Weekly Highlights is a weekly newsletter sent by the BVIS Leadership Team to parents, providing updates on notable news and activities at the school. The newsletter consists of three main sections: updates from the Principal, Head of Primary, and Head of Secondary.
Dear Parents,
Welcome to the final Weekly Highlights of Term 2.
In February, I wrote to all parents to give a summary of the findings from our annual Satisfaction Survey. From your feedback, we identified these areas for future improvement:
Our Secondary canteen area
Whole school social spaces
The quality and size of our performance spaces for both Primary and Secondary students
Sunken Garden Update – updated facilities and menu options, including premium coffee for adults
On Tuesday this week, we hosted the first-ever U9 3v3 Basketball Invitational Tournament in the city. With 21 teams from 7 schools, the courts were buzzing with excitement and energy.
All of our BVIS teams showed off their basketball skills, fantastic teamwork, and as always, outstanding sportsmanship. The final result was an impressive win for both U9 Boys and Girls BVIS teams! Well done to all basketballers for your successes, resilience and determination on the court and, a huge thank you to Ms Lucy Wilson and Mr Long, for making this exciting new event happen for our students.
Go Bulldogs – we were very proud of your achievements.
Over the last few years, we have developed a strong partnership with Raffles Medical Group who have helped deliver numerous parent workshops in school. All BVIS parents are invited to join this new workshop:
Navigating Puberty in Pre-Teens
Date: Wednesday 14th May
Time: 9.30am - 11.30am
Location: 10th Floor, American International Hospital, 199 Nguyen Hoang, District 2
This session is designed to help families and students better understand and manage the physical and emotional changes that come with puberty. It will be mainly delivered in English with Vietnamese translation when needed.
Sign up using the QR code on the poster.
Academic calendar dates for this year and next
EYFS, Primary and Secondary Parent Handbooks
Monthly lunch menus, containing all information about allergens
How and where to order school uniform that can be delivered directly to your home
Presentations and resources from past parent workshops and seminars
Frequently asked questions with answers
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Should you wish to contact your child’s Class Teacher(s) or Form Tutor directly, we encourage communication to be written in the language you most feel confident to use.
Parents may also find it useful to contact their child’s class teacher(s) or form tutor directly for all individual queries about their academic work/social and emotional wellbeing in school. Individual contact details can be found in the Parent's Handbooks or via our Primary/Secondary Receptionists.
On behalf of everyone at BVIS, we wish you a very productive and peaceful Term 2 holiday and look forward to welcoming you all back to School for Term 3 on Monday 5th May.
In Primary this week, we focused on being responsible citizens and the sustainable actions that we can take with particular focus on two UNICEF sustainable development goals: no.13 "Climate Action" and no.14 "Below Water".
During playtimes, our student community leaders set up activities to remind students of the importance of nature and taking care of the ocean. On Wednesday, they also set up a competition to see which house can ‘waste the least amount of food’, with the intention of encouraging students to only take the amount of food they can eat. As a home learning task, students were set the challenge to create a sustainable piece of artwork that represents, ‘Animals under water’ by upcycling used plastic items. Each entry was awarded ClassDojo points with three winners receiving the most. The beautiful artwork was displayed as an art exhibition in the foyer for the community to appreciate and enjoy.
A valuable initiative introduced this year has been the collection and upcycling of used school uniform. Students have been collecting this week and from Term 3, will work with selected tailors to create new and useful items for us to purchase. We are excited to see what is created with our old uniform – we will update you when the items are ready for purchase.
The week ended with a ‘Green Day’, where the whole community dressed in green clothing and made donations to one of our long-standing community partners, ‘Saigon Xanh’ the volunteer organisation that works hard to clean up Saigon River and the canals within Ho Chi Minh City. Thank you to all families who donated – the funds will provide the volunteers with the equipment needed to remove unwanted items from these waterways.
A huge thank you goes to Ms Tram Le, Community Leader, and her team of Student Community Leaders for planning this meaningful week for everyone in primary to enjoy and learn from.
Over the last few weeks, the EYFS team have been focusing on promoting the foundations of Maths with families. This began with an incredibly useful workshop, led by our Maths Leader and EYFS Senior Phase Leader, where practical activities were shared with families to highlight the importance of Maths through a play based approach. This week the focus continued in the Early Years environment with parents being invited in for ‘Stay Play and Learn Together’ (SPLAT) sessions with their children. The SPLAT sessions had a variety of learning resources and activities for children with their families to experience, all related to Maths. From painting to building construction and stories to being active in their learning, Maths was showcased in all areas of the children’s learning environment.
