Tree Planting in Modřanská rokle The Botanicus Quest Reflection on

Reflection on Tanzania
white as I believed them to be. The hotel contributes
to the local economy by providing employment and
opportunity to various communities in Zanzibar. I have returned from a week full of challenges, new friends,
and mixed emotions; a week I wouldn’t have missed for
the world. Since my return to Prague many people have
asked me, “So, how was it?” The question leaves me
standing there hopeless as I can never find the words
to explain the rather life-changing week. Every moment
I spent either on camp, in the school, in Zanzibar or in the
bus was accompanied by a mix of emotion and constant
curiosity to find out more about my fellow students, the
culture or the ways of thinking. The trip has allowed me to
challenge myself and therefore expand my comfort zone.
Whether it was teaching 39 children, singing in Swahili
or African dancing, every moment was a chance for me to
develop myself. Teaching such a large group of children outside with limited
resources was definitely one of the most overwhelming
experiences of the trip. I stood there in front of 39 kids
with their eyes constantly fixed on me while other groups
started painting the school behind me. During my stay in
the school, I got very close to a 12-year-old student, Glory.
She goes to the boarding school and has no knowledge of
her biological parents but she told me that the school is
her family. In one of her letters, she wrote, “I love you
Emma you are my best friend. You taught us many things
and painted for us our school.” This brought tears to my
eyes because I realised how different her values were to
mine - she valued education and the love from her older
‘sisters’ whereas a lot of the time I take my education and
many other things for granted.
The trip to Zanzibar definitely gave me insight on the
role tourism plays in Tanzania and the complexity of
the situation. After an hour and a half trip through the
impoverished Zanzibar, we arrived at our hotel. The
contrast was quite shocking: even 5 meters before the
hotel, I could observe poverty: unfinished and crumbling
constructions inhabited by both man and beast; the hotel,
on the other hand, offered a variety of luxuries, such as
buffet dinner and breakfast, sport facilities and a pool.
However, having witnessed some of the local life,
I came to the conclusion that things aren’t as black and
4
Tree Planting
in Modřanská rokle
90% of income in Zanzibar comes from tourism. We
experienced this through a dolphin safari, a popular tourist
attraction on the island. Chasing and cornering a group
of dolphins, we were surprised and slightly shocked by
both the inconsiderate behaviour of the tourists and the
locals. As tourists, we felt that it was our responsibility to
respect the wildlife and the natural routine of the animals.
Instead, they made no apparent objections to behave with
disrespect. At first, we felt that the locals were equally to
blame as they seemed indifferent towards the welfare of
the dolphins. After reflecting, we realized that there was
a reason for their actions: tourists came with expectations
of seeing dolphins and as guides it was their responsibility
to meet their demands- the better their performance, the
higher income they have.
Back in camp, I learned that community service is
great and does make a change. Has teaching, painting,
reconstructing and bonding been beneficial to both us
and the students and Maua? Definitely. However, the key
to really making a change to less economically developed
countries is by investment and education. Education is
the foundation for success and means more potential
investment leading to sustainability, development and
overall growth in GDP.
Emma, 16 years
STUDENTS´ NEWS
Spring 2014
Though it was really hard,
I loved the outdoor work. We
had to work collaboratively
with other members of the
team, measuring the distance
between the trees we were going
to plant to ensure that they had
enough space to grow without
overcrowding the other trees.
To ensure we were doing this
correctly, we were given some
expert advice by an agriculturist.
At first I thought I would not be
that good at planting the trees
because the other team members
worked faster, however I did
catch up eventually. In the end
we planted a total of 120 trees!
The event took place on a Saturday morning in April in
the Modřanská rokle forest behind school from 9am to
12pm and was organised by a local group of volunteers.
The forest park is still suffering the effects of last year’s
floods and there is much work needed to conserve the
surrounding forest area. I took this new challenge of
planting trees in an area that had been devastated by the
floods.
Once the work was done, I gave
home-made lemonade to others.
