March to conduct our second curriculum review of our CLC programme. You have already received a questionnaire from me in which I invite your views on your child’s experiences of the programme in the British Secondary and High School. Your feedback is greatly appre-ciated and will enable us to continually improve the quality of our languages provision, so I do hope you can take a few minutes to participate.

We hope you enjoyed the Chinese New Year holiday and we hope our students have come back refreshed. With only 33 school days left of their studies, it is imperative that our H4 and H2 students soak up every last minute of teach-ing and learning time as they enter the final furlong of their examination programmes.

新年快乐!

Dear Parents

This month we celebrated the start of the Year of the Goat during our always spectacular Chinese New Year celebra-tions. As ever, the Chinese Department pulled out all the stops and, with a willing band of slightly embarrassed looking male volunteers in garish cos-tumes, recreated a production of ‘The Cowherd and the Weaving Lady’. This story showcased not only the excel-lent acting and dancing abilities of our male teachers, but also the close links between Chi-nese Valentine Day and the traditional European Valen-tine’s celebrations.

The CNY assembly was the culmination of a week-long Festival of Languages that has grown from last year’s Mother Tongue Day, to become a cross section, cross campus

event that brought the whole school together to celebrate

our wonderful diversity. Visit-ing authors, workshops, video displays, riveting reads, dis-plays, radio shows and poetry competitions have all featured at ESC this week and my thanks to all of those involved in making it happen.

As we continue on our path to become a Centre of Linguistic Excellence, we will have a team of visiting experts in Chinese Language teaching with us in

Welcome from the BSHS Head

February 2015 Issue 6

ESC Newsletter Coming up this month:

3-4 March: Futurewise

10-14 March: U13 FOBISIA

17 March: IGCSE & IB Options Evening

24-27 March: Wizard of Oz Production

Inside this issue:

Chinese New Year

4

Radio Reflet 6

University Counsellor

8

ESCPA 13

IB Spotlight 16

Sports News

18

And much more!

Chrysta Garnett, Head of British Secondary and High School Section

Languages Festival Week

Languages Festival Week was a big success, with students across the secondary campus participating in a wide range of activities both within and out of lessons. Languages Week lessons featured creative writ-ing competitions, poetry recit-als and visits to our two fea-tured Reading Zones. Teach-ers and students alike record-ed themselves reading ex-cerpts from their favourite books and turned these into QR codes, creating interactive displays around the school. The Eslite Book Fair provided many opportunities to test our wallets with hundreds of books on offer and Key Stage 3 students spent some time thinking about the role of language in shaping our indi-vidual identities, culminating in a lovely display called ‘Our Favourite Words’. In every registration period of the week, students watched video

clips of their peers speaking in their mother tongue – it was truly impressive to see the range of languages spoken by our community and a wonder-ful celebration of language! Of course we were disap-pointed by the late cancella-tion of the Ha Jin visit, due to the extreme winter weather in North America at the mo-ment. However, our two oth-er author visits, by children’s author Jon Agee and German author Z. Schwartz, were truly fantastic and captivated audiences.

Over the next few weeks our Languages Week Press Team and TES Radio will continue to celebrate the week’s events and showcase work produced by students. Please stay tuned for our feature publication which will be shared with our community before the end of term.

Chinese Language Review

Earlier this week Dr Weston wrote to TES parents with information about the upcom-ing Chinese Language Review. Between 2nd and 5th March we will host a review team who will follow up on their last visit, which took place in 2010, to review Chinese language provision across the school and make recommendations for further development of the programme. Please note that an information evening for parents, focusing on teach-ing and learning Chinese lan-guage in an international set-ting, will be held on Tuesday, 3rd March in the EPC Amphi-theatre from 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm. If you plan to attend the evening please RSVP via email to your section secretary. Please see Dr Weston’s letter for more information about the review, the visiting team and the information evening.

Message from the Deputy Head

Page 2 ESC Newsletter

Sonya Papps, Deputy Head British Section

Recently our H2 students were given their academic reports, which are crucial at this stage, as they detail the students’ current progress and their tar-gets in the lead up to exam preparation. These reports will ensure that students have set targets across all their subject areas and will also help them to construct study schedules which will ensure that prepara-tion is comprehensive and thor-ough and that learning routines

are maintained in the remaining days until study leave. Teaching staff are also using these re-ports as a focus for meetings with individual students in H2 and H4, in which they will set personal curriculum targets and offer guidance on how each student can be successful across all their subjects.

On the 5th March, we look forward to meeting with you during the High School Parent-

Teacher meetings in which students are strongly encour-aged to attend with parents in order to strengthen the three-way dialogue between teachers, parents and the student. These meetings will focus on the stu-dent’s learning and progress towards their subject goals and together we will share tips and strategies for making the final few weeks of school for H2 and H4 students productive and rewarding.

