Key Dates | BIS Debate Club | Keep Hanoi Clean’s "Beautification" Programme | Virtual Learning Showcase
Dear Parents,
It has been a hugely busy and successful first term. I am extremely grateful for the hard work and fortitude shown by everyone in our community, and this includes students, parents, and teachers. Not every school community thrives amid challenge; but at BIS Hanoi, I believe we continue to go from strength to strength.
We wish everyone in the community a refreshing and fun holiday break. It is well deserved, and I hope that soon we can invite all students, and eventually parents, onto campus again.
Please keep an eye on communications from the school over the break, and particularly in the days leading up to the start of Term 2.
Kind regards,
Chris Newman
Head of Secondary
Thursday 27 January – Friday 11 February: Tet Holiday
Monday 14 February: School resumes after Tet Holiday
Recently, BIS Hanoi's debate club has launched a Nord Anglia Education Debate Network. As of now, we are collaborating with the debate clubs at BIS Ho Chi Minh City and BIS Chicago South Loop. The leaders of each school’s respective debate clubs held numerous meetings to plan ahead events and strategy of this network.
We are currently in the process of planning a debate exchange that is set to be held this weekend. This will be an amazing opportunity for the students at all three schools to develop their debate skills and meet fellow debaters across Nord Anglia schools. All three schools are greatly looking forward to this exchange and we have high expectations.
Looking into the future, we are hoping to launch more events and work with even more Nord Anglia schools across the world. We want to be able to share our debate knowledge and passion and cultivate a vibrant debating community within Nord Anglia . Our ultimate goal would be to host workshops, discussion forums, and a Nord Anglia wide debate tournament in the near future.
The Chuong Duong neighbourhood makeover project is one of the key projects in Keep Hanoi Clean’s "Beautification" Programme - which looks to promote clean, green environments in communities throughout Hanoi.
The Chuong Duong project encompasses 4 main activities:
The work carried out last weekend to clean up and sanitise the site means that the creation of the community garden and playground can begin. Joining the makeover project on Sunday, December 12th were two volunteers from the BIS community...see if you can spot them in these photos:
Art | Computer Science | MFL | Maths | Vietnamese | Korean | History
This week Year 12 SL have been examining the ways Chairman Mao consolidated his power, particularly in regard to his foreign policy. In groups they have been examining the role of China in the Korean War, as well as the changing relations with the USSR and USA throughout the Cold War.
Year 10 have also been consolidating their third unit of work on Hitler’s foreign policy, known as the ‘Collapse of Peace’. Chronology and key terms are especially important for this topic and we have been using quizlet to revise key content and terms of the course.
Snow in Hanoi!
It was great to finally meet my Year 13 class for the first time last week; such a difference to teaching online! The students were really buzzing and we began the lesson with an episode of “the snowball” to get everyone warmed up. Each student is given a piece of paper and has 1 minute to write everything they know about a topic – in this case Genetic Algorithms, the topic of this year’s Paper 3 exam. The students then scrunch their paper into a snowball and throw it their peers. Everyone picks up a random snowball and we repeat this process twice, adding any new information to the paper each student now has in their hands.
Finally, we brainstormed all the information gathered and created a mind map on the board. I was really impressed that as a class we covered every piece of essential terminology which the IB have indicated the students need to know for their exam this Summer; a clear indication that their independent research on this topic has been effective so far.
We followed this session with a masterclass from Minh Anh, our resident expert on Genetic Algorithms. Minh Anh created her own GA for her Internal Assessment earlier this year, so it was really kind of her to share her super knowledge and experience with her peers, who were very appreciative.
On the whole, a fun and engaging way to restart our learning journey - together again!!
Rob Shepley
Computer Science Teacher
This term, all of our Key Stage 3 students have been exploring the formal elements and creating incredible artworks. It has been an outstanding learning journey for all of our students, from creating the effort certificates at the start of the year to creating masterpieces on the formal elements. More recently, our Year 8s have started to explore the topic of Portraiture while our Year 9 students are now exploring the topic of Architecture. As the Art department, we could not be prouder of the achievements of our Key Stage 3 students this term and we wanted to share their incredible artworks with their families and our community as they have not ceased to amaze us this term. We are looking forward to seeing what the new year brings and please join us on congratulating them for everything they have achieved this term.
Over the last two weeks, our Year 7 students have been inquiring about Christmas traditions in the French-speaking world and have been absolutely amazing as working collaboratively and presenting their findings to the class. They really wanted to understand foreign cultures further and compared it to their own one. It was so amazing to watch! This week, to congratulate them for all their hard work this term and to say goodbye to some of their classmates, we have organised a Christmas quiz. The Year 7s performed extremely well and the winners of the quiz have shown a great understanding of the Christmas traditions all over the world!
Well done Year 7s and looking forward to teaching you all more French in the new year!
As we come to the end of Term 1, we are also coming to the end of our term 1 ECAs. The achievements of our students and the efforts of our teachers both made Term 1 so fantastic. Our Year 10 students in the Korean Audio Book Club ECA have written a piece of reflection for this term, read more here.
Year 12 Higher Level students have dealt admirably with spending the first 4 months of an extremely challenging new course online. They have had to learn how to reflect for themselves on techniques and ways of thinking that are completely new to them. One of the most important and subtle aspects of mathematics is Hypothesis Testing, trying to put a mathematical value on whether something is “just a coincidence”.
After carefully considering real-life scenarios that mind lend themselves to this way of thinking and questioning, the students were able to formulate their intuitions and put a numerical value on this seemingly subjective measure. The ability to quantify concepts which at first glance seem abstract is something that is a university level skill in most applied sciences, and the fact that students were able to master it and explain it while online is a massive credit to them.
Year 7s are reading "I'm gifted, so are you!" by Adam Khoo which is a famous book for teenagers in Asia. They have designed the book cover according to their own ideas, explored the content of each chapter, related the content to their own reality and made book reviews.
Year 9s are working in groups to make presentation videos about Vietnamese society during the French colonial period. Students are excited to learn about a period of history that is so far away from them. These will be the background knowledge to help students familiarize themselves with the famous Vietnamese stories learned in Term 2.
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