Weekly Highlights 27/10/2023

Mr. Simon Higham, Principal

Dear Parents

A warm welcome back to all of our BVIS community after the half term break. I trust that both you and your child(ren) managed to have a good rest and are now ready for another half term of exciting, learning opportunities.

Welcome also to our new families who have joined/rejoined our school this week. We are all very much looking forward to working with you in partnership during your BVIS journey.

Spooktacular Halloween Event

I would like to thank all parents, students and BVIS staff involved in organising our first ever Friends of BVIS (FoBVIS) event to celebrate Halloween.

Organised by our community, for our community, please look out for a full write-up and pictures in next week's edition of the Highlights. 

FoBVIS Needs You!

To help support FoBVIS events in school, we need your help and support. If you can offer any amount of your time to help with this year’s Halloween Event or other upcoming events, please contact: Ms. Nhien Ngo - Events Manager via email at nhien.ngo@bvisvietnam.com / Hotline: 090 6880 005.   

As always, any help you can give will go a very long way! Go on......we’d love you to get involved!

BVIS Students are Amongst the Top Learners in Vietnam!

I would like to extend my congratulations to our incredible BVIS students for achieving outstanding results in the Cambridge 2023 Awards.

Six students from BVIS have received prestigious awards from Cambridge Assessment International Education to acknowledge their outstanding performance in the June 2023 examination series.   

BVIS students always work hard, giving their very best in all that they do and as ever, we are extremely proud of everyone’s achievements.

Read more about their successes in this post from the ‘News’ section of our school website.

BVIS Student Visits MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

A huge congratulations to Bao Quyen (BQ), Year 10 who will represent our school at the forthcoming Nord Anglia Education STEAM event held at MIT, consistently one of the world’s most prestigious universities.

Our unique global collaborations enable our students to experience lifelong learning opportunities from the very best, across the world.

Read more in this post about BQ’s inspiration for her innovative project ideas. We wish her the very best when she visits Boston, Massachusetts next week and look forward to hearing about her experiences when she returns to school.

School Photographs – Dates For Your Diary

This half term, we will continue to use the professional photography company ‘Pret-A-Portrait’ to take our individual and class photographs for this school year. They will be in school during the following dates below:
 
Monday 13th November to Friday 17th November 2023
Venue:  BVIS Sport’s Hall (3rd floor)

Please look out for more information via your email inbox regarding:

• which day your child(ren) will have their photograph taken
• how to purchase photographs and 
• contact information for help and advice.

Introducing our Amazing New Teachers

Ms Tina Hsu  

BA(Hons) in Business Studies, University of Sunderland, UK

PGCE, University of Sunderland, UK 

Tina completed her Business Degree at the University of Sunderland and started working in the Banking Sector for several years. She then returned to university to complete her PGCE and is now an experienced teacher. Tina spent 12 years in her school in the UK and has vast experience in teaching both Business and ICT.  Tina then moved to Qingdao, China spending 4 years there as a teacher and house parent in a boarding school. Tina’s most recent role was in Zhuhai where she was also Head of Year 12.    

Tina has a love for coffee and food and is excited to explore everything that Vietnam has to offer.

Contact Us

Should you wish to contact your child’s Class Teacher(s) or Form Tutor directly, we encourage communication to be written in the language you most feel confident to use. 

Parents may also find it useful to contact their child’s class teacher(s) or form tutor directly for all individual queries about their academic work/social and emotional wellbeing in school.  Individual contact details can be found in the Parents' Handbooks or via our Primary/Secondary Receptionists.  

As always, your engagement and connection with our school and your child’s / children's learning is vitally important to us. Thank you for taking time to read today’s Highlights and we hope you found them both interesting and useful.

On behalf of everyone at BVIS, we wish you a great weekend ahead.

Mrs Mary McAloon, Head of Primary

Project Curiosity

Over the course of this week and next, Years 4, 5 and 6 students have the opportunity to bring together their learning and present their findings and experiences of the deep dive that they took into a topic they chose.  The aim of Project Curiosity is to encourage students to follow their own interests and focus their learning on topics that inspire and engage them.  Another part of Project Curiosity is for students to investigate with their parents, providing great opportunities for home learning.

Yesterday was the turn of Year 6 to start this year’s showcasing; they all presented with confidence and enthusiasm.  Teachers and parents were proud of the students having dedicated their free time at home to learning more about their topic of choice.  Adults at the showcase also came away from the event having learned facts about topics they had never even considered before!  Well done to our Year 6 students and thank you to their parents for all the support and time spent with their children at home on the project.

Bilingual Month Celebration

This week saw the final week of the special activities and challenges set by our additional language teachers to celebrate our bilingualism.  Throughout the month of October, the primary community had activities such as ‘Tongue Twister’ challenge, bilingual poetry and ‘Korean Golden Time’ to participate in.  Through these fun activities, participants not only practiced using the languages of our school but also celebrated the fact that knowing two languages provides us with many more opportunities than only knowing one language. 

