VICE-PRINCIPAL’S MESSAGE

NEWSLETTER

ENGLISH INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL MOSCOW EAST

Friday 7th February

FORTHCOMING EVENTS

Year 7,8,9, 10 & 11

School Trip

Museum of the Great Patriotic War

Wednesday 12th February

Valentine’s Day Celebration and Parent Coffee

Morning

Friday 14th February

Friday 21st February

13:00 Finish

Half Term

Winter has finally arrived in Moscow with snow falling every day. Students and adults alike love to play in the snow, making fortresses, building snowmen and creating mountains. It is therefore important that the clothes students wear suit these requirements and are waterproof, including their gloves. Although the knitted ones are warm, they will get very wet and take a long time to dry.

The school has a number of performances approaching and I hope that many of you are able to attend. Please keep an eye out for letters going home, social media posts and the list of events in the newsletters. These are great ways of keep up to date with what is happening at school.

On Friday February 14th, we invite parents into school for our next parent coffee morning. During this session, I will be sharing feedback gathered from the Parent school survey that took place in December. We will be discussing what we do well as school and where we are looking to make improvements in the future. I hope to see many of you there.

I spent approximately 8 years as a student at the East campus of EIS Moscow and, as a result, I am now able to, and have the privilege of attending a boarding school in England.

I can confidently say that my education at EIS had a significant, positive impact on my academics, as well as my personality, opening my mind to new people and new ways of learning. Of course, one of the main objectives of an English school is to improve their pupils’ grasp of the language, of which I think EIS does a particularly excellent job. Like it does with all its students, EIS did all that was possible to successfully provide me with an altogether English environment and also had teachers that could speak other languages too, primarily Russian; this created a perfect balance where I was challenged yet felt secure, which is a key component of why I feel have benefitted so highly from this school.

Although numerous factors define EIS for me, I can say that what I think makes it stand out from other schools are the meaningful, long-lasting relationships that I built throughout my school career there, not only with classmates but with staff, too; I believe that this is incredibly important to enable students to flourish and mature academically character-wise in a school environment.

Overall, my experience has proven to me that EIS is a truly advantageous and welcoming school that thoroughly encourages both personal and academic growth, continuously offering numerous opportunities to its students that enable us to progress confidently towards our futures.

Meet Katya—Former EIS

Moscow East Student

We are proud that some of our EIS students make

the transition from Moscow to boarding schools

in the UK. Here at EIS we are able to create a safe

and challenging environment to prepare them for

life in an English school. This week former

student, Katya, shares her thoughts about her

time at EIS East and how her experience gave her

the confidence to continue her academic studies

this year at a UK boarding school.

IGCSE students have just started

the Chemistry of Life and had to figure out the nutrient content of different types of food. It took them about 10 minutes to get the courage together to start experimenting without step by step instructions from the teacher. Once they gained the confidence to start they soon found out planning is a crucial part of gathering data. What were they going to put the samples in? How much of the different indicators are needed? How much of the food samples are needed? What if the book doesn’t tell you how much? How many tests are they going to do? What are they supposed to do if their test of milk shows that milk has no proteins? What is the best way to hold a test tube in a flame? How long must you wait for a result

before you decide that the result is negative? Should they record their results in tables? What should the tables look like?

The overall feedback… Their heads hurt and Science is hard! We had loads of fun with the student-lead learning. The teachers probably more than the students!

Subject Focus Science During our first term in the Sciences across the year groups we introduced students to the Scientific Method and worked with them through prepared experiments. This term we threw the ball in their court and asked them to come up with ways to produce data to prove their answers to questions we asked them. The students quickly realized that even though the questions were pretty straight forward, proving their answers through experiments that produced data that could be verified by their classmates in their groups was a completely different story all together.

Year 7 One of the tasks the year 7’s had to complete was to measure the speed of something. Initial attempts by the students included trying to measure the speed of their writing, the speed of a ball rolling on the floor, and the speed of an object falling from a desk. They quickly things like the size of the writing, timing themselves while doing their own writing, what to write, when to start and stop writing, getting a ball to roll in a straight line, rolling the ball at the same speed more than once, deciding when a ball stopped rolling on a hard, flat, uneven surface, measuring the distance the ball travelled on that same surface, and timing a falling object was quite hard to control. After quite a few rounds of talks and tweaks they eventually ended up with scrapping finding out how fast they write and stuck to measuring the speed of a rolling ball and falling object. They built some ramps to ensure the ball always rolled at the same speed, used gaps between desks to ensure the balled travelled in a straight line, and stopped timing the moment the ball fell of the end of the table. Thanks to cellphones they decided to take a video of the falling object, and then went into the video’s timing to work out how long it took for the object to fall to the floor. They also increased the distance of the falling object to make working out the time a little easier.