This event was very new to me
and helping the environment
both locally and globally by
planting trees is very important especially with reports of
pollution increasing day by day.
Dheeraj, 16 years
(For part of his CAS volunteer work for his IB Diploma,
Dheeraj got involved with a local environmental group
to help replant trees in the local forest park behind
school.)
The Botanicus Quest
continues….
The wise knights of EISP were now in the beautiful garden of
Botanicus. The knight named Daniel, dismounted his trusty steed.
“Let us head to the candle making!” he announced dramatically.
The adventure will continue in the next newsletter… J
Krystof, 10 years and Dadmehr, 12 years
The English International School, Prague
Brunelova 960/12, 142 00 Prague 4, school@eisp.cz, www.eisp.cz
Year 4 Robotics
From our Principal
Dear Parent
As we race towards the
end of the year it might
be useful to think back
on all the progress that
has been made over
the first two terms with
the support of parents,
staff and of course, our
students.
Improving the school’s
use of data for teaching
and learning, expansion
of the enrichment programme, updating Moodle, new
website, relaunching school councils, further developing
High Performance Learning, expanding the IB offer, staff
restructuring, new languages on offer and a full curriculum
review are just a part of what has been happening over the
last eight months at our school.
Sport, drama and music continue to develop in the school
and on top of the productions, concerts and excellent
results against other schools (we’ve won so much this
year) I am committed to ensuring we do even more for
next and not only develop our teams but also to work with
smaller groups of students on sports such as tennis, golf
and dancing. This will widen our offer yet further and
allow other students to excel.
What did we do?
i) Call 112 – rock, paper, scissors
ii) pressure bandage for cuts
And what did the Year 6 students think?
to our students and as I walk around the school I am
always so pleased at how happy they are which as a parent
is inevitably near the top of our list of priorities. We are
working on developing our tutoring in the Senior school to
further support this pastoral care and I am confident that
under the supervision of tutors and new Key Stage leaders
this will be superb next academic year.
‘…it was really important. We had a lot of fun bandaging
our friends’ areas…we also learnt how to call to save
someone’s’ life!’ (Daniel)
There is of course more to do as we are committed to
ensuring that the English International School, Prague
not only cements its position as a leader in academic
performance and pastoral care in the city but also
constantly looks to challenge itself to do better. This is
a feature of the very best international schools and it is,
and will continue to be, a feature of our school.
‘…There was a pressure situation…we had a lot of pressure
to bandage our injured classmates to save their lives before
they bled out….at the same time our friend had to call the 112
emergency line…’ (Luis)
‘ …at first I wasn’t sure …then it was great fun, especially
with the bandages…I like practicing and working in groups…’
(Honza)
Mr Ogden and I will be asking parents, students and staff
to join us after half term in looking at vision and mission
statements for the school where we really set out clearly
what sort of school we want to be. This is a very important
piece of work which I know parents will certainly want to
be a part of.
‘…it was fun, very fun…I liked bandaging my friends….’ (Sally)
The relationships that I have been able to build with you
all have been hugely important to me and I am earnestly
looking forward to continuing to working with you all as
your Principal to make the English International School,
Prague better than ever.
As part of our new computer science curriculum in primary
school students in Year 4 have been learning to build and
program robots that mimic real life situations. The students
were challenged to follow complex instructions to construct
and then program their robot to complete a series of tasks
that can be controlled by a human. The next step in our
development within robotics looked at students evolving
their creations to preform actions automatically by using
sensors as inputs. The students used a range of skills such
as refining sequences of instructions, problem solving
and using models to explore input and outputs to answer
questions.
My thanks as ever for all your support
Stephen
We are justifiably proud of the pastoral care that we give
Turtle Day
To give you an insight into Year 4 lessons in robotics we
spoke to Jakub and Iris about their experience of learning
robotics with the Lego Wedo education kits:
Turtle Day was organised by the school to raise money for the school turtles.
They live in a tank outside the Year 5 classroom.
