Student Highlights & Success Stories (17.03 - 21.03)

Dear Families, 

Firstly, a huge thank you for your support and understanding in what has been a challenging week in school, particularly for our staff. Thank you so much, your support, it means a great deal to the whole community. 

Tomorrow, Ms Colleen our University Guidance Counsellor will be running a session on how at BVIS we support students to get to the top universities around the world. I hope many of you and your friends will be able to attend. 

I am delighted to see so many children have signed up for the delayed Year 4,5 and 6 residential trips. We are now making final preparations for the exciting trips ahead. 

We are very delighted with the parent satisfaction results and I have posted below the summary slide of the main headlines for your information. 

I am delighted to announce that we are making final plans for our summer development work program and this will include a newly renovated Primary Canteen. Please see link to draft design below, this is just for illustrative purposes.

I wish you all a very relaxing weekend ahead.

Language and Communication

Language and Communication is a Prime Area in the Early Years Curriculum. It supports all areas of the developmental skills framework. This week, F1are using language to develop Role Play – acting out a conversation with each other. F2 have been story mapping as part of the Talk 4 Writing Literacy program and F3 are using the text of Little Red Riding Hood to develop English patterns in language. What busy language learners they all are! 

Strengthening Maths Skills

Last Friday, the students had an exciting Maths Day filled with fun and engaging activities! They took on the Jelly Bean picking challenge, using tweezers to carefully pick up jelly beans while practising their counting skills. In the pattern-making challenge, they arranged colourful jelly beans in sequences, helping to develop their logical thinking. The matching game brought lots of excitement as they searched for and paired corresponding colour cards. A favourite activity was finding number pairs that add up to 10, which strengthened their mathematical skills and encouraged teamwork. Maths Day was truly a valuable learning experience, allowing the children to explore maths in a lively and enjoyable way! 

Caring for the Environment

In alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals- Goal 14: Life Below Water and Goal 15: Life on Land - Year 2 students are cultivating plants using a hydroponic system and visiting the community garden. This has been a wonderful experience, allowing us to learn, grow, and share our commitment to caring for the environment.

Fun Maths

Year 3 had a fantastic time celebrating Maths day on Friday. We read the story ‘How Many Jelly Beans’ by Andrea Menotti, which is a fun and colourful book that helps children understand large numbers. After this, Y3 studentds completed a range of activities, moving between the 3 classes, including estimating how many jelly beans were on a plate; making a graph to represent the different colours of the jelly beans; measuring objects with jelly beans; solving subtraction problems using jelly beans; and making 2D shapes using jelly beans and wooden sticks.  

The students had so much fun immersing themselves into the different activities, and loved using the jelly beans to help them with their Maths work – especially when they got to eat some at the end!

Delicious Jelly Beans

Year 4 students had a fantastic time celebrating Maths Day! They engaged in a variety of maths-related activities using jelly beans. From collecting and handling data to creating graphs, tables, and bar charts, the students applied their mathematical skills in a fun and interactive way. Of course, the most exciting part was enjoying the delicious jelly beans after completing their tasks! 

Investigating Patterns

This week the students had a great time doing Maths Week activities, using jellybeans to complete a number of maths challenges. Year 5 moved from room to room to try out all the different activities, including creating 3D models by using sweets as vertices and toothpicks as the edges. They investigated if there were patterns in the numbers of faces, edges and vertices in the different 3D shapes.

Creativity and Teamwork

This week, Year 6 students completed the editing and improvement of their first poems, moving on to a more independent task—writing a poem on a topic of their choice. In IPC, they conducted research on a specific area of a country, demonstrating commendable skills in research, as well as in speaking, listening, and note-taking. Additionally, they created word problems using gummy candy and enthusiastically used the candy to construct 3D shapes, showcasing their creativity and teamwork. 

The Secondary newsletter this week will focus on student achievements over the past week.  It is amazing to think that students have achieved so many diverse and wonderful things in a short space of time!

World Maths Championship

Last weekend, nine students competed at the World Maths Challenge in HCMC, hosted at BVIS HCMC. It was an exceptionally tough competition, and our students did themselves and the school proud! Well done to Vu Le Hoang, Nghiem The Phat, Le Nguyen Nam Khan, Bae Minjun, Kim Hansu, Chung, Jaehoon, Nguyen Van Khue, Nguyen Huong Giang and Nguyen Thi Thang Hang.

MIT Student Competition 2025 Winner 

We are excited to announce that Hiep Huyen Trang has won the MIT Trip competition! With over 500 students competing, her outstanding entry truly stood out!

Her entry tackled the critical issue of fabric waste, which is overwhelming our landfills due to poor recycling methods. Her creative solution was to use fabric-eating microbes to break down textiles into reusable organic compounds. She not only thought about how to reduce waste but also came up with a concept that promotes a sustainable circular economy.

Her innovative thinking and dedication to making a positive environmental impact are truly inspiring, and we couldn’t be prouder of her incredible achievement!

Global Campus Art Competition 

Last week we were very proud to announce the winners of the BVIS Global Campus Art Competition for 2025! This year's theme was 'Light and Dark', linked to the UN International Day of Light on 16th May.

We had some excellent entries this year, making our judges' lives a lot more difficult, but after much deliberation, the winners and runners-up of the competition are:

KS3

Runner Up: Ngoc Bao Anh Nguyen (8B)

Winner: Lam Anh TRINH (9V) 

KS4/5

Runner-up: HwaYeong SONG (13I)

Winner: Michelle Yeh (12V) 

Here are pictures of Lam Anh and Michelle with their artwork and their winners trophies; their entries will now be entered into the global competition, where they will compete with winning school entries from Nord Anglia schools from around the world. Everyone at BVIS wishes Lam Anh and Michelle the very best of luck in this stage of the competition! 

Pi Day

Last  Friday, the Maths Department invited  students to participate in a Pi Day Challenge of reciting as many digits of Pi as possible. Congratulations to Quynh Anh in year 9 who beat her own record of 145 digits last year to retain her title, reciting an incredible 188 digits of Pi! Honorable mention for GaEun in year 8 who recited 111 digits. Well done also to Jihyeon in year 8 and Tuan Minh in Year 8 who were brave enough to stand on stage and give it a go! A few pictures below.

KS4 & KS5 3v3 Basketball pulls a big crowd

Wednesday 12^th March marked the start of the KS4 & KS5 3v3 Basketball competition hosted at lunch time by the PE department. After the excitement of the KS3 Finals Day the week before, our more senior students were bristling with anticipation. With all teams present in Week 1, the games got off to an intense start with a high level of fierce, but fair, competition. With 32 total students taking part, this was the largest number of students ever to take part in a lunch time competition. This number, however, was trumped by the size of the crowd that gathered to watch the Week 1 fixtures, with over 70 students from all year groups in attendance in the sports hall. The 3v3 Basketball competitions have grown in popularity over the past 2 years. The results and standings after Week 1 can be seen below.

Year 12 students experience a special Maths workshop

Last Friday, Dr Shane Bauman from Waterloo university, led a fantastic a workshop with a selection of year 12 students.

Even more dedication from our KS4 and 5 students!

This Tuesday, the English department ran the third of four after school mock exams ahead of the rapidly approaching IGCSE and A-Level examinations. We continued to be blown away by the attendance of our students - almost all IGCSE literature, IGCSE First Language and A-Level literature students were in attendance! The huge uptake in attendance of these has led to invaluable feedback sessions happening every week across the English department, allowing us to maximise the little time we have left before exams. The next (and final) mock exam will take place on Tuesday 1st April. Mr. Ogden, Ms. Mary, Ms. Grayson and Mr. Sutherland are immensely proud of our students' efforts!

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