Welcome back to the Year of the Dog, I hope that all of us in the BVIS community had a lovely Tet holiday.
We have come straight back into Book Week with World Book Day being celebrated on Friday. The focus has been about a love of and a passion for reading of all kinds. We have been sharing our favourite books with each other and we even had a ‘Dragon’s Den’ competition where staff tried to convince the students that their favourite book was the best book of all. At this particular event, the joint winners were Mr. Graeme Jones who proposed “Marching Powder” by Rusty Young and Ms Tanya Ramanah who put forward “The Theory of Everything” by Stephen Hawking. My thanks to Mr Chris Whiffin and Mrs Kirstin McKie for organising all the events of the week - which culminated in a terrific Book Day assembly, where many staff dressed up as characters from books.
We welcomed 30 US universities on Thursday this week to our school. At this university fair - part of our ongoing university guidance programme - students from Years 11 and 12 were able to speak freely to this large range of universities to understand the types of courses available and different destinations. My thanks to Mr Berni Widemann for organising this.
It was wonderful to see an immersive drama lesson this week, where Year 7 students entered into a ghostly old house -’the dark manor’- complete with brilliant projections, eerie mist from our smoke machine, and clever lighting to give the students an immersive experience at the start of their new topic. Thanks as always to Ms Olivia Hutchinson for the creative approach to teaching and learning.
We had two exciting trips depart the BVIS shores this week. Firstly we had the Under 13 FOBISIA team leave to compete in the FOBISIA Games held in Phuket, Thailand. This is our largest ever cohort of students to take part in the games and I wish them all the very best. They have worked extremely hard in preparation, going each Saturday to an athletics track to prepare themselves for each event. My thanks to Ms Alicia Smith, Mr Chris Walsh and Mr Jon Leak for taking the students and coaching them to do their very best.
Also this week, we saw some Year 9 students going to Northbridge School in Cambodia for the NAE SEA Model United Nations (MUN) Conference. Our students were representing Spain, Ethiopia, Kuwait, USA, Philippines and the Netherlands and have had to prepare their country’s stance on issues such as international security, human rights and decolonisation; an amazing opportunity for all of them. My thanks to Mr Alex Larmour and Mr Graeme Jones for their organisation and belief in the power of MUN.
I hope you all have a great week ahead.