After building lots of different animals using the Lego Wedo
the students were challenged to design and construct their
very own Lego Robot based on their experiences over the
term. Jakub and Iris worked together to create a snake
that had several moving body parts that mimicked a snake
slithering across the ground. As Jakub explained, “We used
our experience of creating the drumming monkey robot
to build the two separate parts of the snake that used the
clams to move the Lego at random speeds. We then added
a motion sensor so that the snake would start to slither
once it sensed an object in front of it – just like a real snake
would!”
We all had to wear green or dress up as a turtle and bring in 50 CZK for the
turtles. Turtle Day was fun because we got to do some activities. I picked up
a turtle to see what it felt like. Its shell was bumpy and when I picked it up it
was very funny because it opened its mouth wide and looked like it was smiling
at the camera when a photograph was taken of me holding it. I didn’t touch its
belly but held it by the side of its shell.
My sister was lucky because she won a prize from the Tombola. She was very
happy. I didn’t win anything but enjoyed taking part in the other activities.
There was face painting, a craft activity, a Turtle and Spoon race and Hide the
Turtle in the sand game.
Year 6 Programming
and science for building experiments. I think that building
the robots lets me use my maths skills for creating the right
power and timing of our snake movement.” When asked
about the most challenging part about learning robotics
Iris felt that “it was hard to learn so many different skills
at the same time but this also made it more interesting.
I especially felt good when we managed to make our snake
move like a real snake would after lots of testing with
different combinations of cams.”
Jakub reflected on the overall engineering process: “It helped
us to follow the instructions on the computer but when we
tried to just build a robot ourselves it was very difficult, but
it helped when we learnt how to plan our designs before
trying to build”, Iris added: “When we planned our design
on paper we were able to look back at robots we had
already built and link parts of these to our snake robot. It
also meant that we didn’t waste lots of time experimenting
with the Lego because we knew exactly what we wanted to
do”. Jakub felt that “the planning helped us to think about
the design, what we wanted to achieve and what program
code we would need to make our snake work.”
In Year 6 students have been learning how to program their
own games using the online application Scratch. This was
an exciting addition to our computing curriculum aimed at
developing logical reasoning and problem solving skills in
order to develop ideas from initial conception to completed
games. Year 6 students have been creating multiplayer
and multi-level games that involve characters collecting
objects by avoiding capture by another character. To give
an insight to the lessons we asked Alex and Honza from
Year 6 to tell us more about using Scratch to create their
games:
Alex created a game called Dungeon Chaser and felt that
“creating complex rules in my gaming script was the most
challenging as I had to link my knowledge of physics to
make my character move how I wanted him to move”. He
also felt that “sequencing the code was difficult as there
is so much and some people think that it is simple but
you need good problem solving skills to debug the code”.
The most motivating aspect of learning programming
through game building is that students have control over
the creative design of their characters, environment and
When asked about their experience of learning robotics this
term Iris felt that “the best thing about using the Lego to
learn was that it was fun and easy as well as we got to work
in teams to help each other”. Jakub was interested in “using
the Lego to help me learn in other subjects such as maths
My sister had a turtle painted on her arm and face and we both made a turtle
out of rocks and card. I made three turtles! When I got home I made a little
habitat for them.
Asia, 7 years
1
Year 6 First Aid Training
2
3
movements. As Alex said, ”I invested allot of heart and
time into creating a game that I would like to play”.
When we spoke with Honza about his experiences of
Scratch to create his (as yet unnamed) game, he was excited
to be doing something which he loved and hoped “to study
in the future at University to use my programming skills
to create artificially intelligent machines that could
make a difference in real life”. Honza highlighted that
“learning computational skills such as logical sequencing
of instructions allowed me to break more complex
instructions into multistep that made it easier to program”.
Alex was excited that he could now use his new transferable
programming skills to “learn more programing languages
now like Java Script and then move onto Unity which
means I can build even more complex games”. Our aim
is to equip students with the fundamentals of computer
science that enables them to transfer these skills to any
given programming environment to create a wide variety
of creations from animation and computer games to
applications and robotics.