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Four love-drunk teens, escaped from the confines of an oppressive regime, caught in a dispute of increasingly magical proportions. A posse of wannabe actors determined to put on a play against the odds. The Fairy Queen and King at war, and one wild spirit hell-bent on causing as much havoc as possible. What could possibly go wrong?...

Every winter, thousands of people die due to carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning. Carbon monoxide is an odorless, colorless, and tasteless gas, that comes from fires when they don’t have enough air supply (oxygen), this is called incomplete combustion. When you breathe carbon monoxide in, it gets into your bloodstream and tricks your body into considering it as oxygen until it is too late! This is because carbon monoxide binds very strongly to the iron atoms in haemoglobin inside red blood cells. The affinity between CO and haemoglobin is 200 times stronger than the affinity between haemoglobin and oxygen. When CO binds to the haemoglobin it cannot be released as quickly as oxygen would be. This causes suffocation as body tissues are not getting any oxygen.    

In countries with prevalent poverty rates or simply corrupt governments, carbon monoxide takes a significantly larger amount of lives each year, especially in the winter months. This is due to many reasons in addition to poverty, such as the lack of awareness amongst people, and the lack of domestic heating regulations.

Grade 6 students decided to take action against this deadly gas! We are using our Science and I&S knowledge, and research to study the roots of the problem and to find ways to raise awareness and conduct research based on carbon monoxide poisoning around the world with a specific focus on Algeria as a case study.  It has come to...

In our 'How the World Works' Unit of Inquiry we learnt about the 'Design Cycle'. This week, we transferred this knowledge to our Minecraft lesson to extend our understandings in our 'How We Organise Ourselves' Unit of Inquiry. First, we PLANNED and sketched our ‘Dream Minecraft House’, labelling the materials we planned to use. As well as keeping in mind that it is a volcano-and-flood-safe and strong house. Last week, our Minecraft houses suffered a volcano eruption and then a flood! Then we CREATED our designs in Minecraft. Mr Alberto taught us how to screen record while giving a tour of our houses. Afterwards, we SHARED our designs...

Our budding scientists planned a full investigation independently from scratch for the first time! They were creative and precise in identifying variables to be manipulated.  They wrote research questions to test how changing one variable related to combustion with a Bunsen burner will affect another variable. They identified controlled variables and wrote detailed equipment lists which were handed to the Science technician. The small twist in this year’s task was that each group had to perform the experiment of another group. This meant that...

Last week Dr Rob visited both Research Institute teams to work on data coding. One team were starting to code their interview transcripts and needed some initial guidance on the best techniques to use once they had identified some themes to explore further. They are now well underway and have spent some quality time reading through and highlighting different themes to discuss further and analyse in the coming weeks. The second team were taking their first steps into statistical data analysis but needed to identify...

This week, Grade 8 Visual Arts students were engaged in a ‘Quick Drawing’ exercise. Well, it was actually quicker than that…

In order to become familiar with different drawing media and to allow ourselves the freedom of drawing without judgement we drew a choice of 3 still life models in short 1, 3, 15, and 20 minute timed sessions, from different angles in...

In Art, Grade 3W students have been learning about Piet Mondrian. We studied primary colours, lines, and composition to make our own Mondrian-inspired art.

During the whole month of May, the ISL community will walk, run, cycle and skate the 13,322km (8,278 miles) needed to travel from ISL London to Beirut, on to ISL Qatar and back to Gunnersbury Park in the ‘ISL GLOBE Relay event’!

This student-led major fundraising initiative will raise funds to bridge the digital learning divide with Beirut, Lebanon, following the devastating explosion last year, as well support local initiatives for education charities in London.

You can support the cause by buying ISL Globe branded merchandise from the website here: https://www.islglobe.org​

#ISLstories​ #IBWorldschool​ #london​ #beirut

The G10 Research Institute team is now starting the process of immersing themselves in their data before Dr. Rob visits them next week to work on data analysis with them. They have a lot of data to sort through and have already done short presentations of some initial observations which have set them up well to delve deeper and filter through the survey...

Some of the students from the Research Institute met in person for the first time in over a year this week! We are finally transitioning our meetings back to 'in-person' although in separate bubbles, while some of the team will continue joining us remotely for the rest of this term. We are now looking at our automated interview transcripts and correcting any mistranslations before starting the data analysis with...

What's happening in Grade 5? The Exhibition journey has begun! Last week, students asked themselves, "What do I want to know about my topic?" This week, they are working hard on turning their essential questions into lines of inquiry. In order to promote questions that lead to deeper thinking, the students explored how their questions could be framed under the lens of the IB Key Concepts. This helps to...

To extend students' knowledge of global and local crises, we connected to a school in Norway! Beforehand, Ms. Sagha, who lived in Norway for 7 years, shared her knowledge about Norway's geography, climate, and everyday school life. Then, we wrote questions to students at the Children's International School in Fredrikstad, Norway. We questioned what type of disasters they experience, how they...

For the past three and a half weeks, Grade 5 students have been busy exploring the design cycle related to our unit, How We Express Ourselves. Now, the students are walking through the process themselves by creating their own prototypes. These prototypes are inspired by problems or challenges a user may experience in everyday life. Their designs are the students' creative solutions to these problems or challenges either by inventing something new or innovating an existing item. In going through the process, students are...

In the current unit “Are you what you eat?” and after learning about nutrients in food and what makes up a balanced diet, students played the role of nutritionists and designed a one-day menu for their friends (the client) to meet their UK recommended calorie intake as well as maintaining a balanced amount of required nutrients. 

The client then examines the menu and decides whether to hire or fire the nutritionists who designed the menu for them. This was an extremely fun task and some students expressed that they would consider becoming nutritionists in future to help people eat healthy!

Students are now embarking on a summative assessment called Diet detectives to analyse the diet of one family member, they may come home and ask you...

In looking at Tobias’ collage work, we don’t see the most important elements at first sight. Especially, not the ones that are missing. Like the small white dot, next to the elephant’s trunk and the rest of the elephant’s herd, which we would expect to see because elephants are sociable animals who live in herds. Unfortunately, this elephant is the last one to survive.

This is Tobias’ way to call our attention to the need for the protection of elephants, that because of human greed, lose their tusks and their families...