Key Dates | Pastoral Update | Library Update | Virtual Learning Showcase
Dear Parents,
In-person learning resumed at BIS Hanoi this week for the first time in over six months. After detailed planning of health and safety arrangements in the background, we welcomed students through the door at 8:10 am on Wednesday morning.
Our staff were thrilled to hear noise in the corridors again, and for many teachers, it was the first time they met their students in person. Students reported how much they enjoyed connecting with classmates that they hadn’t seen since May. As a new Head of Secondary, I was delighted to host the student leaders in my office on Thursday to hear their feedback about the transition they are making from a virtual to a physical learning environment. We know that in-person teaching and learning offers more opportunities for engagement, critical thinking, and social development. It also enables teachers to give more instant feedback and adapt teaching faster to individual needs. An in-person environment also leads to a stronger sense of belonging, well-being, and motivation for young people.
This week is the latest of many adjustments we all have needed to make in the past 2 years. I am very grateful indeed to the teachers, support staff, students, and parents who have supported reopening this week. We hope that the current trajectory continues, so that we can welcome the rest of the student body back to campus shortly.
Chris Newman
Head of Secondary
As we approach the end of our first term in Secondary School, Year 7 has a lot to be proud of. We have navigated an unexpected transition through Virtual School, got to show off our enthusiastic personalities to our new teachers and got to grips with a whole new kind of timetable. The road has at times been rough, we have made some mistakes, but we are emerging at the end as a resilient year group who I am sure are going to do remarkable things.
A couple of weeks ago, I met with our trusty tutor reps as we were all feeling a little mid-term slump in motivation. Together, we created the ‘Battle of the Tutor Groups’ challenge week as a way to ignite some energy into the final stages of this term.
Each day we had a different theme or focus, and we were awarded points for our team efforts. There was ‘Mega Monday’ focusing on EPraise Points, could EVERYONE in the tutor group get at least 1 point on one day? ‘Turn-Up Tuesday,’ an attendance challenge aiming for 100% in EVERY lesson. ‘Who’s Who Wednesday’ testing how well do we know our school with a speedy video and information ‘scavenger hunt.’ ‘Tough Thursday’ encouraged us to activate and spot our VIA strengths in ourselves and each other. We finished the week with ‘Feel Good Friday’ a Gratitude Challenge designed to acknowledge the good things in life.
It was a close call with each tutor group all winning at least one day of challenges, but ultimately 7B were crowned the winners and awarded with a very special trophy! Watch out for more friendly competition next term!
Emily Brawn
Head of Year 7
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Art | Geography | MFL | English | Vietnamese
Year 7 Art
Year 7s have been working on improving their 21st century skills using digital media and making stop-motion video to create artworks on a new topic they have learnt in the past few weeks: positive and negative space. Year 7 have been incredible at applying these new skills, creating visual illusions as well as showing a strong understanding of what organic shapes mean. The Art department is really proud of them and is looking forward to seeing more formal element artwork in the future.
Year 9 Art
Our Year 9 students have started their new project on ‘Architecture’ and have spent their first few lessons learning about one-point and two-point perspectives. In preparation for IGCSE, they have also been taking photos of buildings which they will use for their future digital collages and observational artworks. Here are just a few examples of the skills they have been learning. I look forward to seeing them develop these ideas into final outcomes in Term 2.
Year 11 IGCSE Art
A few weeks ago, I shared some of the stunning coursework boards from our Year 11 IGCSE Art students. This week marked a very important submission date for our students as they handed in their final pieces. These final pieces are the result of in-depth research, experimentation and exploration of media over the last year, and I am so impressed and proud of what they have produced. Here are just some examples of their work. I hope to have a virtual exhibition of all their coursework in the new year so that we can celebrate their successes and see how resilient these students have been over the course of the virtual learning experience.
On Friday 3rd December, a number of our amazing Year 9 Geographers volunteered their time and effort to teach Year 6 students to help them with their understanding of tectonic plates, earthquakes and volcanoes. This was a topic our Year 9 students have learnt earlier in the academic year and the students loved being able to independently create lesson resources and activities to teach younger students. The feedback they have received has been wholeheartedly positive from their class teachers, Year 6 teachers and students as they taught the whole year group at once! They have all worked tremendously hard and pushed themselves outside of their comfort zone and have impressed us all so much they will soon feature on the school’s blog to talk about their experiences. Well done!
In Spanish this term, our Year 8 students have been focusing on improving their grammar knowledge by mastering the past tense! In order to practise this, Ms Dorr’s Y8 class made their own comic strips using the website Linguascope, which is a brilliant website for practising your French and Spanish.
The students designed their story and then used the Comic Strip Tool to bring their sentences to life, with amazing results!
Georgina Dorr
Head of MFL
Film time!
Imagine turning a novel into a movie? This is exactly what Year 9s have done. To consolidate their understanding of the climatic Chapter 9 of ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’, Y9s have created fantastic storyboards. Well done!
Joe Shepley Clarke
Head of English
Our Year 8 students have participated in the project "Teaching each other" by creating videos to teach other students about Vietnamese grammar and also being the host of test activities. Their seriousness and responsibility really surprised and impressed the teachers!
Hong Tran
Vietnamese Teacher
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