Linguistic Intelligence!

Our students of IBPYP had Spell Bee competitions on the 22^nd of June 2018. Our students were divided into two categories- Grades I-II competed as ‘mini-juniors’ and while Grade III-V competed as ‘sub-juniors’.The Spell Bee for our mini-juniors was conducted through writing tasks, where facilitators dictated words and children spelled them out on paper. The Spell Bee for the Sub-Juniors  was a little different as it had many rounds such as ‘Misspelt Words’, ‘Guess the Word’, ‘Jumbled Words’ and a ‘Spellathon’. All the four houses were enthusiastic in their participation and applauded their house-mates as they proceeded from round to round. Our students demonstrated great team work and impressive levels of linguistic intelligence.

Grow with games

Our active little ones of IK III visited Decathlon at Kompally as a part of their exploration of the central idea ‘Games help us Learn and grow’. Our tiny tots were very excited to step into the megastore and see sports equipment and displays for themselves. They actively discussed and made connections between equipment like goggles, helmets, head caps, swim wear, skates, safety pads and different sports besides understanding their functions. This visit helped them gain knowledge about various games and related equipment. This experience will indeed help the tiny tots to go further with their learning in the ongoing inquiry.

Unlocking Potential!

Every club inspires our students of the secondary wing to innovate with projects they are passionate about. The last club meet of the month too saw our students push the boundaries of what they know with group challenges.The Literary Club experimented with writing mini sagas on a genre of their choice, while our Visual Arts Club created their own mazes with cardboard and Popsicle sticks. The Performing Arts club saw students learning classical dance practice a traditional welcome song to be performed at the upcoming Founder’s Day Celebrations and while our students of western dance rehearsed some basic steps of free style dance.

 


The Eco-sustainability club practiced a role-play on issues regarding sustainability. Elsewhere, the DRSIS Community and Humane club created some gift envelopes s with construction paper and poster colors. Our Design and Technology Club too made the most of the meet by encouraging students to explore how to use Windows Live Movie Maker. The DRS MUN Club discussed about different organs of the UNO even as the Cuisine Club tried their hand at making delicious and nutritious ragi laddus. The club meet certainly took our students love for their hobbies to the next level.

Paperless Week Celebrations!

As IB celebrates 50 years of its functioning, our PYP students at DRS International School decided to join in on the celebrations by making a difference to the world in their own small way and agreed to observe a ‘Paperless Week’ from the 16^th to the 20^th of April, 2018. The week-long celebrations created opportunities for students at every grade level to take action by conserving paper and minimizing and eliminating their use of it in their learning experiences and activities at school.

 


Our children of the IK had an exciting Paperless Week in which they thoroughly enjoyed engaging activities that incorporated cooperative play, using markers and board, blocks, dough and sand in the IB way! The learners developed their pre-writing concepts through games such as treasure hunt, classroom props, hopping on the number-line and games like ‘spin the bottle’. Students also learnt recognition of consonants, vowels in different languages and ‘after’ numbers through activities like treasure hunts, hop-scotch, train and dice activities! The paperless week helped them to understand the importance of environmental friendly practices in their own way.
Our Grade 1 students, too, made the most out of paperless week with a range of hands on activities including learning with popsicle sticks,magnetic number activities for concepts in math, vowel cars to explore blends and digraphs, puppets to explore about families and friends, as well as a role-play to enact a story in Hindi.

 


Our little explorers of Grade II investigated nouns around the campus and enhanced their communication skills as part of the paperless week celebrations. They learnt Math concepts using their interactive smartboards. As a part of their Inquiry, they explored their favorite food through presentations and also made a visit to the school cafeteria and cold storage where they interacted with the chef and his assistants to learn more about food.

 

The eco-warriors of Grade III celebrated this special week through different learning engagements including one in which they categorized ‘Countries & Continents’ through ‘Pass the Ball’ as well interactive maps displayed on the smart board!

Meanwhile, our students of Grade IV explored a lot of new ideas and concepts with Paperless Week Activities! They explored about the different types of diseases through videos and also saw videos on health and hygiene to learn to protect themselves from diseases. They also enjoyed a unique nature walk to explore the microbes that cause diseases in plants using a magnifying glass.

Students of Grade V marked the week in style, beginning with an exciting activity on learning styles. Students were asked to close their eyes and visualize the scenario of smoke in the movie theater while watching an interesting movie. After understanding the scenario, students were asked to express their reactions as ‘Look’, ‘Run’ or ‘Yell’. This activity helped students reflect on their preferred learning style.

