In this issue: Science News, Preschool has a new teacher, Grade 2 loves the snow, French Dept News , Special report: Chinese New Year, Grade 5 Field Trip, PTA news, Classifieds
Issue 03/2009 February 17, 2009 While Mother Nature rests and gives us a typical Pol- ish winter, ISK staff and students are busier than ever. Mid-Term exams for Middle and High Schoolers and International Schools Assessment trial tests and tests for Grades 3 through 9 have been the focus here for the last few weeks. A team of dentists from Vita Medical Dental Institute gave workshops for stu- dents on dental hygiene. Chinese New Year work- shops, presented by Ms. Wei-Yun Lin of the Jagiello- nian University’s Confucius Institute, included dramatic presentation, calligraphy and paper-cutting activities. Our Career Weeks are in full swing, as many parents will be visiting to talk to students about their lines of work. Teachers and administra- tors have been involved in their continuing work on curriculum mapping. ISK was represented at the RubiconAtlas training at the Marymount Paris School, and at the European League for Middle Level Education Conference, also in Paris. But paramount to all this activity was the news from the Council of International Schools (CIS) and from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC): ISK has been officially awarded accreditation from both of these institutions. This information is the culmina- tion of years of preparation, and is great news for all of us. Congratulations to the entire ISK Community! Erica Mazzeo, Directo Sue Mleczko, Deputy Director In this issue Science News Preschool has a new teacher Grade 2 loves the snow French Dept News Special report: Chinese New Year Grade 5 Field Trip PTA news Classifieds ISKVOICE The Bi-Monthly International School of Krakow Newsletter The International School of Krakow - ul. sw. Floriana 57 - Lusina - 30-698 Krakow - Poland - www.iskonline.org coming up February 17 Chess tournament begins February 20 Bake Sale March 10 PTA coffee morning While Moth Nate Sleeps... ISK celebrates Chinese New Year, takes exams and sees the dentist!
Transcript
Issue 03/2009February 17, 2009
While Mother Nature rests and gives us a typical Pol-ish winter, ISK staff and students are busier than ever. Mid-Term exams for Middle and High Schoolers and International Schools Assessment trial tests and tests for Grades 3 through 9 have been the focus here for the last few weeks. A team of dentists from Vita Medical Dental Institute gave workshops for stu-dents on dental hygiene. Chinese New Year work-shops, presented by Ms. Wei-Yun Lin of the Jagiello-nian University’s Confucius Institute, included dramatic presentation, calligraphy and paper-cutting activities. Our Career Weeks are in full swing, as many parents
will be visiting to talk to students about their lines of work.
Teachers and administra-tors have been involved in their continuing work on curriculum mapping. ISK was represented at the RubiconAtlas training at the Marymount Paris School, and at the European League for Middle Level Education Conference, also in Paris. But paramount to all this activity was the news from the Council of International Schools (CIS) and from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC): ISK has been officially awarded accreditation from both of these institutions. This information is the culmina-
tion of years of preparation, and is great news for all of us. Congratulations to the entire ISK Community!
Erica Mazzeo, Directo Sue Mleczko, Deputy
Director
In this issue
Science News
Preschool has a new teacher
Grade 2 loves the snow
French Dept News
Special report: Chinese New Year
Grade 5 Field Trip
PTA news
Classifieds ISKVOICEThe Bi-Monthly International School of Krakow Newsletter
The International School of Krakow - ul. sw. Floriana 57 - Lusina - 30-698 Krakow - Poland - www.iskonline.org
coming up
February 17 Chess tournament begins
February 20 Bake Sale
March 10 PTA coffee morning
While Mother Nature Sleeps...ISK celebrates Chinese New Year, takes exams and sees the dentist!
We made it!!!You might all well remember the visit from the accredita-tion team last October, but for those who missed the event, here’s a short summary: a 7 person team visited the school to review all aspects of the school from curriculum, to staffing, to financing, etc in order to evaluate the possibilty of ISK to be given the presti-gious CIS and NEASC accredi-tions.
The news came in from the Council of International Schools (CIS) and from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC): ISK has been of-ficially awarded accreditation from both of these institutions. This information is the culmi-
nation of years of preparation, and is great news for all of us.
Congratulations to the entire ISK Community!