Focus on Progress

Daisy Rana, Assistant Head British Section

Jon Agee shares his creativity with our

students

Z. Schwartz captivates his

German Section audience

Page 3 Issue 6

James Woodall, Assistant Head British Section

Wizard of Oz

Setting the Stage Preparations are hotting up for the annual school show, which will take place on the last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of term. The cast are working hard in rehearsals during lunchtimes, after school and on weekends.

Work is also taking place on the set. A huge revolving wall arrived on the last Friday before the holiday that will be used as a backdrop for three sets, which are being designed by an enthusiastic group of H1s. There will also be smoke machines, special effects, a rotat-ing bridge, moving house and many more exciting visual effects on the night. It is going to be a very busy four weeks for the set design team.

Matinee The Wizard of Oz is a fun show for audiences of all ages and we really hope to fill each

night. As a way of making the show more accessible to younger audiences, we have made a change this year. The Wednesday show (opening night) has been changed from the usual 7:00 pm start to a

5:30 pm start. This means that primary-aged students can attend and still get home for a good sleep on a school night. The show has been advertised at the EPC and tickets for the Wednesday will be sold at the EPC first. The cast will be visit-

ing the EPC to do a promo-tional performance and there is also a primary school draw-ing competition taking place to win tickets to the show.

Ticket Sales Tickets will go on sale next Monday at the ESC. You can buy the tickets from the British School office. The cost is 300 NT per ticket or 1000 NT for a family of four. There are only 160 tickets per evening, so it is im-portant that you purchase them as soon as you can, as they will sell out quickly. As ever, the ESPCA will be selling refreshments before and after the show and the evenings

promise to be extremely fun and entertaining for all.

We hope to see as many of you there as possible, but re-member to buy your tickets soon as it is going to be a very popular show.

Chinese New Year Celebrations

Page 4 ESC Newsletter

Page 5 Issue 6

Chinese New Year Celebrations

Page 6 ESC Newsletter

Radio Reflet Rivets TES Helen Gamble, Editor

Two years ago the French Sec-tion of TES launched an initia-tive that they hoped would improve the oral and written skills of students, as well as being a fun project for them to get involved in. With a €2000 per year subsidy from the French Education Ministry, TES Web Radio was born. Since that time, the initiative has gone from strength to strength and has undergone a name change, as well as growing in popularity amongst students and as a teaching tool for teachers.

TES web radio is now called Radio Reflet, an appropriate name, as reflet means ‘reflection’ and that is what students who want to broad-cast are being asked to do – to reflect on topics as diverse as K-Pop, climate change, school events and life in Taiwan. The letters in Reflet also stand for Radio-Ecole (school)-Francaise (French)-Link-Europe-Taiwan and thus perfectly encompass the aims of the project.

Currently the format of Radio Reflet is a collection of audio clips, like podcasts, that are written, delivered and pro-duced by students. These can currently be accessed by visit-ing the TES website, going into the French Section and then clicking on Web Radio TES: http://academic.tes.tp.edu.tw/awss/website/webradio. In the near future, however, Radio Reflet is hoping to have its own domain at radioreflet.com.tw.

All recordings are ordered into categories, depending on their subject matter. The categories are:

Vie du réseau AEFE Broadcasts relating to the Agence pour l’enseignement fran-çais à l’étranger (French ministry for education abroad). In recent broadcasts, students were able to interview important repre-sentatives of the ministry when

they visited the school. Parole libre A place for freedom of speech. Here you can express your views on anything you like. A recent broadcast extolled the virtues of Taylor Swift, a young broadcaster’s favourite singer. Revue de presse Seen something noteworthy in the news of late and want to comment on it? Here’s where you can do just that. Remem-ber the cooking oil crisis? Find out what some students had to say about it. Vie de l'école A great place to comment on what’s happening around our school. Feuilleton Here you will find the latest episodes of several broadcast series. La France à Taipei Interesting things happening within the French community in Taiwan. Economie What does Dr Weston think of the state of the economy? The first recording in this category will tell you the answer! Lecture Excerpts from books… with added sound effects! Arts et Cultures Broadcasts relating to culture and the arts, including inter-views with famous people. Even people who have long since died are given airtime, with students taking on the roles of both interviewer and inter-viewee!

Jesus Robla, Franck Lefevre and Sabrina Barre, all teachers in the French Section, explained that Radio Reflet has been useful in lessons, where students can use the radio project to prac-tice their writing, speaking and listening skills, as well as fur-ther master their use of tech-nology. It has also been a useful tool for students who are stud-ying French as a second lan-guage, as it gives them a chance

to listen to French being spo-ken and to practice speaking the language themselves.

