this topic we enjoyed a yoga session with our school counsellor Aida Ivan to learn some basic stretches to relax and keep our body supple. The children enjoyed working together to create bridges with their hands and made star shapes with their legs. One thing they learnt was that yoga is done in absolute silence to ensure that everyone is relaxed and concentrating. This is something we could all work on together – being relaxed and taking some time for ourselves!

The students have also identified healthy and non-healthy food and sorted them in the food groups. They also tasted a wide range of food and used amazing adjectives to describe the taste of each. Some children described hummus as ‘disgusting’ and others described it as ‘yummy’ and ‘delicious’.

We are looking forward to learning more about the topic ‘Staying Alive’ in the next four weeks.

In Geography this week we have been exploring one of the main stories being covered by the media across Europe, and in fact the world.  The Refugee Crisis.  Year groups across KS3 have taken different approaches.  Year 7 have been finding out about Refugees throughout history, putting their mapping skills to the test by locating their origin and destination.  This is then being followed up by finding out how one of the refugees made a contribution to society.  Did you know one of the first contraceptive pills was invented by a refugee?  Year 8 are taking a more general approach and building up their understanding of migration, both voluntary and forced, before considering why people have become refugees.  Year 9 have the challenging task of investigating some of the myths and rumours around refugees, to either prove or disprove them based on comments made by people responding to the media stories.

In order to support the students, many resources have been made available on http://www.pearltrees.com/markstorey, including some of the resources from the lessons in class folders, along with a folder ‘In the News’ to give a wider selection of information.

Students also have the opportunity to challenge themselves further by responding to posts on. http://storiesofgeog.blogspot.ro/ Here they will find articles and websites that they may find useful to their lessons, or something they are interested in.

Lastly, a twitter account has been set up to share websites, news stories as they happen.  Follow @MSTGeography to discover even more about Geography and world around us.

Today Year 5C had the honour to open the new season of Primary School Assemblies this week, with the children presenting a timeline of the Human’s Rights given the fact this is what they studied in class in the last week.

Every bit of the assembly was their concept and they put a lot of effort to make it work. Through short plays, speeches, and crafts that children prepared carefully in advance, they showed how Cyrus the Great set the slaves free in 153BC, how King John signed the Magna Carta in 1215, and how Mahatma Gandhi fought for Human Rights in India. In Europe, during the World War II, Human Rights were almost extinguished because of Adolf Hitler. The assembly ended with Eleanor Roosevelt creating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

All in all, it was a great experience that made our students happy, excited, but also gave them a bit of stage fright. Thank you to all the parents who came along to watch their fantastic performance.

Our Year 1 children have been very excited about being in the new classroom. We used the  “Ourselves” theme as a starting point to allow the children to know each other better and to integrate the new children to the school and the current children from the Reception class.  As you can see in the pictures we drew around one of the children and labelled the parts of the body. We discussed what we use each part of the body for and about our five senses.

Last week we held our Transition Day for new students coming into Year 1 next year, for students new to IBSB and for our current Reception children. We held the activities in the Year 1 classroom along with Ms Irina from Reception, in order to introduce the children to what Year 1 will be like. The children got to explore the room and have lunch in the hall with the rest of Key Stage 1.

Even playing outside during break times with the rest of the children was a new and fun experience. We did some work on the Human Body, as we will do at the start of the year in Year 1 and also with Living Things, which we are studying now at the end of the year. It was a fun day filled with new teachers, new children, and an overall good introduction to how Year 1 will be!

Every day there are clubs running at IBSB in the Secondary School during lunch time and in the Primary School from 3-4pm (Monday –Thursday).These clubs offer our students the chance to explore new activities and interests, including sports, art and craft activities, the creative arts, as well as the more academic pursuits, such as the MUN Club and the School Debating Club. This week we stopped by the Primary School Young Engineers Club to see what they were up to. The photos tell the rest of story.

Last week the Primary School learnt about different religions across the world like Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam and Hindu.

In Year 1 the focus was on Christianity and Judaism. The children found out there are different beliefs, different ways of praying, and that all religions should be respected. They learnt about the story of Zacchaeus and how to be kind and tolerant. They also learnt how Jewish people celebrate the Shabbat and they compared their weekend activities with it.

