It’s about to get a whole lot busier on the Junior Campus as we look forward to the long anticipated, crowd favourite, best week of the year…. International Week!
Next week is the culmination of hard work, organisation, learning and BIS community spirit at its finest as we celebrate International Week here at Primary. It is probably fair to say that it is most people’s favourite week including students, staff and parents.
The children have been learning all about various countries and cultures. International Week builds on our International Primary Curriculum and offers the children the chance to learn in a good amount of detail about a country of their choosing as a class. Jamaica, Tanzania, Denmark and Canada are all in there. Ireland, Russia, Ghana and Finland are also included to name but a few and the children have already begun their learning about the geography, the flora and fauna, culture and people. Please do ask your children to share their learning with you and check out their seesaw pages which will, no doubt, be filled with a wonderful record of their journey around the world next week.
The PTG have been working extremely hard to prepare for the Global Café which will be housed in the gym and all classes from EY&I and Juniors will visit over 2 days, Tuesday and Wednesday. With its largest number of countries participating ever, 26 countries will share their culinary delights. Do remind your children to bring their reusable containers to school for their trip to the café. We will have no single use plastic on these days.
My sincere thanks in advance to Lily and all the PTG for their hard work and to Mr Chris and Ms Sarah for all their organisation in creating what promises to be another memorable week for all our BIS Community. A parent guide has been created and you can access it below.
BIS Parent Guide to International Week
It will be updated and will include links to the live streaming of our parades on Friday as unfortunately we will be unable to invite parents to join. We are sure you will still be able to enjoy the parades from the comfort of home (or work) in a comfy chair!
This week we had a Nord Anglia Health and Safety Inspection. They spent the day at the Junior Campus on Monday and observed traffic, canteen procedures, playtimes as well as doing a Health and Safety tour of the campus and checking systems and processes in place. We were very pleased with the feedback; it was very positive but also had some items we can action to improve our site even more. We are already actioning some of the recommendations ahead of the more formal written feedback that will be sent to us.
This year, Nord Anglia organised a Comic Book Competition through Global Campus, inspired by James Foley's graphic novel series S.Tinker Inc. and Sustainable Development Goal 13: “Taking action to combat climate change.”
We would like to congratulate all the participants. We were very impressed with the incredible creations, interesting characters, great drawings and fantastic ideas on how to make a real change in how we care for our environment.
Congratulations to the winning entry from the Junior Campus, Anna Vo in Y4 C! Anna’s comic shows a great understanding of comic structure and language, creates a visual impact and uses imaginative ideas to communicate one way in which we can improve our environment.
Great job Anna!
Miss Fiorella Balbuena
Have a look at this building. Would you believe that this new school was built using “eco-bricks”?
What’s an eco-brick? It’s a new type of building brick that is made from plastic bottles and thrown away plastic!
If you haven’t yet heard, over 8000 of these bricks have been made right here in Vietnam. In both international and local schools, students have been collecting thrown away plastic bottles and filling them with plastic. Truly fantastic!
It’s time for the BIS community to wake up and support this amazing project! The great news is that it is very easy to make an eco-brick. You can make an eco-brick at home or you could start bringing your used plastic to school. Please click this link for further details.
Mr Jonathan Smith, Year 4 Teacher
Our Junior Campus performers have enjoyed a myriad of performance opportunities this week with Nord Anglia Young Musician, Teatime Recitals and Lunchtime concerts all taking place. Find out more about these exciting and must be said, excellent performances by our young musicians in this post by Ms Anna Hogan, Music Leader.
Our English leaders will be hosting a reading webinar for parents this Monday to guide you on how to help your children at home with their reading. All details are on the post above and have also been sent to you via Seesaw. We hope many of you will tune in to the webinar.
A reminder that this survey closes on January 31st. Please do share your feedback with us. We are constantly looking for ways to improve our school and your feedback is vital to this process. Our annual parent satisfaction survey helps us better understand how we are performing in key areas, including what we are doing well and any opportunities for improvement, and we use these results to inform our strategy. Therefore, the more parents we hear from, the more confident we can be that our action plans respond to your views and allows us to continue providing the best possible educational experience for your child.
The 2020-21 Parent Satisfaction Survey is now live and will remain open until Friday 31st January 2021.
Please click here to complete the survery.
On Thursday 21st and Friday 22nd the BIS HCMC Community Choir resumed rehearsals. BIS HCMC Community Choir are a group of singers made up from parents and staff from the British International School, HCMC. We regularly rehearse each Thursday (7.00- 7.45am) in the Secondary Theatre and Friday (1.15 - 2.15pm) in the Junior Campus multi-purpose room, and aim to perform each term. Anyone is welcome, whatever your experience of singing.
More information can be found on our choir website here or contact Ian.alexander@bisvietnam.com for further information.
Last term, BIS entered the Nord Anglia Education Global Sports Competition. 30 schools from across the world participated in this event. Our Primary Campus students, along with their Secondary peers participated in this huge event taking part during school, with every child scoring points for all sporting disciplines entered in Athletics and Swimming. Find out how we did as a school in this post by Mr Phil Husband, Director of Sport.
A parent Health declaration Form was sent to all parents this week. Please can we ask that you complete this form if you have bot already done so. This is particularly important with Parent Teacher Student Conferences taking place next week.
Just a reminder that all children should wear a mask to and from school, and when not in the classroom (moving between classrooms, playtime, etc.). Please make sure the mask is named and that your child has a spare in their bag.
Children should be bringing a water bottle to school every day as part of their usual routine, but it is all the more important during the current coronavirus pandemic. Please make sure that your child brings their water bottle, with their name clearly on it, every day.
Sincere thanks to everyone for your support in adhering to the guidelines for drop off and pick up. In the afternoons for those exiting through Gate C, please do not cross the road to the secondary campus there. Please go to Gate B where guards will assist you. Please note that parents cannot cross the bridge at this time as parents are not allowed into the secondary campus. Thank you for your cooperation.
Our PTG are busy organising more Term 2 events beyond International Week next week. The biggest event is our Spring Fair. It is a mammoth task and much support is needed. Find out how you can help and how you can get involved. More details of this and other upcoming events can be accessed here.
To connect with us personally, or if you would like to support as a volunteer, please email us directly on primaryptgbis@gmail.com
Primary PTG Coordinators
Dates for your diary
25 – 29 /01/21 International Week at Primary
26 and 27/01/21 Global Café
29/01/21 Parade of Nations Children come to school in their national/colours dress
1st – 5th/02/21 Tet Celebrations
05/02/21 Children come to school in their Ao Dai
8/02/21 School closed for Tet Holiday.
Next Friday, children are invited to wear their traditional dress/colours for our International Week Parade of Nations. The following week is Tet we will have our Tet celebrations in the week beginning February 1st. Children are invited to wear their Ao Dai on Friday 5th when we will have our Tet assemblies.
Have a lovely weekend,
Deirdre Grimshaw, Headteacher of Junior Campus
The weekly update from Dee Grimshaw, Headteacher of the Junior Campus, highlighting some of the events that have taken place this week.
The weekly update from Dee Grimshaw and Ian Battersby, Headteachers of the Junior and Early Years & Infant Campuses, highlighting some of the events that have taken place this week.
101 Thao Dien Street,
Thao Dien Ward, Thu Duc City,
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Junior Campus
225 Nguyen Van Huong Street,
Thao Dien Ward, Thu Duc City,
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Secondary Campus
246 Nguyen Van Huong Street,
Thao Dien Ward, Thu Duc City,
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
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