We would also like to thank again all the people who par-ticipated in making the ac-creditation week a success. A special thank you to Sylvie Suret for putting together some wonderful gift bags for the visiting team members. The bags looked great, and the team members appreci-ated the warm and welcom-ing touch. We would also like to thank Liz Johnson, Teresa Turin-Lis, Agda Cartolano and Sylvie Suret for keeping the accreditation team supplied with delicious treats while at ISK. We also appreciate Kasia
Virkler’s efforts to support the teachers that week and let them know how much we ap-preciate the extra work it took while the accreditation team visited. A big thanks to all of you!
Welcome Ms Anna !Hello parents and members of the ISK family!
I’m happy to be a new member of the teaching staff working with the preschool. I was fortunate to get to know most of my students while Ms. Julie was still on-board. The transition to the second semester is going smoothly for everyone.
We have started off our first week together by preparing arts and crafts with a “Valentine’s Day” theme. By next week you should be able to see your creative children’s work posted throughout our class-room.
From the topic of “hearts and loved ones” we will transition into recognizing our own emotions as well as those of our friends. Pretty soon we hope to understand when others are happy, angry or sad.
I look forward to both teaching and learning from our preschoolers. See you in the classroom or on the ISK playground.
Sincerely, Ms. Anna
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Grade 2 is loving the snow!
The students have enjoyed the winter weather.
They love to go outside and play in the snow.
They really enjoy when fresh snow has fallen and they can make a big snowman!
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News from the French DepartmentPRIMARY FRENCH
The book used by 4th graders learning French as a foreign language relates to a very famous French writer : Jules Verne. Each topic is based on his most famous books and children’s stories, and every unit corresponds to one of his books.
So far, Natalia, Aarzoo, Joanna, Dominik and Wolf, have already traveled a lot with Alex and Zoe, the heroes of the book; first they went to Transylvania in Romania to visit “Carpathian Castle”, then to Lebanon where they discovered that Phoenicians
invented the alphabet 3000 years ago (“Two years on holiday”).
After that, they went to Cambodia where they could ride elephants to visit the jungle and the temples (“Around the World in 80 days”) ; they continued their trip to Tahiti where they “met” Paul Gauguin and Henri Matisse (“20 000 Leagues under the Sea”), before going to Quebec in Canada, and after trying to land on the Moon (“All around the Moon”) from the French Space Center in Guyana.
Their next trip will bring
them inside a volcano (“A Journey to the Center of the Earth”), to Russia (“Michel Strogoff”) as well as Morocco. Of course their priority is to visit countries where French is or was spoken.
To make it even more lively, we are currently watching “The Children of Captain Grant”. The film is about two children who travel to South America, Australia and New Zealand to try to find their dad whose ship got lost. If you want to know the end of the story, ask the students...!
Catherine Humnicki
Vive les Fromages….. de France et de Suisse…
French is not just tons of grammar and vocabulary to remember…
It can also be an occasion to eat nos “specialites de Fromages”…
Students from Grade 10 -11 ( French Foreign 1) tasted different sorts during the lesson. A bit afraid and reluctant at the beginning, ( these cheeses would stink !) they did try milky brie de Meaux, camembert, some goat cheeses as Chevrotin and the delicious Chabichou ( only the names should give you the desire to deguste them ) the tasty Maroille ( ok, may be a “bit” strong as Kaniskh said) the delicate Reblochon and the Bleu
d’Auvergne…. With some bread, believe us, it was just delightful.
There are so many ( one for each day of the year say the French people ) that we weren’t able to discover all of them but students enjoyed it and had a lot of fun !!!
Next time we will taste the famous “ Cuisses de grenouille” ( Frog’s legs)
Avis aux amateurs!
Ms Bénédicte
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The year of the OxISK students celebrated Chinese New Year in a variety of ways.
Our younger students did art projects connected to the Chi-nese animals which name each new year.
Grades Zero and One treated the school to a parade of little dragons.
Upper Elementary students learned why the Chinese wear red and make noise with fireworks at this holiday season: to scare away the evil monster!
Middle School and High School tried their hands at callig-raphy, and at paper-cutting, which look easy but take much skill to master. Ms. Wei-Yun Lin of the Confucius Institute at the Jagiellonian University , and a native of Taiwan, led the workshops for the students. She also informs us that Chi-nese New Year celebrations will continue in Krakow, at the Kino Kijow, on Feb. 14 and 15.
There will be Chinese films and martial arts workshops for children.
Check out the link: http://www.instytutkonfucjusza.pl/im-prezy#1232474343
The PTA cornerYou are a member of the ISK PTA if you have a child who attends ISK or you are a teacher or
administrator at ISK. (In case you didn’t know.)