Radio Reflet is also run as an ECA that meets every Friday. A group of keen broadcasters from all sections of the second-ary school meet to express and record their opinions. It’s be-come the place to share ideas, work as a team, freely express your opinions, gain useful knowledge about technology and foster both school and community spirit. The ECA does not have strict attendance rules – any student is welcome to drop in as many times as they like. The teachers running the ECA hope that in the fu-ture more students from all sections will join in and they will be able to broadcast more items in English. Staff are availa-ble to help with ideas, as well as the technical aspects of broadcasting. So, if you have something to say, just come along and say it!

Other initiatives that have come out of the Radio Reflet project are the Friday morning song choice, where students can nominate a song to be played in the Phase 1 atrium prior to registration and the jingle competition, where stu-dents have been asked to come up with a new jingle to match the name change. There is also a plan to introduce more live streaming – an idea that was trialled during the Christmas Bazaar, where a grand total of eight people tuned in to a live broadcast! Hopefully this num-ber will increase, as more peo-ple become aware of the pro-ject.

With new initiatives in the pipeline and an intern from the Chinese Cultural University due to join the team soon, Radio Reflet is set to become an inspirational source of infor-mation for the TES community. Happy listening!

Page 7 Issue 6

Student Council Update Jade Tsui, Secretary

Along with the New Year came exciting new activities in the Student Council. First off, the Student Council winter recruit-ment took place in early Janu-ary and, in order to add a crea-tive touch to the applications, the executives posed questions like: “What would you be if you were an item of food?” and “What was the biggest mistake you’ve ever made?” on the application. Even though these questions are fun, they are also quite difficult to answer. How-ever, many interesting replies came from our applicants, showing not only their creativi-ty, but also their passion for the Student Council as well. The

executives spent ages deciding who to recruit, due to the amount of amazing applicants and in the end we were able to recruit many talented and dedi-cated people through thewin-ter recruitment this year. Thank you again to those who applied!

Also, in order to accommodate the number of hungry students during break times, the Student Council have decided to start selling food during lunch breaks, increasing the variety of snacks we sell. Now there are turnip cakes (Monday), egg pancakes and burgers (Tuesday & Wednesday), hash browns and cookies (Thursday) up for sale, so please come along

when you need a little snack!

If you’ve been looking carefully on the doors of the wash-rooms (because you kind of have to when you’ve got no-where to stare) you will see small posters about famous people with autism. This is a joint project between the Stu-dent Council and the ASPIRE department to raise people’s awareness about autism and that it is perfectly ok to ‘be your own kind of special’.

More updates from the Student Council will be coming through social media and various other platforms, so please keep an eye out for them!

Message from the Library Angela Chang, Chief Librarian

The Languages Festival Week was a very exciting week for book lovers. This year the library had once again invited the Eslite Bookstore, Librairie Le Pigeonnier, German PA and a newly joined bookshop, Sun-ny Books, to participate in our two-day Book Fair and a great variety of books were present-ed to everyone in the ESC community! Some teachers complained they went home with a significantly lighter wal-

let; however I believe their souls will be amazingly wealthi-er soon after!

Another great event was the visit of the author/illustrator of popular picture books and wordplay books, Jon Agee. Mr Agee visited our school and spoke to Year 9s on Tuesday, February 10th. He talked about the nuts and bolts of develop-ing stories, the uniqueness of illustrating a picture book and

the opportunities wordplay has for humor and pictures! A lot of pictures from his books were drawn to facilitate com-prehension. There were gasps of amazement and laughter; students and teachers thor-oughly enjoyed his workshop!

Special Thank You to our par-ent, Charlene Lai, for her sup-port to make Mr Agee’s visit a reality.

Book Fair and Author Visit

As you enter high school, there are so many things for you to consider. Things you may never have thought about before. It’s time to get serious and start thinking about IGCSEs, IB, extra curricula activities, transcripts and life after high school. All im-portant things, but not the one important thing that I want to discuss here. What I want to discuss this month is the use of social media and how it can affect your aca-demic future.

There can be no doubt that social media has transformed our world and university ad-mission is an area where this is becoming more and more apparent. Gone are the days of university prospectuses landing on your doormat. The days of lengthy and costly campus tours are diminishing. No longer do you have to write a letter to a friend-of-a-friend’s son to find out what life is like at a particular uni-versity.

Everything you could possibly want to know about a univer-sity is out there, at the click of a mouse or the swipe of a

screen. You can take a virtual tour of a campus on YouTube or Tumblr, view pictures of university housing on Insta-gram, find current students or alumni on Facebook, read college news on Twitter and find blogs that will give you a true picture of campus life. It’s as easy as that.

However, consider this. If it is so easy for you to research colleges online, then it is equally easy for colleges to research potential students and many are doing so al-ready. A survey conducted by Kaplan Test Prep found that 31% of colleges had visited applicants’ Facebook or other social media platforms to learn more about them and that 30% of admissions officers who responded to the survey had discovered information online that had negatively affected an applicant’s pro-spects.