 The Paperless Week was a great success in many ways, with the PYP Wing single-handedly eliminating the use of nearly 4000 sheets of paper over the course of the week!

Inspiring our Teachers!

Our facilitators were welcomed back after their summer break with a week long Faculty Development Program designed to help them grow professionally and to keep them inspired with best practices from across the world.

Our IB PYP facilitators enjoyed sessions that focussed on strategies to foster collaboration and thinking in our classrooms such as ‘Teaching & Grouping Strategies’ as well as ‘Making Thinking Visible’. Sessions such as ‘Approaches to Teaching’, meanwhile, helped them revisit the core pedagogical beliefs and practices around which the IB curriculum revolves. The facilitators also shared their reflections of their professional development journeys over the summer break, sharing books they had read, new strategies and tech tools they had learned to use in the classroom.

Our secondary and senior secondary facilitators on the other hand, brainstormed on the different ways schools kill creativity and identified ways they could bring innovation back to the heart of classrooms. Facilitators also shared their knowledge of how to maximize their use of interactive smart boards and shared their favourite apps and tools for teaching. The sessions also saw many facilitators reflect on how they can best support their students in the classroom and spent time refining their planning for the current academic year to incorporate principles of differentiation.

The Faculty Development Programme certainly helped our facilitators look at learning and teaching anew and equipped them with a sharper set of tools, ideas and concepts to make the rest of the academic year more fulfilling for our students!

Inspiring Creativity ! Art and Craft Week

The PYP Wing celebrated Art & Craft Week from 18th to 22nd June with a series of well-designed hands-on activities for each Grade level. Our little inquirers of Grades I and II decided to make colourful palm-shaped greeting cards with a dash of potato printing, while our creative students of Grades III and IV learned how to make paper-chain snakes, that were impressively life-like. Our Grade V students also joined in on the celebrations by experimenting with advanced leaf printing techniques. The Art & Craft Week celebrations succeeded in inspiring our students and getting them to put their best creative foot forward. The last day of this special week saw our students showcase their creations to present about both their creative process and learning outcomes!

 

Speaking Out! Special Assembly on ‘The International Day Against Drug Abuse’

A special assembly conducted by Grade IX marked our school’s observance of the International Day Against Drug Abuse.  While adolescents around the world are vulnerable to substance abuse and drug addiction, our aware and proactive students made us proud by speaking out strongly against the dangers of drug abuse! Our students presented an engaging skit on resisting the temptation to seek temporary pleasure through the use of drugs and portrayed how substance abuse destroys lives. Our facilitators also cautioned the assembly on the need to be vigilant and alert to peer pressure and peddlers.

 

Eating Right! Resource person session Grade II

Ms Nandini, one of our facilitators visited Grade II as an in-house resource person and shared  key points about the importance of food. This visit related to our students’ inquiry of their central idea ‘our choices lead us to consequences’ with regard to food and lifestyle choices.  Students understood how they could be responsible in choosing food and how they can exercise their self-management skills in avoiding junk food. Ms Nandini also posed interesting questions for the students to puzzle over and shared a few handy tips on how to stay healthy.

 

Friends of the Forest!

Our Grade VI students headed out for a tryst with nature in a visit to the Telangana State Forest Academy on the 25^th of June. The field trip encouraged our students to explore different types of medicinal plants and a variety of plant species under the guidance of a voluntary organization called Society for Training, Awareness, Recruitment & Social Service.’ Throughout the course of the trip, the students enjoyed activities like ‘Nature Trail’, ‘Rock Climbing’, ‘Paper-bag Making’ and also enjoyed a visit to the herbal garden of medicinal plants. Students also understood how different forestry models suitable for different agro-ecological situations in Telangana State, apart from conventional forestry operations can be used as to reduce pressure on natural stands and to enhance ecological conditions. The field trip inspired students to take initiative to protect our fragile eco-system and helped them brainstorm on the measures they could take up to do so!

 

Baking Goodness!

Our Grade II students visited a Bread Factory (Nanda Foods) as a part of the ‘Going Further’ stage of their ongoing inquiry on the Constituents of a Balanced Diet, specifically what the effects of improper diet  are and how we can make right choices in our diet. Our students were very curious to see the bread being processed; they also understood the process of food preparation and the different machinery used for each food. They also interacted with the bakers around and inquired about how food is processed.  The field trip gave them insight into how the manufacturing process of food potential affects our health for the better or for the worse, and this in turn will definitely help them make informed lifestyle choices.

 

Adventure at the Hidden Castle!

