Current Activities and challenging Contests

Despite the Corona pandemic and the difficulties it has caused, we have organized many great activities and exciting competitions in our school over the past few weeks and are eagerly awaiting the results:

• Heureka – we are participating!

The first part, which took place in the fall, HEUREKA! Man and Nature includes all science topics. The questions come from the fields of man, the environment, animals and plants. The weather, chemical and physical phenomena as well as questions from the fields of technology, energy and progress are also addressed. The second part in spring will ask questions about world history.

We are pleased to have a staggering 225 registrations from 236 Platanus students in Years 3 through 8.

More information can be found here: http://www.inkas-berlin.de/heureka-wettbewerb.html.

• WRO – We are already training diligently with students who are part of the elective subject Robotics for participation in the World Robotics Olympiad (WRO).

This is an international robotics competition for all children and young people between the ages of 6 and 19. In teams of 2 or 3, with an adult team coach, the teams compete in different competition categories or the respective age group. In Germany, the association TECHNIK BEGEISTERT e.V. organizes the WRO.

More information can be found here: https://www.worldrobotolympiad.de/.

• Duracell calls for the competition “MITMACHEN -SAMMELN – GEWINNEN” within the DURACELL ROSSMANN SCHUL-CHALLENGE – We are participating!

The campaign is taking place from 26.10.2020 to 31.03.2021. The students of the participating schools collect used batteries and hand them in at school. The empty batteries will then be recycled. Since we have made it a class contest, our students are unstoppable. We even had to reorder boxes from DURACELL. Should we win the fabulous prize money of 10,000.00 EUR, we will invest this money in a sustainable, school-owned project.

You can read more info here: https://www.duracell.de/challenge/.

• Climate Future Conference – We are involved!

Our secondary school students Luca, Lenny, Ziad, Khalif and Carl participated virtually, together with Mrs. Mouroum-Ebeler in Workshop D (The ClimateKit of Greenpeace – develop your own action with: Greenpeace e.V.) and in the lecture: “Climate Future Conference – Our contribution to solving the climate and sustainability crisis” with Dr. Gregor Hagedorn, Scientists for Future.

The Senate Department for Education, Youth and Family and the Planetarium Berlin Foundation invited us to the first Climate Future Conference at the Zeiss Großplanetarium. Nearly 300 students from the 5th grade and upwards gathered from numerous schools to work with representatives from the fields of science, civil society and politics on the question of how the debate on climate crisis and climate protection can be brought even more into focus within the classroom and in schools. Students also had extensive opportunities to network.

For more information, click here: https://klimazukunftskonferenz.de/.

• Math Advent – Our teachers Fr. Jennifer Konradt and Fr. Nicole Konradt came up with something great.

From December 1st to December 24th, a math competition will be announced across various classes. During the time of the “Mathvent” a math task will be uploaded to MS Teams every day. The students have time to work on this problem until the next weekend and upload the solution to Microsoft Teams. In classes with younger children, the tasks will be sent by Santa Claus and worked on in class before the actual math lesson.

Participation is voluntary and the tasks are separate from the current math content of the learning plan. It is an interesting mixture of several areas of mathematics. There are some more difficult and some easier tasks, so that every child has the chance to be able to have a go and feel a sense of achievement.

Best of all, there are even prizes to be won!

• Art Challenge – Our school magazine, Platanus Post, has launched an art challenge.

All students in grades 1 through 4 can participate, create a picture and submit it to the editors of our school magazine, consisting of students as well as Mrs. Parr and Ms. McCaulley.

The winning student’s artwork will be published in the Platanus Post for a chance to win a chocolate Santa Claus.

• School Climate Change Project Day in 9th grade!

The idea behind, and main goal of, ‘School-Climate-Change’ is to sustainably change the learning environment of schools and to encourage young people to be creators of a climate-friendly school and society. Young people are experts in their own right. They can and want to shape the future themselves. This project day will be carried out as a hybrid event, half-day digital and half-day analog, here on site. The students of our 9th grade will work together with the experts of ‘School-Climate-Change’ to plan very concrete projects on how our school can become even more sustainable and how they can involve our entire school community in the process.

• Caption Contest – to everyone’s delight!

Our Sciences ladies have called a contest for the best comments on the craziest animal photos. This will involve posting particularly funny animal photos in the hallway next to the NaWi subject room, as well as in our team lounge. These are to be creatively and aptly titled by our students and colleagues who should then send a photo of them to Ms. Kappes, Ms. Leong, Ms. McCrary or Ms. Dufft.

We are very proud that we were able to organize so many projects and competitions for our students, even though the organization of the normal school day in times of the Corona pandemic is challenging. Many thanks to all colleagues for their commitment and to all students for their inexhaustible enthusiasm.