Weekly Highlights 13/09/2019

Mr. Simon Higham, Principal

Dear Parents

It has been a very busy week in the BVIS calendar as all students have now moved beyond those first few weeks of settling and have begun to establish well embedded routines to manage and maximize their learning.

On Monday this week, I had the pleasure of visiting one of our Nord Anglia Education family members, Dover Court International School in Singapore to take part with their Health and Safety evaluation. As I have mentioned in previous Highlights, the health, safety and well being of our students remains our numbers one priority and it is always useful to learn from others and in turn, help to enable our colleagues worldwide, to gain from us too.

On Thursday this week, 13 of our teachers attended the Level 3 Safeguarding training that was hosted by our close colleagues at our other Nord Anglia Education school in HCMC, BIS in District 2.

We are pleased to report that this course reaffirmed the well established Safeguarding practices that we already have across our school and allowed us all to enquire and reflect upon how these can be further refined to help us achieve the marginal gains that we strive for.

The Safeguarding and Health and Safety of all our BVIS HCMC community is always our number one priority. Should you have a concern for the welfare of any child in our school, please refer to our Safeguarding poster below:

Welcome back Fundinotots!

This week, we welcomed back our very youngest members of the BVIS community, our Fundinotots.

Fundinotots is a programme which enables parents and children to familiarise themselves with the school environment. It is a friendly place to meet other families with young children and is a safe, friendly and thriving community for children aged 0-36 months.

Free Play Sessions Now Available!

If you have a child(ren) aged from 0-36 months old, join our Fundinotots Free Play Sessions that are perfect for your family!  

I am pleased to share that these Free Play Sessions are now available at the following times:  

• 24th, 25th or 26th Sept 2019   

08:00-10:15 a.m on (Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday morning)  

OR  

• 1st, 2nd or 3rd Oct 2019  

08:00-10:15 a.m on (Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday morning)  

To register for your free play session, click here. We are looking forward to welcoming you to our thriving Fundinotot community. 

*Note: Each child must be accompanied by parents/guardians to attend the Free Play (02 adults per child maximum). Limited places are on offer, and strictly on a first come first served basis. 

To find out more about our Fundinotots programme, click on this link from our website that has more information and details about how you can join us.

Full Moon Festival Celebration

It was great to see our school community in their Ao Dai today to help celebrate and learn about the traditions of Moon Festival. Looking around, this got me thinking about how others around the world celebrate the same festival but in very different ways:

Mid-Autumn Festival Around the World

Moon Festival, or Mid-Autumn Festival is a popular harvest festival celebrated not only in Vietnam but also across many Asian countries. It dates back more than 3,000 years to moon worshipping in China's Shang Dynasty (c.16th century-11th century BC).

The festival is traditionally held on the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese lunar calendar, during a full moon, which is in September or early October in the Gregorian calendar.

Republic of Korea

Mid-Autumn Festival, known as Chuseok in the Republic of Korea, is a major harvest festival and a three-day holiday in the country celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar. Some families also go to cemeteries to honour the deceased relatives.

Sri Lanka

Every month, Sri Lanka, the island nation of 19 million people shuts down for the full moon day. The mid-autumn day is especially grand with a national holiday and lots of disciples swarm into temples for sermons or moon worship.

China

Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the most important holidays in China. Farmers celebrate the end of the summer harvest season on this day.

Singapore and Malaysia

Great importance is attached to the Mid-Autumn Festival in Singapore and Malaysia. Galas organized by commercial units are seen in many communities. Besides the celebrations of eating mooncake and lighting lanterns, there are garden tours and dragon dances. It is also sometimes referred to as the Lantern Festival or Mooncake Festival in these countries.

Japan

Mid-Autumn Festival is called Tsukimi or Otsukimi (literally means moon-viewing) in Japan. The Tsukimi custom originated from the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival as the tradition of the Chinese festival was introduced to Japan 1,000 years ago.

(information taken from China Daily)

This weekend, take time to talk with your children about why this festival is important to you and your family and discuss how the traditions of one culture can have both similarities and differences to another.

Feel free to share pictures of you and your family celebrating the Moon Festival together. I would be pleased to share these in next week’s Highlights.

Contact jacy.nguyen@bvisvietnam.com

CPR – An Essential Skills Workshop for all Parents to Attend

Thank you to all parents who attended our CPR Workshop on Wednesday morning.

We sincerely hope that you found it both interesting and useful and we look forward to hosting more of these parent workshops, in collaboration with Family Medical Practice throughout the year.

Read more about this event in this post from our school website.

If you have any ideas or suggestions for future workshops, please feel free to contact Ms. Thao Nguyen (Director of Admissions and Marketing) either in the Admissions Office or by email: thao.nguyen1@bvisvietnam.com

Meet our New Teachers

This week, we have another new teacher to our school to introduce you to.

Welcome to Ms Rebecca Robinson - EYFS Teacher/EYFS Coordinator 

1. Where did you live prior to coming to Vietnam, what role did you have and what was the name of your previous school? 

I lived in Bristol, working as the Assistant Head and EYFS Lead at The Dolphin School.