In circle time we discussed traditional celebrations from the two cultures and pointed out the difference between them. In art the children discovered the Buddhist mandalas and they had fun making their own ones. What will we be learning about next week?

The students from year 4 were recently invited to join an exciting carnival experience. It was the Carnival of the Animals!!!!

The topic of the French lesson was based on the piece of music composed by Camille Saint-Saëns. Each song for ‘Carnival of the Animals’ was written for a particular animal. The composer did a fantastic job of imitating the spirit of each animal with his music. The children had the chance to ask and answer questions about animals and describe them.

Extracts from ‘Carnival of the Animals’ were played and the students tried to guess what animals the composer represented in each piece. It was amazing to imagine the lions roaring, the hens clucking, the mules braying, the dancing elephant, and the bouncy kangaroos.

The topic for Term 2B in Cross Curricular was the Stone Age. During a very interesting and exciting lesson Year 5 children had the opportunity to create their own natural paint using only spices, plants, fruit, and vegetables. After they had the mixture sorted, they painted their cavemen paintings and the results were absolutely amazing. Not only did they learn a lot about Stone Art and culture through direct experience, they also enjoyed it very much as you can see in the photos.

On Wednesday, April 1^st, the students had a special afternoon activity arranged around the theme of Healthy Eating. The students were all asked to bring in healthy snacks and fruit to use for the afternoon competition, where they each put their artistic skills and understanding of a healthy diet to good use creating the ultimate snack. You can see from the photos that there was an impressive range of tasty treats on offer and the staff were all very impressed by both the quality of the presentation and the tastiness value. A special thank you to Ms Marascu for arranging this fun event. Now, time for a tasty bowl of fruit salad, or maybe a fruit salad sandwich?

Every year on the 20^th of March, the anniversary of the creation of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF, or International Organisation of La Francophonie), the Journée Internationale de la Francophonie (International Francophonie Day),  is celebrated throughout the world, in the 77 states and governments of the OIF, and also many non-French speaking countries.

This year, our IBSB students decided to continue the tradition and organised a series of activities, including a Bake Sale and a Non-Uniform Day to support one of our local charities in their mission to help kids with cancer in Romania (http://www.sperantapentrutine.ro).

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Catrinel, Maria, and Maria Luiza  (Year 11) for this successful initiative, for their inspiration to us all, and for the effort required to organise such an event. French cuisine, cultural quizzes on important French and francophone figures, and music contributed to creating a multicultural environment.

Inspired by the passion for the French language and Francophone values, the Year 9 students also got involved and worked on a Francophone Global Citizens Project where they used their knowledge of the current topic studied in class (Ways to protect the environment) and passed on this message in our community.

Students also got involved and promoted the French language and the solidarity of the Francophone culture by offering spring plants (in pots) in school at the end of the lessons. This activity was a wonderful opportunity for students to express their opinions (in French) on issues of great importance.

As part of the new computing curriculum Year 2 are learning all about photography, how cameras work and how to take and talk about photographs. Linking to our work on transport inventions the children took the Samsung tablets out into the playground and took a range of photographs of toy cars thinking about backgrounds, angles and focus. Later that day they used an App called Animoby to transfer all their photographs into a single slide for ease of presentation. The children were really proud of their photographs and very creative in how they set up their shots.

This was the first Year 1 assembly this year! It was fun, but also a lot of work. Over the last few weeks, we have been reading some funny stories in Literacy about “The Pigeon” and the children loved them so much that they decided to perform one of them in front of their families and the whole school. Parents were very impressed, the children had fun performing, and all said that the assembly was a big success.  So well done Year 1!

Did you know that on the 13th of March Year 6 together with Year 7 celebrated the Pi Day? Pi Day is an annual celebration commemorating the mathematical constant π (pi).

On the 14th of March people also celebrate Albert Einstein’s birthday and eat all kinds of pies. On the morning of 13th of March in the Senior School, students did the same thing, eating lots of delicious pies. Some students have presented some nice Power points about this event offering us good explanations about Pi number. For example, they found out that consequently Pi’s decimal representation never ends and never settles into a permanent repeating pattern. Three Year 6 students took part in a memorizing digits competition. They have really impressed us. Congratulations!