Magic and mystery found our adventure-seeking Residential students in their Night-Out to the Hidden Castle Resort on the weekend of 23 & 24^th June. The much awaited trip was a great success and gave students new experiences that challenged them to be more confident and risk-taking!

 

As soon as the magical castle opened its gates to our students, our students were thrilled to see the action-packed weekend that awaited them. Students chose adventure sports and experiences from across the circuit, including zip-lining, tree-top walking, sand volley ball, bicycle trails, archery and the tricky commmando net. A delightful magic show and karaoke event added cultural flair to their evening, while the ‘Spooky Tree’ and ‘Secret Tunnel Walk’ certainly sent shivers down some spines! Skeletons, ‘ghosts’ and eerie howling definitely added to the experience of the mysterious castle. The evening drew to an end with a cosy campfire and some dancing!

Our students woke up to a crisp morning in which they headed for a challenging four-kilometre forest trek. The sumptous outdoor breakfast that followed refreshed everyone just in time for some special team-building games like Electric Pole, A-Z Pick Ups, Roll the Ball, Reverse the Flow, Balloon Fart and Tug of War. The games definitely built our students interpersonal skills and ability to work as teams. The adventurous weekend was capped off with a round of exciting water-sports and a fun-filled rain dance that are sure to be remembered by our students for a long time to come.

The World in a Museum! Trip to Salarjung Museum

As a part of a series of learning experiences designed to get them thinking, our students of Grade III embarked on an educational field trip to the Salar Jung museum as a part of their inquiry about special features of countries. Our students were amazed to see the different galleries and the exhibits the museum had in store for them. During the visit, many curious questions popped up in their creative minds. The exhibit they found the most interesting was one of the museum’s most loved treasures, the English Bracket Clock! The mesmerizing miniature toy models also wowed their children with their intricate construction. Our students’ excitement and energy was so infectious, that even after a long walk through the museum kids they still had energy to ask more questions! They were able to reflect on their existing knowledge and were able to connect to their inquiry quite well.

 

Decoding ‘Diseases’!

A field trip is a great way to show our students that science is not just a school subject. It’s integral to their daily lives and its fun too! On Monday 18^th June 2018 we took our students of Grade IV to the Health Museum and Department of Horticulture to understand different aspects of diseases through live presentations. The museum had many exhibits, models, charts and other displays related to different types of diseases as well as measures to prevent diseases. The museum visit strengthened our students’ inquiry and gave them more information to work with and explore. The students also visited the Department of Horticulture where Mr. Srinivas, the resource person, shared information about how microbes affect plants and cause diseases. The field trip not only deepened our students understanding of diseases and microbes but also increased their empathy for those affected by them.

 

Sharing is Caring! Field trip to ‘GRACE HOME FOR CHILDREN’ .

Our Grade I students counted themselves lucky to get the opportunity to visit an orphanage named ‘Grace Home for Children’ on the 19^th of June, 2018. The orphanage was home to 35 children and their 6 caretakers. Our caring students were delighted to meet and interact with them, and tried to make a difference to their lives in their own tiny way! With the help of their facilitators, our students distributed colouring materials and stationery such as crayons, paints, clay dough and other essentials to their new friends.

 

Power-through! Inter House Tug of War Competition

It’s not enough to have power, it’s important to know how to best harness it for our collective good. Our PYP students mirrored this idea as they participated enthusiastically in the Inter-House Tug of War held on the 20^th of June. The students were divided into two groups according to their ages- students of Grades I and II competed in the ‘Mini Junior’ category, while the students of Grades III, IV and V compered as Sub-juniors. This competition was particularly exciting as it saw the complete representation of each houses in terms of its strength. The House Masters and mentors of all the houses cheered and encouraged their students to do their best and the electric atmosphere at the venue left everyone wanting more!

 

Red Day with a Twist!

Our imaginative little ones of the International Kindergarten celebrated with the colour ‘Red’ on the 21^st as part of the year-round series of ‘Colour of the Month’ Celebrations. Vibrant ‘red’ themed displays and classroom decor set the ambience for the day.  Our students dressed in every possible shade of red, much to each others’ delight.

 The much-awaited morning assembly saw both the colour ‘red’ and our tiny tots take centre-stage. Our budding communicators of IK III shared their favourite ‘red’ props with a fun round of Show & Tell and also dazzled the audience with their performances for ‘I like to Twist’ and ‘Let’s Star Jump!’. Our caring young ones of IK II swayed to the tune of ‘I love you’ while the tiny stars of IK 1 made their own moves up for a peppy instrumental track. This was an important day for IK 1, for whom it was their first time on-stage in school!

