Crafting Creativity in the Wood Workshop

This month, our enrichment students took their learning beyond the classroom with an exciting trip to a local wood workshop! Using real tools and materials, they designed and carved their own woodland animals — a hands-on challenge that stretched their creativity, problem-solving, and fine motor skills. For our more able learners, this experience provided opportunities to think critically, take risks, and apply precision and patience — skills that enrich not only their craftsmanship but also their learning across all areas of school life.

Our youngest learners are becoming number detectives! They’ve been exploring what happens when we add one more or take one less, and discovering which numbers come before and after. Through songs, games, and hands-on activities, students are building strong number sense and confidence as growing mathematicians.

Our young scientists and storytellers have been busy mixing colours, pouring through funnels, and creating their very own emotion jars! As they experimented with how colours blend and flow, students made connections between science and feelings—using their jars to inspire stories about different emotions. Through this creative inquiry, they’re learning to express themselves, make observations, and communicate how they feel in colourful new ways!

Our young mathematicians have been exploring factors and prime numbers using colourful manipulatives! By grouping, arranging, and experimenting with different materials, students are discovering patterns and deepening their understanding of how numbers work. It’s all about thinking, testing, and learning through play!

In Spanish, our young artists have been exploring the life and art of Frida Kahlo, discovering how she expressed her identity and emotions through her colourful paintings. Students made personal connections by thinking about what makes them unique and how they can show this through their own art. Along the way, they’ve been using key Spanish vocabulary to describe colours, feelings, and self-expression — ¡qué maravilloso!

In Individuals and Societies, Year 7 students have been researching some of our Hominid ancestors.  There’s a lot of different traits that hominids share and so to help the students tell them apart, they carried out extensive research across many sources to create a Hominid Top Trumps card game.  Creating and playing the game is a fun way to get to know our evolutionary ancestors.

It is, of course, possible to learn about the Laws of Motion in the classroom but it’s way more fun on the playground with a slide.  Year 9 has been exploring the Laws of Motion and to get a better understanding, they went to the park to see what effect different sliding techniques have on how quickly you get down the slide.  What a fun way to create a data set that proves that even in Brno, the Laws of Motion apply.

Year 10s, brought the book “1984” to life through a classroom roleplay. Students took on the roles of characters and interviewed Winston in real time, sending in their questions through Slido, an audience interaction app. The discussion explored truth, control, and resistance in Orwell’s dystopia — and the answers felt as intense as life in Oceania.

How likely are you to win at rock, paper scissors?  There are different ways to explore the probability of a win.  High School Math students have been exploring the difference between theoretical and experimental probability by playing rock-paper-scissors to create an experimental data set.

As we wrap up our current well-being units on friendship, respect, and kindness, we are so proud of the growth we’ve seen in our students across the ISB community. Throughout these lessons, we’ve been emphasising our learner profiles of being communicative, principled, and caring. It’s been inspiring to watch students reflect on what these qualities look like in everyday life, in the classroom, on the playground, and even beyond our school walls.

In the PYP, each class has been setting goals to work toward becoming a Distinguished Kindness School through the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation. Every primary class has signed, or will soon sign the Kindness Pledge, committing to make kindness a part of their daily actions. It’s been truly heartwarming to see this in action. One student shared, “At first I had to focus on doing the kind acts, and the more that I did them, they started to just happen without me even thinking about it!” Moments like these show the lasting impact of nurturing kindness as a habit and value.

Our Community Connections Parent Well-Being Group met this month to discuss the important topic of cyber safety and digital well-being. Thank you to everyone who joined the conversation and shared insights. I’ll be sending out an announcement on Toddle with a short survey to help us decide the next meeting’s topic, date, and location. I look forward to continuing these discussions and seeing more of our parent community participate!

Looking ahead, our next well-being unit will explore health and well-being for our primary students and “real world” survival skills for our secondary and high school learners. Thank you all for your continued support, it truly takes our whole community to help students grow into kind, capable, and balanced individuals. I’m deeply grateful for the ISB community and look forward to our continued collaboration for the well-being of our student body! 

• Midterm Reports
  

• Parent Teacher Conferences
  

• November Enrichment Program