Last weekend was an incredibly busy but exciting one for many of us at BVIS. On Friday night we had a terrific Halloween party that was organised by Mr Clarke and the student council. Amongst some brilliant dancing and karaoke were some truly scary characters. Many many students spent a long time in organising their costumes and the ingenuity and creativity was startling. Thank you all for a fun night!
We also had 25 students from years 7 and 8 competing in the global games, held at BIS. This multi sport event of football, athletics and swimming was held from Friday to Sunday. We acquitted ourselves really well and were competitive in all sports, bringing home trophies and medals in many events. Many of the other students and parents commented on how positive and enthusiastic our students were, I was very proud of the sportsmanship that was shown towards other competitors by the BVIS team. My thanks to Ms Smith and the other staff members who helped with the event for the full weekend.
Wednesday lunch time saw a first for us when we live streamed over facebook the first of our monthly ‘Live Lunch’ performances (see the recorded video here). 5 groups of very talented students performed short pieces which was broadcast over Facebook, and projected on to the screen in the auditorium whilst we were all having lunch. There were people all over the world watching and sending congratulatory messages. Well done to everyone involved and my thanks go to Mr Dale, Ms Pogson, Hiep, Soi and Chi for making the magic happen. We will be trying to do this once a month from now on.
Thursday saw the Geography department taking all of Year 9 on a field trip to Hoan Kiem. They are studying tourism at the moment and the field trip involved them asking tourists to the old quarter area of Hanoi, a variety of questions. They will then, in subsequent lessons, be analysing the data they have gathered, and be drawing conclusions about the tourist experience to Vietnam.
I spend a lot of my day popping into lessons and seeing the activities and learning that is going on. I was struck the other day by one student, Nha Truc in year 8, who had been so inspired by the work she was doing on the renaissance that she made a model of the helicopter by Leonardo Da Vinci. This was a terrific example of being given access to a topic and being encouraged and supported to explore further.
This sense of enquiry based learning will hopefully be on show next week. We are going to have the first of three enrichment days where all students will be off of their normal timetable and engaged in deep wider learning. The purpose of these days are to further enquiry based wider learning, to try and address real world issues and problems and to have fun and a deep sense of engagement.
The first of these days is on the theme of armistice or rememberance.
Traditionally in the UK we mark the end of the First World War , on November 11th, by wearing a poppy and spending time remembering the victims of all conflicts. At BVIS we will be selling poppies which I hope all of our students will buy and wear on November 11th, also known as Remembrance Day. The money raised goes towards the upkeep of military cemeteries and cenotaphs around the world - including the Vietnamese cenotaph in France, which commemorates those Vietnamese soldiers that died fighting in World War 1.
It can be quite a somber occasion, and indeed we will mark the day with the traditional two minutes silence at 11.00am , but it gives us a chance to really consider and explore the issues of war and conflict in an engaging and enquiry based way.
The enrichment day will see students participating in art projects, in science experiments, drill and team building, in reflection activities and the day will culminate in a debate led by Year 12, in which the whole school will participate in. It should be a terrific day.
Finally my thanks to all the Year 9 parents who came to the IGCSE information evening on Tuesday evening. I sincerely hope that it was worthwhile.
I wish you all a lovely weekend and week ahead.
Mr Nick Lee - Head of Secondary