The German students from Year 7 came prepared with all the ingredients for preparing a Banana Milkshake in order to test a German milkshake recipe learnt in the previous lesson. They followed carefully all the preparation steps and came up with original ideas to make the milkshake tasty and appealing. In addition to making an irresistible drink, they also had a lot of fun.

In Term 2A, the students from Y5 have studied a very fascinating topic about planets during their French lessons. They can name the planets in French, describe their position in the solar system and some of their characteristics. The students have also developed new skills such as using complex sentences and becoming aware of adjectival agreement in French. Learning about planets was great fun with active learning opportunities for pupils: games, quizzes, poems and creating a display.

It was also Martisor Day, so all the students in the Primary School dressed in red and white to celebrate this important day in Romania.

Some of the students in Years 7-11 have been involved in a very special Community Action Service project this year, working with the children from Sfanta Macrina orphanage to help the lives of some of the street dogs, and in this case (see photos below) are taking Bela to the vet for the first time for her vaccinations, deworming, and first check-up. She is only a puppy, but already huge! The club is helping to improve her living conditions and the way others respond to her, and it’s working! She now has a house (shelter), water dishes, and some healthier food, plus she is freed from her chain twice a day. She is learning how to walk on a leash and socialise with other dogs. The children from Sfanta Macrina orphanage are also losing their fear of dogs, interacting with her in positive ways, and are beginning to understand how to treat and care for living creatures.

Next project- sterilisation!

This week in Year 1 the children have been studying Countries and Culture in their Cross Curricular subject. It has been a week of animals and weather! They have learned about different climate zones around the world and the names of some of the continents. They also learned what the equator is and how it affects the weather in certain places. They organised pictures of animals into groups depending on their habitat and the food they eat and can tell you the difference between herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores. I wonder what we will study next?

This term has started in a very fun way for Year 5. The Cross Curricular theme for Term 2a is Myths and Legends. The children already knew so many interesting things about the subject, and so for this reason our lessons began with interesting discussions generated in the class. During this week the students started creating their own mythical creature. First they had to design one by cutting and gluing body parts of 3 different animals. Then they had to sketch it, to make it look as mythical as possible, and to give it a name. For everyone involved, it has been a incredibly interesting start to the term.

The Year 4 students showed an incredible amount of creativity and concentration during our trip to Made by You ceramics. It was a very specific art lesson in which the children received instructions and suggestions from specialists and were able to create some excellent pottery. They each received a bowl, special paints, and paint brushes, and worked hard for 2 hours in order to create very different final pieces. A lot was learned and now the children have a new bowl for their cereal in the morning. Good job, Year 4!

Almost two weeks ago the students in Year 6 started preparing for an important event – Annual ESU Public Speaking Competition – which will be hosted by our school on the 24th of January, 2015, with the theme for this year being: Life is about the journey, and not about the destination.

To get the process rolling, the children spent some English lessons working on their speeches. They came up with lots of ideas in a brainstorming session and then began planning everything by writing clear and concise arguments, with the help of the teachers. Next they critically examined their speeches and the speeches of the others, trying to improve them by developing some good messages or by giving more examples to show how the information presented applies to the lives of the audience. Finally, the Year 6 students focused on delivering their speeches, taking into account the good standards of performance.

Here are some photos taken in front of the classroom, after the students prepared their cue cards and memorized parts of their speeches. They are still rehearsing for the big competition, so let’s wish them all good luck!

As part of our PSHE programme the Year 4 children learn about different religions so that they have a better understanding and more respect for differences. This term our focus was on the Jewish religion and we were lucky enough to have a visitor, Mrs Cohen, who helped us understand a little more about her culture. We learned about how Hannukah came about, the importance of the candles, and what people around the world will be doing celebrating Hannukah. It was a hands on experience, with the children being able to paint oil containers and play with dreidels.