Year 8 The Year 8’s had to determine what the properties of magnets were through experimentation, as well as determine the size of three different magnets’ magnetic fields. They were surprised to discover that not all metals are magnetic and even though the whiteboard is magnetic it is difficult to say what it is made of. There was also some interesting observations with the magnetic field experiments. Their shape and size did not necessarily determine the size of their magnetic fields.

We have started the new Chemistry term full of energy and enthusiasm and

continued working on our exam courses.

Year 10 explored rate of chemical reactions and what factors can affect this rate. We

talked about the factors such as temperature, pressure, concentration. Here is the

photo from the lesson when we discussed what catalyst is the way it works.

Then the students also checked how the size of particles may affect the speed of

reaction by trying out the same reaction, but putting lumps of metal in one case and

fine power in the other.

Simultaneously we have a regular exam practise and

work on exam questions in class and also the students

are given them for homework. Soon we will start

studying oxides, acids and various types of salts. These

lessons will also be accompanied by a series of practical

sessions which the students will surely enjoy.

Chemistry support club has successfully started

and, apart from supporting the students in their

exam preparation, we also develop our laboratory

skills and carry out some cool experiments. Here is

one of them where the students obtained pure

oxygen in the lab (which comes out from the white

pipe).

Subject Focus Chemistry

Year 13 students keep on working with a

good pace and managed to cover a large

part of their A2 program – redux equilibria

and have already started transition metals.

They show interest and curiosity towards

the new topic as it relates to sophisticated

techniques applied in modern medicine and

the colours produced by complex

compounds are absolutely fascinating.

Year 11 began a challenging part of their course –

organic chemistry. They now know how to name and

write a complicated formula of a compound and are

aware of various classes of organic substances. Soon we

will start topics such as crude oil and polymer materials,

which students usually meet with great enthusiasm due

to their direct relevance to real life processes and global

problems associated with climate and resources.

Physics is a subject which requires a lot

of effort and confidence and it is

pleasing to note that most of our

students have taken to physics quite

well. The year 9 have been studying

Mechanics(Graphs of Motion) and have

worked really hard making excellent

progress in a section which most

students consider difficult. They are

doing some advanced work and are

very enthusiastic in this physics aspect

of science. They did a preliminary investigation studying

the effects of friction on motion. This will lead to a better

understanding in the next section on

Forces. The year 10 class have started a new section Waves. It is one of

the lengthier sections in Physics. This section has a lot of

practical applications in everyday life. They will study reflection

and refraction and how it impacts on our everyday life. Drop a

coin in water, why does it appear larger. Go and look at yourself

in a mirror and lift your right hand. Which hand did your image

lift in the mirror? Left or right? These are just some of the fun

stuff they will be learning. They also used an interactive site

called E-Chalk which enables them to create and study waves

by changing wavelength, frequency and amplitude.

The year 11,12 and 13 have just

finished their Mock Exams. It will be

full steam ahead as we prepare them

for their final exams in May. They will

be receiving a lot of revision worksheets

and past exam

papers in the

weeks to

come so they

must start

burning the

midnight oil.

Subject Focus Physics

Musical Steven Universe is an adopted

version of the TV show of the same name.

It tells how friendship and kindness can help

and change people. This musical is prepared

by the secondary activity club and will be

performed on Thursday 13th February at

14:30 in the school hall. Primary students

and parents are welcome to join us.

Secondary Activity Club

Pupils Awarded Personal Achievement and Endeavour Certificates this week:

Year 1/2 Aliabbas Year 3 & Year 4 Jayden

Year 5 Tim and Rafieh Year 6 Maarij

Star Athlete

Bogdan

MATHLETICS CERTIFICATES

WERE

AWARDED TO:

SILVER Emir and Kerem

Nursery and Reception

Year 1 & 2

EYFS continued learning the letter J this week. They made jam toasts and sang a Jelly Fish song. They played with Year 1/2 during construction club and welcomed a new friend Philip who will soon join their class. They enjoyed Music, PE and Art lessons and played outside in the snow.

It has been a pleasure to get to know Year 1 and 2 better this week.

