Dear Parents and Friends,

this coming week is again a busy week with a number of excursions for the Pre-school and Primary students.  Please remember to return medical forms as these serve as letters of permission from parents for their child to attend the excursion.  We ask that parents fill in a new medical form for each excursion so that we are kept up to date with current medical information.

We are sending home two surveys (click here to download) on Thursday 31 January.  One survey is for parents to reflect on teacher performance.  The other survey is for parents to reflect on school performance.  It is our desire to reflect on what we are doing well and what our community thinks we need to do to improve.  I greatly appreciate your time taken to complete the survey.  Both are anonymous and you should not put your name on the form.  To ensure the system is anonymous we ask you to place your response in a sealed envelope and return it to the Receptionist, Helen, or to Mrs Cindy Weng at Admin 2. 

We have ISA testing this week for Year 3,4 and 5.  Please see the information below to ensure you understand the test.  We are doing this for parents this year as trial.  It will give parents a good understanding of where there child stands in terms of English literacy and Mathematical literacy.  In the Mathematics section students can bring a translator so that the child can show their mathematical understanding (rather than their English understanding).  As students sit this test all around the world, we get a good understanding (in these two key areas) of how a child is performing against their peers.  Please note that this test is not compulsory (as parents have to pay this year), but highly recommended.

On Friday we have our Chinese New Year Celebration.  Students will be involved in activities throughout the day.  From 3:30pm we invite parents and friends to join with us in our new year activities.  We expect activities to run till approximately 5:30pm.  In the evening our staff will join with colleagues from Hua Mao Foreign Languages School for a staff party.

Buses will run as per normal on Friday BUT we encourage as many parents as possible to attend our Chinese New Year Celebrations!

And finally a reminder that classes finish at 3:45pm on Tuesday 5th February.  We will resume classes on Monday 25th February at 9am.

亲爱的家长朋友们：

欢迎大家在圣诞假期之后返回学校，希望大家都度过了一个愉快的假期。在假期之后，我带领我们13名10和11年级的高中学生前往澳大利亚学习参观。我带领他们参观了悉尼的新南威尔士州大学和悉尼大学、墨尔本大学、阿德莱德大学和在布里斯班的昆士兰大学。在阿德莱德，学生们入住当地人的家庭并参加了阿德莱德商业技术学院举行的浸入式英语学习课程。此次前往澳大利亚的参观和学习非常成功，我们将每年举行类似活动。

在本学年开学初，我曾和家长就是否有兴趣让孩子参加国际学校评估（ISA标准测试）有过商议，这是一项测试学生英语水平的标准化测试。测试有语言和数学两个项目组成，是以经济合作和发展机构组织（OECD）的PISA测试为基础模板设计的。 PISA测试是由澳大利亚教育研究机构举行的，已经成为世界知名的针对国际学校学生进行评估测试。 我们小学3年级、4年级和5年级的学生将和世界上32，000名国际学校学生一起参加这一测试。 为了帮助学生进行本次测试，您孩子的班级老师将给孩子布置一些额外的家庭作业，提高学生创造性写作和议论文写作的水平以及孩子的理解能力。这是为了让孩子能充满自信地参加测试。

澳大利亚的教育研究机构与IBO机构合作，共同研究IB学生与进行其他课程学习的学生存在的差异性。

学生参加ISA测试需缴纳人民币300元。测试将在中国新年庆祝活动之前进行。我们将向家长发送有关详情的通知信。

Dear Parents and Friends,

it has certainly got cold quickly.  It is time to rug up and prepare for Christmas.  We will be hosting our annual concert on Wednesday 19 December, 2012.  We are sending home letters (a copy is found below) so that you can help us to plan for this event.  At present we will be hosting the one concert from 2:25 to 5:00pm.  However, if we have a large number of parents and friends attending, we will host two concerts - one in the morning and the other in the afternoon.  We appreciate you returning the forms (via your classroom teachers) as soon as possible.  We will then send home admission tickets based on how many of your family to wish to attend.

In my last newsletter I started to introduce the work of Professor John Hattie, Professor of Education, Melbourne University and Director of Melbourne Education Research Institute.  As I stated last time, we are investigating this research within our staff professional development sessions on a Wednesday afternoon.

For a number of years Prof. Hattie has been performing meta-analyses of research previously performed by researchers around the world.  This basically means he performs statistical analysis of thousands of studies to find out which factors have the greatest impact on improving student learning.  After many years of statistical analysis that has involved 245 million students he has consolidated this research to show which factors have the biggest impact on student learning.  This can be distilled down to 150 factors or programs that schools try to implement to improve student achievement.  As a school we want to look at this research and implement methods that have the largest impact on student learning outcomes.  We also want to direct money and resources into methods that are known to work.  Last newsletter, I listed some programs that schools try to implement and asked if you could guess which of them has been shown to have a high, medium or low affect on student learning. 

