MESSAGE FROM THE PRINCIPAL
Dear Parents,
Last week, I attended the ACAMIS Conference in Macao with my colleagues, Mr. Ferguson and Mr. Pate. This is the Association of Chinese and Mongolian International Schools and you have to attend their Annual General Meeting to keep your membership. The organisation offers training for staff, opportunities for students and sporting fixtures.
Usually these types of meetings are boring, if necessary, but I am glad that I did not miss it because the keynote speaker, Sir John Jones, was outstanding. As an experienced Head Teacher, he is recognised worldwide as a leading educationalist. He gave a realistic appraisal of where education is at present, delivered confidently, without any notes and with humour and humanity.
His speech was prepared with anecdotes, inspirational video clips and comments from pupils over the years. It reminded me of a message I received on LinkedIn recently. A woman I taught 40 years ago wrote to thank me and this is an extract: “You have been more important to more people than you can imagine. Thanks for everything you have given as a teacher”
Needless to say, I was moved by this message which came out of the blue. However, I remembered that when I was training teachers in the U.K., I used to tell them not to underestimate the power of every little action or word which can have such a positive effect on a child’s education.
This week, we have enjoyed one of our regular visits by Erin Wight, our Julliard curriculum specialist, who has intrigued, inspired and provoked our pupils to be creative. We also had a wonderful visit from the award-winning writer, Margriet Ruurs, while Secondary students took part in a Spanish Cookery Workshop and Dragon Maths competition. Year 5 are of course on their residential trip to Yangshuo. There is certainly variety in life at NAIS!
Our week has been capped off with a highly entertaining Year 4 performance of “The Adventures of Superstan”. It was great to see the fun they had and the wonderful teamwork they displayed. I was also impressed with the quality of 2C’s assembly this morning.
Mr Brian Cooklin
Principal
SCROLL DOWN FOR TAI TAM AND SAI KUNG UPDATE
LAM TIN UPDATES
Head of Campus Message
Dear Parents
This week started off with the sound of the whole school singing. Mr Widger led the assembly with a song about Plastic Oceans from KS1. The Music Department and whole primary school then sang in three part harmony. A lovely way to start the week! The musical theme continued as Erin Wright our Juilliard Curriculum specialist has also been in this week observing and teaching lessons across all of our schools.
The week has also seen our Year 5 pupils enjoying their Residential trip to Yangshuo and there are highlights of their trip on the Year 5 Blog page.
Our Secondary pupils have been busy in and out of the classroom. Year 8 experienced a Spanish Cookery workshop which enabled them to learn how to cook different Spanish dishes by following recipes in Spanish and learning useful vocabulary connected with food and cooking.
A number of our Secondary pupils also represented the school in the Dragon Maths competition at CIS this week. This then developed into a Maths competition between staff and pupils in their assembly this morning. If you remember the TV show ‘Countdown’ you will remember the 30 second Maths tasks they had to do.
Our Year 4 performance of ‘The Amazing Adventures of Superstan’ was truly amazing and a delightful spectacular performance with singing, dancing, acting and a few ‘teacher jokes’ thrown in. Well done to all involved!
2C rounded off our week with an assembly about Thomas Edison, reinforcing the importance of perseverance and resilience.
Don’t forget next week is Primary Parents Evening and our Spring Soiree. I look forward to seeing some of you at these events.
Sarah Harley.
Assistant Principal.
UPCOMING EVENTS
No ECAs 12-16 March unless otherwise informed
12 MARCH
IB Diploma parents event
13 & 15 MARCH
Primary Parents Evening
14 MARCH
PTA Spring Soiree
26 MARCH
Healthy Schools Week
27 & 28 MARCH
Secondary Parents Evening
29 MARCH
End of the term – Early finish @1pm
19 APRIL
PTA Quiz Night 7:00-9:00pm
26 APRIL
PTA Mahjong Night 7:00-9:00pm
30 APRIL
Book Week
4 MAY
Dress up as a book character day
STARS OF THE WEEK – ART
Year 1: Caden San Juan Asmara, Ho Yeung Huang, Lawrence Lo, Frank Lam, Adam Ye
Year 2: Valarie Kung, Monica Zhao,Becky Sun, George Cardonnel, Oryana Hilditch
Year 3: Josie Hatherall, Annette Cheung, Natalie Wan, Isabelle Kwon, Mavis Chau
Year 4: Bill Zhao, Alicia Poon, Gigi Yuan, Jocelyn Rayner, Jerry Tang
Year 5: Yvette Engle, Harold Scott, Stella Todd, Fiona Dyck, Alex Wadsworth
Year 6: Anton Jerga, Anna Li, Mary Zhang, Rebecca Gao, Elizabeth Clough
HIGH COMMENDATIONS – ART
Year 7: Boco To, Tala Kamhawi
Year 8: Susannah Beadell
Year 9: Beatrice Villaflor
Year 10: Kelly Chen
GET YOUR DIARIES OUT …
Dates for your diaries as you won’t want to miss these great events organised by the PTA.