One of the key messages for families throughout the focus on Maths has been that for a child, being able to rote learn and say the sequence of numbers from 1 to 20 is not enough and can risk missing key ingredients when nurturing successful mathematicians. It is more important that the child learns what the quantity of each number looks like in real life and what it looks like when more objects are added or taken away. Thank you to all families who joined the teachers and children learning together about the importance of Maths in the Early Years.
For our Year 11, 12 and 13 students this week represented the last full week in school before the commencement of the IGCSE or A level examination period.
Although our Year 11 and Year 12 students will return for activities week, work experience and further learning next year, this Friday marks the last time that all Year 13 will be in school together.
We are sad to see our Year 13s leave us and are exceptionally proud of the young adults that they have become. We all look forward to seeing their amazing results later in the summer and celebrating the end to this phase of their education at our Graduation event in June.
Happy Holiday from The Gardening Club
(Student Article by Nguyen Khanh – 9S)
Since joining the gardening club, I’ve learned that plants are basically like green pets—with less barking and more dramatic wilting when you forget to water them. Aloe vera is the low-maintenance friend, Mother of Thousands are always making little baby plants, and spider plants throw out new shoots like they’re on a top-secret mission to expand take over planet Earth. Don’t even get me started on the dragon fruit cacti—they look cool and grow actual fruit.
The gardening club has helped me become more thoughtful about what I do, from watering plants to avoiding single use plastics, Gardening has made me way more eco-aware and proud of keeping things alive (finally!).
Every school needs a student-run garden. It's fun, oddly emotional, and way cheaper than therapy. Also, it turns the dirt under your fingernails (yuck!) into a badge of honor, so you can flex on your not-so green friends on what you did for the school garden today!
This week was our annual Key Stage 3 (Years 7-9) Poetry Competition, and we are proud to announce the following winners from each year's group.
Year 7: Tran, Vu Hoan An (Harvey)
Year 8: Thai, Kim Long (Raymond)
Year 9: Le, Khanh Linh (Lyly)
We challenged students to create and perform their own poem, focusing on the themes of adventure and identity, power and conflict, and my culture. The work produced was outstanding, and it was a pleasure to enjoy such mature, sophisticated performances. Congratulations to the winners, and to Key Stage 3 Literature students for participating!
This Tuesday 10 students were invited to a reward’s breakfast for their contributions to their House or more broadly their school across the term so far.
Well done to: Kim Anh, Minh Hung, Yen Dan, Bao Luan (James), Bao Anh (Nathan), Emma, Harvey, Annie, Jun Ann and Aki.
The links below display the House Sways, which are put together by our House student leaders. As the term progresses different posts and updates will be added displaying the relevant news for each of the Houses.
Dalat - Dalat House News
Hanoi - Hanoi House News
Hue - Hue House News
Saigon - Saigon House News
University Newsletter - University ambassadors News
The Sparx Maths Weekly Champion is the student who is the top XP earner in each year group.
Students earn XP by completing tasks in their Sparx Homework
Compulsory Tasks earn 60-80XP
XP Boost Tasks earn 120-150XP
Target Tasks earn 120-150XP
Independent Learning Tasks earn 100XP
Students reach a new Sparx Level every 10000XP
Top XP earners this Term are:
|
Year Group |
Name |
Class |
|
7 |
Bim Luu |
7S |
|
8 |
Finn Hua |
8zMat2x |
|
9 |
Anna Quach |
9zMat2x |
|
10 |
Quoc An Nguyen |
10zMat1 |
|
11 |
Ngoc Anh To |
11zMat4 |
This week’s bedrock champions are:
Year 8 Le Hong Minh Quang Mraz
Year 11 Do Nhat Minh Anh
Year 9 Chung Quang Huy
Year 7 Nguyen Ha My
Year 10 Nguyen Phuc Minh Dang
Year 12 Phan Thi Ngoc Hien
Congratulations to all the above students who came up on top in their respective Year groups. A special well done to Mraz who achieved the highest Bedrock points total across the whole of the secondary school this week!
This week’s champion is...
Congratulations and well-done to Susie!
This week’s Champion tutor group is
Congratulations to 789v/hanoi3 well done!
Congratulations to Hanoi who have finished in the lead of the housepoints race at the end of term 2. Also well done to Saigon who through hard work have moved up from 4th to 2nd!
4. 14th May: Puberty Seminar run by Raffles Medical
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:
