Dear Parents,

The school year is rapidly approaching its end—

sped on by the mass of activities and events in

the last few weeks, including exams, perfor-

mances, exhibitions and many school trips. The

senior Cambridge IGCSE, AS and A Level exam-

inations are over for most of our students, with

just a few more exams next week. These stu-

dents can now look forward to a relaxing couple

of months whilst awaiting their results which

are released by Cambridge University in mid-

August. For those who are leaving the school to

move on to university, other countries and

schools, very best wishes from all of us at CIS

for an exciting, fulfilling and prosperous future.

This bumper newsletter has many photos of the

amazing activities of the last month, in particu-

lar the Science Day and the International Day. I

would like to once again extend the thanks of

myself and all here at CIS to colleagues, parents

and others who made the days so successful and

enjoyable for us all. We look forward to many

such days to come over future years!

Peter Radoja

June 2014

International Day

We hosted our first International Day last week, and it ended up being a huge success. We started

the day with an Assembly with presentations about Finland and Ireland, we enjoyed a brilliant per-

formance from the Indonesian embassy on their traditional music instrument ‘angklung’, a tradi-

tional Slovak folk dance performance, and the students even had a chance to see a demonstration of

Asian martial arts. Many of our parents got involved as well, helped us with activities for the chil-

dren, and prepared wonderful stalls with lots of traditional food from their countries to taste.

Days such as this, when students can hear from representatives of different countries, enjoy perfor-

mances, take part in activities and sample national cuisine, help tremendously in developing inter-

national mindedness, an awareness and respect for differences of geography, language, culture and

beliefs of the diverse populations of this shrinking and increasingly interdependent world.

Indonesian embassy performance Food stalls

Martial arts by ‘Škola kungfu a taiji’

Headband making workshop—most

of the girls were queuing up to make

a headband on their own

Music workshop–our children learned

how to sing ‘Happy’

You can find more pictures on our website www.cambridgeschool.eu. Check out our Facebook page

for a video of the ‘angklung’ performance on www.facebook.com/cambridgeschool.eu as well .

Learning walks

“I love it - lessons and learning – here!”

“We get a good education here.”

“Teachers go out of their way to make learning fun, memo-

rable and ike ‘play’ for us.”

“Because we are an international school, we meet people from other countries and

we see how they live and we learn about their cultures and traditions. We can learn

English and so we can communicate all over the world as it is the most used langua-

ge in the world. We also learn English with Slovak, Russian, Korean students etc. –

all of the children of the world can be friends here.”

These are just some of the comments that our students made

about Cambridge International School, during interviews desig-

ned to gain their views about their learning and experiences he-

re.

Since I was appointed Deputy Head (Academic) on 23rd April, I

have been talking with students and teachers, scrutinising

work, observing lessons and generally setting out to ensure that

we are all maximising the opportunities that the Cambridge In-

ternational School Bratislava offers us to prepare for a fulfilling life.

The aim is to ensure that – irrespective of a student’s age or a teacher’s subject – we are all following

the same routines of teaching and marking to reach objectives that are clearly understood by all and

designed to help children to continue to want to improve and progress.

Improvements are now being considered in several aspects of school life – ranging from what food is

available at lunchtime to how homework is marked uniformly across all subjects and all age groups.

All changes will be implemented for one simple reason: to make sure that every student and teacher

is a confident and contented member of our team… a winning team, of course.

(Claire Smith, Deputy Head Academic)

Your children in action Kindergarten

May was quite a busy month again as we were preparing for the big event – Mother’s Day. Every

class prepared a short performance for our moms and then we all met in the basement where we en-

joyed various workshops.

In May we turned our focus to jobs and occupations, too. In connection with the topic “When I grow

up, I’d like to be…” we spoke about a wide range of jobs and occupations, and moreover, we went to

visit our parents at their work. So we saw the routine in Orange, the Town Hall and also at school .

We also talked about community helpers and welcomed real policemen with a very well trained po-

lice dog. Although May is considered to be a month of love, it was also a month full of work and a

busy time for us.

(Helena Molnárová, Head of Kindergarten)

Mother’s Day

Orange

Town Hall

Primary Assembly

Year 2S showed their best acting qualities in the Primary Assembly on Friday, May 16th. Children

finished their week performing one of the Aesop fables. They had a difficult task to memorize long

and tongue-breaking lines but despite all of this and the nervous feelings before the play they all did

it stunningly! The whole Primary was taken aback by their abilities and the teachers were so proud of

them!

