Newsletter - Ahmedabad International SchoolIB seemed like a challenging experience filled with difficulties. I feared not completing my assignments on ... teacher gives us beneficial

IB Newsletter

2014-2015

In this issue… Reflections from the students of the IBDP class Pictures from the Cambodia CAS trip 2014

Group 1: Language A1

English has always been one of my favorite subjects. Literature has been a really good companion for a really long time. So it was basically a no brainer for me to go for higher level English. So far it’s definitely been enjoyable. The fact that we have so many different sorts of texts to read is pretty exhilarating and discussing them in class made me realize that there’s so much more to a novel than what meets the eye. Apart from just reading books and analyzing them, I think we learnt a lot from our practice for the IOC. While it is easy to

understand a work and appreciate the story, giving a detailed commentary on the content, the literary techniques used in the book and possible explanations for the diction is relatively difficult. So, in a way I also learnt how to read between the lines and convey my viewpoint and ideas in a more concise and effective way. So far, English class has been something I look forward to and I hope it pretty much stays the same way.

-Anmol Katiya

Group 2: Language B Hindi has always been a tough subject for me. However, this year it seems to be particularly challenging due to the oral presentation requirement. My pronunciations

are all over the place, and my teacher says my sentence structure is incorrect. This is because I think in English and then have to translate it into Hindi every time I want to speak.

Studying the subject is a fun experience as it requires us to study our culture in greater depth. We have done research on different Indian festivals and why they are celebrated, how they are celebrated etc. So this subject brings us closer to our roots.

In order to improve my Hindi sentence structure and pronunciations, my teacher has asked me to read the Hindi newspaper and watch the Hindi news frequently. I hope this helps me do better in the next semester.

-Priya Shah

Group 3: individuals & societies IB seemed like a challenging experience filled with difficulties. I feared not completing my assignments on time. However, IB turned out to be an extremely interesting and enjoyable curriculum. My favorite subjects, economics and business management, made

the IB curriculum fun. The topics and chapters we covered in economics this year were quite similar to those that we covered during IGCSE, which made the

“journey” easier for me. Our IB textbook however contains clear diagrams with concise and meaningful explanations. Also, for better understanding, our teacher gives us beneficial notes that have helped me increase my grades.

The beauty of business management is that, there is no right answer or wrong answer as long as you can justify your side of the argument. Our class teacher has always been a supportive role model. She has always encouraged us to do something extraordinary. She also encourages us to refer other sources of knowledge such as newspapers, websites, and magazines. This method not only encourages us to learn something different but also become open-minded, knowledgeable inquirers.

-Dhwani Pandya

Group 4: experimental sciences

Science has always been my favorite subject. One of the best things about the subject is its practicality, especially in physics and chemistry. So when it came to deciding my HLs, they were my first choices. I expected the courses to be extremely difficult and I wasn’t wrong. These subjects are not only interesting but also challenging, which makes me like them even more. As my teacher says, “Physics is fun!” And indeed it is. In this short period of time, I learnt about kinematics, dynamics, thermal physics, as well as their application in real life. Some concepts were tough to grasp while many were comparatively easy. I liked the lab sessions and hope to have them more frequently in the future. Through chemistry, I now know many theories about bonding, energetics, and stoichiometry. The class is fun and interactive. But what I like the most again, are the practical sessions. I like the hands on learning experience that it gives me. It also makes it easier to not only understand the concepts but also remember them.

-Sannidhi

Group 5: mathematics Higher Level Well, the things I heard about the Higher Level Mathematics course from my seniors completely freaked me out. I also went through the syllabus and read a lot about the subject online in order to make a better choice between Math SL and HL. I was confident that I could do well on the subject and therefore chose HL. However, the first six months of IB Math HL weren’t easy at all. We all had to do a lot of hard work and practice in order to even dream about getting a good score. We didn’t have any previous knowledge of some of the topics that we studied, while some topics were familiar. Our questions were a lot harder than questions we had in our previous grade. It was a huge jump forward. This made the subject quite stressful and troublesome due to the extensive portion that needs to be completed over the course of two years. After putting in a large amount of effort into this subject, I understood the topics better but the questions that were asked were extremely complicated and difficult to comprehend in the first try. I hope to do better here on out by practicing frequently.

-Arhan Parikh  

Group 6: visual arts In the past six months in Visual Arts class, we have experimented with different types of media, done several exercises that helped us get familiar with the course, talked about different artists and their works of art, and learnt to analyze pieces of art. There are five of us in the Visual Arts class and every class is very

interactive so we learn something new from each other every time. I’ve always liked art but taking it up as a subject in my final years of school has helped me to gain a deeper knowledge of it and has

opened up options for me to pursue art in the near future. The visual arts course offered to us is unlike any other course as it helps us to not only excel in the techniques of drawing and painting but also helps us analyze pieces of work and act as critics. It urges us to look into the history of art and compare and contrast different artists and their works. I believe that at the end of two years, along with drawing and painting, I will be familiar with the vocabulary used by art critics and be able to analyze paintings. At the end of an interactive and interesting class with our teacher and classmates, we are left inspired and stirred to create something new.

-Riya Haria

Creativity, action and service