News for Parents

Pigments are naturally occurring dyes that play an important role as photoreceptors in photosynthesis in green plants. They can absorb light and convert it into a photochemical process.
The 11th grade, students examined the pigments in green spinach leaves in their practical course this week. For this purpose, the pigments were extracted from the leaves in the first step and then separated using thin-layer chromatography. The individual pigments were identified by evaluating their band pattern and comparing them with expected patterns in reference literature.

Entitled “Europe and the World”, the 17th German “Nationwide Reading Day” will take place again this year here in Vietnam. Reading connects people and offers young and old listeners the opportunity to go on a journey of discovery.
At IGS we have also planned an exciting program for Reading Day. While the grown-ups read to the crèche children, school children in grade 8 will organize a quick reading competition for the secondary students.
The reading day is, of course, multilingual and cross-cultural, so you could be meeting readers and listeners of different cultures and languages on our green campus for the entire school day.

The annual IB project day is about getting to know characteristics and skills that are helpful for preparing our students to successfully complete the IB diploma phase in grades 11/12.
Last Wednesday, therefore, all activities engaged in by  grades 6 to 8 revolved around understanding the learner profile, which in the IB helps to develop internationally-oriented people who have a common awareness of humanity and the planet earth.
In various experience-oriented workshops, the students reflected on what it means to be questioning, thinking, knowing, risk-taking and balanced learners.
Classes 9 and 10 started their day with three debates, the topics of which they had previously researched and presented to their classmates and class 8. The IB teachers then prepared workshops on research skills and academic honesty, as well as understanding global challenges. Class 11 also presented a seminar on time management, because they have been able to gain valuable experience in engaging in the diploma phase themselves.
At the end of the day, a student from grade 9 commented that the newly-learned skills would be of great benefit to his class, and his judgment was very clear: we need more of these project days.

Experiments and practical activities are an important part of acquiring science skills. On the one hand, tests and experiments help to better understand theoretical aspects; on the other hand, the students learn the basics of scientific knowledge processes through experiments.
Especially in the Natural Science courses at IB, experiments and practical activities are an essential part of the teaching.
This week, our class 11 dealt with the effect of substrate concentration on the activity of catalase. Catalase is an enzyme that occurs in all animal and plant cells and renders the cell toxin hydrogen peroxide harmless by splitting it into water and oxygen.
The students obtained the catalase from potatoes. The catalase obtained in this way was added to the hydrogen peroxide in different amounts. In this way, the enzyme activity could be observed using a stable head of foam and measured for the evaluation.
In this experiment, the students had to organize and plan the implementation of the experiment themselves. Researching sensible methods, making arrangements with classmates and organizing the laboratory equipment and utensils were necessary for this. It was very exciting to see what the challenges were.
More experiments will follow, we will keep you up to date.

Pham, Mai Thuong

The motto of the creative day was “Under the Sea – Save our Sea”. This is exactly what grades 1-5 learned at this year’s creative day in different ways on November 11 2020.
For 20 minutes at each station, the students let their creativity and energy run free: making a pop-up ocean or an aquarium from paper plates and colored paper, making collages of underwater scenes with oil paints, getting to know the secret mermaid language with the help of Puzzles, designing percussion instruments and promoting the sense of community through cooperative games such as the “fishing game”, “drops in the desert” or the longest “pipeline in the world.”
Thanks to Mr Weyman and Ms Quynh Anh for organizing and hosting this exciting day.

This time our educational days were themed around safety, health and communication. On Thursday, in cooperation with an expert from FFAD (Fitzpatrick First Aid Training), we had the opportunity to complete a first aid course, specifically first aid for children. The focus here was, of course, on the care of small wounds in everyday life and the right action to take in an emergency in cooperation with our nurse.
On the second day, we attended a workshop by Dr. Torsten Seeger on the topic of “Leading parenthetically solution-oriented discussions”. In several role plays, we placed ourselves in the different perspectives of a conversation, and were able to draw conclusions for our daily communications.

