The Grade 12 Extended Essay Exhibition 2021 is live!

 

Click on the image to visit the Extended Essay Exhibition

Grade 11 and 12 students go through the process of planning, writing and publishing the extended essay as part of the IB Diploma Programme. This is an independent, self-directed piece of research, finishing with a 4,000-word paper.

The extended essay provides:

• practical preparation for undergraduate research
• an opportunity for students to investigate a topic of personal interest to them, which relates to one of the student's six DP subjects, or takes the interdisciplinary approach of a World Studies extended essay.

Through the research process for the extended essay, students develop skills in:

• formulating an appropriate research question
• engaging in a personal exploration of the topic
• communicating ideas
• developing an argument.

This year, AISM students have written essays about topics ranging from the ideal diets for basketball players to the relationship between childhood experiences and criminal behaviour, from the discrimination and exploitation of minorities to Turtle nesting in Mozambique, from the effects of social isolation to Korean cuisine and social media! The diversity of topics is amazing, and something our school, and this cohort of students, can be very proud of.

Crucially, the extended essay is a powerful reminder of how important it is for students to be curious about the world, to develop strong interests and to develop the skills involved in personal inquiry.

Please enjoy exploring the Extended Essay 2021 Virtual Exhibition!

Research, our Librarian and a slice of the PIE!

For three days last week, our whole-school Librarian, Leah Ittner, Zoomed into the Grade 8 classes during PIE (Personalization, Intervention, Extension) time to introduce the learners to the library resources and databases that are available to them for their research. Reminding students that anyone can make a website, it is important to use the carefully curated databases to get reliable facts and information about topics. She also showed tools that can help learners cite their sources easily, translate texts into any language, and listen to articles in order to support with comprehension. 

"The students responded really well to Leah’s openness and general disposition. Many are thinking about reaching out to her for support because they thought she was so nice! It was a great kick-off to our research process" said Peter Hennigar, Grade 8 Science Teacher and Advisor.

Here are the Slides that Leah used in order to share this information with Grade 8 students.

AISM Earth Day Buffalo Talks

On the 31st of March, we continued our series of Buffalo Talks. These talks are aimed at connecting people in our community with people in Maputo and beyond who are taking action and doing work that reflects our school's mission.

The 31st of March was Earth Day, so the focus was on environmental issues. An inspiring line-up was created and the programme was put together and hosted by our amazing Grade 11 Environmental Committee - Lara and Jana.

Larissa Sousa spoke about the Girls' Education Programme in Gorongoza National Park. Her talk starts here.

Olivier Hamerlynck spoke about the incredible Macaneta wetlands, just a short drive from AISM. His talk starts here.

Dorkhanay Paykhar spoke about the Circular Economy and the work she is doing with the African Circular Economy Network. Her talk starts here.

Sharing the Planet in Grade 2

In our Sharing the Planet unit of inquiry, Grade 2 learners have been inquiring into living things in different environments and how humans share those environments with living things.

We met with one of our parents, James Hogg, who is an Environmental Scientist and avid bird-watcher. He shared information about different habitats in Maputo and the birds we might encounter in each habitat. We also  learned about the importance of planting indigenous plants to support local wildlife.

We were also inspired by Jadav Payang, the man who planted a forest, and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner Wanagari Maathai, who told the story of the Hummingbird taking action.  We decided to plant indigenous trees and reached out to Ms. Colleen who taught us about the Spekboom plant, a super plant amongst plants!  She kindly shared some cuttings with us that we were able to plant and will be caring for on campus.  

Furthermore, we have been reading poems and stories about different habitats, and the 2H  Hummingbirds decided to write their own to show appreciation for the Earth.

Photo by John O'Nolan on Unsplash

The IB Learner Profile in the AISM Community

 

This is a video that shows the postcards we have designed in order to make the language of the IB learner profile more visible in our community. It features some beautiful photographs by some of our talented parents and teachers!

The IB learner profile is the most crucial element in the identity of an IB school like ours. The collective mission of IB schools is to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect. This is the work of our whole community and can only be achieved when we are all doing our best to model the attributes of the IB learner profile to the young people we are educating and parenting. As the African proverb says, it takes a village to raise a child.

One of our current goals, as a school, is to rapidly bring the language of the IB learner profile to the surface in our community, to make it a priority to strive towards living it and to have high expectations for how we all behave and interact with each other. Keep an eye out for some of the initiatives that we hope will help us achieve those goals.

Feel free to contact Sam, our Director of Learning, if you have any questions, ideas or suggestions about how we can make this happen.

Grade 7 are Spoken Poets and Activists!

