ISK Voice 2009_02 - january 23, 2009

Issue 02/2009January 23, 2009

It’s been a very eventful and snowy start back from Winter Holiday. The football fields, playgrounds and forest complete our winter wonderland where sled-ding and football are the favored activities at recess and PE.

On the sporty side of things, we had our fist Snowriders Family Ski Weekend last weekend. We also competed in our first ever ski/snowboard downhill race early this week. Three of our board-ers placed in the top ten! Of course, we look forward to more Snowrider events this season as we prepare for the biggest event of the season, ski camp in Austria! All events so far have been booked to capacity. Thank you to the ISK Team for organizing these events and to the students and fami-

lies who participate. Your participation enriches our school community.

Of course there’s been plenty go-ing on inside as well. Our middle and high school stu-dents begin mid term ex-ams this week and grades 3-9 have ISA (ACER) exams coming later this month.

This week students and staff are attending and pre-senting on College Board programs as well as admis-sions procedure reviews for North American university systems. Our fourth admin-istration of SAT I&II exams

this year will be happening this weekend.

This month ISK was visited by representatives from the Global Student Teaching and the English Language Teaching Assistant Pro-gram at the University of Minnesota-Morris as well as Rhode Island College. We look forward to hosting stu-dents from their programs.

There’s always something happening at ISK! If you would like to be closer to the action, please let us know. There are plenty of opportunities to be involved with the PTA, committees, events and more.

Erica Mazzeo School Director

In this issue

Art Department

Grade 0

Grade 3

Math

Special report: Snow Activities

German

PTA news

Classifieds ISKVOICEThe Bi-Monthly International School of Krakow Newsletter

The International School of Krakow - ul. sw. Floriana 57 - Lusina - 30-698 Krakow - Poland - www.iskonline.org

coming up

February 2 - 6 Winter break

February 10 PTA coffee morning

Winter time is here!

mailto:www.iskonline.org

Competition open to:

1. Elementary grades 1-3

2. Elementary grades 4-5

3. All of Middle School

4. All of High School

Art competition themes

• π in the Sky

• Circles, Circles everywhere and a square of radius to spare

• π and pipes

What kinds of artwork will be accepted?

Artwork MUST be 2-dimensional (no 3 -D work will be accepted)

Works submitted may be in the form of a painting, a collage, a piece of computer graphics or a photograph.

Some ideas for materials that could be used include: paint, crayon, pastel, ink, pencil, Power-Point, photography or a collage.

What will the judges be looking for in the artwork?

1. Originality and creativity

2. How well the artist communicated his/her idea regarding π

3. Amount of effort seen in the work

4. Good presentation

When?

Monday, March 9th will be the last date to drop of your work in specially marked boxes to be placed in certain areas of the school. We will notify your homeroom teacher where the drop-off areas are, closer to the deadline.

Paulette Lidert, ISK Art Department

Consultation: ISK Math Department

A cross-curricular activity Art and Math

Grade 0 wishes you a happy new year !We continue to learn about the different letters of the alphabet and some of us have even started to read!

We are also learning how to count by 2’s, 3’s, 5’s, and 10’s. We have lots of fun songs to go along with learning how to count that we would be happy to share with you if you see one of us in the hallway or after school.

Do you know what the characteristics are that classify

an animal as a mammal?

Do you know the different stages of the life cycle of a butterfly or a frog?

If you have forgotten, be sure to ask one of us and we will tell you.

Grade Zero is also loving the winter weather.

We love the snowmen that the older kids create and we love using the new sleds at recess.

Another activity that we love is playing dress up during our center time.

If you come visit our class at that time you may run into Snow White, a cowboy, a ladybug or Batman.

Happy New Year from Grade Zero!

Teresa Sabatasso Grade 0 teacher

Grade Zero has started off the new year with lots of fun activities.

it’s a girl We are thrilled to announce that ISK teacher,

Ms. Dominika Skiba, gave birth to a healthy baby girl.

Baby Gaja and Mom are doing well.

Congratulations, Ms. Dominika!

Grade 3 discovers AsiaThe continent of Asia has been the focus of 3rd grade social studies for the past few weeks.

For the Winternational cel-ebration, students prepared a Japanese song and an Israeli circle dance.

For the Winternational Food Festival, third graders in collaboration with eleventh graders prepared a variety of Asian foods, which in-cluded dishes from China, Japan, India, and Kazakh-stan.

Lately, the country of Japan has become the primary focus of third grade social studies as the class pre-pares for the Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes literature unit in language arts.

Students have been read-ing about Japan’s geog-raphy as well as various aspects of the Japanese culture.