(Katarína Schultzová, Year 2S Class Teacher)

Year 4H performed their third assembly of the year. The topic they chose was heroes and the chil-

dren did an excellent job getting the message across that everyone can be a hero. You don’t need fan-

cy costumes or super powers, all you need to do is try your best, be good to people and don’t hide

what you are good at. We hope we brought a few smiles to everyone’s faces as well.

(Jason Harrison, Year 4H Class Teacher)

Year 2G have had great fun making the pla-

nets from balloons and papier mache, before

painting them. They now know the order of the

planets and all the names!

(Nicki Gray, Year 2G Class Teacher)

For world book week, 3W came dressed in as

our favourite literary character. Vivi won the

school competition dressed as the Queen of

Hearts from Alice's Adventures in Wonder-

land.

The week really helped the learners to redisco-

ver their love for reading, which is a very im-

portant life skill.

Science day was a fun and interesting day in

Year 3W. We made fizzy lemonade from

scratch, lava lamps and made eggs float with

only salt and water.

In science, Year 3W made boats from paper

and tested how buoyant they were. We found

most of them floated but some sunk sadly. It

was a lot of fun.

(David Wells, Year 3W Class Teacher)

On science day pupils from Year 4S completed a range of fun science experiments. Pupils mixed

vinegar with baking soda and learned that this chemical reaction creates CO2 gas. The gas rose up

from the bottle, filling the balloons with CO2 and blowing up the balloons.

Pupils learned about the properties of the latex material which balloons are made from. Pupils were

able to skewer a balloon because the long chains of molecules in rubber don’t break when you slowly

spin a skewer into the balloon. This took several attempts to perfect!

The students also created their own lava lamps, mixing oil, water and food colouring. The oil and

water separated and the food colouring turned the water red. Pupils then added a dissolving tablet

to the mixture which created bubbles of air which rose up and fell down (taking some of the food

colouring with them). This created the lava lamp effect.

Pupils learned that the denser the liquid the easier it is for objects to float. Pupils tested this by dis-

solving salt in water until an egg floated. Pupils then carefully poured tap water on top so that the

two waters would not mix. When they put the egg into this mixture it sank through the tap water

and floated where the salt water began – thus creating the illusion of floating in the middle of the

water.

(Faye Smith, Year 4S Class Teacher)

In Year 4H we went on a Habitat walk through

Horsky Park to find habitats in the surrounding

area and which organisms live in those habitats.

The children used their scientific enquiry skills to

first determine what the organism was and then

determine how it could survive in its habitat.

(Jason Harrison, Year 4H Class Teacher)

Having fun in German lessons

Learning a foreign language is not only about

practicing the vocabulary and working on gram-

mar exercises. We also play lots of games, learn

short poems or songs. Sometimes it is just great

fun to release some energy by dancing to Ger-

man songs.

As you can see, our primary students from Y4H

enjoyed it a lot. I hope that the more comfortable

they feel with the language, the easier it will be

for them to learn and speak. Fingers crossed,

this is a good start.

(Elena Turoňová, Teacher of German)

Help Africa

The children in Year 5 are inviting everyone to partic-

ipate in the Help Africa project. It is organised by the

University of St Elisabeth in Bratislava and supports

the School of St Philip Neri in Kenya.

The school is a day and boarding school for 2-15 year old children rescued from living in very bad

conditions. The focus is to help people, especially children, to study, be healthy and to live a better

life. Also to protect children who have to work extremely hard, who are sold into child slavery, babies

from very big families who do not have enough to eat because they are poor, etc.

We ask you to bring some unused items that you do not need anymore which will be sent to the

school and given to the children. We would be very happy to collect:

• clothes • shoes (especially trainers)

• toys • stationery and other school things.

Just find the big box at the reception and put your donation inside. Thank you! If you have any ques-

tions about the project, ask any of the Y5 children or Miss Edita.

(Edita Harrison, Year 5H Class Teacher)

At the same time, we would like to thank all of you who have already contributed to this good cause,

the donations are piling up nicely and will help the children in Africa lots .

On May 7th it was Science Day at CIS and Year 6

enthusiastically joined in a series of experiments

that we carried out in the classroom. Some of the

activities included bending water with static electri-

city; persuading a hard-boiled egg to go into a coni-

cal flask; using different strengths of sugar solu-

tions to create a rainbow ‘cocktail’ and constructing

electronic quizzes which buzzed or lit up if your an-

swer to a question was correct. Most of the activi-

ties were based on work carried out this year but

some were just for fun! As you can see from the

photographs Y6 participated with real enthusiasm,

had great fun and learnt a lot. Altogether, a succes-

sful day!