A staple in the calendar – the legendary quix night returns. Click here to sign up and start planning your team. Thursday, 19 April 7:00-9:00pm
Don’t miss out on this fun evening. Click here to secure your space.
CELEBRATING SUCCESS
A big shout out to Anelotte Espeskog for her acheviments, placing 1st runner up in the Triathlon 2017 (girls age 10) Competition and taking home the champion trophy for coming first in the girls age 10 overall in the series - aquathon, duathlon and triathlon. Wow! Congratualtions also to Evelyn Bowen, who won 2nd runner-up for the girls Age 9 Aquathon 2017, competition. Way to go, girls!
GUEST AUTHOR VISIT
Year 3, 4 and 6 students had the great opportunity this week to hear a talk by author Margriet Ruurs, who visited Hong Kong from her home in Canada. She gave a wonderful assembly to children about her book Stepping Stones: A Refugee Family’s Journey. She told her story of meeting Syrian artist Nazir Ali Badr on Facebook then working with him to create Stepping Stones. The book tells an inspiring story of peace and perseverance through the journey of a family of refugees from Syria, brought to life with Nazir’s amazing “rock art.”
Following her talk, she met with select pupils from each of the year group. Margriet talked about the writing process all way from getting ideas, to researching through asking questions and even the illustration process. She showed them photos of children all around the world that she used as inspiration for her books. Margriet also answered lots of questions about writing and researching for books. She also talked about the positive impact books have on the world through service learning projects, like unusual mobile libraries and an elephant sanctuary! The children loved learning all about the writing and publishing process from a world-renowned author. Margriet’s visit provided inspiring guidance on how to write (and act) with compassion and creativity.
STREET SMARTS – Cardboard City
For our second STEAM challenge of the year pupils are exploring the impact of self driving car technology and looking at the ways in which self driving cars work. In KS1 pupils are creating their own model city and learning how to program BeeBots to navigate it efficiently. In KS2 pupils are programming EV3 robots to intelligently navigate the city as well as exploring the moral implications of self driving technology using the moral machine, a tool created by MIT. In KS3 pupils are looking at how machines learn and teaching their own machines to learn and respond to different road signs.
All of this will come together for a show case event in our Maker Space on the week of the 19th (date to be confirmed) where parents will be invited to explore the city and the learning that has taken place over the course of the term.
UNLEASHING YOUR INNER CHAMPION
A fabulous opportunity has arisen for our Year 6 and Secondary students. NAIS has been offered a number of free places to listen to US two-time Olympic Gold Medalist and world champion, Deedee Trotter. Deedee will be in Hong Kong in March and will give a talk about “Unleashing Your Inner Champion”. This talk aims to motivate students through positive education, so that they can achieve higher goals than they can imagine. Details of the talk are as follows: Saturday, 17 March: 10-11:30am @Diocesan Girls School, 1 Jordan Rd, Jordan, Main Hall.
Please note that NAIS will not be providing any transport to or from this event. Parents may attend the event, but must also register. On the registration form, form 1 is Year 6 & 7, form 2 Year 8 and so on.
If you are interested in your child attending this event you must register here. The deadline for registering is 12 midnight on Sunday 11th March. Once you have registered please email Ricky Au Yeung so we can keep track of numbers.
ASSEMBLY TIME
PRIMARY – Class 2C
On Friday 9th March 2C performed an exciting and informative assembly about Thomas Edison. The assembly took us on a journey through the life of Thomas Edison and taught us that, after a lot of hard work, he became famous because of the lightbulb. The assembly had a deeply embedded message about the learning dispositions of resilience and perseverance.
