This week the grade 6 students finished up their exploration of the plastics in the ocean case study by using information to support arguments from two people with different perspectives of the global issue: an environmental activist and a CEO of a plastics manufacturing company. The students wrote 2-3 paragraphs explaining the different viewpoints.

Grade 7 students focused on learning about poverty and its different forms. The students used the information they have learned to create posters, in groups, that demonstrated their knowledge and understanding of poverty. The process allowed students to work on their social and communication skills.

The grade 8 students have continued studying physical patterns in the changing world. They began this week by completing a gallery walk of each other's work inorder to assess communication skills of the work and then they reflected on the process with the goal of how they could improve on future work.

The grade 9 students are exploring cultural facts about the Ancient Mesopotamians. The students spent the week using their notes and additional research to complete a factsheet that summarizes the 5 key aspects of a culture: Religion, Communication, Art & Architecture, Artifacts, and Social Structure.

Grade 10 students covered the concept of constitution and constitutional monarchies, as well as the Great Fear and the August Decrees. Students read an article on the flight to Varennes and formed expert groups to discuss the various impacts this event had on the course of the french revolution.

Psychology

This week the DP1 Psychology class focused on analyzing and evaluating experimental designs and research methods. They learned about independent samples and repeated measures designs and identified the strengths and limitations of each. The students learned about internal and external validity of studies and focused largely on ecological and population validity. 

The DP2 Psychology students continued exploring the sociocultural and biological origins and solutions to conflict. They reviewed Sherif’s “Robbers Cave” experiment and learned about the final stage of the experiment, in which the researchers worked to reduce conflict. Students read about Allport’s contact hypothesis and Pettigrew & Tropp’s meta-analysis that offer support for Sherif’s findings.

Global Politics

Grade 11: Held our weekly news discussion, in which we discussed topics like the earthquakes in Morocco and school closures due to faulty concrete in the UK. We covered IGO’s and NGO’s and explored the descriptions between them, and discussed examples of NGO’s like doctors without borders.

Grade 12: Students covered the world bank and IMF as well as different models of develop like Modernization Theory and Dependency Theory. Students continued working on their case studies in which they are investigating how development has progressed, including economic, environmental and social factors, in a country of their choice.

Business Management

Congratulations to Kefei (“Coffee”) Wu, CISH Alumnus and business studies student who just successfully completed her Masters in Global Healthcare Management at Imperial College, London; ranked the 6th best University in the world. (QS World University Rankings 2024) after graduating from University College London in Business Management.

Grade 11: How private and public companies work, and Franchises like McDonalds has been the main topic this week.  Students worked in groups to analyse the features of a franchise and discuss with their peers.

Grade 12: Continuing the study of the Human Resource Functions in companies students role played an 360 degree appraisal process and studied SMART objectives. Role play has been a very effective way in Business Management studies for students to remember  and recall, apart from being a fun learning exercise.

IVEY Competiton Junior Team Awards (2023)

Meanwhile Certificates arrived (see below) for Grade 10 students who last year (as Grade 9) completed and succeeded in reaching 1st place in China for the youth category of the IVEY business competition sponsored by AKD group of schools of which CISH is a part.

In our Grade 6-1 Design (Van Vuuren) class this week, we reinforced the importance of the Design Cycle and delved into Criteria C: Creating the Solution. The students displayed enthusiasm and an aptitude for problem-solving, which bodes well for their upcoming design projects.

In our Grade 6-2 Design (Van Wyk) class this week, we've been dedicated to introducing students to the fundamental concepts of the design cycle within the MYP framework. Through hands-on mock tasks, our Grade 6 learners have actively engaged with the criteria and strands, ensuring a solid grasp of the foundational principles of design and problem-solving.

Our Grade 7 students have demonstrated their dedication by actively participating in safety discussions and engaging in practical exercises, ultimately leading to the successful completion of the Final Workshop Safety Test. It's noteworthy that many of our students not only met but exceeded the pass mark with remarkable scores, emphasizing their unwavering commitment to safety.

This week marks a significant milestone in our Grade 8 IB MYP Design program as we celebrate the successful culmination of our Workshop Safety Course. Throughout this week and the preceding unit, our Grade 8 students have demonstrated admirable dedication, actively engaging in safety discussions and practical exercises, which ultimately led to the successful completion of Final Workshop Safety Test.

I am delighted to announce the successful culmination of our Grade 9 Design Workshop Safety Course during Week 4. Throughout this unit, our students showcased remarkable dedication, actively participating in safety discussions and hands-on exercises, culminating in the Final Workshop Safety Test. It is worth noting that the majority of students not only met but exceeded the high standards by meeting the required 100% pass mark.

This week, grade 10 students completed Developing ideas strand 1, the design specifications table. As part of the planning process, students examine their design brief and develop an outlined catalogue of the tools and resources that they will need to successfully complete their product. 

This week, grade 11 students continued exploring some programming concepts. We focused on the String class as a data type. Strings are often implemented as an array data structure of bytes (or words) that stores a sequence of elements, typically characters. We then introduced the first sub-div of Topic 2, which discussed components of a computer system.

This week, the DP2 class finished examining the div “Human interaction with the system”. This div focuses on the design, research and development of interfaces between people and computer systems. With this div complete they will prepare for an assessment on this div and divs “System backup” and “Software deployment” which they completed at the end of August. 

EY German (Yani Wang)

K1: Our K1 German topic this week is eyes and mouth. We first learned about the nouns related to eyes, including eyelids, eyeballs, eyelashes, etc. We also distinguished between eye colours. Through an eye test game, children learned to find shapes within complex colours and they practised concentration.

K2: Our K2 German topic this week is: ‘What is a friend?’ This includes learning why people need friends and how friends get along with each other. We explored friendly and unfriendly behaviours and learned a lot of new vocabulary from this topic, such as: Seilspringen, troesten, stolpern and kneifen.

K3: This week our K3 German theme is ‘Angry Emotions’. Everyone learned and analysed the reasons we get angry. They also explored the characteristics of people's facial expressions when they are angry. It is normal for people to be angry, but we must learn to control our emotions and divert our attention when we are angry.

PYP German

 (Sascha Wandkowsky & Robert Jordan)

G1: This week in German class, we continued our work on letters. We focused on the letters ‘P/p’, ‘E/e’, ‘S/s’, and ‘T/t’. The children learned new words associated with these letters and practised using them in sentences. 

G2: This week in German class, we focused on words that start with ‘Sch/sch’. The children learned new nouns and verbs beginning with this letter combination. We also practised ‘fill in the gaps’ exercises to reinforce their understanding.

G3: This week in German class, we focused on understanding the difference between singular and plural forms. The children also learned how to identify and use definite and indefinite articles in sentences.

G4: This week in German class, we continued our study of tenses with a focus on the past tenses - simple past and past perfect. We explored general as well as more advanced terms, and discussed when to use each tense. The students learned how to form sentences in these tenses and practised using them in speech and writing.

G5: The students were working on improving writing and reading. Some of them had many questions on the partly challenging content and worked hard to improve written articulation by learning some new vocabulary.