Weekly Highlights 27/09/2019

Mr. Simon Higham, Principal

Dear Parents

As I write to you all, I am currently away from school, representing BVIS HCMC at the Nord Anglia Education Senior Leadership Team Conference in Switzerland.

The conference takes place annually and brings together all Principals from across the globe from our 66 schools. The focus of this event is building relationships and collaboration throughout our global network with innovation at the heart of everything we do and aim to achieve. Please be assured that I will be spreading our unique message and educational philosophy that is very special to our school and will be looking at ways in which we can develop further into the future in terms of our educational provision and pedagogy.

Thank you to all parents who attended our first two phonics sessions, both this week and last as well as to all parents who attended the EYFS Class Dojo session last Friday. Your support for further developing the partnership between home and school is very much appreciated. I look forward to seeing you all again next week.

If you have missed any of the previous editions of our Highlights or simply would like to look back and refresh your knowledge of our school, they can be found on the News and Events section situated on the Home Page of our school website.

BBGV Charity Fun Run 2019

Good luck and best wishes to all of our runners who have registered for this week’s BBGV Charity Fun Run.

All relevant information about the event can be found here.

Please note that you can pay to collect your T Shirt and bib number until 27th Sep 2019 from the Primary Office (Ms Ha – Cashier).

All T Shirts are sold on a first-come-first-served basis with limited sizes. Students are encouraged to wear PE uniform.

Bringing exciting Juilliard Drama to Primary this year!

Our commitment at BVIS HCMC is to ensure that we recruit the very best teachers from across the world. In addition to this, we also have a commitment that we will develop them professionally to challenge their thinking regarding what they deliver in their classrooms and the impact it has on the learning of our students.

Recently, Ms Emily Jones, one of our Year 2 teachers spent a week with colleagues at the Juilliard School in New York. The purpose of the course was to support primary and secondary teachers in implementing Juilliard drama practice into the curriculum.

During the course, she took part in a range of different workshops that allowed her to understand the rationale, philosophy and ethos of the Juilliard ‘Creative Classroom’ curriculum.

In this post, read more about her learning and how this has been implemented into Primary this year, to further compliment the well-established drama programme that is already embedded into the secondary curriculum.

Students, teachers and staff from Nord Anglia Education schools raise more than US$650,000 for charity

This week, Nord Anglia Education published the impact report for its ‘Share a Dream’ outreach charitable activities. During the 2018-19 academic year more than US$650,000 was raised by students, teachers and staff at NAE schools as part of ongoing philanthropy efforts across the organisation.

In addition, 76,000 volunteering hours for good causes were recorded.

For more information about this incredible achievement that your child(ren) have been a part of, click here to access the post.

The Share a Dream online platform equips students, teachers and staff with a host of fundraising and volunteering tools to support communities across the world and this was introduced to all Primary and Key Stage 3 BVIS students in our Community Assembly today.

Meet our New Teachers

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

Welcome to Mr Christopher Hughes - Primary EAL Teacher

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

Although I am new to BVIS, I have been living in and loving Vietnam for almost five years.  I previously worked at ILA Vietnam.

2.   What were your first impressions of BVIS? 

When I first came to BVIS I was most impressed by the way the students use both Vietnamese and English fluently and switch between them seemingly effortlessly.

3. What were your first impressions of Vietnam? 

At first, I was afraid, especially of all the traffic.  However, after the first few days of culture shock were over, I gained a deep appreciation for the culture and character of this beautiful country.

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

While living in Vietnam, I hope to continue to improve my Vietnamese language skills, visit some of the less well-known provinces of Vietnam, and get to know the culture of the Vietnamese people.

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

Inspirational

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

• Friday 27^th – Sun 29^th Sept: Y12 Mui Ne Trip
• Sunday 29^th Sept: BBGV Fun Run
• Thu 3^rd Oct: Phonics Coffee morning (8.30am in the Main Hall) – part 3
• Thu 3rd Oct: Year 11 Options Evening (4.30pm in the Theatre/Dance Studio) All Year 11 parents and students are expected to attend.
• Friday 4^th – Sun 6^th Oct: Year 11 Geography field trip to Mui Ne

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.