Whilst you might strongly disagree with colleges ‘checking up’ on prospective students, I fear that this is only going to become a more com-mon practice in the coming years. Therefore it is critically

important that you bear in mind the potential pitfalls of social media as you go through high school.

Throughout school you will have been made aware of the dangers of the internet in terms of bullying, grooming and so on. What you might not have heard so much about is the fact that what you do or say today might be viewed by a university admissions officer tomorrow. You need to be ever conscious of what you are posting and not let the ease of social media allow you to become complacent. Once you enter high school, your focus will be on your grades, your academic transcripts and your extra curricula activities. This focus must extend to your online presence. What goes online, stays online. Don’t let it ruin your chances of getting into the university of your dreams.

For more on the subject, check out the New York Times article They Loved Your GPA. Then They Saw Your Tweets by Natasha Singer.

Page 8 ESC Newsletter

Jack Shull, University and Careers Counsellor Written by Helen Gamble, Editor

Social Media in University Admissions University Counsellors

Corner

Page 9 Issue 6

Year 7 Model United Nations Experience

Raymond Imbleau, History Teacher

Going to MUN was a first time experience for both of us and we were especially excited about the trip to Beijing, as it was our very first conference. Throughout the journey of preparing for this conference, we encountered lots of chal-lenges, not only with the draft resolutions, but also trying to keep our opening speeches shorter than a mi-nute. When we finally arrived at the conference and split up into our committees, we were both very nervous!

After our first speech in front of people that we didn’t know, we had more confidence and faith in ourselves. We spoke up to some of the people we were working with and worked up the courage to become the

main submitter of a resolution. The two of us shared our ex-periences later and found that it was pretty similar and so we got over it together.

The pressure on the main sub-mitter is really big, as most delegates will judge you and not the people who you worked with. We had both worked hard on our resolu-tions and we got them passed by the Approval Panel. All

there was to do now was to see if our house/committee allowed it to pass or not. The two of us not only spoke in favour of our resolutions, we also made amendments and amendment speeches to other resolutions, which also took a lot of bravery, self-confidence and a tiny risk.

Both of us believe that this experience was valuable and would love to do it again. We believe that it not only helps with your knowledge of people and how the UN works, but also benefits you by improving your school work and also your drama skills. Getting the best out of this experience, the two of us trust that this will help us in our future lives.

Presentation by Mrs SuYun Geithner on Dr George Leslie Mackay

Jewel Lee & Jeni Liu (Year 7)

The Year 8 History students were very fortunate on January 29th to have SuYun Geithner, the Director of General Rela-tions for the Canadi-an Trade Office in Taipei, give a presen-tation on an “extraordinary Cana-dian in Taiwan who lived here (Danshui) in the late 19th century and had a huge impact on the development of Tai-wan as a modern society.”

Mrs Geithner’s histo-ry presentation on the Presby-terian Minister, Dr George Leslie Mackay was both educa-tional and amazing, as so many of us, including myself, did not know that Dr Mackay estab-

lished the first girl’s school in Taiwan, as well as Oxford Col-lege. His famous motto “It’s better to burn out than rust

out” was truly the way he lived his life in Taiwan. He also in-troduced northern Taiwan to western medicine and dentistry and during his more than thirty

years in Taiwan, until his death in 1901, Dr Mackay pulled more than 21,000 teeth!

He is also credited with bring-ing tomatoes, brocco-li, cauliflower and carrots from Canada and introducing these vegetables to the Taiwanese farmers and diet. One of my favourite dishes that can be found in every cafeteria in Taiwan is the tomato and egg scramble – it’s incred-ible to now know that a Canadian

played a role in creating this Taiwanese delicacy. The Year 8s as a whole would like to thank Mrs SuYun Geithner for her remarkable presentation on Dr Mackay.

Science News

Page 10 ESC Newsletter

Nicholas Hardy, Head of Science

Dissections

Whilst H4 biologists have been doing plenty of dissection work for their Advanced Human Physiology topic.

Yoghurt Cultures and Digestive System

Year 8s have been carrying out aseptic technique for making yoghurt cul-tures with Mr Weng and Ms Tsai’s class have been making digestive system posters.

New Science Teacher

Geoff Newton, originally from Durham City, United Kingdom, obtained his honours degree in Chemistry from the University of London. After qualifying as a teacher, he spent ten years in sec-ondary schools in the United Kingdom, teaching Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics and General Science, before occupying posts teaching Chemistry overseas, including a Head of Chemistry post at the International School of South Africa. Mr Newton is joining us from the International School of Penang (Uplands) where he was Deputy Principal (Curriculum). He also served as Head of Sci-ence, Examinations Officer, and TOK Coordinator in his years at Uplands.

