Message from Ms Matillon, Director General
Dear Parents,
It is hard to believe we have already begun Term 3. It was a pleasure to welcome students and staff back this week, with so many arriving smiling and clearly motivated to make these final months of the academic year as productive and successful as possible.
While students enjoyed an extra day of holiday on Monday, GES staff were engaged in a professional development day. A wide range of topics were reviewed, including the results of the recent parent survey and the development plans shaped by your valuable feedback. If you have not yet done so, I encourage you to read the email sent this morning outlining our findings, as well as the many improvements planned for the near- and medium-term. If you have any questions about this update, please feel free to contact me by email.
Looking ahead, John Leitao, Inspired Regional CEO, will be with us in Geneva next week. On Wednesday morning, 29 April, he will meet with the leaders of our Parents’ Association:
· for Early Years Foundation Stage and Primary: Zita Sheikh, Susie Leslie, Zory Zaharieva
· for Secondary: Fiona Henderson-Ross, Sarah Wainwright, Caitlin Spahr
If you have any questions or messages for John, you are welcome to contact these representatives directly or via the Parents’ Association email at [email protected]. A summary of the meeting will be shared with the parent community afterwards.
Highlights of this week at GES reflect the three core pillars of the Inspired Education Group: Academics, Creative and Performing Arts, and Sport.
· In Academics, two teams represented GES at the Swiss Group of International Schools (SGIS) Maths Competition at Verbier International School. Accompanied by Ms Brewin, eight students from Years 8 to 11, forming two teams, achieved impressive 2nd and 7th place finishes in a highly competitive field, including schools much larger than our own. Congratulations to all involved for this excellent showing!
· In Creative Arts, students from Years 2 to 6 took part in workshops led by artist Regina Adame, mum of Rodrigo in Year 4. These sessions encouraged exploration, introduced new techniques, and provided plenty of colourful inspiration to our budding artists. Thank you to Mrs Humphreys for organising these workshops, and to Ms Adame for sharing her expertise with our students.
· In Sport, today’s ADISR Cross Country Championship event at the Centre Sportif de Versoix was a great success, with 20 of our students from Years 6 to 13 participating. Well done to all who took part and demonstrated such enthusiasm and resilience. In just under two weeks, it will be the turn of Year 3-5 children to represent GES with pride in the Primary version of the cross-country challenge.
The serious business of exam season is now officially underway, with GCSE Art & Design completed over the past three days. Next week will bring GCSE speaking exams in French, German, and Spanish, alongside A Level Art assessments. I wish well-earned confidence to all our students; you have been well prepared and you have worked hard – now is your time to shine!
All the best,
Christina Matillon
An Artist in Residence at Primary
We are thrilled to have Regina Adame, Mexican artist and mum of Year 4 student Rodrigo, with us for the next few weeks for a series of art workshops with our Primary students.
These workshops started this week, with a fabulous first session for our Year 2 students, who created their own Matisse-inspired artwork using cut paper shapes and designs. For Year 3, the workshop with Regina had them out of doors taking in the beautiful surroundings of our school to try their hand at landscape painting in the style of J.M.W. Turner. Artists in Years 5 and 6 had three workshops with Regina during which they began their exploration of mandala drawing by using compasses to create concentric circles to form the skeleton of the repeating patterns so characteristic of this art form.
A big thank you goes to our very own Siân Humphreys for organising Regina’s visit to our school.
Stay tuned for news of upcoming workshops!
This week in class
Our youngest learners in our Pre-school class have just started their new topic on “Growth and Change”. After reading Jack and the Beanstalk, they planted their very own bean plant. They brainstormed on what they would need to plant the bean and what it would need to help the bean grow: sunlight and water. Now they are eagerly waiting to see the first signs that their plants are growing!
Our Year 2 mathematicians kicked off the first week back with a hands-on lesson to start their measurement topic. They enjoyed learning about mass by measuring and comparing weights using grams and kilograms and applying the four operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division to solve some tricky problems.
Our Year 3 students started the final term of the year with a great exercise to introduce their new book. They read Chapter 1 with the main character’s name taken out, and used the book’s descriptions to imagine (and draw!) who the main character is and where the story’s action is taking place.
They are now all excited to find out what the book is and see if their interpretations were correct!
Students in Year 3 stepped into the shoes of biologists with a fascinating morning dedicated to dissecting real flowers to learn all about their different parts and the functions they serve. They were intrigued to see how the different parts looked under the microscope and were able to transfer their knowledge to labelling a diagram of a flower.
In their first French lesson after the Easter holidays, our Year 5 and 6 students took part in a speaking activity to help them return to oral language with confidence.
They first had to find a classmate who had the matching sentence answer to different questions about what they had been doing during the holidays. Then, they moved around the classroom asking these questions to their peers. Students were expected to answer in full sentences, and if they needed support, they could use the model answer provided.
It was a very positive start to the lesson, and everyone was able to speak confidently thanks to the support of both the questions and sentence prompts.
Our Year 8 biologists launched into the new term with a practical experiment to test leaves for the presence of starch. By first removing the chlorophyll from leaves using boiling ethanol, they were then able to sprinkle iodine solution onto the leaves and watch as the parts that contain starch turned a blacking brown colour. This process indicated to them which parts of the leaf produce starch and therefore play a key role in photosynthesis.
Beyond the Classroom
First House Registration
Our Secondary students had the first of this term’s House registrations on Wednesday, which began with an exciting quiz.
Unbeknownst to the students, all answers were two words long and began with the letters F and H, and questions included such brainteasers as “What is a hand of three aces and two jacks called in poker?” or “What is the phrase used to describe getting information directly from a source?”.
After this stimulating mental warm-up, each House picked their candidates for the Inter-House Spelling Bee which will take place next Monday. Stay tuned for news about this event and the results of the House Quiz!
Team GES at the SGIS Maths Competition
A team of mathematicians from Years 8 to 11 took part in the much-awaited SGIS Maths Competition at Verbier International School this week!
Selected on the basis of their performance in maths challenges, our representatives had a great time working with their peers to solve some tough maths challenges thrown at them as part of this competition.
Having prepared for the tournament right up to the very last minute on the train to Verbier, our team devised a strategy to gain as many points as possible as they worked through the increasingly difficult levels, each composed of 12 questions. They decided to work quickly through the easier questions to secure as many points as possible and then move strategically up into the harder questions as a team.
We are proud of all of them for representing their school in this exciting academic tournament and were delighted to see the confidence with which they took on all the challenges and the brilliant teamwork they displayed ahead of and throughout the event.
Thank you to Ms Brewin for accompanying Team GES!
Extra-Curricular Activities
ADISR Cross-Country Championship
No fewer than 20 GES athletes, ranging from Year 6 to Year 13, participated in the ADISR Cross-Country championships today!
Running between 1.8km and 4.5km around a set course at the nearby Centre Sportif de Versoix, our students competed against students from other international schools in this test of resilience, endurance and tactical awareness.
In this first-ever edition, GES finished second in the team standings against five other schools, and our runners produced some fantastic individual results, with medals awarded to:
Téo (Year 6) for 1st place
Lila (Year 9) for 2nd place
Elen (Year 13) for 1st place
Congratulations to all GES runners who all contributed to the teams success and pushed themselves around the course today.
Our athletes’ younger peers from Years 3 to 5 will also be competing in a similar tournament on Wednesday 6 May.
Well done to our 39 students signed-up students for acting as excellent ambassadors of our school’s sporting attitude!
Community News
New App for Musicians
Our fabulous piano teacher, Kristina Annamukhamedova, has designed an app, Thriill! (available for download both on Android and iOS), for supporting our student musicians in music theory.
Inside the app, students can find structured material covering everything from the very basics of music theory to more advanced topics. Each chapter includes an explanation video as well as written material, making it easy to learn step by step.
Thank you, Kristina!