As part of our study third grade was very privileged to host Jane, one of ISK’s ninth graders, who talked about her experience of liv-ing in Japan.

Students were very excited

as Jane wrote their names in Japanese and taught them how to make an origami swan.

Having had a little preview before the Winternational, now the class is looking forward to learning more details about the life of Sadako Sasaki, a brave Japanese girl, who has become the symbol of peace in Japan.

Third graders are also hoping to create one thousand paper cranes in her memory.

In the meantime, we wish ev-eryone much happiness and peace in 2009!

Samanta Cerusici-Rubik Grade 3 Teacher

Page 6

Special Snow Fun ReportISK “Rules” at Ski Competition

ISK Competes in Krakow Non-Public Ski and Snowboard Competition

On Monday, January 19th, ISK Elementary and Middle, and High Schoolers took part in a ski and snowboard competition in Kluszkowce, Poland. The competition was for all Krakow non-public schools and we had 15 students participate from Grades 1-9.

It was a beautiful, sunny day and the students represented our school very well. All the ISK participants showed great sportsmanship and competitiveness. Thank you to Coach Mike, Mr. Zink, and Mrs. Lutley for accompanying the students and making sure everything went smoothly. Thank you also to those parents who made it out to cheer our snow riders on.

ISK was lucky enough to have 4 top ten finishers in the competition. They were:

Morgan Humphrey 10th PlaceJoelle Darnai 10th PlaceMarcel Darnai 6th PlaceAlexandre Good 4th Place

According to Mr. Zink, Daniel Ansari looked as fast as any of the racers, but suffered from a late start. Dan, ‘Jazda!’ means ‘Go!’ Next time, buddy.

One more big thank you to all those who took part in, organized, and supported this event.

Brett Elkei

Competitors:

SKIERSGrades 1, 2 & 3:Stan Brinkman Daniel LutleyStas Miczyk

Tyler Humphrey Morgan Humphrey

Grades 4 & 5:Marcus Hunt

Dominik Lutley Wolf von Weiler

Dorotea Eder Sophie von Weiler

Grade 6 & 7Michał Jabłoński

SNOWBOARDERSGrade 8:

Daniel AnsariMarcel Darnai

Grade 9:Alexandre Good

Joelle Darnai

Special Snow Fun ReportSnowriders Club start off the season with a bang!

The ISK Snowriders Club had their first trip of the season to Czorsztyn-SKI in Kluszkowce on Saturday January 17th.

We had record attendance for this trip and we had perfect conditions.

It snowed in the morning on the way to the resort and the sun came out when we arrived making for a perfect day of skiing and shredding.

Some of our ski racers received a lesson to prepare them for the race on Monday and others had lessons to sharpen their skills.

The only disappointment came with the highly anticipated bowl of zurek. Sadly, the soup is only a shadow of it’s former incarnation. It was watery and tasteless and generally disappointing. It could be that we had it at the top of the resort and not at the bottom restaurant and that the altitude had thinned the soup beyond recognition.

Mrs.Lutley-Niemiec, Ms. Marzec, Mr. Elkei and Mr. Kozak all came out to help organize the day and by all reports it was a big success! We should have another outing in February!

Jean-Pierre Mlodynia-Zink

Colors project - Native GermanFor most of us colors are an important part of our daily lives.

Different colors mean different things to different people.

In different cultures they can have different meanings.

It is also true to say that people see colors differently; a color which bring up positive feelings for one person can bring up negative feelings for another person.

Colors are associated with culture, zodiac, partnership, psychology, and language.

This topic is also a great area do research on.

In our German lessons we started the “Color Project.”

Students from grade 5, 8 and 9 did research and

found information about one chosen color (red, yellow, or blue).

They tried to find the meanings of colors in different countries, cultures, and especially in the German language.

You can find the result of their work in our German class on beautiful posters.

Katarzyna Pieszczek-Janas German teacher

Did you know ?

• 80 % of German like blue.

• Friday is associated with blue.

• If you have a black eye, in German you say: “I have a blue eye.”

• Bright blue is associ-ated with friendship and frankness.

• Red is associated with animation, life, success and love.

• In China red is the color of prosperity and joy.

And what is your favorite color?

The PTA corner

Treasurer’s report

The PTA has about 12,500 PLN in our treasury. In December and January we will be paying for an industrial-size paper cutter, a digital camera for High School, calculator sets for Middle School, and a Ski Camp scholarship for a Middle School student

PTA is offering nice quality T-shirts as a fundraiser. Orders are due Friday, 23 January.

The Bake Sale on 16 January earned about 500 PLN. Many thanks to Nursery and Pre-school families for their generous donations.

Upcoming activities

PTA is planning a family bowling outing on March 21 or 22. A new parent, Anna Kucharczyk, will head up the planning with help from Chris Ladd.

PTA will host a flower sale in May. Gina Christie will head up the planning with help from Anna, who has relatives in flower distribution in Krakow.

The date for this year’s Summer Jamboree is June 7. Planning will begin soon. We are looking for a chairperson. If you’re interested, please contact me.

Teacher Appreciation Day is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday, 16 June.

We are looking for a co-President for remainder of this year or a President for the next school year.

We need you!

In a discussion about increasing attendance at PTA meetings, it was suggested that we meet for lunch periodically or host a coffee afternoon.

Does everyone know they’re a member of PTA? (I hope you do now!)

ISK Administration will put something about PTA in school admissions material. I will always send a reminder. Is it feasible to set up dial-in meetings—ask parents? Perhaps we could offer rides to meetings.

Teresa Turin-Lis

Discussion minutes from our January Coffee Morning

Calculus is Latin for stone. As stones were used in ancient times for counting, and so is Calculus applied nowadays as a very advanced tool for calculations. It was developed in the 17th century independently by two scientists: Mr. Leibniz, a self-taught German mathematician, and Sir Isaac Newton, a well known English scientist.

There are two primary branches of calculus: differential calculus and integral calculus.

Differential calculus, or differentiation, is used primarily to determine the slope or steepness of a curve, also called a curve’s derivative. Slope is a rate of change in

a curve – a very steep curve is changing very fast – and calculus is used when a curve is very complicated, such as calculating the slope of a mountain or the speed of a roller coaster.

Integral calculus, or integration, deals with areas and volumes of complex figures, such as determining the greatest amount of space or volume beneath a dome in a stadium design in order to incorporate as many seats as possible. To find the area beneath a curve, integration breaks the area beneath the curve into minute pieces, determines the area of each piece, and adds them all together, or integrates them,

into a final answer. “

Calculus is used in many professions. Here are some examples.

“Biologists use differential calculus to determine the exact rate of growth in a bacterial culture when different variables such as temperature and food source are changed. This research can help increase the rate of growth of necessary bacteria, or decrease the rate of growth for harmful and potentially threatening bacteria.

An electrical engineer uses integration to determine the exact length of power cable needed to connect two substations that are

Why study Calculus?Two students from grade 12 are taking the Calculus math course this school year, and half of the class ;) is going to take the demanding AP exam in May. Why would one take such a hard course? Why would they spend hours studying and solving problems? How could it be used in every day life? (a typical question many would wonder relating to math subjects). For one, it is an excellent exercise for your brain! Lots of practice problem solving now equals an easier time solving problems later in life. For another, you may use it in your future career. Before giving you careers which use Calculus, you may want to know what Calculus is all about.

miles apart. Because the cable is hung from poles, it is constantly curving. Calculus allows a precise figure to be determined.

An architect will use integration to determine the amount of materials necessary to construct a curved dome over a new sports arena, as well as calculate the weight of that dome and determine the type of support structure required.

Space flight engineers frequently use calculus when

planning lengthy missions. To launch an exploratory probe, they must consider the different orbiting velocities of the Earth and the planet the probe is targeted for, as

well as other gravitational influences like the sun and the moon. Calculus allows each of those variables to be accurately taken into account.

A graphic artist uses calculus to determine how different three-dimensional models will behave when subjected to rapidly changing conditions. This can create a realistic environment for movies or video games.

Obviously, a wide variety of careers regularly use calculus.

Universities, the military, government agencies, airlines, entertainment studios, software companies, and construction companies are only a few employers who seek individuals with a solid

knowledge of calculus.

Even doctors and lawyers use calculus to help build the discipline necessary for solving complex problems, such as diagnosing patients or planning a prosecution case.

Despite its mystique as a more complex branch of mathematics, calculus touches our lives each day, in ways too numerous to calculate.”

(from: www.essortment.com/family/mathbasicscalc_sejq.htm)

Anna Tokarz ISK Math Department

Jasmin Maslanek grade 12

“ Why would one take such a hard course? Why would they spend hours studying and

solving problems?”

www.essortment.com/family/mathbasicscalc_sejq.htm



ClassifiedsCareer Week

The Early Years and Elementary grades invite parents and interested adults

to come speak about their careers for ISK’s Career Weeks.

If you are willing to visit the school to give a short talk about your career to the students, please contact Sue Mleczko

at [email protected].

Similac Advance formula

(from the States)

wrapped in a case for

sale (4 total cas

es.)

Expiration date May 2011.

We bought too much.

Price is negotiable.

Contact [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]



ISK Voice 2009_02 - january 23, 2009

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