MESSAGE FROM THE SCHOOL
Dear Parents
The old saying is “Variety is the spice of life” and this week proved it. From the Monday morning assembly, where I thanked the whole school for their wonderful behaviour and positive attitude during the inspection week to the fabulous and highly informative 3E Assembly on space, it has been action-packed.
I have hosted visits and tours from the Hong Kong Youth Arts Foundation, colleagues from the International Montessori School and the new Shrewsbury International school. All of them were highly impressed by the school and want to collaborate with us on different activities.
I also attended a British Chamber event where Andy Heyn, who is the British Consul General, spoke about his priorities. One of the issues raised was to re-assure families in Hong Kong that Britain is still an open and welcoming country for students to go there for university or other studies. If, anything after the U.K. leaves the European Union, they will be more welcome according to the Consul General. Otherwise preparations have gone on for the school’s first Open Day tomorrow. I have just seen the video made showing the artist’s impressions of what the new campus at Tin Wan in Aberdeen will look like. It is very exciting to see it and I look forward to hearing your opinions.
Enjoy your weekend.
Brian Cooklin
Principal
UPCOMING EVENTS:
20 March
Trumpeter Liam Day visit
23 March
Last ECA of the term (resuming again in Term 3)
24 March
Class Assembly 3A, Katie Doherty
27 March
Year 3 residential departs
28 March
Secondary Battle of the Books – Mandarin
Year 2 Zen Organic Farm visit
29 March
Year 3 residential returns
SNEAK PEAK – Tin Wan preview
Are you ready? It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for… yes, that’s right, we’re very happy to share with you the virtual fly through of the new campus. Now we can’t wait to get on site and show you around once it’s open! Watch now.
LIAM DAY COMES TO SCHOOL AND YOU’RE INVITED
We will welcome trumpeter and Juilliard Alumni Liam Day to our school for interactive performances next Monday (20th March) at 8.15am and 9am and we’d love for you to join us. We hope you will enjoy Mr. Day's stunning performance!
SWIMMING SQUAD TRAINING
Our swimming squad training will continue to take place at Lam Tin Swimming Pool until Spring Break. After the holiday our swimming squad will take place at NAIS and more sessions will be opened up to allow more of our pupils to progress their endurance and stroke development. The PE Department will be sending out letters of invitation in the coming weeks.
CONGRATULATIONS
Jean and Anni in Y9 both received Highly Commended Certificates in the Flower Show Competition on Friday and have been invited to attended the prize ceremony on Saturday.
WHAT A NIGHT!
We all had a great time as the teams battled it out to be named winner of the 2017 PTA quiz night. Congratulations to team ‘The Try Hards’ who walked away with some fabulous goodie bags. Thank you also to everyone who got involved be it behind the scenes, helping on the night, or taking part. We can’t wait for next year’s quiz!
THIS WEEK IN MUSIC
The Hong Kong Music Festival continues and the results are pouring in! Congratulations this week to Naomi, Gabrielle, Bryant and Soleil for their amazing results. Please do keep sending in photographs and letting us know how your young people are getting on!
We are extremely excited about our Juilliard Artist visit on Monday! Trumpeter Liam Day will be coming into school to perform for students and parents, lead workshops and masterclasses and pop into lessons. If you would like to hear Liam play, all parents are welcome to join us at either 8.15am or 9.00am for 45 minutes in the hall.
As a number of performers, parents and staff will be attending the HK Rugby 7s on April 7th, we will now be holding our termly concert on 6th April at 4pm. This will be an open house, so if you are in school for a parent-teacher conference, please do drop in to see the marvellous work produced by students. We will notify all students involved early next week of their performance time so that meetings can be scheduled accordingly!
CALLING ALL NETBALL LOVERS - LEARN FROM THE BEST
We will be hosting two workshops with Joline Henry, New Zealand Silver Fern 2004-2015, in May and June so we wanted to share with everyone to make sure our keen netballers out there don’t miss out. This is a great opportunity to learn from one of the best.
Workshop dates:
Sunday 21st May @ HKIS 9-12noon
Sunday 4th June@ NAIS 8.30-11.30am
Call us for more information.
MY GUEST WRITER IS A SUPERHERO AUTHOR!
Read on to learn how to win a signed copy of his new book!
On Wednesday, we had a heroic day of superhero excitement as acclaimed Scottish author David Solomons landed in our library to discuss his award winning Global Library book ‘My Brother is a Superhero’ and its equally awesome follow up ‘My Gym Teacher is an Alien Overlord’ (don’t worry it’s not based on anyone from our PE department). Years 6, 7 and 8 all had an amazing opportunity to hear Mr Solomons talk first-hand about the creative process , his main influences and future plans for his superhero stories. Furthermore, students had the chance to get their books signed and to take star struck selfies with Mr Solomons. Vielle Tsang, Stella Todd, Mao Tsuda, Eva Simmonds and Chloe Cheung from Year 4 interviewed the author for forthcoming writing projects while Tristan Surgenor, Gilbert Scott and Gary Gao in Year 7 filmed an interview with him to help promote their own Global Campus Superhero Challenge Competition. The competition is open to all students and challenges them to create a superhero who can help to promote the Global Goals and has a connection with our community. You can see more about the competition in this video: https://vimeo.com/206372924
Entries should be shared on the Padlet on Global Campus Online by May 2nd to have a chance of winning a signed copy of one of Solomon’s books. If you are already logged into Global Campus, the following link will take you to relevant page:
http://globalcampus.nae.school/mod/page/view.php?id=6708
Class 8B got a collaborative start to this competition when they were joined for the afternoon by 20 of their Global Classmates from the British School of Guangzhou who popped over the border to meet David Solomons themselves and work on their artistry and team building skills in an afternoon of comic books and creativity.
