IB Highlights: Therapy Bunnies & Tea
An SGS senior has used the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme to set up a program to reduce stress in her neighborhood -- with therapy bunnies and tea!
CAS Project Highlight: Senior Erika Piotrowski has developed a Bunny Outreach Program that she will run for two months. This will be a neighborhood stress release program with her pet bunnies as therapy animals. She plans to individually schedule people for the program, then show up wearing a mask and bringing a folding table. She will set the rabbit and some tea on the table then move six feet back. The neighbor, who is wearing a mask, will help themselves to refreshments and will be able to interact with the bunny. In conjunction, they will discuss their day and any other light-hearted topics. Erika has already discussed this program with some neighbors to gauge interest, and they all seem really enthused by it.
CAS Experience Highlights: CAS experiences for all of our Upper School students (in the US and in China) include cooking clams, delivering cookies, making rings, shadowing a parent at work for a day, skiing, participating in a community night, making dessert, volunteering at 2nd Harvest, making a snowman, solving a Rubik’s cube, and walking dogs.
EE Highlight: Senior Sophie Yao is doing her Extended Essay on a topic in Economics. She is discovering the pros and the cons of her EE question: To What extent does passing out coupons to citizens influence the general merchandise industry in Hangzhou, China. She came up with the idea because Hangzhou’s government was passing out an electronic coupon through a site called Alipay. Most of the citizens had successfully obtained the coupon, including Sophie’s mother, which sparked her interest in her research topic.
IB Question of the Week: Can you explain a little more the difference between HL and SL courses?
With humor, see the picture below:
But seriously, follow this link to see the brief on HL and SL courses: https://www.ibo.org/globalassets/publications/recognition/slhl-brief-en.pdf
“It is essential for any pre-university education to equip students with the depth of discipline-specific knowledge and skills that they will need for their chosen academic and career paths. However, this must be balanced with the breadth needed to develop well-rounded students who can draw connections between the different disciplines.
"As such, the philosophy of the IB DP is that students should engage with a range of subjects while being able to explore specific areas of personal interest in greater depth. SL courses ensure students are exposed to a range of disciplines that they might otherwise opt out of, and HL courses allow students to spend more time with subjects they are more interested in by exploring options in addition to the SL core curriculum. In this sense, all DP courses, regardless of whether they are SL or HL, are integral to the programme.”
IB Overview: The Diploma Programme (DP) curriculum for grades 11-12 is made up of six subject groups and the DP core, comprising Theory of Knowledge (TOK), Creativity, Activity, Service (CAS) and the Extended Essay (EE). Please refer to our IB webpage and to the IB Resources page in PowerSchool Learning for detailed IB information.