What were schools like in the past? What did classrooms look like 50 years ago? What punishments were there for bad behavior back then?
The students in grade 4 presented these and other exciting topics to their younger classmates with the help of descriptive posters in their classrooms. But the focus was not only on “schools of the past”: The students’ pen pals from the primary school in Markt Wald in Germany were also discussed. Questions about how exactly a pen friend works and what should be considered when writing a letter were discussed with Grades 1, 2 and 3 through highly informative presentations.
The highlight of the presentations was, of course, the reading out of the letters received from Germany.

The U6 and Primary schools presented some music and a play to each other’s mutual benefit. U6 sang “Durch Die Strasse” in its traditional musical setting. Their presentation was fresh and cherubic. This was followed by a rather jolly presentation of “Ich Geh mit meiner Laterne” and “Laterne, Laterne” sung a s a canon.
Class five then acted out the life of St Martin in a short drama which focused mainly on the crucial event in Martin’s life. The play was well-rehearsed and was received with polite attention.
Finally, the senior choir sang a new arrangement of “Durch die Strasse”. It was sweetly sung and projected the rather melancholy tone of the music.

For our alternative St Martin celebrations this year, classes 1 and 2 have been working hard-to-create large-scale lantern installations celebrating the light festival.
Each student modified recycled cups and CDs to create imaginative flowers and snowflakes.Along with some beautiful transparent collages these were assembled to form two large lanterns, one symbolising the cold and loneliness of hard times, and the other the warmth and care we get from the people closest to us.The lanterns will be on display outside of campus in the trees at the main entrance to the school. We recommend coming by to see them lit at night to enjoy their full effect.

A beautiful tradition in the U6 area has become the fathers’ annual lantern handicrafts before St. Martin’s festival. For this reason, many fathers – and some mothers – met on Monday evening to design a lantern for their children. With bratwurst and a cool drink there was of course time for a chat. At the end of the evening, the parents could proudly pat each other on the shoulder, because every lantern has become a little eye-catcher, which the children will certainly be happy about on Friday at the U6 lantern run.

Class 4 was allowed to test how a letter can travel around the world. The pen friends project was started with the primary school Markt Wald in Germany. The students of grade 4 opened the long-awaited letters eagerly. When answering, care was taken to apply the newly-learned criteria for a personal letter and of course to report on Vietnamese culture, food and traffic.
They look forward to news from Markt Wald.

Of course there were some difficulties, e.g. when buying ripe avocados or finding kitchen utensils. Since we were in a kitchen we were unfamiliar with, we didn’t know where all the utensils were. It took us a lot of time to find them ;).
After an hour of preparation everything was ready. The food was nicely arranged on the plates. We deliberately chose colorful foods, because as a German idiom says: The eye eats too. After cleaning up, we were ready to eat. Our mouths were already watering.
By the way: there is a catering committee at the IGS. Pupils can send their suggestions to the committee through the student representatives; Parents should contact Ms. Thuy directly.
Why don’t you try to cook a healthy recipe at home! 🙂

Your class 11

Also in this school year a fire drill was carried out at the IGS.

On Wednesday in the third lesson the alarm sounded and all students, teachers and employees quickly gathered at the two designated assembly points. This time the exercise could be completed efficiently in less than three minutes.

Then the local fire brigade moved in with heavy equipment and demonstrated their extinguishing exercise on our school campus. The children of the U6 area as well as the pupils of the first and second grades were also given the opportunity to examine the equipment and vehicles of the fire brigade more closely and to ask interesting questions to the emergency services.The exercise apparently seemed so authentic that for a moment some students from our neighboring school assumed it was a real emergency. In the future, the school offices will therefore inform each other about the exercises in advance.

Why do children play?
Which games encourage children to speak in particular?

These questions occupied the guests of the first “Coffee with us”, to which the team from the U6 area had been invited.
Many families take time to play board games together or look for specific opportunities to provide their children with a stimulating home environment. In conversation with the educators, the parents discovered how various areas of development, such as gross and fine motor skills or perception, could be promoted by playing games with them.
The little tour of discovery through the world of play opened up new perspectives for the parents. With the search books and the set table in the doll’s corner, the parents came up with their own ideas: Why not make an album with pictures of your own family, or use grandma’s old handbag to play with?
In the end, the parents realized that you don’t need expensive toys to give children the opportunity to speak and to support them in their development in a variety of ways