Best regards,

Malene Sørensen

Congratulations to the pre-IB students on completing the pre-IB considering what was most likely their most challenging school year to date.

 

There are undoubtedly many more successes that warrant a celebration: perhaps they finally understood a mathematical concept, were able to confidently shotput in PE, remember important dates in history or finally understood what an author meant when he wrote that the curtains were blue. And as they reflect on their success and the obstacles that they had overcome this past year, I hope that they send their teachers a kind thought. They have struggled along with them in trying to adapt classroom teaching into online teaching and then back again, trying to motivate them via a screen on a gloomy Monday morning, and trying to prepare them for the challenges that await them next year.

 

And as we send off the pre-IB students into the IB, we look forward to recharging our batteries so that we are prepared for the next group of pre-IB students that we’re so excited to meet and welcome to our IB community.

 

Have a lovely summer ☀

 

Best wishes,

Maria Friis Lindinger  

 

We are two students currently finishing our pre-IB year and as a final project and preparation for the IB, we were asked to mimic a CAS project. CAS stands for creativity, activity, and service, and as most IB students know, it’s a programme meant to develop the students’ skills outside of the academic world. Earlier this year, we did a project focused on the activity aspect of CAS, but this week was focused on service.

 

Service covers a huge variety of different topics, but since both of us are in the school’s climate committee, that was our focus. The environment and climate are facing many different threats all over the word, so it is difficult to find a place to start. Therefore, we wanted to start small by changing the biodiversity in our own local society! As we humans cultivate more and more land to feed our growing population, we destroy the original homes of the insects. Today 40% of the world’s insects are endangered. This is a big problem as the insects are part of ecosystems that will change drastically if most insects disappear. Moreover, if pollinating insects go extinct it will be more difficult for our nature to flourish. To accomplish our goal of helping insects thrive in our suburban environment, we wanted to build insect homes.

 

Insect homes are tiny boxes made of wood and natural materials, designed to replicate insects’ natual habitats. By having one in your own garden, you can increase the bug population and better the biodiversity. The only issue with our project was our own inexperience. None of us are skilled craftsmen and have no experience other than our fifth-grade workshop classes. This meant that we were very much out of our comfort zone, but that is what CAS is all about. The time pressure of only one week also caused some stress, since we had to build not only an insect home for our school, but also nine smaller ones for people living in our area. We didn’t have a clear plan for how to build the homes, which is very unlike us since we both love to plan ahead. Instead, we simply made our plans on the go and let our ideas flow free.

 

Building and crafting proposed many challenges for us. It turns out that sawing planks is much more difficult than it would seem, and when we got to making the backsides of the homes, we asked Regine’s dad to assist us with a round saw. That sped things up quite a bit and made our time frame seem more realistic. Drilling screws into the planks also turned out to be a two-person job, so we constantly had to ask each other for help and hold the boards still for each other. Even though we were both out of our comfort zone and doing things we weren’t used to, the fact that we were both in the same situation and could help each other made it a very pleasant experience. We had many interesting conversations and long walks looking for pinecones and sticks to fill up the homes. The feeling of accomplishment when the first home was done was great and seeing it hanging on a tree on the school’s grounds a few days later was awesome!

 

The feeling of creating something from scratch is wonderful, so we were very motivated as we went on to finish the rest of the homes. By Friday morning we had managed to finish all insect homes and delivered them to the people who had ordered them. We got tons of positive feedback, and people seemed happy and eager to help the biodiversity in their backyard. All in all, this project was very successful, and we had tons of fun. It is great to experience how you can make actual change in your local area, and it is certainly something we will bring with us again next year for real CAS!

 

Regine and Sophie, 1i

 

 

Writing an extended essay in physics hasn’t only been appealing, but also entertaining at a high level. I chose to write my extended essay in physics, which many students might think is one of the hardest subject to write an EE in. I admit I even thought so at the beginning. But knowing that the school has provided us with enough knowledge to structure a proper project and to develop our own skills regarding scientific research, I was willing to begin.   

 

Understanding the mechanics and trajectory of the table tennis game is something I am passionate about. The ball control, the incredible speed, and the magical spins make the player like he is bending the laws of physics to the viewer. Still, physics has an accurate justification for every fascinating move or trick to win the game. Fortunately, our physics course had backed me up with enough scientific knowledge to study and analyze this topic for my extended essay. Many factors play a role in the mechanics and the trajectory and table tennis ball, including work, power, force, momentum, rotation, and some of the concepts that are not available in our course as the Magnus effect and coefficient of restitution.  

 

As the process started, I noticed myself developing in areas I thought were very complicated. Thanks to the guidance of my supervisor I stayed motivated and the path became clear.I perceived my research and investigation skills improving on many levels; it is hard not to mention the pride that comes with it.

 

Writing the extended essay gave me an opportunity to apply the knowledge I have gained throughout the year in my physics class to something I was passionate about. While writing the theoretical part, things started making since and I was then able to connect different topics from the course to each other in order to formulate a proper hypothesis and in order to connect the knowledge I have gained to the subject of investigation.

 

Designing and constructing the experiment was the most exciting part of the EE, where the knowledge is then applied to real life, and despite it being the most challenging part nothing feels more fascinating than having a successful experiment. At that point, you feel the effect of the extended essay on the growth of your perception and understanding of the subject, you will feel that the way of approaching knowledge has improved. Nothing feels more victorious than obtaining results that make sense and that match your hypothesis.  

 

I look forward to having a final product, as I believe you can consider yourself a professional within your field.

Writing my EE in History - Signe Lykke Møller   

 

I was an IB1 student in the turbulent year that was 2020/2021. It was filled with lots of virtual teaching and missed school days, but one thing that didn’t change was the workload. Already by January, only 4.5 months after starting IB1, we were having meetings starting to discuss which subject we wanted to write our Extended Essay in. I was very lost as to what I wanted to write about, as I didn’t see one subject or topic as something that stood out to me.  

 

My friends described how they found something really interesting straight away and I was therefore a bit discouraged. I have always seen myself as rather a fan of the sciences as in those subjects there can only be one right answer, however, during this past school year I became a big fan of history. I have found the investigation process really interesting during our lessons and decided therefore that was what I wanted to write my EE about.  

 

I started thinking about possible topics, and coincidently I read an article about the Black Lives Matter movement, that used the American court case “Brown v Board of Education of Topeka” as a case study. I found the topic really interesting and found myself wanting to learn more about it. I found the process of researching for my EE both frustrating and annoying at the best of times, but in the end, it was really nice to see how far I had come when I handed in my first full draft.

 

Environmental Systems and Societies is an interdisciplinary subject that uses methods from the natural sciences and the social sciences to understand environmental issues. In ESS we study how natural systems work and examine a range of environmental issues, such as climate change, water pollution and biodiversity. These are relevant issues that we will have to address as a society in the coming decades, and thus it is important that all students have a working understanding of the issues, from both a scientific and social perspective, so that they can contribute to solving the problems and be an informed participant in the public conversation. IB1 finished the school year in ESS by studying how ecosystems work, and we culminated the topic with a field trip to the beach to do ecological field work. It was nice to get out into the field after a school year spent mostly behind computer screens. ESS is a unique course since it counts as both a Group 3 AND a Group 4 subject. ESS is only offered at Standard Level, but the IB is in the process of developing a Higher Level course for ESS because the subject has been growing in popularity at IB schools around the world.

On June 10th and 11th, IB 1 had their TOK days.

Over the years, the days’ activities have taken many forms, but this time it was centered around the brand new assessment called the TOK Exhibition. The Exhibition is designed to be completed at the end of IB1, and asks the students to demonstrate how TOK manifests in the world around us. They do this by selecting one of thirty-five prescribed prompts, and then choosing three real world objects which exemplify possible answers to the prompt.  

 

On the first day, the students finished the actual writing, having received feedback weeks before, and then made a poster which included their objects and their main reflections on the work. On second day, the students presented to each other in small groups, and then toured the different classrooms to see all the rest. Finally, they voted on “Most Unusual Object”, “Highest TOK Ratio”, “Most Aesthetically Pleasing” and “Best Overall”.  Prizes were given at the EE breakfast the following Monday.

 

The Exhibition was a great success thanks to the hard work, creativity and attentiveness of the students.  It was also a terrific showcase for the diversity of this class, which came through in the wide variety of objects they used: everything from family recipes and childhood toys, obscure artifacts, artistic performances and cutting edge technologies.

 

 

 

 

Hello new AGT students.

 

We are two current IB students from AGT. We would like to share some of our great knowledge with you. Since we have combined 3 years of experience at this school, we know a good amount about most things regarding being a new student on AGT.  

 

We look forward to seeing you next year - perhaps on the bus, in the canteen or in one of our classes. 

 

Maria Bucica (upcoming IB1) and Nikolas Konggaard (upcoming IB2)

Following a long lockdown, the pre-IB students along with the 1st year STX students went on a fun social trip to Djurs Sommerland. Unfortunately for the designated photographer, the students scattered as soon as they entered the park and thus the only photographic evidence of the day is this picture of the teachers 'letting loose' 😉