News from the Mathematics Department

Page 11

Y8 have been studying transfor-mations in Mathematics and when these students got a close look at our Mathematics department 3D printer, they just wanted to use it!

The students made tessella-tions by translating and rotating pieces from one side of a square to another, then turned these designs into 3D programs using Google SketchUp. Many other students tried a different

interpretation of transfor-mations for their project. Some students made models on Google SketchUp, then made enlargements or symmetrical designs. There were also some students who chose to do thorough analyses of intricate tessellations and Taipei 101 from various sketches.

Surprisingly, the hardest part of this project was communicating what they had done into a re-

port! Here’s a look at some of the finished designs.

In other news, Alex Lee (Y9) and Milton Lin (H4) received their book prizes and Olympiad medals from the UKMT. The Intermediate Maths Challenge was also sat by nearly 100 stu-dents from Y9 to H2 and we await the results with anticipa-tion.

Year 8 and 9 News

It is nearly Service Project time for Years 8 and 9! This time of year is so rewarding for our students, who will be getting involved with the com-munity in and around Taipei city. Year 8 students will be starting to look at issues of sustainability and the impact we have on our environment. In March, The Society of Wil-derness will then be working with our students in and out of school to increase their knowledge about our environ-ment. Our students will also be giving back and helping with some environmental redevel-

opment. More details to come!

Not to be outdone, our Year 9 students will be working with the Atayal tribe in Wulai, which is a project that has grown from our very success-ful Christmas charity collec-tion. We are in the process of organising a link so our stu-dents can help students in the Wulai area and at the same time learn more about the indigenous culture in Taiwan.

Aside from the classroom, our students continue to shine in their sporting, cultural and

other extra-curricular endeav-ours. The students who went to the DIMUN Conference in Beijing did TES very proud, representing their various countries in the Model United Nations. Nine of our Year 8 and 9 students presented, lobbied, debated and voted against various other middle school students from China, Korea and the Philippines. All the students involved showed themselves to be very com-mitted and generally an im-pressive bunch.

Julie Dale, Head of Mathematics

Libby Bevin, Head of Year 8 & 9

Issue 4

Page 12 ESC Newsletter

Art News Amanda Marcon, Art Teacher

Students looked at the con-cepts of globalisation, commu-nities and sustainability while researching two Architects, one Taiwanese and one from a country of their choice.

They worked individually and collaboratively, creating sustain-able buildings. As a class, they attempted to create an ideal community village based on need. There was a focus on

sustainable building practices, green power sources and the impact of our decisions on mankind and the environment.

Year 9 Architecture Project

Page 13 Issue 6

ESCPA Corner

Jaime Chang, ESCPA

School Show The Wizard of Oz

25th-27th March 7:00 pm -10:00 pm

ESC

Vegetarian Lunch January’s Vegetarian Lunch was prepared by Adrienne, Masako and Rian, who made salad, fried tofu and fried noodles with mushroom.

Next Vegetarian Lunch: Wednesday 25th March, Phase II Canteen

Yangmingshan Clean-Up

March (date and time

will be announced)

Next Monthly Meeting:

Friday 20th March

9:00 am -11:00 am Phase II

Conference Room

BSHS U13 Sports FOBISIA

Hosted by TES

10th-14th March

Welcome Coffee Morning It was a cold and crisp morn-ing on the Yangmingshan cam-pus, with the temperature a few degrees lower than the city, alongside a few beautiful cherry blossoms embellishing the campus. Parents arrived as early as 8:00 am to set up in the canteen and start the cof-fee machine so that it would be ready for the Welcome Coffee Morning.

Our ESCPA Chair, Marine, started the morning with poise, introducing the key staff, along with the school counsellor, Jenny Hsu, the University and Careers Coun-sellor, Jack Shull, Head of AS-PIRE, Ms Grace Kennedy, the Community Center repre-sentative, John Imbrogulio and the Student Council President, Steven Liu, who was pulled in by Marine at the last minute when she saw him outside. After his initial surprise, Ste-ven handled it rather well, by saying a few words to the audience. Ms Papps and Mr Woodall also stopped by to

say a few words. A few Year 7 students then lead the par-ents for a short tour around the school. The morning was enjoyed with homemade bread, coffee and tea. We hope the event was helpful to the parents who attended.

Annual Music Concert Following the Welcome Cof-fee Morning that week was the ESC’s 15th Annual Music Con-cert on the Friday evening. The concert was thoroughly enjoyed by all who attended and we noticed some very proud parents of very talented kids! Many thanks go to Mr Papps for all the preparation and organising of such a great event. The ESCPA activity committee, on the other hand, was worried at one point whether they would have excess or not enough refresh-ments for the evening and, because our electric blanket stopped working, volunteers had to run down to the can-teen to heat up the pizza. Apologies to anyone who had to eat theirs cold! In the end,

it was a great turnout, with just a little leftover pizza and hot dogs, which the parent volunteers purchased. Thanks to all the volunteers as always!

