Dear Parents,
Today’s update is coming to you from Beijing where Mr Cooklin, Mr Bishop and I are participating in workshops with our colleagues from across our China schools. It’s been a really interesting and challenging day so far, especially looking at more examples of High Performance Learning from our Director of Education, Professor Deborah Eyre. One of the valuable things about being part of such a large family of schools is the experience and best practice that we share with our colleagues.
I hope you all received the important email that went out yesterday asking you to let us know as early as possible any changes to the pick-up or bus arrangements for your children. Now that we’ve been open for 11 weeks (can you believe it!), we’re really aware that the primary thing that holds up the buses in the afternoon are last-minute changes. So please, take the time to look at our upgraded contact procedures. Please send an email to the class teacher and bus@nais.hk BEFORE 10am on that day so that we can make the necessary arrangements.
We are so looking forward to inviting you all back into our school for the Christmas Performances. We appreciate that you’re all going to have very full diaries between now and Christmas, but we know your children would really enjoy seeing mum and dad for their end-of-term performances.
There will be several Christmas Performances and we will let you know times and dates very shortly but we wanted to flag the following now:
12 December: Whole School Photo – we’ll be celebrating our inaugural group of pupils on 12 December with a whole school photo. Please remind your child to be in full uniform (blazers for Year 7s) and if they have PE that day they can bring this with them to change.
16 December: Our new Class Reps will be helping to organise Class Christmas parties between 1.30 and 2.45pm for Primary and 2.15 – 3.30pm for Secondary pupils. (Class teachers will be emailing details of the newly appointed Class Reps shortly – please look out for it!)
19 December: Last day of term. Early finish at 1pm.
We just wanted to take this opportunity to remind you of our school uniform policy. While we do know how hard it is to resist the latest trends, please remember:
· Hair – hair that is shoulder length (or longer) should be tied back while at school. Hair ties and ribbons should be black or blue.
· Tights – tights should be black (please, no white or fancy colours!). Girls are also welcome to wear long black socks if they prefer.
· Trousers – girls are welcome to wear the uniform trousers instead of the skort and tights if they prefer.
· PE Kit – socks only (no tights) with PE kit.
· Shoes – please ensure your child has black, leather school shoes and white (or predominantly white) trainers for PE.
Our new community members met on Wednesday to elect a Chairman, Vice-Chair, Secretary and other key positions. We’re delighted to have such strong and able leadership in the PTA. The minutes will be shared with you all next week. Members of the new PTA were already hard at work yesterday planning events for Christmas, and I’m sure that they can count on your support as they help us to further develop our school. Mr Heath Zarin is the appointed PTA Chairman.
This morning we enjoyed celebrating the achievements of our Stars of the Week in Science. These were: Archie Vinning (1A), Julius She (1B), Henry Zarin (1C), Lucas Cheng (1D), Osher Ma (1E), Edward Savagar (2A), Gilles Bogaert (2B), Sydney Chow (2C) , Tommaso Scapinello (2D), Kristen Wong (2E), Bronte Marner (3A), Pranav Rajendran (3B), Yoshi Okaguchi (3C), John Qin (3D), Anne Matsumoto (4A), Tala Kamhawi (4B), Beatrice Leeders (4C), Charlie Dier (5A), Joonmin Huh (5B), Bogdan Trandifar (5C), Elena Gonzalez (6A), Beatrice Villafor (6B), Daniel Cheng (7A) and Andrew Chim (7B). It was another excellent opportunity for the whole school to recognise the achievements and efforts of our pupils. Congratulations to everyone!
We had an excellent – and very popular - Parent Workshop this week led by Tom Ferguson, our Year Leader for Year 4. The subject was ‘How to Read to Your Child’, specifically with children in the years 3 to 6 age group. If you missed the workshop, you can find the presentation on our website as well as a reading list too.
Our next Parent event will be on 27 November, focusing on children with Additional Support Needs. This will be hosted by Ms Jane Henderson (Head of ASN) and Mrs Mariam Khalik. The whole ASN team will be there including Mr David Sheehan (our new Head of PSHE). Please register with Ricky.Auyeung@nais.hk.
Look out for more on how your children will be enjoying our school’s ‘Global Classroom’ over the next few weeks as our new Global Classroom Ambassador, David Robinson, starts to roll out new plans and initiatives. You can see a brief overview of how our Global Classroom enriches your children’s learning on our website and you’ll be hearing a lot more about this from your children, especially in the upper Primary and Secondary years.
Thank you to parents for providing the PE staff with very valuable information in completing the questionnaire. We are delighted with the volume of responses. It appears that we have numerous pupils within our school that have sporting talents which we are keen to nurture. If you have not yet completed the questionnaire please do so as soon as possible. Here’s the link for the survey.
As you are no doubt aware we have been selected to compete in this prestigious event in May of next year. We are in the difficult situation that we have many talented pupils in years 5 & 6 but can only take a team of 7 boys and 7 girls from our school. The 14 pupils will compete against other schools in all three activities - Swimming, Athletics & Football. In effect the pupils will all be completing a triathlon of events requiring them to be multi talented! PE staff will be speaking to year 5 & 6 pupils over the next few weeks to further explain about the games.
In preparation for the COBIS Games we are inviting all year 5 & 6 pupils who are competent swimmers to an initial swimming session from 3 - 4pm on Friday 28 November at Lam Tin Swimming Complex. If your son/daughter falls into this category they should sign up next week through their PE teacher.
Please note that due to space constraints, unfortunately no spectators are allowed to attend this initial swimming session. After the swimming session, pupils will be escorted back to the school and should be picked up at the school reception area at 4.15pm.
A quick reminder to all of you with children applying to start Year 1 in August 2015. You should all have received details from our Admissions Manager, Maddi Palser, about our assessments being held from 1 – 3 December. It will be lovely to meet lots of the younger brothers and sisters of our current pupils. Please talk to your children about being welcoming ambassadors for our school during this week.
On a final note, please do remember to name all pupils’ water bottles, lunch boxes etc as we are slowly building a collection of lost property which is kept in our reception area.
That’s it for this week – thank you again for taking the time to read through this lengthy update. As always, please feel free to get in touch via the email addresses below in relation to any of the issues covered in this update (or beyond).
· Bus enquiries or updates: bus@nais.hk
· Uniform: contactus@nais.hk
· School lunches: contactus@nais.hk
· Absences: <class teacher>@nais.hk AND bus@nais.hk
· Admissions queries: admissions@nais.hk
· Any curriculum queries: <class teacher>@nais.hk