2.   What were your first impressions of BVIS? 

What a friendly and welcoming school community there is at BVIS and what amazing facilities the school has, especially in EYFS.

3. What were your first impressions of Vietnam? 

I spent a month travelling Vietnam a few years ago but didn’t spend much time in HCMC so look forward to seeing what it’s like to live here. Lots of bikes, food and strong coffee!

4. What 3 things are you looking forward to doing whilst working and living in Vietnam? 

 Exploring South East Asia, trying lots of interesting food and learning to Scuba Dive and get my PADI.

5. If you could sum up your experience so far in just one word, what would it be?

Exciting!

Look out for another new teacher in next week’s Highlights.

For information on all of our teachers in school, please click here to see their profiles on our website.

Important Upcoming dates for your Diary

• Thu 19^th Sept: Phonics Coffee morning  (8.30am in the Main Hall) – part 1
• Fri 20^th Sept: EYFS (F1, F2 and F3) Coffee Morning – Class Dojo

      (8.30am in the ELC)

• Monday 23^rd Sept: Project Curiosity begins in Primary
• Thu 26th Sept: Phonics Coffee morning  (8.30am in the Main Hall) – part 2
• Sunday 29^th Sept: BBGV Fun Run 

Essential School Contacts

If you need to contact school, please use the essential contacts below to ensure that you get in touch with the correct departments in the most effective way:

For all Primary Enquiries

(028) 3758 0709 / ext. 111

For all Secondary Enquiries

(028) 3758 0717 / ext. 211

For all Enquiries linked to Admissions

(028) 3758 0710

A full list of our school contacts can be found here on our school website

Engage and Connect with us on Social Media

Connect with us on social media to discover more about what's happening at the school, and to learn about events and student achievements:

Ms Rosy Clark, Head of Primary

Drama and performance in the Primary School

This week was the occasion of our Moon Festival celebrations. As usual, we began with a dragon dance and children’s entertainment on the school field enjoyed by all EYFS and Primary children dressed in traditional ao dai.

The second part of our celebrations featured all eight of our Year 3 and Year 5 classes. The children entertained a large audience of Primary and Secondary students, staff and parents in the main hall with dancing, some drama and their own Year 5 dragon dance. Congratulations to the children, teaching assistants and teachers for a colourful and accomplished performance.

So, how do we nurture the confidence and performance skills of children at BVIS as demonstrated in Friday’s Moon Festival celebrations?

Read on to find out:

• As a bilingual international Primary school, we ensure that speaking and listening skills are an essential part of every lesson at BVIS. Throughout the day, day in and day out, our children are encouraged to practise these skills in order to articulate clearly and present themselves confidently.
• As we have outstanding facilities at BVIS, we are able to provide children with opportunities at least twice every year to perform on stage, either in the theatre on the third floor or in the school’s enormous main hall. This exposure to performance begins in F1 with our two-year olds, so it’s no wonder that our Upper Primary year groups are such confident performers after years of practice!

• As a Nord Anglia Education school, we are able to offer our children high quality learning through our collaboration with Juilliard in New York. Primary children study music with Mr Fergus and drama with their class teachers (as well as dance in Year 6 with Ms Danielle) using Juilliard programmes of learning.

An example of the impact of this was seen last week in Friday’s Primary assembly when Class 5S shared their learning and performed their impressive, newly developed drama skills following a series of Juilliard drama lessons.

Mr Jack Rudin, Head of Secondary

KS5 Art Trip

This week, A Level Art students in Years 12 and 13 embarked on an art trip in the city, where they were joined by art students from BIS. The trip began at the Museum of Fine Arts in the centre of town, where students learned about the history of Vietnamese art whilst also completing some group drawing activities with their BIS peers. Students then visited the Craig Thomas Gallery to see a show by a Saigon-based painter inspired by the abstract expressionist paintings of 1940s New York. We then travelled to District Two’s Factory of Contemporary Arts to see two contemporary shows combining drawings, paintings, collage and installation work. Here, students were also able to spend time in the gallery’s reading room, extending their contextual knowledge of other artists and art movements for their coursework and personal investigations. We’re looking forward to seeing the creative and individual work produced by the students in response to the visit!

Student Council

This week saw the launch of our new Student Council. We are revamping it this year with new elected positions to bring focus to key areas which we as a school care about. These are: Wellbeing, Communities and Environment. Each area is something that we, as a school, believe passionately in and although we already do a lot of community and environmental work, we want to raise the profile and try to get more student involvement.

The wellbeing chair will oversee a part of the student council to look at student welfare and to try and make the school a healthy and enjoyable place for all our students. On top of these three chair-people will be our Student President who will guide these committees and help shape the direction of the school. This should be an exciting time for our school and students, so please get involved!

We would like to wish all of our BVIS community, a pleasant weekend ahead and thank you for engaging with us this week and into the future.

As always, please do not hesitate to contact me directly at: Simon.Higham@bvisvietnam.com to give feedback on our Weekly Highlights and how it can be further improved in the future.