NEWSLETTER

ENGLISH INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL MOSCOW EAST

Friday 17th April

Welcome to Term 3 of this academic year. It is not how I would usually like to welcome our student but in these strange times but I have seen many of them in conference meetings and zoom calls. Their excitement and engagement is always encouraging and reminds me how lucky we all are to have such a positive school community.

Next Monday we start our theme of Eco/Earth week. It’s a great opportunity for your and your family to discuss ways that we can help the world stay healthy and safe for the future. There are many examples of nature taking back control since the start of this global pandemic. If you find anything interested that you would like to share and think other would enjoy, please send me an email.

We all hope you stay safe and well. Mr Barnaby

Dear Parents

As we come to the end of our first month of eLearning, I would like to write a few words of thanks to you for your support.

These are extraordinary times and I am proud that as a school EIS has risen to the challenge to ensure that we continue to offer a quality education to all our students. Teachers at EIS have had to adapt to delivering their lessons online and have done so with a great deal of skill and ingenuity. Our students have shown resilience and a positive attitude to eLearning, led by the examples of their teachers and parents.

The current eLearning programme will continue until the 28th April at which time we will take the Spring break so that students, teachers and parents can have well deserved rest from the computer screens. Teaching will resume on Tuesday 12th May. At the current time it is still unclear whether we will return to school campuses or continue to teach online. Please be reassured that we will update you once advice is forthcoming from the Moscow authorities. What I can assure you is that we will, however, continue to work with all our students and their families to deliver a varied programme that ensures all our students continue on their important educational journey.

I would also like to take this opportunity to remind students in Years 11-13 of the importance of maintaining their studies at this time. Staff are still gathering evidence to support their submissions to the examination boards, who have made the unprecedented step of cancelling this year’s IGCSE, AS and A level examinations. Grades will now be awarded based on various forms of continual assessment which the teachers need to submit to the examination boards.

I look forward to the time when we can meet again in person and in the meantime send my best wishes to all our EIS families.

Malcolm C Phillips

PRINCIPAL’S MESSAGE

Year 1 & 2

Year 3 & 4

We have enjoyed learning about Spring this week. We have been thinking about new life, vibrant colours, new beginnings and how Spring affects animals. We enjoyed learning about a special event in Denmark, where organic dairy cows are released after being inside all winter. They spring and leap like Easter bunnies! It is really fun to watch. We enjoyed writing about it. In maths, we have been learning about place value to 1000. In English, we have been learning about non-chronological reports. So far, we have written about a butterfly's life cycle, cows in Spring and we have described how Spring looks by choosing a noun, a verb and an adjective. In topic, we are enjoying a new theme called 'Great Explorers' and we have started off by learning about Neil Armstrong and his adventures as the first man on the moon! In science, we have learnt about the weather and how it affects us. It is very fitting because the weather is so changeable in Moscow at the moment! We have begun to name our days of the week to add something fresh to our afternoon class Zoom sessions. We will do something special on each day of the week. Can you guess what we will do on the following days? Mindfulness Monday, Teamwork Tuesday, Wacky Wednesday, Thoughtful Thursday, Funny Friday.

Year 3 and 4 have had a week of all things Spring! We have completed Maths, English, Science and Art activities based around the season. In Maths, the Year 3 students have looked at partitioning numbers as an addition strategy. The Year 4 students have learnt to round decimals to the nearest whole number, the nearest 10th, and the nearest 100th. They have also looked at improper fractions, and begun to understand what they mean. In English, we have continued with our phonics programme to help with sounding out words and spelling. Some students have been doing a novel study about A Bear Called Paddington, while others have enjoyed listening to Mr Meddle's

Muddles. We had a choice of fun Science and technology activities this week that included building with Lego, creating Spring themed coding activities, cooking, and graphic design.

Year 6 Year 5

In Science, we learned about energy. We watched a very interesting Mystery Science video which asked: "How is our body similar to a car?" We learned that while a car gets stored energy from gasoline, our bodies get energy from food - and it's the same thing. In fact, scientists have been able to power cars from excess french fries oil, chocolate and beans! We learned about stored energy and how when there is more stored energy, its release can propel things to move faster.

In Topic, we started learning about World War 2. We discussed what we already know and then learned about the events that led to the outbreak of war. We found out the dates of some of the key events and then placed them onto a timeline. It promises to be a very interesting topic.

It has been another busy week of eLearning in Year 6. In Maths, we focused on word problems during the first half of the week. We practised solving two and multi-step problems, using the RUCSAC method to help us break down the questions. Later in the week, we worked on improving the speed and accuracy of our mental calculations. We used strategies such as partitioning, rounding, near doubles and repeated doubling and halving to help us. In English, we read a number of texts and used these as a basis for sentence and word level work. We read a story about Robin Hood using that to discuss using context clues for unfamiliar words and also examining the differences between regular and irregular past tense verbs. We also read about working dogs and compared and contrasted the information we found about the different dogs. On Thursday, we had a fun lesson playing games to develop our speaking fluency. We played a game called Taboo where you have to describe a word without using other closely related words. It was surprisingly tricky but fun!

We have enjoyed listening to our book this week

‘Escape from Mercy Hall’. Each day another chapter

appears on Seesaw for the students to listen to and

use their imaginations.

In English

this week,

students

learnt what

a similes is

and how

they can be

used in a descriptive piece of writing or poem. The

students also watch a short animated film called

‘present’. From this students learnt how a character

can change as the story develops.

This week in maths, students looked at angles.

Students found that angles can be found anywhere,

including in letters/words and even artwork. At the

end of this week, they revised how to find the area

of a shape and it’s perimeter.

We have also been continuing to study French through eLearning. This week, the focus was on learning the French names for different animals. We practised the spellings and listened to the correct pronunciation. Then we recorded ourselves speaking on Seesaw. There were some excellent French accents!

ART

Our talented students have

been producing

some stunning pieces of artwork.

These pictures are by Suzu and

Yu.

This week the students were given the

opportunity to complete all outstanding

work. The Year 7 students are still busy with

Rivers; Year 8 students Coasts and the Year

10 students on the Natural environment

looking at Natural Hazards like Earthquakes

and volcanoes. We continued with our

conferences during their specified Geography

lessons.

GEOGRAPHY IN FOCUS

PRIMARY DRAWING COMPETITION

This week the theme has been Spring and even though they are eLearning this hasn’t dampened the

competitiveness of our Primary students.

Housepoints were up for grabs and the standard of entries was extremely high. Well done

everyone. All entries received a Housepoint and the winners were awarded 5 Housepoints.

Year 1 and 2

Reilans

Year 3 and 4

Amanda Year 5 and 6

Rainers

ENGLISH Last week Year 7 created a set of

static images for their novel Treasure

Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.

This exercise gave them the

opportunity to show the way they

viewed the novel. Students focused

on either character or a potential

cover for the book.

Despite the lock down our students continuing working hard and developing their piano skills. Who can you spot in these photos?

MUSIC