STAR-CROSSED STUDENTS MEET A QUEEN OF WRITING
A lucky group of Year 8 and 9 students were star struck on Thursday while attending a writing workshop by glamourous American writer Roshani Chokshi, author of the New York Times best-selling ‘The Star Crossed Queen’ which is featured on Nord Anglia’s Global Library. Upon arrival, she was startled to see that we already had a copy of her brand new book “A Crown of Wishes” which she herself had not yet seen in print!
During her presentation, Chokshi had students in stitches with her embarrassing tales of growing up in Atlanta, Georgia and the failures and rejections she faced on her path to becoming an author which she summed up saying ‘how will you know how good sweetness tastes if you’ve never tasted bitterness’. Poignantly, she also discussed her childhood reading idols and her frustration that the children’s books on offer during her own upbringing did not feature characters from diverse backgrounds such as her own dual Indian and Filipino heritage. Hopefully, our own NA Global Library is trying to address such issues with titles from China, Iran and Tanzania not to mention Chokshi’s own books attracting readers from across our family of schools.
She discussed how literature has inspired her, quoting author Neil Gaiman’s maxim that: 'Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.' She also let us in on some top secret news about her future writing projects, which are too confidential to be disclosed here. Next, she set students to work developing ideas to build their own fantasy worlds based on her own fictional kingdoms, Akaran and Bharata, which mix classic fairytales like Beauty and the Beast with Indian and Hindu mythology and her own imaginative ideas.
She also noted how she uses Pinterest for inspiration and used to write her own fan fiction texts much like our students have for this year’s Global Campus Creative Writing Competition. Chokshi was suitable impressed with our students’ familiarity with Greek and Anglo-Saxon mythology thanks, in part, to our KS3 English curriculum which includes works such as Beowulf, The Odyssey and Oedipus the King. We ended with some book signings, the now obligatory selfie and the beginnings of an idea for a new Global Campus competition we hope to launch in the weeks to come.
GLOBAL CAMPUS VISUAL ARTS COMPETITION UPDATE
You are reminded of the Global Campus Visual Arts competition, as the deadline for entries is just over a week away. The task is to illustrate one of the stories written by Nord Anglia students, which have been shortlisted for the Creative Writing competition. The stories can be found on Global Campus Online and have also been shared on the Primary and Secondary Global Campus Firefly pages for easy access. The competition has been set as an optional homework task for all students on Firefly which includes links to Firefly pages, which give a full explanation of the requirements and how to enter.
Please be aware of the following:
Good luck with your entries. We hope to announce our NAIS HK shortlist before the Spring holidays.
If you have any questions, contact david.robinson@nais.hk
STARS OF THE WEEK – Teachers Choice
Another week and more to celebrate. Congratulations to the following students:
Year 1: Hailey Wong, Kit Thorley, Abbie Tang, Emilia Wallwork, Kinjal Ruthiya
Year 2: Biel Bertran Molinas, Rinnosuke Konishi, Annabelle Mitchell, Julian Erzincanli, Alicia Ying
Year 3: Erika Saito, Chloe Gordon, Andrew Li, Audrey Todd, Joshua McQueen
Year 4: Sasha Parsons, Fiona Dyck, Yash Madnani, Natalie Kung, Alberto Sesana
Year 5: On Residential
Year 6: Lisa Kang, Leo Han, Tala Kamhawi, Alice Stevenson
HIGH COMMENDATION AWARDS – Teachers Choice
Year 7: Emma Bombana
Year 8: Anakin Lee
Year 9: Kayci Qi
See their smiling faces here.
PRIMARY ASSEMBLY – Class 3E, Arwen Batiste
Class 3E used role play to tell us all about space and planet earth this morning. They shared us what they learn in class, introducing us to the following five perspectives.
S – Solar System
P – Planet
A – Axis
C – Constellation
E – Exploration
From Jupiter to Mercury, Cygnus to Orion, every class member was fully dedicated to their performance. Well done everyone!
SECONDARY ASSEMBLY
Our talented Equestrian team shared their experiences in today’s secondary and primary assembly. They played a video clip showing us all their routine training and the different types of competition, such as dressage, running and jumping. Any students who wish to join the Equestrian team in the school could contact Ms Charlesworth mailto:at Kathryn.Charlesworth@nais.hk for more details.
MELODIA – Book your tickets now
MELODIA is an original production created by Cirque du Soleil composer and singer duo, Violaine Corradi and Rose Winebrenner, in collaboration with HKYAF founder Lindsey McAlister! This unique cross-genre performance mixes word, song, dance, aerial arts, puppetry, physical theatre and acrobatics.
Tickets are on sale through URBTIX, please contact Christine Lau (christine@hkyaf.com) for more details.
The Hong Kong Youth Arts Foundation (YAF, www.hkyaf.com) is a charity that provides access to high quality, non-competitive free-of-charge arts experiences for all young people aged 5 to 25. Established in 1993 YAF organises inclusive and inspirational projects that reach out to youngsters of all cultures, backgrounds, languages and abilities, and actively creates opportunities for those who are disadvantaged and underprivileged. Each year we reach over 800,000 people through our projects, exhibitions and performances.
Check out their trailer to get an idea of the scope and the quality of their events:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khJIXJ8aGoY
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KEY CONTACTS
Quick list guide of who to email for what:
Please do not use the info@nais.hk for any of the above queries.
Have a lovely weekend.
Primary Campus
11 On Tin Street
Lam Tin, Kowloon
Hong Kong
Secondary Campus
19 Yuet Wah Street
Kwun Tong, Kowloon
Hong Kong
Early Years Campus
285 Hong Kin Road,
Tui Min Hoi, Sai Kung,
New Territories