SECONDARY
In today’s secondary assembly World Maths Day (7th March) was celebrated. Pupils in Years 8 and 9 that represented our school at the Dragon Maths competition held at Chinese International School all received certificates from Mr Cooklin in recognition of their efforts in competing against multiple international schools - and doing better than many (we won’t name names)!
A game of Maths Dingbats was then played where pupils had to guess the mathematical phrase to a picture on the screen, example below. This was followed by a competition between a Year 7 and a Year 10 team up against the mathematical might of Mr Cooklin and Miss Grevis-James playing the maths game from the popular UK show Countdown. Honours on this occasion went to Year 7, and a ‘good try’ to the staff team.
YEAR 4 PERFORMANCE
If you didn’t get the chance to see the performacne live, you can watch it here.
BOWLED OVER BY MARGRIET RUURS
This week the Secondary History Bowl club were joined by Canadian author Margriet Ruurs for an intimate discussion on history, international mindedness and books. Margriet told the story of her own family who fled from Europe to Canada as a response to the Second World War. She said that she found parallels between her family’s experiences and the lives of Syrians escaping civil war in their country today which is the subject of her book Stepping Stones: A Refugee Family’s Journey.
Margriet was excited to hear about our Global Campus where her book has been shared with over 50 schools worldwide as part of the Global Library. Many of her own books have built on ideas of building international mindedness and making connections between different parts of the globe. She also shared her experiences around the world such as the Book Bus Project founded by well-known illustrator Quentin Blake where she helped build interest in books and reading in rural areas of Zambia.
Finally, she discussed what life is like as a writer and illustrator in modern world and the need to pay artists for the world. She suggested we avoid buying books from Amazon and instead we look at the company Better World Books who give their profits to various charitable causes. Overall it was an enlightening and inspiring discussion and we hope to build a relationship with Margriet for future Global Campus Projects.
You can borrow many of Margriet’s books from the school library and learn more about her here.
BOOK WEEK IS COMING!
30 April – 4 May
This exciting event will run from Monday, 30 April to Friday, 4 May and we are promoting books from our Global Library list or that have a gender equality message. Our aim is to expose children to quality text that promote global mindedness and that break down gender stereotypes.
We hope that children develop a love of reading and that along the way they realise the wonderful worlds that books unlock. As Dr Seuss once quotes, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.” Throughout the week, children will engage in activities that will achieve these aims whilst having lots of fun!
We are in contact with a number of authors who will be supporting our learning in the lead up and during this event. On Friday, 4 May, we invite all pupils and staff to come dressed in their favourite book character outfit. We look forward to seeing your wonderful outfits in a whole school assembly that will take place on Friday, 4 May. Read more here.
TAI TAM UPDATES
Message from the Deputy Head of School
Dear Parents,
I have always admired musicians and their creativity so it was a delight to welcome Erin Wight our Juilliard Curriculum Fellow on Wednesday for a wonderful assembly in which children were able to create music using their voices layering sounds. She also led staff training about our Juilliard curriculum and how we can integrate the Juilliard approach into our learning in the classroom .
We have many things to look forward to over the next few weeks including our MIT challenge ‘Street Smarts’ with our Year 1 children heading over to Lam Tin to use our maker space and then coming back to teach our EYFS children about their learning. You should have received information about our bee bot cover challenge and I look forward to seeing the creative talents of the children. We also have a healthy schools week coming up and our EYFS sports day which we are all looking forward to.
The children have continued to enjoy their learning outside and have spent this week telling me all the things they enjoy the most which has ranged from space hoppers, scooters, building houses to drawing with chalk! Hopefully the weather will stay as beautiful as it is today so you can enjoy the sunshine over the weekend.
Kind regards,
Mrs. Katie Malone.
Deputy Head of School.
NOTICES
15 MARCH
Dolphins and Seahorses Assembly 10:00am – Parents welcome
15 MARCH
Dolphins and Seahorses Class assembly - Parents invited to attend at 10:00am
Return Bee Bot Cover for MIT Challenge
20 MARCH
Year 1 Parents Evening: 3:00- 6:00pm.
This is an opportunity to meet with your child’s teacher as well as Ms Li. Please do ensure that you return the slip to your child’s teacher to organise an appointment time.