This week, we have explored the 'Superhero' theme in English, topic and PSHE. With Valentines Day approaching, we are focusing on friendship, love and kindness. We have been looking at describing words for Superheros and comparing them to our friends. Are our friends strong, kind and brave? Can we be a mighty, selfless and helpful friend? In English, we have learned about labels and captions this week. We have labelled a Superhero of our own design and described their super powers. In topic, we have learnt about animals who helped during World War 1. We enjoyed learning about Sergeant Stubby, a dog who became famous for his fearless actions on the battlefield. We made him a medal and included superhero describing words on it. In PSHE, we talked about how we can be superhero friends and that our every day actions can be as strong as super powers. We made actions to help us remember a few things we can do every day to be good friends:

In maths, we have been learning how to apply our knowledge of number bonds to 10 to larger bonds to 100. We have also been using a 100 square to jump forward and backward in 1s and 10s. In Science, we have continued to learn how materials can be recycled and we have made some fantastic posters to promote the message: Re-use, Reduce, Recycle.

Year 4 Year 3

Maths We have looked at fractions in Maths this week. We began with naming and identifying fractions, then moved on to looking to see which fractions are the same size as each other. We have been learning to share our mathematical thinking and use a variety of strategies to count quickly, add and subtract.

Maths In Maths We have been discovering how decimals work this week. We have learnt to compare and order decimals, place decimals on a number and multiply and divide decimals by multiples of 10.

Science In Science, we have been looking at decomposers and their important place in the food chain. We have been studying our mold terrariums each day to watch the decomposers break down the food. We looked at a pond ecosystem, and discussed how each part of the system is vital to the survival of all the other living things. We played a game called Fish-O-Metre, where we had to complete our own pond ecosystems.

Year 3 & 4 English In English, we have been learning to use the different parts of a word (prefix, base and suffix) to read and understand more complicated words. We learnt about morphology maps, which show the word families for different words. We practiced reading books upside down! This gave us a big challenge, as our brain had to focus on rotating the words, as well as sounding them out. We have used context clues to figure out the missing words in sentences. We have also learnt about the 7 syllable types and how they can help us to decode unknown words.

Year 3 & 4 Topic In Topic, we worked with pairs or groups to turn our research into a presentation of our learning. We could choose the presentation type, and we are responsible for sharing all of our information in the exciting way we chose.

Science We have been learning about camouflage this week. We have learnt the four reasons why animals camouflage themselves and how light and shadow can contribute to their camouflage. We had fun creating camouflage patterns that matched items and areas of the classroom then we hid the animals and challenged our friends to find them.

Emir, Amanda and Asmaa giving

their presentation.

Telephone: +7 (495) 301 21 04 Facebook: EIS Moscow East - Website: englishedmoscow.com

Year 6 Year 5

This week, Year 6 have really got their creative juices flowing in English lessons. Each child has been writing their own spooky story, using our work on The Curse of Cogston House as their inspiration. Everyone has fully committed to their stories and some of the storytelling has been excellent. By using the school's Chromebook computers, the children have also been able to edit and improve their work with ease. This is an important part of the process and it's great to see the children getting into the habit of trying to improve their writing.

In Maths, we have been working on mental addition and subtraction. Sometimes it is easy to become reliant on only written methods, but the children have really developed their mental calculation skills, often helped by their favourite "Countdown Numbers Game". They have a range of mental strategies which they can use, including place value, partitioning and rounding. We also learned about

various other concepts, such as powers and prime factorisation. There was even time for some children to put their algebra skills to the test using Pythagoras' Theorem.

Year 5 & 6 Topic This week the children in Years 5 and 6 continued their learning about the Americas, this time with a historical slant as they were introduced to the Mayans. The children thought about questions they would like to research about the Mayans in the week ahead. It looks like there will be some very interesting discoveries to be made!

Year 5 & 6 Science In Science, the children learned about hydropower and how it could be used to contribute to a more sustainable future. They also researched the advantages and disadvantages of different sources of energy. On Thursday, they began a new unit called Chemical Magic. The unit began with an interesting mystery entitled "Are Magic Potions Real?" The children explored how certain chemicals could be used to clean dirty old coins. They learned that this had something to do with a process called oxidation. Everyone is looking forward to more chemical mysteries in the weeks ahead!

We are so excited that our swimming lessons will be extended until the end of this term.

In English this week, student concluded the unit of reference texts. After carefully research and editing, the students planned their non-chronological reports and wrote them up into neat. This work was carefully arranged (then re-arranged) to help the reader fully engage with their work. Keep an eye out for their work on display soon.

This week in maths, students learnt to find squares and square roots of square numbers; finding patterns and making and testing rules; use mental multiplication and division strategies; relate mental division strategies to multiples of ten of the divisor