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As part of our IPC Topic Express Yourself, Year 6 students have been looking at the importance of personal and collective responsibility within our local community.

We are extremely lucky to enjoy the benefits of Nord Anglia’s collaboration with The Juilliard School across the age range at BIS, with access to curriculum resources, staff develop opportunities, global projects and world-class professionals in theatre, dance and music.

What an amazing outcome for our students in Y5 to Y9 in the FOBISIA LANGUAGE Championship last week, which was run by Education Perfect.

What a week it has been! There has been so much going on in school, with many exciting opportunities for our students to get involved in experiences and learning beyond the formal curriculum.

The school was awash with every colour as books were brought to life by an abundance of incredible costumes. Characters from all genres descended upon the school and there was an energetic buzz around the building.

I had a great start to my day on Wednesday morning, when I met three of our impressive Year 10 students. Bao Chau, Ngoc Anh and Thanh Mai shared with me their amazing story of competing in the World Scholar’s Cup at the Dewey School, last weekend. Along with 1000s of other students from Vietnam they embraced four challenging rounds (Collaborative Writing; The Scholar Bowl; The Scholar Challenge and the Scholar Debate).

Making a difference in people’s lives is extremely important to our school community. Staff, students and parents at BIS are committed to supporting others through a variety of charity activities. Last year, we launched Share A Dream, a social platform that empowers our school to effect social change and channel this goodwill into a practical tool for change.

At BIS Hanoi, we think and talk a lot about preparing our students for the future. In a rapidly changing world, it can be challenging to try to predict what that future might look like, but what we do know is that our students will need to be true global citizens, able to appreciate the views of others and show empathy, in a proactive manner, if we are to hope to improve our world.

This week has been a very special week on the BIS Hanoi calendar – Science Week! Students across the school enthusiastically got stuck into experiments and investigations both at home and at school.

Let’s meet our second teacher of our “Meet the Teacher” series: Mr. David Burke shares about his passion for STEAM and how he develops a global perspective to inspire his students.

It was wonderful on Tuesday to be able to welcome all our students back to school following our two weeks of VSE and a two-week holiday for Tet. At the main entrance on Tuesday morning I was met with many pairs of smiling eyes – I could not see their smiling mouths because of the masks everyone is wearing! There was a real buzz around the school as students reconnected with their friends and teachers, and got back down to face-to-face learning.

The Extended Essay is a 400-word dissertation style essay, which forms part of the core of the IB Diploma, along with TOK and CAS. Following a course teaching research and essay writing skills, the Essay is written on a topic of the student’s choosing. Completing the Extended Essay (EE) gives students the opportunity to produce a unique piece of work on a subject of interest to them, as well as to develop skills which will be extremely useful when they reach University.

For all of our students at BIS Hanoi, our university counsellor plays a key role in helping them to understand and successfully navigate the pathway to their university of choice. Taking the step from Sixth Form to university is an exciting challenge for students, but there are many big decisions which sit between these two milestones. It is the role of the university counsellor to provide support and guidance to students so that these decisions are informed, manageable, and ultimately lead our students to securing a place at a university which suits their ambitions for the future.

Your child’s natural desire to learn, experiment and question is fundamentally important to their education and development, so at BIS Hanoi we don’t give our students all of the answers. Instead, we give them some of life’s most interesting questions and challenges, and the tools to tackle them. Our aim for your child is that they learn creativity and resilience throughout their education with us. When they leave school and take their first steps into university and beyond, we want them to do so with the confidence of real global citizens. The question is, how do we teach that?

Following Sunday’s announcement regarding school closures, for the last five days of this term we have moved back to our Virtual School Experience (VSE). Emails and information were sent out on Sunday evening, and on Monday morning we launched straight back into teaching.

This week, BIS Hanoi returned to Virtual School and received a fantastic attendance from students.

Learning a language at BIS Hanoi goes beyond memorising words and basic grammar rules. Understanding the culture of the language that our students are learning has become our new teaching goal in the MFL department. Culture knowledge is not only providing the context that is allowing our students to give the right meaning to each new word, it has given a way to understand values, beliefs and customs around the world, without leaving Hanoi!

Protecting the health and safety of every member of our school community is our top priority at BIS Hanoi.

On Tuesday, I had the privilege of taking four BIS students to UNIS to take part in a Youth for Climate Action event. Ngoc Anh and Thanh Mai from Year 10 and our UNICEF ambassadors, Thu An and Angela from Year 12, worked with students from UNIS, HIS and Concordia.

At BIS Hanoi, we value learning outside of the classroom environment and traditionally arrange a residential trip for Year 12 students to Mai Chau as part of their IB CAS programme. However, due to COVID, this cannot take place this academic year 2020-2021. Therefore, our IB team devised an alternative 4 days off timetable that aimed to foster similar skills to those acquired during the residential trip, particularly team building and community service.