The results are listed on the full version of this newsletter.  Click here to go to the full version, or click READ MORE beneath this post to read the version without photos..

Dear Parents and Friends,

we have had a wonderful two weeks of celebrating our multicultural school community.  We started with UN Day quiz at both primary and senior school level.  Congratulations again to Michael Dow and Tiana Moore in the Primary school section.  In the senior school the quiz was won by Issabelle Shen-Bradford and Sam Hofman.  The senior students also organised a UN Week Dinner and we had over 200 guests at this event, raising more than 21,000 RMB.  A fantastic effort that speaks of the dedication of Mrs Deepali and the students.  This week we celebrated Halloween.  Scroll down to see some of the photos from our special assembly.

PLEASE NOTE THIS FORM OF THE NEWSLETTER IS WITHOUT PHOTOS FOR QUICKER READING AND LOADING OF THE WEBPAGE.  IF YOU WISH TO SEE THE FULL NEWSLETTER CLICK HERE.  ALL NEWSLETTERS WILL NOW COME IN THESE TWO FORMATS.  CLICK THE READ MORE ON THE RIGHT OF THIS POST TO CONTINUE READING THE NEWSLETTER WITHOUT PHOTOS PRESENT.

NEWS FROM THE HEAD OF SCHOOL

Art Exhibition

a big thank you to all of you who turned up to our Annual Art Exhibition.  It was a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the creativity and innovation of our students.  The work on display was outstanding and is a positive reflection on what is happening in Art classes.  I welcome you to join me in congratulating Mr Steven Murray and Mr Ajay Jain for the work they have been doing with your children.

地球心灵周
     感谢所有上周参加地球心灵周活动的老师们和学生们。4-5年的学生们组织了本次活动，通过活动，他们锻炼了自己的组织能力、沟通能力，提高了保护地球环境的意识。我们为这些孩子感到骄傲。对于本次活动筹集到的资金，我们将与4-5年级的学生们一起商量如何采用最佳的方式使用，并会把学生们的计划告知家长们。另附上周三学生们参观东钱湖石刻公园的照片。


Read more.....

Spirit Week

thank you to all children and teachers that participated in Spirit Week this past week.  The students had a wonderful time dressing up and celebrating activities that aimed to promote greater consciousness about environmental issues.  The Year 4-5 students put a lot of effort into organising the events and we should feel proud of what students aged 8-10 can achieve. The money raised will now go to environmental projects around the school.  I will meet with the Year 4-5 class to discuss the best way of using the money we raised and report back to you in coming weeks about those initiatives.  A few photos are found below of students visiting the Song Dynasty Statue Park near Dong Qian Lake on Wednesday.  From all accounts the excursion was extremely successful.

Read more....

IB 认证
上个月，学校老师们在异常忙碌中迎来了我校PYP和DP两项认证。两队来自IB的认证委员分别在我校展开了为期三天针对IB（国际文凭组织）标准和实践的考核。这两队认证委员独立于IB国际组织（分别为PYP—--幼儿园、小学阶段项目，DP—--高中段项目），他们（代表IBO）分别来自新西兰、中国台湾、香港和上海，同为IBO（国际文凭组织）考核、审批全球IB学校提供参考报告。经过为期三天对教学计划、学校相关资料的查看，听所有中外教的公开课，并与老师们的教学理念的沟通，通过与上层领导的教育思想的交流，跟所有各年段学生以及家长的谈话，委员们对我校的工作持肯定意见。目前，他们正在向IB在新加坡的亚太地区办公室提交书面报告。之后，这些将被送往瑞士的日内瓦总部。这一过程需要持续4-6周。


Read more.....

Our teachers have been working extremely hard the past month in readiness for the IB PYP and DP Authorisation visit.  Two separate teams have travelled to Ningbo to visit the school and provide an independent assessment on our ability to meet the IB Standards and Practices.  The teams are independent of the IB, but provide reports to the International Baccalaurate Organisation (IBO) based on benchmarks for IB schools worldwide.  We have consultants (working on behalf of the IBO) travel from New Zealand, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Shanghai.  The consultants have been extremely positive about how we are faring and the work we are doing with our students.  They now write a report to the IB Asia Pacific Office in Singapore.  In turn these recommendations are then sent to the head office in Geneva, Switzerland.  This process takes 4-6 weeks. 

Read more.....