SCIENCE
Science! Science! Science and more science. This week we hosted a science week with Wednesday and Thursday being days full of activities. There were lots of activities, demonstrations, experiments and constructions taking place throughout the week.
On Wednesday the primary school from Early years to year Six were introduced to the exciting and practical world of physics. On Thursday the secondary school were fully engaged. There were demonstration done for students by teachers and fellow students. The students enjoyed watching and participating in all activities. The year 7 students and some year 11 students demonstrated their own experiments. All students also got the chance to build their own hologram projector. All students thoroughly enjoyed it and everyone managed to build their own working hologram projector.
Secondary students had their exciting Science session on Thursday.
They saw some cool chemical reactions, such as: ammonium dichromate burning (“a volcano”), calcium metal reacting with water which produced a deep purple solution when an indictor was added (phenolphthalein). There were also shown how ethanol prevents a piece of fabric from burning (“the unburnt handkerchief”).
Year 10-13 students saw a flame test, where each metal ion (barium, potassium, copper, calcium) produced a certain colour in the flame.
Another thing is that each year group carried out their own experiment in small groups. The students from Year 7 and 8 used a piece of dry fuel to burn the pills of calcium gluconate. They finally observed black substance being formed, which would look like a snake coming out of the crucible. Year 10-13 students made two colourless solutions of KI and Pb(NO3)2 and then mixed them together. As a result, they saw shiny yellow particles formed which looked like glitter. The glitter was lead iodide which is insoluble in water.
All students enjoyed their session and looked like real scientists. Well done everybody!
ART
It it has been a busy week again in the Art department. Year 9 made Valentine designs that were used to decorate a pop up Valentine photo booth. Here is a small sample of the photographs of our wonderful students.As well as Valentine fun we were able to investigate gravity and make an art installation of imagined planets in far galaxies.
DRAMA
The students in Drama have been finishing up and preparing for their final filming project for this term. In preparation for Mental Heath Week, the students have been working on an activity of Self Expression, the theme of this year's Mental Health Week. All of the students have been working hard to think about how to tell their own personal story. They have been exploring how to express their thoughts, feelings, fears, and dreams and we are looking forward to the final project next week.
ICT
This week in ICT year 12 have been doing research on The Digital Divide and looking at what causes it and how it can be resolved. They had created a poster and then presented their ideas. Year 7 were finishing with the leaflet in MS Publisher to advertise the theme park and the short video to promote their theme park. Some pupils then presented their ideas. Moreover Year 13 were doing research on Emerging Technologies including artificial blood vessels and biometrics then presented their research through Podcast.
ENGLISH
This week students have worked to a high level in English . Year 9 are concluding their study of a play and participated in a debate looking at the cause of tragedy. As a class, we have looked at strong spoken literacy skills and considered how to speak formally and academically when presenting. Year 10 and Year 11 have both written discursive essays and have now worked on literacy-based feedback. Year 12 have been reading 'Death of a Salesman' with great enthusiasm and have completed presentations. Finally, year 13 have been working well through their novel 'The Colour Purple' and explored how the writer presents suffering and the loss of innocence.
MATH
Year 9 students finished off the big topic in Geometry unit with Pythagoras theorem and had a test on Wednesday. Most of the class showed a sound understanding of the topic with three students gaining over 90%! Well done, year 9s!
Year 11 students have started a new topic on Financial Maths and have been learning how to calculate taxes on salaries, value added tax on products and services, how to calculate reverse percentages and convert between currencies.
Year 12 class has been introduced to Trigonometry and learnt about how to identify angles on a unit circle, how to solve basic trigonometric equations and got familiar with the trigonometric graphs by means of online app Geogebra.
Year 13 students worked on binomial expansion questions in Pure Mathematics module and finished off Moments topic in Mechanics solving mixed questions on finding moments and forces acting on a tilting rod and rod in equilibrium.
RUSSIAN
This week Y11& Y10 focused on describing pictures and making up dialogues about cultural life, using languages beyond the classroom, what school is like. As well as that, the students did practice work with past papers to see what questions they could be met with during the exam. The work completed was overall well done and has shown improvement in general.
Y9 & Y8 students focused on writing, studying grammatical rules and translating in Russian class. For the main part, the students did various compositions for different themes such as favorite books and movies, sport in our life.
MUSIC
In secondary school with Year 7 we were talking about two types of music where keeping a steady beat is very important, such as the March and the Waltz. The students explored how many beats this music usually contains. Year 8 explored five composers who have composed film music and soundtracks to some of the most famous films. We also learned about concord and discord in music. The students have been practicing on keyboards the most popular soundtrack music. Year 9 explored major scales in music. The formula of major scale helped us to play scales from any key.
FRENCH
We have finished the subject of "La conjugaison". It was an important and essential work to be more independent in French lessons. We learned how to conjugate current verbs in 3 different groups.
First of all, we have to recognize if a verb belongs to the 1st, 2nd or 3rd group. We can only do this if we know the suffix of the verb: "er" for the 1st group, "ir" for the 2nd group and "dre, tre, re, ire etc" for the 3rd group. After that we need to add the correct ending according to the pronouns. To help them remember the end, they did exercises and homework. Finally, next week, they will do a test on "La conjugaison"
In Year 10, we talked about "My house". First of all, we read a description and try to understand each word. We matched the questions and the answers. We had to find the wrong answer. Then we listened to an audio track and had to write the details according to the right person and the right room. Thanks to our previous lesson, we were able to do the grammar part: conjugate verbs, using the correct pronouns. In the end, they had to write 10 sentences about what they use to do at home after a day of school.
