Dear Parents,
I hope you enjoyed the long holiday weekend. Despite this shorter school week, there has been no let up in the range and quality of experiences across the Secondary Campus. A key feature of our educational approach at BIS HCMC is promoting students’ transdisciplinary understanding and finding ways to explore the application of this understanding to real world situations.
In this week’s update, I am pleased to share just a few examples of this approach from across the age range: from our Year 7 artists using scientific methods as a basis for observation and exploration, to our Year 12 IB students designing experiments to scrutinise the accuracy of Hollywood films, and our wonderful co-curricular Precious Plastics Club using technology to put their values into action by shredding and melting recycled plastic and turning them into marketable products. Find out more about these exciting activities below.
As we move ever closer to our return to normal school life, I am delighted that we are now able to return to a normal school day for Year 7 and Year 8 students and welcome the return of a range of community engagement and enrichment events in Term 3, to include the return of our Parent Partnership Series of workshops. Please check out the “Dates for your Diary” section below. I look forward to seeing you there.
My best wishes to you all for the weekend ahead,
Sean O’Neill
Head of Secondary
Experimental Sciences are at the heart of the IB Diploma Programme. Every IB student takes at least one “Group 4 subject”, exploring the concepts, theories, models and techniques that underpin each scientific discipline and through these develop their understanding of the scientific method and its application. Yesterday our year 12 IB Scientists worked on their transdisciplinary Group 4 project. Find out from Mr Husband, our Director of Sport how our students used their scientific knowledge and skills to scrutinise a well known element of popular culture. Click here to read more.
Earlier this year, the BIS HCMC Precious Plastics team applied for the NAE Charitable Giving Grant in order to help fund its projects. Under its Global Goals initiative, Precious Plastics has focused on shredding and melting recycled plastic and turning them into marketable products. We aim to sell these products in order to raise funds that will then be channelled towards fostering environmental sustainability in our community.
We are very delighted to announce that Precious Plastics has been awarded the Research & Development Grant for $1,500 by the NAE Student Advisory Board. The board was impressed with the team’s mission, which focuses on “elongating the lifetime of plastic waste in order to generate a profit as well as to reduce waste.” The grant money will be used to help purchase new equipment and furnish the team’s designated club room, where they will continue to research and implement ways toward creating marketable products out of recycled plastic.
The Precious Plastics team
In Art Year 7 enjoyed a school visit up to the fourth floor Science labs as they explored microscopic first hand observation drawing techniques for their Bio-Art project this term. The aim of this project is to investigate ways artists can create abstract compositions using real life sources as inspiration. Next lesson the students will move their lovely drawings forwards into some beautiful watercolour and mixed media final outcomes. The activity also gave us some interesting points of discussion as we compared how scientists draw from a microscope against an artist’s quest for the perfect balance of the formal qualities of line, tone, texture and shape!
Janet Williams
Head of Art
Juilliard Music Workshop
Music is a fundamental feature of BIS school life and we are delighted to invite parents to learn more. On Thursday 26th May in the Secondary Auditorium, Erin Wight will be leading a Secondary Parents workshop giving an overview of the Juilliard collaboration for Music. Erin is the BIS/Juilliard Music Curriculum specialist. She will take this opportunity to explain the Juilliard resources and the Juilliard approach to Music education. There will be an opportunity to experience a music lesson (no musical skills necessary). There will also be performances from BIS KS3 students demonstrating their progress in the band/choral/strings programme.
The session will start at 8.30 and will last about 1 hour.
Looking forward to seeing you there.
Ian Alexander
Director of Music.
Moving On Workshop
Year 7 Spanish students have been learning about music. We worked in pairs and created video interviews about our musical tastes, our favourite singers and opinions about different types of music. You can see some of the videos here.
We also wrote some short texts on our musical tastes and shared them with the class, as well as practicing our listening using www.lyricstraining.com, a website with songs in Spanish.
This gave our students an opportunity to practice their Speaking skills and develop confidence in expressing themselves in Spanish”.
Fiorella Balbuena
Spanish teacher.
The year 6 transition process of 2022-2023 got underway today and it was wonderful to see the enthusiasm and excitement of our Year 6 students as they made their first trip across the bridge. This first in our series of transition events was a chance to meet the Year 7 team who will guide them over the coming weeks and months. The assembly focused on building early familiarity to the secondary campus while also nurturing confidence and understanding towards the upcoming changes. The Year 6 students will return to the secondary campus in just over 2 weeks for a more extended experience as they participate in an orientation morning designed to build on the foundations established today.
As our Year 11 and 13 students are now on study leave, we are now able to return to the normal end of school day timings for Year 7 and 8 students.
From Monday 9th May, the school day will end at 2:40pm for all Secondary students.
We continue our series of Virtual University visits over the next two weeks with the following two visits:
Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore is currently ranked as the 12th best university in the world (QS World Rankings 2022), placing it higher than Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Cornell and UC Berkeley to name just a few. Singapore is also an increasingly popular destination for students from Vietnam having the obvious advantage of its proximity and excellent transport links. NTU has a particular draw for those students who excel in STEM subjects but wish to remain in Asia for their university studies. We will be joined by Chan Jia Qi who will be presenting on NTU’s Admission and Scholarships and will also provide a small glimpse of Life at NTU. There will be a chance for questions at the end of the presentation.
The Australian National University (ANU) was ranked 27th in the QS 2022 Global University Rankings, placing it as the number one university in Australia, and indeed in the Southern Hemisphere. Located in the Australian capital Canberra, the university has an extensive body of International Students. ANU has seven academic colleges that house a number of schools and research centres that specialise in a range of disciplines – all relevant but some unique in Australian region. Andy Pham will talk students and their parents through this structure and through the admissions process. He will also look at the type of experience a student might have while studying at ANU. Andy will be available for questions at the end of his presentation.
We hope to see you at one or both of these events.
Have a wonderful weekend,
Sean O’Neill
Head Teacher, Secondary Campus
We are incredibly proud of our Year 11 class of 2024, for their impressive IGCSE (International General Certificate of Secondary Education) results. This incredible cohort of 155 students, our largest IGCSE class in the history of the school, have significantly surpassed UK and international averages and were awarded 97% of all grades at A*-C. An incredible 62% of all grades awarded were at A*-A.