(Judi Easton, Year 6E Class Teacher)

Secondary Assembly

Mr David Madden, the founder and Director of

both the National History Bee and the National

History Bowl, visited CIS this month and bro-

ught a set of buzzers with him to show us how

his quizzes work. Our students were pretty good

and didnt have much trouble answering his qu-

estions on a range of topics—from actual History

lessons to history of sports or food.

Our Year 11s are already thinking and plannig

their future, and had a chance to hear more abo-

ut their options once they finish the school here.

Ms Martin from New College of the Humanities

in London joined them during their PSHE les-

son and explained how distinctive the college is

from others.

The Year 9s went on a river fieldwork field-

trip in the last week of May to prepare for IG-

CSE Geography next academic year. They con-

ducted various measurements of the river sys-

tem which included the river's width, speed of

river's flow, gradient and size of the load

(pebbles) it carries at various site along the

river's course.

They enjoyed their day out doing river fiel-

dwork and are looking forward to doing some

urban fieldwork in Bratislava's old town in

September.

Year 8 students were in our new laborato-

ry. They are studying the differences between

elements, compounds and mixtures and are

learning about different methods of separating

mixtures - chromatography, filtration, distilla-

tion etc.

(Mária Sirniková, Teacher of Science and Che-

mistry)

Eva Fendeková’s Culinary club participated in

Jamie Oliver’s cooking class with 237,822 par-

ticipants from countries around the whole wo-

rld.

Teachers and students from 121 countries in

total all joined together on Friday, 16th of May

for Food Revolution Day, and prepared a tasty

salad wrap which they then enjoyed eating .

(Declan Hayes, Teacher of Geography and Histo-

ry)

Features

Take a look at an interview with Ms Elena, our teacher of German, who kindly shared a few bits

about her life with us:

Which places have you been to (and what did

you do there)?

I have visited many different places mainly in Europe.

As a tourist I was in Turkey, France, England, Germa-

ny, Switzerland, Poland, Austria, Czech Republic, Bel-

gium…

All these countries are beautiful in their own way and

each of them had so many fascinating places and peo-

ple worthy to see. I value the most those places where I had a chance to visit not only the famous

tourist destinations, but also see and feel how regular people live their everyday lives.

And when it comes to doing things there, well… I have tried their traditional foods, visited museums

and galleries, tried different sports such as sailing, horse riding, cycling, mountain climbing (which

was really scary and now I prefer hiking only ), hiking, and some of the traditional arts and crafts.

One of the most memorable moments was when I have visited and tried the Turkish traditional spa

called Hammam.

What jobs have you done and whereabouts?

I worked as a personal assistant in a Slovak company when I was 19 years old. After two months I

decided that the job was really not for me and I started to fulfil my dream about travelling. I lived in

England for many years. Amongst many other jobs I have worked as a teacher assistant and a substi-

tute teacher. I also worked as a language teacher while studying at university in Slovakia. I have also

tried out interpreting as a summer job in one Czech company. Many of my summer holidays I have

spent in Germany with my friends and family and visited some of their primary and secondary

schools to see and try how it “works” there.

Why did you decide to become a teacher?

When I look back I think I can say I always wanted to be a teacher. Even my nickname was “little

professor” . My dad used to call me professor because I loved to discuss many different topics,

many times far too difficult to understand at that age. My parents wanted me to be a doctor but then

they saw that my talents are somewhere else and supported my development on every step I made. I

loved learning languages so I wanted to pursue my career in this area and teaching was the natural

choice as I always wanted to work with children and young people. They are the best source of hon-

esty and true emotions. They show you immediately what they think of you. I view teaching not as a

job but as a vocation.

Why did you choose to teach German?

My family has many friends and family members in Germany and Austria. We kept visiting each oth-

er ever since I was 4 years old so I can say that I grew up with German. For many years I saw it as my

second language. And because I wanted to be a teacher, I combined two things which I liked and

knew.

What do you do in your free time?

In my free time I love cycling and hiking or working in the garden. I live in an area very suitable for

these activities. I also like spending time with my family and friends. I often take my nephews and

nieces to the swimming pool or we go to the cinema or theatre together. When I want to have some

peace and quiet, I usually reach for a book or listen to music. When I feel like creating something,

I work on my embroidery but that takes a lot of time and usually I do it only during the winter.

Children's Corner

We are back with the last competition

of this school year. The task is to guess

who the girl in the middle of the pictu-

re is. Strain you brain cells a little and

think who of our teachers she resem-

bles .

Please submit the answers to your

class teachers by Friday, June 13th at

the latest. The correct answer from the

previous newsletter was (surprisingly

to most of our students) Ms Denisa.

P: +421 2 207 206 79 M: +421 918 121 892 E: school@cambridgeschool.eu