Carnival Day After resting over the week-end, Carnival Day was next. The school again celebrated the European tradition of car-nival, with the ESCPA serving crepes to everyone. We had sixteen parent volunteers, who diligently spread Nutella on 700 crepes! We hope everyone got one at least. A big thank you to two H1 stu-dents, Sherry Chen and Grace Liu, who helped to put togeth-er a short film about the carni-val that played on the screen.

Parents, please see call-outs for volunteers for forthcoming events. We will need your help!

We hope everyone enjoyed a nice break and Happy Chinese New Year of the Sheep!

新年快樂！喜氣羊羊！

Page 14 ESC Newsletter

Page 15 Issue 6

ASPIRE News

Last month we discussed note taking as being an extremely useful skill, not just for school but for life in general. This month we move on to another skill that shares many similarities.

Summarising and note taking – what’s the difference?

Summarising: You must sort, select and combine information which should lead to increased comprehension. It is the process of condensing information down to its most relevant points to aid your understand-ing, memorising and learning of the material. Not an easy task!

Note taking: Like sumarising, note taking also requires you to identify essential information. When you take notes, you must access, sort and code information, which should help you to memorise it and formulate new ideas. It refers to the process of capturing key points – through writing, drawing or audio recording – for access later.

These two skills are not the same, but often go hand-in-hand because both require you to distill information into an abbreviated and integrated form. Both skills will help you to deepen your un-derstanding of information, because these strategies involve higher order thinking (HOT skills). You must analyse information at a deep level, in order to decide which information to keep, which to delete and which to replace with more general terms.

When we ask you to summarise, we are asking you to ‘omit’ details and flowery language – to break the language down to basic nuggets.

This can be confusing, as you might struggle to identify what to keep and what to omit. As a gen-eral rule of how tom summarise, try to remember these two points:

Try to grasp the main idea, leave out anything that is repeated and replace individual items with a generic term.

Try to pick out the ‘who , where, what, when , why?’

Here is an example of a summary frame for understanding narrative text:

1. Who are the main characters? What distinguishes them from other characters? 2. When and where did the story take place? What were the circumstances? 3. What prompted the action in the story? 4. How did the characters express their feelings? 5. What did the main character decide to do? Did they set a goal? What was it? 6. How did the characters try to accomplish their goals? 7. What were the consequences?

OR

Here is an example of an argumentation frame that might be used to summarise a news story:

1. What is the basic claim or focus of the information? 2. What information is presented that leads to a claim? 3. What examples or explanations support the claim? 4. What restricts the claim? What evidence counters the claim?

Bear in mind that generic summarising strategies alone are not particularly effective (although they are better than no strategy), but when you use them in conjunction with other strategies such as questioning, clarifying and predicting, it will lead to greater success.

Resources / Links

http://www.ereadingworksheets.com/free-reading-worksheets/reading-comprehension-worksheets/summarizing-worksheets-and-activities/

http://www.d214.org/assets/1/workflow_staging/Documents/8884.PDF

http://writingfix.com/PDFs/RICA_PDFS/summarizing/Summary_Frames.pdf

Grace Kennedy, Head of ASPIRE & Helen Gamble, Editor

Summarising

Page 16 ESC Newsletter

Darren Latchford, IB Coordinator

The IB learner profile is the IBO mission statement translat-ed into a set of learning out-comes for 21st century interna-tional education and involves the whole community of learn-ers – students, teachers and parents. Taipei European School has a commitment to the values inherent in the IB learner profile.

This month we are specifically focusing on the H3 year group, demonstrating the Principled attribute. According to the IBO, students should act with “integrity and honesty, with a strong sense of fairness, justice and respect for the dignity of the individual, groups and com-munities. They take responsibil-ity for their own actions and

the consequences that accom-pany them.” H3 form tutors, teachers and students will be asked to nominate a particular deserving student who will then receive public recognition that they are really living by the values of IB at TES.

Celebrating the Core

Learner Profile Champions Ian Stewart, Deputy IB Coordinator

As you know, the IB Core consists of three elements: Creativity, Action and Ser-

vice (CAS) Extended Essay (EE) Theory of Knowledge

(TOK)

As the IB Diploma Programme draws to a close for H4 and

they begin to focus their atten-tion only on the aspects of the course that are assessed by final examination, it is good to take a moment to reflect on some of the wonderful achieve-ments that students in both year groups make in the three Core elements. In this edition of Spotlight on IB we have an

article from our new Deputy IB Coordinator, Mr Ian Stewart, on the Learner Profile, our CAS Coordinator, Mr Paul Lee, on our CAS Star of the Month and Mr Sean Kenny, our TOK Coordinator, on a recent visit from a guest speaker about Indigenous Knowledge Sys-tems.