Dads and the PTACheck out this short article for some compel-ling reasons Dad might want to get involved in the ISK PTA: http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/dads-in-the-pta/?emc=eta1
PTA Recent PurchasesThe PTA has recently purchased a digital cam-era for the High School and several sets of calculators for the Middle School.
Family DirectoryYou have recieved an e-mail about the ISK Family Directory this week. If you’d like to add, delete or change your listing, please follow the instructions in that e-mail. Questions? Contact me at [email protected].
VolunteersI’m looking for next year’s PTA President. Is it you? Contact me!
If you can help plan this year’s Summer Jam-boree, please e-mail me at [email protected]. The first planning meeting will be at the end of February.
Thank you to Gina Christie and Anna Kuchar-czyk for their generous donations of time and creativity to the PTA Flower Sale and our Family Bowling outing.
ISK Cookbook
Copies of the ISK Cookbook are still available. They cost a pittance, only 70 PLN, and are loaded with great recipes and full-color pho-tos. I can personally say the Yum-Yum Chicken lives up to its name.
Get your copy by e-mailing me or simply by picking one up at school.
Upcoming events20 February Bake Sale, Friday, Grades 0 and 1
The field trip was not only strange, but also a bit smelly. Our guide, Mr. Andrew, the plant worker, explained to us the process of how filthy sewage from around 400 homes in Wlosan turns into clean water that we use everyday.
First, the waste-water arrives in the treatment plant through many different pipes and then
is mechanically cleaned on a big, spiral sieve and on a grid chamber.
Many of the “thick and bulky” pollutants, as we call it, are taken out of the water.
This is the first cleaning step out of many, and happens
in a big, extremely smelly (to us that is) room where our guide showed us these large machines under the floor as he
opened the grates.
After the sewage has completed with the first step, it is pumped up by electric pumps to the reactor.
The next room we passed through was upstairs. We walked up a set of stairs and were incredibly awed at the room before us.
We skipped this room and walked into a room with a machine called the “reactor” in it.
The reactor is a small “oxygen-free” chamber. Bacteria in the still called sewage takes oxygen from the nitrogen compound in order to use it in its life processes. However, the gas nitrogen goes back to the atmosphere. There are special air pumps that can be only found in plants like this that pump up the sewage into the amazing room we passed through some time ago.
This room looked like a huge swimming pool – though you wouldn’t like to swim in it.
It was a sewage pool, divided into 3 sections – one with sewage from the reactor which was disgusting, thick and
On Monday, December 15th 2008, the 2008 5th grade class of ISK went on a strange field trip – to the Sewage Treatment Works in Wlosan.
“ ... how filthy sewage from around 400 homes in Wlosan turns into clean water that
we use everyday.”
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smelly, but not so much as the one opposite it.
This one holds sewage that is bubbly because of propellers that mix oxygen from an underwater pipe. It was slimy and stinky, and if you looked at the section in the center, it looked black and not much better than its neighbors, but as it poured into a narrow, silver trough in the middle of the room, it looked perfectly clean.
This was because the sewage particles settled at the bottom of the pool and the cleaner
water went into the trough at the surface.
Our guide took a long stick with a cup attached to the end and scooped up some of the murky unpurified sewage from this section, then some purified water.
The sewage didn’t look much different from when it was in the pool, but the water looked clean, but slightly yellow. This may have been because of the sewage in the cup before. We shall never know.
The guide led us to his office, a small and un-smelly room compared to the rest of the building.
A map of all the machines was on a cupboard. He explained that the little lights on each device showed that the machine was working.
After showing us the order of the steps, he opened up the cupboard and we were amazed at all the little wires and switches inside.
Mrs. Kasia, our Social Studies
teacher, said, “And I thought computers were difficult!”
Mr. Andrew then showed us another cupboard with two compartments. One had a blue work hat like ‘Bob the Builder’s’ and a blue coat and blue binder with no more than paper in it! T
he other section had several binders, not blue this time, all full of paperwork that didn’t seem very interesting to any of us except our classmate Hannah, who asked if our guide could read it to us (or maybe she just wanted to miss more lessons at school!).
All in all it was a very interesting trip and was a good way to finish up our pollution unit we worked on in Social Studies with Ms. Kasia.
by Maisy Hallam & Frankie Reene
“ It was slimy and stinky ...”
ClassifiedsWanted !!!
The ISK Board of Trustees is anticipating some vacancies this spring and we are looking for
new member candidates.
To find out more about these excellent op-portunities to serve your School community,
