Key Dates | School Magazine | Teacher Spotlight | Pastoral Update | Virtual Learning Showcase
Dear Parents,
This week we welcomed our students back to the virtual school after a well-deserved rest. As a community of teachers and students, we spent Friday’s assembly exploring our identity, culture, and values, asking important questions of ourselves such as “Who are we?” and “What do we stand for?”
BIS Hanoi is built upon a strong foundation of moral values (Care, Integrity, and Respect) alongside our educational values (Enquiry, Reflection, Perseverance). When we surveyed students this week about our unique culture, the most common features identified included being diverse and international, collaborative, supportive, connected, ambitious, respectful, and challenging. At BIS Hanoi we are proud of our culture, and the values upon which it is embedded, and believe our strong shared values and beliefs is part of the success of our school.
As we move through this year, we look forward to speaking more to students, teachers, and parents about our guiding statements and our identity.
Yours sincerely,
Chris Newman
Head of Secondary
This week started with a big event in the Year 7 calendar with our Parent’s Evening taking place on Tuesday. It was such a lovely opportunity for me to present to the parents of the Secondary School’s newest cohort. We took the chance to pause and reflect on the successes and challenges of our first term. We shared the phenomenal current year group house point total which is over 8000 points! Parents also got to hear about the wellbeing curriculum and support interventions that have been implemented during our first term. Year 7 is going from strength to strength and their creativity and enthusiasm is really starting to shine as they become more familiar and comfortable with their new teachers. Parents then finally got to speak to all our teaching staff about the progress of their students so far! We really enjoyed getting to meet you all!
During our Wellbeing session this week our newly appointed Year 7 Tutor Representative Team delivered their first presentation to the whole year group. One of our activities during the International Festival was to explore the International Connections across our tutor groups. I was blown away by the confidence and professionalism of the presenters. We discovered that Year 7 has family on nearly every continent in the world (excluding Antartica) and that our favorite cuisines are mostly from Italy, Japan or South Korea!
I can’t wait to see what this next term has to offer!
Emily Brawn
Head of Year 7
It is with great pleasure that I introduce this term's school magazine, Novus.
This impressive edition, on the theme of Connection, has been produced by a team of students from Years 9 to 13 comprised of editors, writers, reporters, and designers.
I think you will agree that their journalistic standards are very high and that they have chosen thought-provoking and contemporary issues to interest and entertain you. Please take a moment to read and enjoy.
Find the latest issue of BIS Student School Magazine here.
John Bliss
Staff mentor and Supervisor of School Magazine
Teacher spotlight is a series introducing our dedicated and talented Secondary School teachers. This week we hear from our University Counsellor, Bernd Widemann. Read more
EAL | Mathematics | Humanities | Computer Science
Term 1A has seen the Key Stage 3 EAL students working hard on the theme of Health and Wellbeing. As we have all experienced the devastating effects of COVID-19 in our local and international communities, the students have taken their personal experiences to reflect on life during lockdown and to speculate on what lies ahead for us.
The students produced some wonderful short videos in which they interviewed a future version of themselves – hats off to those students who showed great creativity not only with their questions and answers, but also dressing up and using props to add some humor to the task!
Term 1B continues the same theme, but our principal focus will be on writing and the students will be spending time working on social media posts comparing life during the current global pandemic with the golden ‘pre-COVID’ days. It is key for the students to be able to produce a variety of text types in English as they move into Key Stage 4 and beyond. Our writing focus in EAL classes will always look to the students’ future needs; in previous terms we have produced infographics, diaries, blogs and vlogs, reports and essays to name but a few different text types.
In EAL we believe that by equipping the students with the tools and skills they need for writing in IGSCE and later IBDP, they will have the necessary knowledge and skills to be able to succeed and achieve grades to the best of their abilities. I look forward to seeing what our students are going to produce in the coming weeks.
Stephen Wheeler
EAL Teacher
FOBISIA Maths Competition
Before half term, some of our keenest Key Stage 3 mathematicians took the opportunity to compete in a fun and original competition with other schools across Asia, both inside and outside the Nord Anglia family.
There were three rounds that tested all the students’ ingenuity, problem solving and teamwork. Firstly, there was a video round in teams of 3-5 where students independently completed some fascinating, entertaining and original projects on the topic of the intersection of Maths and Technology. The Maths department were blown away by the presentation, research and explanations that our students managed, despite not even being in school! Second, there was an individual round where students tried different and unusual problems that were unlike anything they normally see. And finally, a Maths virtual escape room where they needed to work together to find and solve challenges in order to break out of their trap!
Eric in Year 8 said: “The FOBISIA Challenge made myself to encourage and work with our team, we discussed about challenging ideas, brought Teamwork, communicated, inquired and lots more. It was really fun having to do these challenges. TEAMWORK!”
Gia Khanh in Year 9 added: “I like the virtual escape room part because that is where I feel like our communication, determination and teamwork reaches peak”.
All 19 of the students should be very proud of their perseverance and drive to have a go at expanding their horizons and doing even more Maths out of class! Special congratulations go to Silver medal winners Quynh Chi (Year 9), Bella (Year 9), Eric (Year 8) and Tae Kang (Year 8) and Bronze Medal winners Gia Khanh (Year 9) and Tae Hoo (Year 7).
Geography
Over the past few weeks, our Year 9 students have been working on their own to investigate the causes, impacts and responses to either a volcanic eruption or a tropical storm. The work that has been produced already was outstanding, through detailed explanations combined with creative and informative displays. We look forward to seeing the rest of the submissions over the next week!
History
This week Year 8s have started a new topic, ‘The Tudors’ which will focus on learning about what people believed and how they were ruled. To get us started we have been using sources to investigate the young life of King Henry VIII. Students sorted the sources into a different part of the body depending on what they revealed about Henry’s beliefs, his background, etc. We then checked our learning by standing up as a task and moving various parts of our body according to what feature of the king's life was mentioned. A wonderful way to get moving after a long day of sitting down.
Cold compression
Year 10s have been studying Data Representation in Computer Science this term and, as we near the end of the unit, they have been experimenting with the effects of compression on image files. The students have seen firsthand how reducing the number of pixels in an image (known as “image resolution”) will also reduce the file size, leading to better transmission speeds and lower storage requirements. The first images depict an original 24-bit colour file with 365 x 650 resolution, which has then been reduced by 10% and 50% respectively.
We have learned that we can also reduce the file size by reducing the colour depth of an image file (in other words, lessening the number of colours each pixel can represent). Compare the second images which have been reduced to 256 colours and 16 colours respectively, with the original file above.
Hopefully, the optics are clear - in both cases, compression has caused a reduction in quality; the greater the compression, the more significant the impact. So, there is a trade-off between the file size and the remaining quality of the image and I’m delighted to say that Year 10s are now very capable of balancing this for themselves.
Rob Shepley
Computer Science Teacher
British International School Hanoi
Hoa Lan Road, Vinhomes Riverside
Long Bien District
Hanoi
100000
Vietnam
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