News from the School

Die Tage bis zu Weihnachten sind gezählt. Die Kinder können es kaum erwarten die Festtage mit Familie und Freunden zu feiern, aber auch, bis endlich die lang-erwartete Weihnachtsaufführung stattfindet. Die Vorbereitungen im Kindergarten 1 laufen auf Hochtouren; schneiden, schreiben, basteln, backen, überall im Haus. Man begegnet vielleicht am 6. Dezember auch dem Nikolaus!

Die Kinder waren hin und weg, als der Samichlaus und sein Schmutzli auf einmal vor der Türe standen. Die beiden haben Geschichten erzählt, die Kinder konnten das "Goldene Buch" bestaunen und mehr über Samichlaus` Esel erfahren. Zum Abschied durften die Kinder aus dem Kindergarten 1 dem Samichlaus und dem Schmutzli noch ihre Weihnachtsbastelprojekte und ihre viel-geübten Lieder vorführen. Die Gruppe wurde für ihre Bemühungen und ihre tolle Gruppenarbeit noch reichlich mit Leckereien belohnt.

Es ist eine Freude zu sehen, wie sehr die Kinder die Vorweihnachtszeit, das Plätzchenbacken sowie das tägliche Üben der Weihnachtslieder geniessen. Der Fleiss, der Ehrgeiz und die Freude der Schülerinnen und Schüler schaffen bereits jetzt grosse Weihnachtstimmung bei allen.

Regina Ramirez, Lehrperson Kindergarten 1

Primary 2 students have hopped on board and blasted off on an exciting adventure this term. We have been learning all about travel and transport. The children have been exploring journeys of all kinds, including how people get around now and how they travelled in the past. 

One of the topics we have been working on is the invention of trains and how this affected travel. We have completed timelines, compared pictures of trains in the past and present and built own our train tracks. We also read the story "Oi! Get Off Our Train" by John Burningham. The story is about a boy who dreams that he is taking a journey around the world in his steam train. He visits many different habitats where endangered animals beg a lift on the train to escape their impending extinction. In our English lessons we have been writing our own version of the story using exciting adjectives to engage the reader and give more detail. We have been working hard to create our own illustrations based on the book too. We have been practising our oracy skills by reading our work out loud to our friends and to other year groups. Our re-tell of the story was even presented in a whole school assembly. 

Elia: I loved building a train track with my friends.

Emilia: I enjoyed learning about trains in the past. It was also fun to build a train track and watch the train go around the track.

Noah: It was fun to make our own pictures from "Oi Get Off Our Train". I also liked the writing.

Mai Lan: I liked watching the video of the world’s longest train ever which happened in Switzerland.

David: It was really interesting to learn about steam trains and how coal is used to help to power them. It’s also interesting to see pictures of old trains.

The term isn’t over yet, and we still have lots more exciting transport learning to do! 

Vicky Bradley, Primary 2 Teacher

Im deutschen Klassenraum haben wir etwas über die coolen Azteken gelernt. Wir haben es toll gefunden, weil die Geschichte alt und interessant war. Die Azteken kannten mega viele Götter, genauer gesagt kannten sie 1600 Götter. Der wichtigste Gott war Huizlipochtli. 

Die Menschenopfer war ein grosses Ereignis bei den Azteken. Sie holten vom Opfer das Herz des Menschen für den Sonnengott heraus und dann warfen sie die Menschen die Treppen runter. Bei den aztekischen Ballspielen kann es vorkommen, dass die Gewinner den Göttern geopfert werden. 

Ihre Sprache hiess Nahuatl. Sie hatten auch viele strenge Regeln. Eine davon lautet, dass man beim Diebstahl versklavt wird. 

Pippa und Wimberly, 3. Klasse

Our 5th Year classes have been studying Ecology since the start of second term. Throughout these lessons, we have been learning about the living and non-living world around us, and how everything interacts to create an ecosystem. One week, we took a closer look at an interaction called symbiosis. Symbiosis is when two organisms exist together and at least one benefits from this co-existence.

To better understand symbiosis, our teacher asked us to make creative advertisements. We started by selecting a pair of organisms out of a hat. We then had to research these organisms and understand how they work together. In some cases, the two organisms had a mutualism relationship, which means both benefited from each other’s existence (bee and a flower). In other cases, the relationship was commensalism, where one organism benefited from the relationship and the other neither benefited or was harmed (whale and a barnacle). In a few cases, the relationship was parasitic, where one organism benefited and the other was harmed (tick and a dog). 

After completing our research on the symbiotic relationship of the organisms, we needed to create an advertisement from the perspective of the benefiting organism. That organism needed to advertise itself, its characteristics, and how it would be beneficial in a relationship. We got to be really creative and use our new knowledge to make these advertisements like something that could be seen in a newspaper, on a billboard, or online. 

Sharing our advertisements was the best part, because we didn’t just get to learn about the symbiotic relationship between two organisms in our world, but we also got to see everyone’s creativity, their impressive drawing skills, and learn about new plants or animals we didn’t know existed. We look forward to more exciting projects about Ecology and the living world around us!

Year 5 Lions and Elephants