Tony Coolidge Visits TES to Speak to H3 TOK Students Sean Kenny, TOK Coordinator

After his mother's death, Tony Coolidge, an American graphic artist working in media adver-tising, returned to Taiwan and for the first time discovered his indigenous heritage. He wrote an article documenting his journey to his mother’s hometown of Wulai that at-tracted filmmakers Derek Bedini and Aaron Hose, who approached Coolidge to make a documentary about his expe-rience.

In 2001, Coolidge founded ATAYAL, a nonprofit organisa-tion, to share the cultures of the indigenous tribes of Taiwan and Tony returned to Taiwan

in 2005 to film Voices in the Clouds, a documentary on Tai-wan's indigenous people which has won Best International Indigenous Film at the 2012 Wairoa Indigenous Film Festi-val in New Zealand and the Golden Drum Award at the 2012 Nepal International Indig-enous Film Festival in Kath-mandu.

On Thursday, November 20th he gave a presentation to the H3 cohort, who have been studying the new unit in the 2015 TOK course entitled Indigenous Knowledge Systems. We are particularly fortunate as a Taiwanese school to have

indigenous people on our doorstep, as it were, and to have a quality speaker like Tony Coolidge come to visit us.

In today's globalised world, we need to look within our nation states for the marginalised and overlooked holders of knowledge before we rush to build bridges between the ma-jority in each place, majorities who often share a bland ac-ceptance of the unquestioned tenets of the modern world. Some knowledge is valid and ancient. Its voice needs to be listened to.

Mexican Cuisine at its Finest

Page 17 Issue 6

News from the English Department

The week before the holiday was Languages Festival Week and Book Week at TES. During the week, the English Depart-ment (thanks to the efforts of Mr Booth and Mr Delange, as well other staff members) were sharing, comparing and reading! The students created their own book covers for classic stories, as well as unknown gems.

Students were also able to reflect on their own choices of ‘Riveting Reads’, when popular children's writer and illustrator, Jon Agee, came in to work with the Year 9s, as well as students from the French and German Sections, to demonstrate how 'What If?' can lead to interest-ing, surreal and creative ideas for storytelling. Students were

prompted to suspend disbelief when reading and writing and were shown how to do so in

their own writing pieces, begin-ning with the FOBISIA writing competition, which was recent-

ly launched across the school. Thank you to Angela and the Library staff for providing such an excellent guest for English.

The theme for this year's FOBISIA writing competition is 'Taking Risks' and, as always, entrants must complete their narrative in fewer than 1000 words. ESC participants have until March 13th to submit their entries, at which point they will be judged in the school, before our winner's story is sent off to Thailand – to the Garden Inter-national School.

Overall, Languages and Book week was a great success and students and staff enjoyed shar-ing their love of words, stories and 'Riveting Reads'.

Belinda Wang was recognised recently for the impressive way that she has embraced the principles of the CAS pro-gramme since she started the IB this year. CAS aims for stu-dents to grow as individuals by participating in activities where they are regularly taken out-side of their ‘comfort zones’ and reflecting on these experi-ences.

Belinda has been involved in so many activities that I am strug-gling to list them all, but here are a few examples: Archery, Chinese Dance, Roots and Shoots (Environmental Aware-ness), Survival Cooking. She has also been instrumental in continuing the Red Cross Pro-ject and leading a team to assist with a clean-up initiative. On top of all this she has been an

active volunteer helping stu-dents at the Fuan Primary School improve their concen-tration and learning skills and assisted with the teaching of English at the NeiWan Elemen-tary School of Hsinchu.

I asked Belinda what she has learned about herself through her CAS experiences. She re-sponded: “I used to wait for a ‘perfect’ moment before trying anything new, but through CAS, I have learned to try and seize opportunities to do new things whenever possible. I have also learned that it’s ok to make mistakes and not be per-fect at something immediately and that mistakes are im-portant lessons in life that help us to grow as individuals. I have never been a leader before and CAS has allowed me a chance

to run a project and lead a team. I found it a big challenge and realised that with leader-ship comes responsibility. Dur-ing one of our Red Cross clean ups, we were in a quiet neigh-bourhood early in the morning and some of the group were a bit noisy. The residents started complaining. Even though I was not one of those making noise, as I was the leader of the pro-ject, I was the one who made the apologies and I felt respon-sible. After that, we decided to split into smaller groups so that we could be more effective but also quieter!”

When done properly, CAS is an important and valuable ex-perience that moulds our stu-dents into reflective learners for all aspects of life.