The current unit in 7th grade Integrated Arts is "Activism in the Arts". We're looking at some of the visual art, music and performance art that has come out of activist movements around the world. All students created a spoken word poem about a cause of their choosing. Spoken Word Poetry has become a popular performance art among young people especially as they share their voices to help change the world and show their own power for good.

Here are some examples of the spoken word poems that Grade 7 students have been producing.

Zara:

Ver no Vocaroo >>

Kate:

 

Francesca:

Raisa:

Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash

Powerful Poetry by Grade 9 Students

 

Grade 9 students have written, performed and produced videos for a variety of powerful, and personal, poems. These poems have been curated on the AISM Grade 9 Poetry Slam website. 

Click on the titles across the top of the webpage in order to access the pages for each individual poem, and don't forget to click "More" and scroll down the right-hand side of the webpage... there's more amazing poems there too!

4L Have Strong Opinions About Our Planet

How do you address your audience in a persuasive way? 

Grade 4L spent the last 8 weeks diving into deep issues around the world in our Sharing the Planet unit:

Central Idea: Interactions within environments have consequences

Lines of Inquiry:

• The cause and effect relationships within the environment
• How interactions impact environmental balance and sustainability
• How advancement in technology changes and affects the world around us.

Changing people's thinking about how we treat the planet was 4L's purpose behind learning how to write a strong and persuasive opinion text. 

We learned how to persuade readers by using a strong and bold thesis, reasons to support that thesis, and finally, examples to help us elaborate about our reasons. 

Please take a few minutes to read our published pieces and learn how you can share our planet responsibly.

We Need to Stop Poaching by Maelle

Stop Water Pollution by Mufaro

We Need to Stop Poaching by Elliana

Is Air Pollution a Problem? by Monica

We Need to Use Less Plastic by Hannah (coming soon!)

Deforestation Needs to Stop by Maia

We Need to Stop Deforestation Now!! by Makai

Climate Change by Tomas

Feel free to leave a comment on this post and share your opinions about sharing the planet too.

Photo by Richard Gatley on Unsplash

Kindergarten's Urban Safaris!

 

During their Sharing the Planet unit of inquiry, Kindergarten students are learning about the living things that share our environment:

Central Idea: When we look closely and wonder, we learn appreciation and respect for living things in our environment.

Lines of Inquiry:

• The features and behaviours of living things
• How features and behaviour connects to where they live (habitats)
• Respect and appreciation for living things

While the AISM campus was closed, they were challenged to go on an "urban safari" around their homes to see what living things they could find. Then, they were asked to document what they saw and record their ideas and thoughts about the features and behaviours of living things in their environments.

Here are two of those urban safaris!

Many thanks to Arielle, Pedro and their families for sharing these wonderful explorations and documentation with us.

Photo by: Rikki Chan on Unsplash

Our Virtual Library - Getting Real Books in the Hands of Students!

We are pretty proud of our AISM Virtual Library!

Getting real books into the hands of our students was a real priority at the start of this year, and the Library Team came up with a plan that would allow families to:

• go to the Virtual Library through our Virtual AISM site
• check the Library Catalogue
• complete a form in order to check books out
• request that they be left at the front gate of the school for collection
• come and collect the books
• read them!
• bring them back to the front gate
• have them checked back in to the system
• do it all again!

When books are returned, they are quarantined before becoming available for check-out again.

So far, there's been over 120 individual requests and roughly 350 books checked-out, read at home and then returned. The families whose names appear the most in the check-out forms are the Quelhas, Wei, Abraham, Ayala and Campos families - well done!

Please continue to make the most of this service in the next few months - it gives our Library Team great satisfaction to see books going out of, and coming back into, our Library.

"Dear World" by Mariana in Grade 3S

 

Dear World,

Everyone needs to “STOP RACISM” because you can't judge people by their color. Just because a person is a particular color, does not mean they are not nice or as special as anyone else. In fact we are all humans with: family members, eyes, nose, ears, bodies, lives, and friends. Maybe not all of us have shelter but we all learn and we need to support others and accept them the way they are.

My opinion is that it is very rude to be racist. Like what happened to Jorge Floyd, American police killed him just because of his skin color, and that's not right. He was: a dad, a brother, a son and most of all a young man and he was a human. It's unfair you are making people lose their self confidence and people will feel sad, anxious, a loser and uncomfortable with who they are.

Everyone has the right to be loved, have a family, have friends that love you. Everyone has the right to have freedom to be themselves, and live with freedom with no one judging them. People need to feel free in this world and feel confident with themselves.

“DON'T BE RACIST”

From: Your Mariana in 3S
To: Our amazing world!

Image from: https://www.gcftf.org/statement-against-racism-and-inequity/