The health, safety and wellbeing of our students remains the numbers 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:

Ms Rosy Clark, Head of Primary

Community Learning

Visiting BVIS on Friday of this week was Ms Naomi Skinner. A real-life example of “being ambitious”, the challenge to us all as members of the world-wide Nord Anglia Education community, Naomi is attempting to run all the way from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City in the next few months which is a distance of 2,200 km!

Naomi joined our weekly Primary assembly and led the children in a “wake up-shake up” activity before we held a house quiz all about her adventure. Both the children and adults wore sports clothes for our “mufti day” inspired by Naomi’s run to raise money for one of our community partners, Rang Dong School.

Until the end of June 2019, Naomi was a Primary class teacher at our sister school BIS and she visited BVIS several times last academic year to link with our Community Coordinators, Ms Nga and Ms Georgina, so our children will be able to engage with her amazing adventure. Her purpose for making this epic journey can be found on her website:

"From October 2019 – March 2020, I am aiming to be the first person to run from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City. As well as making friends and learning about Vietnamese Culture, I aim to fund-raise and raise the profile of children’s access to education and women’s empowerment. I intend to visit schools and charities down the length of the Vietnam. My trip is 100% self funded and all donations will go directly to my chosen charities. The charities that I am running on behalf of, work tirelessly with street children, orphans and families living in poverty. They also provide necessary health care and a safe, fun learning environment as well as supporting scholarships for education. I have worked across the globe as a primary school teacher for the past 13 years and strongly believe that every child should have access to education to ensure a brighter future for themselves and their families."

Naomi’s website has information in both English and Vietnamese and her Instagram and Facebook accounts are linked at the bottom of her website home page.  For more, please visit her website: www.namrunsnam.com

We hope BVIS families will follow Naomi’s progress as she runs through Vietnam over the coming months. Our Primary Community Leaders will take responsibility for updating us regularly with news about her journey in school.

Naomi’s visit to our Primary assembly was a fitting way to start our very first “Community Day” at BVIS. Also in assembly, we learned about this year’s chosen Global Goals that we will be focussing upon and then all children from F3 – Y6 took part in some fun community learning activities with older students to deepen their understanding about global citizenship.

Mr Jack Rudin, Head of Secondary

Let’s Think In English 

We were very lucky this week to welcome Michael Walsh back to BVIS to continue his work with the English Department. Michael is the lead trainer for Let’s Think in English and has been working closely with BIS HCMC for 3 years and with the English Department at BVIS for the past two years. Let’s Think in English is a programme developed by King’s College London which helps students develop their higher order thinking skills. The programme is currently used in over three hundred schools in the United Kingdom and BVIS HCMC is one of the very first International Schools in the world to start delivering the programme. 

Please read this post to read more.

University Fairs 

BVIS has been delighted to host two university fairs in the past fortnight. These have included representatives from 48 different universities, including some ‘big name’ schools such as UC Berkeley. The visits have enabled our Year 11-13 students to get a better understanding of the range of university possibilities open to them, as well as gathering information on specific institutions. In addition to the fairs, our Year 13 students have also been involved in university led workshops on student life in the USA and how US admissions committees work. All of this is part of our wider university guidance programme to ensure our students are properly equipped to get into a great university, wherever they want to go in the world. 

Basketball Success 

We are grateful to Nancy from 9S for writing a match report for the U14 basketball on Wednesday this week. 

"This week, the U14 Basketball team had a match against AMIS at our school gym. The BVIS boys U14 team were amazing and won the match by 20 to 19. After trying hard in the first half, they showed their team spirit by continually scoring baskets and kept working hard which led the team to a glorious win.  

For the girl's side, all of their perseverance, their teamwork and energy got them to a perfect win of 24 to 8. They always cheered for each other, encouraged each other and helped each other out so that the result they got was worth it. In addition, this is a great opportunity and experience for new members of the team, and they all enjoyed it."

Nancy 9S (Saigon House)

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.