This week the Early Years children learned about the Indian Festival of Diwali. All the children listened to the story of Diwali, then coloured some nice Diwali patterns and had their hands painted with the specific Diwali Henna drawings. They also tasted some specific treats traditionally offered and eaten during this celebration.

We hope that by studying the festivals celebrated in different cultures and countries that our children gain a better awareness about the similarities and differences between themselves and others from differing families and communities, with different traditions.

We would like to thank our parents for their involvement and positive impact on the Early Years children. All children enjoyed the parents’ presence and we are looking forward to having more parents in class on different occasions.

St Nicholas Day was a grand success once again last year thanks to the generous donations of many students like Ana (Year 11) who brought in an abundance of Finetti, candy, and socks! Three students in KS3 also chose to selflessly give leftover money from their trip to the Danube Delta to the cause. As a result, all of the children from Sfanta Macrina, day and residential programmes alike, received a sock stuffed to the brim with sweets, plus a large tub of Finetti to enjoy either at home or in the dining hall at Sfanta Macrina.
I would like to thank the entire school community for rallying together to make this special moment happen. I can assure you that for most, if not all of these children, the morning would have passed uneventfully with St Nicholas somehow overlooking them; however, we did not allow that to happen. We made a positive impact in our community, making it possible for disadvantaged children to create happy childhood memories, and most importantly, instilling hope for the future. Great job everyone!

Ms Katie Bickell

This term Year 4 put on their scientists caps and tested how friction affects how objects move. The children had to carry out a number of experiments, but first they had to write their plans, ask their questions, decide which variables to change or not and make predictions. Then it was time to work; shoes off and hands on! The children checked how cars move in different surfaces, who was wearing the shoes with most grip, and how friction affected different objects. It was a great week of discoveries and as per normal in Year 4 they did a great job!

On Monday, the 24th of November, Year 6 Spanish students Nicholas and Pietro had the chance to experience an interesting online journey to the Danube Delta, and to learn some interesting facts about the Nile and Ancient Egyptian civilization. While Pietro introduced us to the splendid species of fauna and flora common to the wetlands of the Danube Delta flowing into the Black Sea, Matei presented some interesting facts that relating to the impressive history of the Nile. It was an astonishing voyage that took us on a journey through the geography and history of our world, narrated in Spanish, so we developed not only our Spanish vocabulary, but also our interest in some of the picturesque and unique places on the Earth, reminding us that it is the duty of all the generations to learn about and to preserve their places of natural beauty.

Year 6 students have had the chance to learn and find out very interesting things about the Aztecs during term 1B. We discovered, for example, that these famous people had a unique system for slavery, played sports, and were very artistic. We also experimented in the classroom to see and understand better how the Aztecs were such great builders of islands, especially considering that their capital city Tenochtitlan was built on a swampy wet area.

The Aztecs are best known for eating chocolate, but also for killing and eating people in a sacrifice to their heathen gods. And because we have talked a lot about the Aztec diet (maize, beans, insects, fish, honey, dogs, snakes, and of course the most valued cocoa beans used to make chocalate) we ordered some special treats from El Torito Mexican restaurant.

So here we are tasting some delicious Taquitos, Empanadas de Pollo, Flautas, and Quesadilla.

Maths lessons for Year 4 students are always interesting and challenging. Ms Jones found some great interactive methods to involve all Year 4 children.

Last week we have been studying fractions, a unit which is not so easy for everyone, but surprisingly after Ms Jones’ explanations and demonstrations at the whiteboard everybody in our classroom understood what a fraction means and how they are formulated, even to the point of showing each other.

This week we are going to extend and consolidate the taught notions.

Year 4B students love History and projects! During our last Romanian lessons we learnt about our ancestors, the Dacians and the Romans, looking at their geography, everyday life, customs, superstitions, and political relations. Children asked lots of questions and also shared very interesting information with their colleagues. We read a text about the fights between Decebal and Traian and learnt many new words. As homework, students were asked to do individual research and make a presentation in front of the class, having the option to choose between designing a poster, creating a Power Point Presentation, or writing a presentation. We had lots of fun and learnt amazing information about our History (especially Ms Ana who was so impressed with her students’ enthusiasm, curiosity and knowledge).

Year 2 have been really excited about the new computing curriculum introduced to IBSB this year. In order to understand how algorithms work we have been out in the playground plotting our course across the solar system with a sequence of simple instructions.
Blast off! Forward 3, Turn Left, Forward 4, Turn Right, Forward 1, Touch Down!

We then transferred this experience into the classroom where we programmed our bee-bots to the make the same journey. Finally, we are learning to use “Scratch” on the computers so that we can programme a spaceship of our own design to travel across the space backgrounds that we have created. When all of our computer programmes are completed, we look forward to sharing them with parents and our friends through our social learning platform Edmodo.

Next stop – Planet Mars!

In Year 3, during our Cross Curricular lessons we’ve been looking at how our school is organised, by comparing it to other schools in different countries, by identifying existing jobs, and by imagining a new way of organising IBSB. By discussing uniforms and creating their own school crest, children put their creative thinking to the test and the results were amazing!

During the school holiday children then shaped their ideas of a perfect school into well-built and interesting displays accompanied by imaginative written presentations. All projects were welcomed with great enthusiasm as the children had great fun presenting their work in front of their colleagues and Year 4 A and Year 4 B, who visited our class and listened to their presentations. We were pleased to see the diversity of their work, which included schools made out of candies and others made out of wood, some of which had swimming pools and beautiful libraries decked with books of all sorts. Great job everyone!

On Thursday October 9th, IBSB had a whole school non uniform day to raise money for Light into Europe. Throughout the day, many classes carried out activities which simulated visual impairment by using blindfolds. Many of the younger children got the chance to write their names in braille, demonstrating that children who become blind at a young age can also experience the joy of reading and writing in school. With the use of fun feely bag activities, pupils were encouraged to think about how they experience the world around them, and learn not to take their sight for granted. To complete our week, Sir Stan Platt, Chairman of Light Into Europe brought to our Friday assembly two guide dogs for the blind. All the children were in awe to see and hear that their donations from World Sight Day were going to a very good cause.

As we celebrated Peace One Day on Friday, the Year 4 students created a beautiful Peace Dove. The whole class contributed peacefully to the final result. Each child was given a piece of the “puzzle” to colour- not knowing what each of the small parts meant; their only instruction was to colour either with shades of blue or to make it very colourful. They were all happily surprised when we put the pieces together and they saw their Picasso by Year 4 work. It does look impressive and in the pictures you can see how proud the children are of the contribution they made! Well done, Year 4!

Another year has started at IBSB and our joyful students are already into a good learning rhythm. One of the main focuses this year is ’Reading’ and students are encouraged to read both in school and at home through Scholastic Books, Guided Reading and Reading Buddies programmes. Last week, Years 2A, 2B and Year 5 got together, Ms Becky, Ms Collier and Mr Quysner carefully set buddies according to the children’s individual needs and an exciting programme came to life. Basically, Year 5s came and read with the younger ones, helped them to understand the story, explained what difficult words mean and they asked questions about the sequences and characters. It has so far been a great experience for all the children and a challenging one for Year 5s! We are looking forward to continuing this throughout the year!

On Friday, September 5th, Year 6 had their first important assembly, in which they talked about the responsibilities of the new prefects Ioana and Gruia, but also about the new House Captains who will all be looking to set a good example to the rest of the school and help students and teachers in the Primary School. The Six Year 6 House Captains for Dobrogea, Muntenia, and Transilvania will collect house points every week, support their house at all times and try to earn as many house points as possible.

On Monday there were elections at break time, so everybody from the Primary School had the chance to vote for the person they would like to lead their house. After listening to the candidates’ persuasive speeches in assembly, it will be hard to choose the best House Captains. Here are a few photos from the elections.

After the summer holidays, the students in 4B came back to School full of energy, great ideas, and were ready to share their news with their class mates. It was week to get use to the School and class routines, write the 4B rules and for all to start learning! The students created an “All About Me” sheet, in which they wrote about themselves, their likes and dislikes, and their families. They also brought in a shoe box filled with items that represented who they are and what is important for them.  As we are a very reliable group of children, they also had to get ready for this year’s first class assembly.  Great job Year 4!