Our kindergarteners were thrilled to create and take away little ‘red’ craft projects of their own that ranged from bugs, ties, apples and birds.The day certainly helped promote colour-identification and developed in our students a deep sense of appreciation for the colour ‘red’.

Quiz Champs!

DRSIS is home to many quiz and trivia buffs who thrive on the spirit of competition. The Inter House Quiz Competition conducted at DRSIS on 20th June for Grades VI-VIII emphasized on promoting a fun way of enriching the learning process and fostering team building. The main objective of school quizzing competitions such as this is to encourage students to look beyond their textual knowledge and establish a relationship between theory and application of the learning concepts. It is easier said than done nonetheless. 

Apart from the Conventional Sciences, literature and technology rounds, the students were also stimulated to answer questions in the visual round in the sport’ category, the audio round in the entertainment category besides other new appealing and energizing rounds such as environment, food and connection rounds. The distinct segment of the quiz was ‘the scoring’ which was on the basis of wagering. The participants either get all or nothing for the points wagered before the question is posed which made the quiz much more exciting.

The atrium was buzzing with cheers from the enthusiastic audience and exhilarated and active participants wherein there was a tie for the second position. The audience, participants and the staff reveled in the event and are now a bit more enlightened.

Professional Development for our DP staff- beginning the academic year with a bang!

Our IBDP Faculty have been busy with a week long Faculty Development Programme that saw them work together to prepare themselves for the year ahead. The programme ensured that our DP facilitators had plenty of time to revisit the fundamentals of IB Philosophy, the Core as well as the key pedagogical principles unique to the school.

The sessions were flagged off with our facilitators sharing their professional development experiences and efforts over the summer break, including ideas on ways to ‘not kill’ creativity in classrooms, ways to support students, ways to enhance communication with colleagues etc. After the conclusion of this set of modules, they then moved on to discussing the school’s language policy, our academic honesty policy and other policies that strengthen and support the programme in myriad ways. Additionally, sessions on the core of the IBDP, namely TOK, CAS and the EE helped facilitators understand the importance of collaboration and coherence within the programme.

The Faculty Development Programme also saw our facilitators work in teams to dissect the Standards and Practices as well as how they are woven through the culture, policies and practices of the school. They also used the opportunity to discuss their preparedness for the upcoming evaluation in 2019 by the IB. The sessions concluded with facilitators working together to discuss and ensure they get the academic year off to a great start for the students!

Yoga for Life- Celebrating International Yoga Day 2018 in School!

The 4th International Day of Yoga was conducted with lots of zest all over the world on 21 st June.On this momentous occasion the students of DRS International School celebrated this beautiful practice by performing the Common Yoga Protocol which is designed annually by the Minsitry of AYUSH to mark this day. The students performed a unique series of asanas including tadasana, vrkshasana, padahasthasana, ardha chakrasana, trikonasana, dandasana, bhadrasana, vajrasana, ardha ustrasana, shashankasana, vakrasana, bhujangasana, shalbhasana, makarasana, setu bandhasana, pawanmuktasana and shavasana. These asanas were followed by pranayama and deep breathing
exercises, and Om chanting for proper relaxation.

The students surprised their Yoga Fitness Instructor with their zest for learning, especially on IDY2018, and their tremendous amount of effort and energy was impressive. Their diligence and dedication to perform each and every asana correctly truly showcased their respect for this wonderful practice. The celebrations definitely succeeded in renewing the students’ passion for Yoga!

The Little Things Matter!

At DRS, we believe that children learn best from the environment and the people around them. A resource parent, Ms Roma Bhunia shared her knowledge and expertise with our Grade 1 students recently to enrich their ongoing inquiry ‘how our behaviour affects us and our relationships’, as part of the transdisciplinary theme ‘Who We Are’.

Through the presentation, the children enjoyed learning about how to respect, love and care for people and all living things around us. Our curious students also asked plenty of questions and shared their ideas on how their behaviour impacts those around them.

Dreaming of a Greener Planet!

The first day after the summer break coincided with the observance of the World Environment Day. The special assembly held by our teacher community saw the whole school come together to understand the significance of creating global awareness about the need to take immediate and positive action to save our environment. This year’s celebrations are especially significant as India is the host country for the World Environment Day celebrations. With the theme ‘Beat Plastic Pollution’,the focus of the assembly was on the different elements of the environment and how they are affected by pollution by non-biodegradable plastic. The assembly ended on a motivating note, with teachers urging our students to step ahead to take action to conserve the environment in all its richness and beauty!