23 MARCH
Please note ECAs are finished on this date. We will contact you further about ECAs for the Summer term.
26 MARCH
Healthy Schools Week
28 MARCH
EYFS Sports Day:
All children, including Year 1, will need to go directly to Lam Tin (we will reroute the buses). Parents of EYFS are welcome to stay and join in. Year 1 will be in class with the rest of Year 1. We will take all children back to Tai Tam by school bus. EYFS children will need to wear their PE kit with a House coloured T-shirt.
29 MARCH
End of the term. School finishes at 12:15pm so the bus will arrive 2 ½ hours earlier.
19 APRIL
PTA Quiz Night @Lam Tin
24 APRIL
EYFS Parent Consultation Evening
26 APRIL
PTA Mahjong Night @Lam Tin 7:00-9:00pm
30 APRIL
Book Week
4 MAY
Dress up as a book character day.
STARS OF THE WEEK - PE
Congratulations! You should feel very proud of your achievements.
Nursery: Corey Pan
Lower Kindergarten: Alexa McGirr
Upper Kindergarten: Chloe Fan
CLASS ASSEMBLY SCHEDULE 2018
The schedule for our class assemblies is as follows – your class teacher will give you more details nearer the time.
CAPS AND HATS
As our roof is now in action, with children using it every day, it is important for all our children to bring their hats to school. We realise that at the moment it is not as necessary as other times of the year, but we want our children to be in routine and to form good habits. We do have a ‘no hat, no play’ policy for our children to be safe and develop good sun smart practices. As a school we appreciate that there are times when hats are forgotten and we do have a small stock of hats children can borrow, but we do encourage everybody to keep them in their bags.
CURRICULUM OVERVIEWS
You can find detailed information about the curriculum for the coming term on our Firefly pages. Please do take a look and ask your teacher if you have any questions.
BLOGS
Please continue to check the blogs for weekly information about what your child has been learning in school.
SAI KUNG UPDATES
Message from the Head of School
Dear Parents,
The week stared with our amazing Chinese New Year assembly and parade. We were really happy to welcome so many of our parents to share this special event with us. We then enjoyed another visit from our Juilliard Curriculum Fellow, Erin Wight, who taught us all about ‘layers’ in music. She finished the day by holding a training session with all the teaching staff so that we could learn more about the Juilliard approach to integrating music and the performing arts into the curriculum.
Lastly this week, we were treated to the Turtles and Dolphins’ class assembly which was all about superheroes. Judging by how well all our children have performed, sung and danced this week, I can safely say that they are all superheroes. It’s been a treat to see how far all of them have come with their confidence and speaking skills.
We are looking forward to more exciting events next week. We will be starting the week with a special assembly to celebrate our “Healthy Schools’ week. All the children will be encouraged to bring a ‘naked lunch’ to school. This means using reusable containers and generating zero plastic waste for our lunches. We hope you can support us with this at home.
Enjoy the weekend.
Kind regards,
Naima Charlier.
Head of School.
Important Information
20 MARCH
Year 1 Parent Consultation Evening
28 MARCH
EYFS Sports Day:
All children, including Year 1, will need to go directly to Sai Kung (we will reroute the buses). Parents of EYFS are welcome to stay and join in. Year 1 will be in class with the rest of Year 1. We will take all children back to Sai Kung by school bus. EYFS children will need to wear their PE kit with a House coloured T-shirt.
More detailed information will be sent out via letter.
29 HALF DAY
School finishes at 12:15 this day in Sai Kung and 1:00pm in Lam Tin
18 APRIL
EYFS Parent Consultation Evening
19 APRIL
PTA Quiz night @Lam Tin
26 APRIL
PTA Mahjong Night @Lam Tin 7:00-9:00pm
30 APRIL
Book Week
4th MAY
Dress up as a book character day
STARS OF THE WEEK -
Congratulations! You should feel very proud of your achievements.
Nursery: Ayden Wong, Neanne To
Lower Kindergarten: Vilma Arrhenius, Hanna Hazarika, Joelle Chen, Yannis Lam
Upper Kindergarten: Dhruv Sinha
CLASS ASSEMBLY SCHEDULE 2018
The schedule for our class assemblies is as follows – your class teacher will give you more details nearer the time.
