We are bursting with pride as we look back on the incredible efforts of our 2023-2024 United Korean Team!
Months of hard work, meticulous planning, and dedication have gone into organizing this extraordinary event. From inviting a diverse audience to liaising with sponsors, selling tickets, and spreading the word through advertising, they’ve done it all! In keeping with tradition, we’ve also extended a warm invitation to other schools to join us in this unforgettable performance.
The concert video will be shared with you very soon, and you won’t want to miss it! Huge congratulations to both our United Korean Team and incredible supervisors for making this all possible!
The United Korean Team has been hosting a community event for the past 14 years. Students lead the main event, the concert, with diverse and innovative ideas. Our primary goal is to provide hope and opportunities to marginalized individuals, which naturally leads to promoting Korean culture as well. Eighteen 11th-grade Korean students began to gather to volunteer their talents, organizing concerts and various activities to contribute to the Kenya Project in early September. The 2024 United Korean Concert chose a Disney's Zootopia theme to create a joyful atmosphere centered around communication with the audience. Emcees Judy, the dumb bunny, and Nick, the sly fox, divided the audience into teams, promoting harmony. The concert turned out to be enjoyable as intended by the United Korean Team. With various performances from 18 outstanding teams, plus the addition of fun through collected sponsorship items, the concert became enriched. As a result, over 350 audience members attended, and more than 800 raffle tickets were sold. Thank you to all who supported the concert.
SLO® Leadership Dinner Photo
Congratulations
We are thrilled to announce the outstanding winners of the American Scholastic Mathematics Association’s annual Mathematics Contest 3! Your dedication and hard work have truly paid off, and we couldn’t be more proud of your achievements. Without further ado, please follow these links to view the list of winners:
2023-2024 Winners Contest 3
2023-2024 Winners Contest 2
2023-2024 Winners Contest 1
CLICK HERE for a comprehensive list of the Globe winners’ names and more details.
Contest 4, takes place on the 8th of February.
On January 19, our Senior Debate Team traveled down to Herrenberg for the third and fourth rounds of the 23/24 competition.
It was a successful day for ISF and the Team won both debates! The team argued in favor of the government paying stay-at-home parents in the impromptu round and were against the introduction of a lottery system for selecting the executive branch of government in the prepared debate.
It was also good for them to catch up with friends from other parts of the country. Congratulations to the team for all their hard work.
They are now looking ahead to the final rounds of regular competition in March. Good luck to those involved
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In a remarkable achievement for our community, our Grade 12 student Chaejeong, has received a conditional offer from the esteemed Istituto Marangoni in Milan, a world-renowned school specializing in design. The offer is contingent only on the completion of her high school diploma.
Istituto Marangoni, with a history of nurturing some of the most brilliant minds in design, fashion, and art, is known for its rigorous selection criteria, making this offer a significant milestone. The student’s journey to this point reflects her dedication, creativity, and the high standard of education she received at ISF.
Our community is brimming with pride and anticipation as we watch one of our own embark on a journey that promises to be filled with innovation, learning, and success at one of the world’s top design schools.
On Thursday, January 11, 2024, ISF held its third annual Extended Essay (EE) Café. The event took place after school, with IB2 students presenting their research to students in grades 11 and 10. The event was organized by IB2 students Sebastian Lammert, Arnav Dinesh, and Atilla Gülen as their CAS project.
This was an opportunity for IB2 students to share their research findings and to receive feedback to help them further reflect upon their work. It was also an opportunity for them to pass on their EE experience to the IB1 students, who are about to begin their EE journeys.
The core of the IBDP includes the Extended Essay, Theory of Knowledge (ToK), and CAS (Creativity, Activity, and Service) requirements. Without passing all three, one cannot receive a full IB diploma. The EE is a 4,000-word, independently researched and written paper that students must submit before the winter break of IB2. Students must choose a subject to write their EE in, and then find a staff supervisor in that subject to guide them.
They then spend nearly a year diving deeply into their chosen topic, developing a research question and methodology, undertaking extensive independent research, carrying out experiments or fieldwork, and ultimately composing their essay. The end goal of the IB Extended Essay is to foster independent research, critical thinking, and advanced academic writing skills in students, preparing them for higher education and promoting personal and intellectual growth.
ISF’s 2024 EE Café was initially divided into two judging panels: one for STEM (Dr. Torres, Mr. Hashmi, and Mr. van der Ark), and another for the Humanities (Dr. Lehmann, Dr. Warne, and Mr. McNulty). The decision was made to combine presentations into a single session, in part due to disruptions caused by train strikes. This year we were also joined by the STEM winner of our first EE Café held in 2021, Ishan Varma, back visiting from Cambridge. The following students presented: Paula J-Chu (English A), Uthaya Viswanathan (English A), Paula Berger (History), Arnav Dinesh (Music) Atilla Gülen (Economics), Sebastian Lammert (ITGS), Dharini Palanivetrivelan (German A).
Two staff-choice and two audience-choice awards were given out. Paula J-Chu and Uthaya Viswanathan were selected by the staff, while Atilla Gülen and Dharini Palanivetrivelan won over the student audience. After the presentations, students got a chance to discuss the research and experiences of the IB2 students over pizza and drinks in the SLO® room.
We hope that the IB1 students who attended learned a lot about the EE, and we wish all the IB1 students the best for their futures.
- Arnav Dinesh, Sebastian Lammert and Atilla Gülen
All of the music classes are refocusing their efforts after the winter concerts and moving forward the summer concerts. With the changing of the year, it is also a changing and adjusting of our musical cultures. This is an interesting time as there are a number of new families that move into music and also some that are returning to their homelands. We share our musical values with our new students and accept influences from their musical experiences. The New Year, brings new ideas and themes.
In grades 2-4, we are developing our skills of writing and identifying aspects of music. Students have the opportunity to write their own 8 measure composition. Of course, there are rules and guidelines and a full range of expressions, and it is really a chance for students to write their own melody that is possible to be played. Many students light up when given this opportunity and are excited to get their musical ideas down on paper.
In the Middle School, students are starting the New Year with various projects. In Strings, students are reading new music and discussing how this music is put together to make a whole piece. In Music Production, students are building on their understanding of the elements of music. These elements apply to a wide variety of applications and form the basics of music notation. In Choir, some classes are examining aspects of new music while others are refining their understanding of music notation and elements.
With the New Year, comes some new students, new musical cultural adjustments and new projects. We are happy for these new experiences that build on our foundations.
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