Overall, it was a fantastic month, and we are looking forward to seeing our students and families celebrate their bilingualism throughout this school year and beyond. 

Lower Primary Positive Parenting – Wearing the Firm Hat

Thank you to our Lower Primary parents who joined Ms Khuyen and Mr Max to learn more about and discuss the importance of providing children with good routines to follow and clear boundaries to guide their choices in life. Parenting will always present questions for discussion and these forums that our school offers, provides a healthy channel for parents to share, discuss and know that they are not alone.  

Our school community is always here to support parents.  If questions arise about your children that you feel school can support with, then please reach out to your child’s class teachers who are always here to help.

Bulldogs – The final preparation

Upcoming Events

1. 30/10 – 4/11/23 – Clubs Programme breaks for City Championships
   
   
2. 6/11/23 – Block 1B Clubs programme begins
   
   
3. 13-17/11/23 – School Photograph Week
   
   
4. 16/11/23 – Maths Workshop for Y3 & Y4 Parents
   
   
5. 22/11/23 – Reading Workshop for EYFS Parents
   
   
6. 30/11/23 – Reading Workshop for Lower Primary Parents
   
   
7. 9/12/23 – Christmas Fun Day for families (tickets required)

Mr Toby Bate, Head of Secondary 

Welcome Back 

A huge welcome back to all students after the October half-term holiday. Form tutors and Heads of House have been delighted with the attitude of the students following a well-deserved rest. With so many house activities coming up in the next few weeks, we would like to encourage everyone to get involved and to support each other. The house points competition is as competitive as ever, and it is impossible to say which house will be lifting the trophy at the end of Term 1. For an update on the points totals, please see below:

Housepoint totals

Student Council Update 

The Student Council has kicked off the second half of this term with lots of activities and events ranging from Halloween to Biology Week to the Blue Dragon Marathon. Students can participate in these activities not just for the sake of having fun after long classes but also to acquire new interesting knowledge as well as taking part in caring for our community. 

Importantly, we have also been granted a ‘TEDxYouth Event’ license and are allowed to host an upcoming TEDxBVIS HCMC Youth event in our school - the first ever at BVIS!

We are pleased to announce that the winners, The Bittersweet, will represent BVIS at the HCMC International Schools Battle of the Bands Competition in February 2024.

Linh and Nancy 
Co-presidents of the Student Council

Halloween Celebration

Today we saw students coming to school dressed up in Halloween fancy dress to celebrate and give a small donation to charity.



There were other Halloween themed events earlier in the week as well, with games organised by the student leaders as well as a bake sale.

Biology Week @ BVIS

Next week is Biology Week at BVIS and we encourage all students to get involved with the different activities that will be taking place. If students want to find out more about what’s going on and if they want to help out, then they can speak to their science teachers. 

Battle of the Bands

This week three student bands, featuring performers from Year 10 to Year 13, battled it out to be named BVIS Battle of the Bands Champion! Congratulations to all three bands involved; Rootsix, Cardiac Arrest and the reigning champions The Bittersweet.

We are pleased to announce that the winners, The Bittersweet, will represent BVIS at the HCMC International Schools Battle of the Bands Competition in February 2024.

Thank-you also to our wonderful audience members and everyone for supporting. 

Sparx Maths Champions

Students earn XP by completing tasks in their Sparx Homework
 
Compulsory Tasks earn 60-80XP
XP Boost Tasks earn 120-150XP
Target Tasks earn 120-150XP
Independent Learning Tasks earn 100XP
 
Students reach a new Sparx Level every 10000XP

Top XP earners this week are:

 
Congratulations to the top Sparx students for this week!

Champions of the Week

This week’s champion student is...

Khanh Linh (13V) is this week’s champion! Congratulations!

Champion Tutor Group

This week's Champion tutor group is...

A huge well done to everyone in 12S who worked together to achieve more housepoints than any other tutor group last week. 

Upcoming Events

1. 27^th Oct, 23: Year 7 – 9 Reports go home
   
   
2. 27^th Oct, 23: Season 1A clubs end
   
   
3. 27^th Oct, 23: Halloween Dress Up day and events
   
   
4. 30^th Oct – 3^rd Nov, 23: Biology Week
   
   
5. 2^nd Nov: Year 13 parents eve
   
   
6. 6^th Nov, 23: Season 1B clubs start
   
   
7. 14^th Nov, 23: Year 12 parents eve
   
   
8. 20^th Nov – 8^th Dec, 23: House Football
   
   
9. 28^th Nov, 23: Year 7 parents eve

Safeguarding and Child Protection

The health, safety and wellbeing of our students remains the number one priority at BVIS HCMC.

Should you have a concern for the welfare of any child in our school, please refer to our Safeguarding poster below: