Weekly Highlights 12/11/2021

Mr. Simon Higham, Principal

Dear Parents

During these ongoing, challenging times the health, safety and wellbeing of our students, staff and whole school community is more important than it has ever been.

As a school, we are proud of our academic achievements and are equally proud of the care and support that we offer our community. Students, teachers and parents need to be happy, safe and secure with their learning in order to fulfil and often exceed their academic potential.

Over the last 5 years, two of the questions that we have asked parents in our annual Parent Satisfaction Survey are:

• ‘Does your child feel happy at school?’
• ‘Does your child feel safe at school?’

It is very pleasing to note that the average percentage of parents who either ‘strongly agreed/agreed’ was 97% and 98% respectively.

Although these results are favourable, we continue to look at ways in which we can further improve and develop how we care for our community wellbeing. Wednesday’s Wellbeing webinar is one example of how we can continue to help to support. Thank you to Mr Luke Curran for leading this session and Ms Mai Truong for translating. Thank you also to all parents who joined and we sincerely hope that it was useful to you.

Never underestimate the importance of wellbeing. This weekend, take time to ask your child(ren):

• How are you feeling with your online learning?
• Is there anything you/our school can do to further support?

Equally as important though, ask yourself the same questions. Look after yourselves and please reach out to us if you require any support or advice on any educational matter.

 Working Together as One

For any technical help in accessing our Virtual School Experience, please email our BVIS Help Desk email: it.servicedesk@nordanglia.com

For all individual queries about your child’s academic work/social and emotional wellbeing, contact their form/class teachers directly via email or Dojo.

• For all additional Primary Enquiries, please call /email:

              (028) 3758 0709 / ext. 111 or

               primaryreception@bvisvietnam.com

• For all additional Secondary Enquiries, please call / email

              (028) 3758 0717 / ext. 211 or

              secondaryreception@bvisvietnam.com

Student Support 

When students return to the school site, they will be welcomed by our new student support facilities.

Following the recent completion of this brand new facility, students will be able to access new, improved and updated pastoral services including additional work space, private meeting rooms and a newly refurbished University and Guidance space all in one convenient area.

Look out for more information about further campus developments in next week’s Highlights.

BVIS students are officially Top 10 worldwide at the World Economics Cup 2021

Recently, BVIS proudly had several students from Year 13 representing the whole of Vietnam in the World Economics Cup 2021. Congratulations to all our students who as a team finished in the Top 10 worldwide, placing 9th amongst 52 teams.

Read more about their individual and collective successes in this recent post from our website.

Have a safe, happy and wellbeing focused weekend ahead.

Mrs Mary McAloon, Head of Primary

How can we support your child’s mental and physical wellbeing during Covid-19?

As mentioned above, on Wednesday, Mr Luke Curran, our Head of Safeguarding, Welfare & Guidance walked us through the theory behind wellbeing along with practical tips of what we as adults can do for our children to support their mental health and wellbeing.

Families and colleagues who joined the webinar found the information extremely valuable in supporting their children further. Mr Luke explored three areas of importance for younger children, these were:

• Active – which is about play, creativity and exercise.
• Healthy – which is about eating, sleeping and talking.
• Learning – which is about enquiry, discovery and growth.

The webinar recording will be shared to all primary parents via email, so if you missed it, I advise you to find time in your schedule to listen to what was shared.

If you have any questions or would like to explore the area of wellbeing and mental health further, then Mr Luke is always available to meet with families. Please contact Primary Reception (see the numbers in the Principal’s section) to book an appointment.

The Impact of Phonics

This week, Mr Ben Brown, our Lower Primary Coordinator explains the importance of phonics when learning to read:

“Phonics is the key for every child to become a successful reader and learner. In learning phonics, a child becomes able to read by understanding the sounds that a letter or group of letters makes. A basic understanding of phonics is that every grapheme (letter), has a corresponding phoneme (sound). Once a child can hear, identify, and manipulate the phonemes of the corresponding graphemes, they can already read hundreds of words.

At BVIS HCMC, we endeavour to help our children do this by following Read Write Inc. Phonics, which was developed by Ruth Miskin. The primary idea behind Read Write Inc. Phonics is that while learning the phonemes of the graphemes, children are also learning to decode, thus read words. Once children know the initial phonemes, they then learn to Fred Talk, otherwise known as blending. This is done in unison with reading books at the appropriate level and allows the child to decode any word they meet on the page.

What makes the phonics programme at BVIS even more unique is that it is done in two languages, English and Vietnamese. Our Vietnamese phonics program mirrors our English programme, thus providing children at BVIS with a unique and seamless transition between language learning and an exclusive, quality phonics learning experience.”

If you missed the phonics and reading webinars back in September and would now like to listen to these, then please contact again our Primary Reception and we will send you the recording links.

Community Leaders

Last week our Primary Community Leaders for 2021 – 2022 were announced in assembly. Each applicant was asked to submit their reasons for wanting to be a Community Leader and their key qualities that would support them being successful in their role. During assembly our new Community Leaders shared these qualities as they embark on leading initiatives that will make a difference to our BVIS community. We can be reassured that our community is in capable hands with what the new leaders offer. Congratulations to our successful students and well done to all applicants for putting themselves forward for this important student leadership role.

Upcoming Events

• 17/11/21 @ 15:30 – Primary Open Afternoon for prospective families

Mr Jack Rudin, Head of Secondary

Update from our Humanities Department

With the ongoing COP26 Climate summit in Scotland, our Humanities students have been looking at the past history of COP summits as well as the current summit.

With Vietnam being one of the countries that will continue to be greatly affected by Global Heating and a changing climate, with record high tides in HCMC, more frequent & stronger tropical storms battering the Eastern coasts and sea water intrusion in the Mekong Delta rendering huge areas of fertile land now infertile, we all have a part to play. With this in mind, students have been looking at who the real ‘Climate Heroes’ are both within Vietnam and around the world. A selection of some of these heroes are shown for you to learn about.

BVIS Secondary Champion(s) of the Week

A huge congratulations to PHAM, Le Hong Ngoc (Lily) in 10S and NGUYEN, Quoc Thai in 9B who are this week’s Champions.

During a week where a large number of students gained huge numbers of housepoints, these two students earned a massive 29 housepoints each. That is on average almost a housepoint for every single lesson they had last week!

Well done to them both!

BVIS Secondary Tutor Groups of the Week

With the 29 Houspoints from Quoc Thai to go alongside the hard work from everyone else in the tutor group, 9B earned the most housepoints this week.

However, 7V with their incredible overall attendance (as well as gaining large numbers of housepoints) managed to equal 9B’s achievments, making both Tutor Groups the overall winners this week.

Well done to all students in these tutor groups and to their tutors as well (Mr Grewal and Mr Chaurasia).

Safeguarding and Child Protection 

The health, safety and wellbeing of our students remains the number one priority at BVIS HCMC. 

Should you have a concern for the welfare of any child in our school, please refer to our Safeguarding poster below: