News

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...

As part of our MYP-DP transition programme, Grade 10 students will experience some DP subjects in the coming week. We have focused our attention on the Group 3-6 subjects. Some of the subjects offered in Groups 3-6 are new to MYP students, and therefore, the aim of these taster sessions will be for our students to be more informed about subject offerings before they make their final subject choices for the Diploma. Below you will find the MYP-DP Transition Programme Roadmap and the taster session schedule for next week...

Welcome back! Our PYP students have had a busy start to their first week back in person. As our Grade 5 students are gearing up toward their exhibitions, our research skills lessons have been focused on learning about citations, plagiarism, and the importance of giving credit when using other people's work.

Dr Rob visited the Grade 10 Intercultural Research Institute this week for the first time. While some of these students are current or ex-members of the ISL Research Institute and so know him quite well, most of the students had not met or worked with him before. His visit provided an excellent opportunity to take stock of their ongoing research into inclusion...

Hello ISL community,

As the Student Council, we would like to address the lack of a variety of activities in the bubbles once we return to school. Our phones and computers became the students' main source of entertainment and we would like to encourage other options when we get back in March.

We want to make lunch and breaks in the bubble fun and enjoyable, and so we need activities to encourage students to socialise more when not in the playground or park.

We think board games and card games would be a great way to enjoy lunchtime in the bubbles. After the recent winter holiday, you may have some unused games around the home, and we would be very grateful if you could look around and see whether any would be appropriate for students to play in the breaks...

This week in our Research Skills lessons, PYP students have been finishing off their summarisation unit. Our grade 5 students are also getting ready to begin their exhibition preparation after the holiday, putting all of their research skills to good use.

Grade 2, to much excitement, has started reading Matilda as part of their library lesson! Our students have been learning new vocabulary through...

This week our researchers have contacted 24 students who fit the profile of those we wish to interview and have managed to secure their first 5 participants. Ms Clare is handling all student data and communications at this stage in order that no students are identified by our team of researchers until they have agreed to take part in our research and signed the consent form. We are still awaiting some responses and hope to increase the number of students that we will interview by the end of the week. In the meantime, we have sent out our information sheet and consent form to those who have already agreed to take part and we are now revisiting and finalising our...

This week in Grade 4R, the class are busy working in their virtual Writers' Workshop to complete their fiction books. Many of our efforts have taken inspiration from fantasy and folklore novels. We look forward to publishing over the next couple of days!

The social impact communication's class welcomed Head of Marketing, Richard Dudley, to speak to them about all of his marketing expertise. The class is learning how to navigate the complex world of start-ups and about the importance of marketing while gearing up to launch their 'sponsor a device' initiative. Watch this space to follow our exciting journey.

If you were to consider the set of skills you’d like to have when graduating from school, I’m sure that somewhere amongst would be the ability to bring a larger, long-term goal to fruition. A goal that is sufficiently challenging enough to require you to work well with others, displaying both strong communication and leadership skills. A goal that you can take ownership of, planning out every single stage from inception to completion, and tackling any difficulties that arise head-on. The CAS project requires all of these skills from students and is the peak of every IB Diploma student’s CAS portfolio.

The grade 11s were introduced to the requirements of the CAS project at the beginning of January and they have now submitted a broad range of exciting project proposals. CAS combines many of the elements of Service Learning in the MYP and the skills required in the Personal Project. It is important that there is a strong level of student agency in the selection of these projects so that the students feel invested in their goal. The project requires students to work in a group; it must last a minimum of one month and lastly, students must show that...

With a very busy half term for G12 students, the EE begins to seem like a memory after their final submissions and Viva voce meetings which took place throughout last week. This will allow us to resume the lunchtime EE seminars which started last term with a very successful kick-off from David with his interesting History question on how much was De Gaulle involved in the time it took Britain to join the EEC! Our dedicated G12 students will resume the lunchtime seminars every Tuesday after the half-term break to share their findings with the rest of the college community. This will allow them to improve their communication skills as well as...

This week, Grade 10 students participated in Live Storytelling as part of the unit ‘From Maus to Night – Personal Histories’. Students prepared a story of their own based on their experience. Storytelling is an important part of humanity. You do not have to write a book to tell your story though! Our students’ live storytelling was moving and entertaining! The rules of Live Storytelling are to speak for 5-6 mins without notes to the audience and to tell a true story about oneself!

Sebastian was encouraged by his cousins in Columbia to go zip-wiring between two mountains. It was terrifying to start with, but he enjoyed this thrilling experience! He is no longer afraid of...

Students are pursuing their exploration of Shakespeare and we were delighted to watch their famous Shakespeare’s Monologues as part of the Festival of Light 2020. This week they have been on an online tour of the world-renowned  Globe Theatre, famously reconstructed in 1997 on the site of its original location. The students have discovered where the Bard used to write and perform some of the world's most famous plays. As part of their discoveries, they had to draw...