Jonathan Booth, Claire Drag & Dan O’Shea

CAS Star of the Month: Belinda Wang H3 Paul Lee, CAS Coordinator

It’s been a very busy six weeks, as we prepare to host the U13 FOBISIA Games from 11th -13th March. I hope to see many parents in attendance to support our students. You can find all the details at www.tesu13fobisia.com. The High School students are now in their final sports season for the academic year, which consists of Boys Volleyball and Girls Football. Our KS3 students are training hard and playing friendly matches in preparation for the TISSA foot-ball tournaments on March 7th. Lastly, the nominations for the MVPs and MIPs for Season 2 are in this Newsletter and the Sports Awards are on May 12th, 2015. I hope you had a good break – Happy Chinese New Year!

A Word from the Head of Sport

Page 18 ESC Newsletter

Kwok Chow, Head of Sport

Athlete of the Month Ryan Patterson for showing great leadership and dis-

playing true commitment to the team for Varsity Boys Basketball.

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Page 20 ESC Newsletter

Varsity Boys TISSA Tournament

On January 24th, the TES Varsity Basketball team participated in the Varsity TISSA Tournament held at MAC. The first game for us started at 11:00 am against DIS. This was a tough year for us, since we suffered quite a few injuries prior to the actual tournaments. Three of our varsity ath-letes could not participate in the tournament; however everyone went to cheer for the team. The first game went well; we started the first quarter strong, playing good TES basketball. Ulti-mately we won the game by 21 points.

Since we only had to win one game to advance to the finals, we got together for a team lunch, going over what we could have done better as a team. The final was held at 2:00 pm against the host team, MAC. We started the first quarter losing by 24, however with the injured athletes cheering the team on, we found the motivation to keep fighting, enabling us to catch up. Howev-er the effort still wasn't enough and we ended up losing by 22 points.

It was a good learning experience for us as a team. It allowed us to identify our weaknesses and how to develop ourselves in order to prepare for next season.

Report by Jay Lee

Y9 Boys Football vs MAB

Report by Kesiuke Makino

February 10th was the day of the clash. Taipei European School Year 9 boys faced last year’s TIS-SA football tournament champions Morrison Academy Bethany. TES lacked some of their key players, including Raghav who unfortunately fractured his finger. We therefore faced a tough challenge. The game started, with MAB taking long shots from the start. However, after around ten minutes, Billy found a gap to break through and took a volley that bounced off the back post and in. Around ten minutes later, the Bethany forward kicked the ball that was in possession of the TES goalkeeper, which the referee let go, and scored in the open net, equalising and bringing the score to 1-1. The second half began, with Billy finding space again to volley chip the MAB goalkeeper, successfully breaking the tie and handing TES the lead. However, in the closing minutes, there was a communication breakdown between two defenders in the TES penalty box, leading to an own goal after an attempted clearance hit a defender in the stomach, deflecting into the TES goal, which the goalkeeper Robert could not get to. This equalised the game and the referee blew the final whistle directly after the kick off, the game ending 2-2.

We Won: ESC’s Inaugural Football Match on the New Pitch!

Page 21 Issue 6

Report by Jhon Michael Yamaguchi

On Tuesday January 27th, the first football match was played on the new ESC football pitch and the Year 7 boys were victorious with a score of 9-0 over Bethany Broncos. An hour before kick-off, as we were preparing for the friendly, Mr Woodall explained to our team that he had high expectations. He wanted us to transfer the skills and drills that we learned in practice onto the field in a real game situation. He reminded us that when we had the ball, we were to ‘send it’, ‘look for an open man’ and ‘when in doubt, kick it out’!

Scott Maxwell netted the opening goal; an excellent display of aggressive attacking as he took the rebound from Aidan Mayall’s hard shot and banked it in with his strong right foot. There were many other creative goals that were scored on this auspicious afternoon. Overall, a fine display of offence and teamwork! Arsalan Mir was a reliable midfielder, who provided many sharp and clean passes which gave the strikers many opportunities to score. Shubh Lashkery, Jhon Michael Yamaguchi and George Chang shared time in goal to preserve the clean slate with a few fine saves.

Hopefully this victory is a good sign of things to come for all home games! Thank you to Mr Woodall and Mr Imbleau for helping us train.

U13 FOBISIA Squad

Good Luck to the U13 FOBISIA Squad.

Go Titans !

31 JianYe Road, ShiLin District,

Taipei 11193 Phone: 555-555-5555

Fax: 555-555-5555 E-mail:

SWIRE EUROPEAN SECONDARY CAMPUS

Our school has attracted regional and worldwide attention with its unique model for integrating German, British, French, and High School sections in terms of their curricula, administration, finance, buildings and facilities. The Taipei British School (TBS), Ecole Francaise de Taipei (EFT); and Deutsche Schule Taipei (DST) began around 1990 in response to the needs of expatriate families with young children, living in Tai-pei. The schools soon realised that there was much to be gained by joining forces to establish a combined European campus. This would allow the schools to share some facilities and resources yet teach their own respective national curricula.