newsletter14th February 2014

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Simon LeslieHeadmaster

Adrian WattsDirector of Academic StudiesDeputy Headmaster

Dear ISHCMC Community, I hope that you have all enjoyed your TET break and that the Year of the Horse will bring something special to you all. We have a very busy four months ahead as the 2013-2014 academic year continues. Our Grade 12 students are currently undertaking their mock examinations as the countdown begins towards their May 5th final IB Diploma examinations. In fact, all secondary students will, this year, undertake examinations. This is something new to ISHCMC and we feel it will be an opportunity to ensure our students gain invaluable experience at this type of assessment.

It is not long now until our great celebration event ‘The Great Gatsby’ at the Intercontinental Hotel on March 1st. Tickets are on sale at Reception at the Admissions Office. The price of VND1m per person covers the cost of all drinks, food and entertainment. The tickets are subsidized by the School. Etihad Airways has generously donated two return tickets to anywhere in the world! These are lucky door prizes. I hope to see you there! With kind regards. Simon

Dear Parents,

I hope you all had a good Tet vacation. Chuc Mung Nam Moi.

One of the really strong aspects of our ISHCMC community is the service attitude of our students. Each week we have nearly 400 students attending service related activities through their GIN committees. What makes this such a strong programme is that it is very much student managed and organized. Many international schools have equivalent service programmes but they are organized and supervised by teachers and students attend the activity but take little to no responsibility for the planning or organization. The IB uses Roger Hart’s ideas (ladder below) to encourage schools and their students to become the initiators of service activities. By the end of last semester there were a whole host of new activities and service actions being initiated by PYP students ensuring that ISHCMC’s tradition will be maintained in the future. For those you of you interested in understanding more about the schools approach to student initiated service activities here is a link to an excellent article about Hart’s ideas and why they are important.

Just a quick reminder that I have posted 43 articles so far on this blogspot site that I think you will find interesting and useful in your understanding of modern education. http://4u2nomore.blogspot.com/

All my best wishes for the Year of the Horse,

YoursAdrian

Ready, steady… gRow!Grade Four and Grade Five students might be looking more excited than they usually do! This is because they are getting ready to go on their annual school camp.

Grade Four will be going to Madagui, and Grade Five will be going to Ta Lai Longhouse. Both of these places are beautiful and natural environments that offer students the perfect escape from city life for a few days. ISHCMC is taking outdoor education more and more seriously as research links experiences in nature to health and general well-being. Modern children may suffer from something called “Nature-Deficit Disorder” as they are less and less exposed to the natural world and spend more and more time inside, in air-conditioning and watching television or using electronic devices.

“As the young spend less and less of their lives in natural surroundings, their senses narrow, physiologically and psychologically, and this reduces the richness of human experience.” -Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods

Grade Four and Five students will certainly be having some rich experiences when they go away – trekking, kayaking, mountain-biking, star-gazing, relaxing by camp fires, cooking, setting up campsites, interacting with local people… the list is endless! Even more importantly, these students will be going through amazing personal growth as they take care of themselves and their possessions, collaborate with others to solve problems, take on real-life responsibilities and learn to be more independent. These are all essential qualities for students in an IB school.

So, if you see any of these excited looking students from Grade Four and Five, now you know why they feel that way!

Sam Sherratt IB PYP Coordinator

See this video for more information.

Tuesday February 18th

4.00pm – 6.00pmon the ISHCMC Rooftop

Wine & Cheese

Night

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P T O G E N E R A L M E E T I N G

Everyone welcome to attend.

Pto satuRday sPoRtsPlay starts back up this Saturday, and we are looking forward to coming back together after the Tet break! We kicked off our season on Saturday, January 25th with three sports on offer this semester.

Junior Basketball is new to the line up! We welcome Jon Boisseau who is coaching the younger players. The upper primary squad for grades 2-5 is coached by Myke Nguyen, Ginny Condra & Gracie Wells. Myke also coaches our secondary squad. Many of the Senior MRISA team members help out and we really appreciate their support.

We are very happy to continue with junior soccer for EE4 to Grade 1 students. Our two teams are coached by Joe Takeda & Adrian Watts. Mark Boot, Michiel Hankel and Jan Willem Winkelhuijzen are leading the field hockey team once again this semester.

The table below lists the Saturday morning schedule:

Saturday Sport Schedule

Junior Soccer EE4 – Grade 1 8:00 amField Hockey Grades 2-5 9:00 amBasketball Junior (Lower Primary) 8:00 am Upper Primary 9:00 am Secondary 10:00 am

YOU CAN STILL REGISTER TO PLAY! If your child is interested in playing this semester, please come out and join us Saturday. We will sign you up. The fee for the semester is 500,000 VND. Play will continue until the end of the school year excluding school holidays.

Ginny & Annemarieginnycondra@mindspringannemariehellmans@yahoo.com

FRom the admissions desk

It’s an exciting time at ISHCMC at present, the stream of new families to HCMC generally and ISHCMC specifically has not slowed down. Our 40 new students who started with us on 7th January have all settled in very well and families have advised that they have been made to feel very welcome and supported. We will have more students arriving to start during February, March and April also.

If you have another child / younger sibling or any friend or relative that you know would like to apply to ISHCMC for 2014-2015 for EE2 – Gr 11, please submit Applications to us by 1st March, 2013 so that we can ensure that we are able to secure a place for them.

You are able to apply on-line to ISHCMC by going to our Website, click on Admissions and then On-line Application. You will be able to create an Account with your own username and password and then complete an on-line application and upload documents into your account and submit. You can also Book A Tour on-line very easily through the Website.

Re-enrollment To assist in the process of arranging our classes for the next school year, in the next two weeks, we will begin our re-enrollment process. We will email a form home to you to ask you the following:

Are you staying ; Are you withdrawing ; Are you unsure

You will be able to save it as a Word doc, complete and send back to the Admissions Office as an attachment or pdf or you can print it off and hand to your child’s teacher.

We are pleased to report that there has been active interest, school interviews and Applications being submitted already for the new school year 2014-2015.

Our Receptionist and Admissions Staff are friendly and welcoming and we are here to support parents. Please do not hesitate to contact us at any time on 38989100 Ext: 504, 507, 502, 669, 509

Christine ByrneAdmissions Manager

100 days oF school celebRation

Kindergarten students have been counting the days they have been attending school since the beginning of the year. The 100th day of school on Monday February 10th was celebrated throughout this week with the children having great fun with a range of craft and counting activities.

Children created collections of 100 items during the school break and proudly shared their displays with their friends. 100 beads in 10 groups of 10 made a beautiful mobile. 100 pins decorated a t-shirt, shells, pasta, matches, cards, and flowers were among the collections. Some bundled as 10 groups of 10 to reinforce the nature of 100.

We dressed up as 100 year olds! Hats, shawls, glasses, beards, wrinkles and grey hair were the order of the day!

We surveyed 100 people to find out their favourite Vietnamese food and graphed the results, with an expert group collating and analyzing the data.

Our 100 day hats had sets of 20 stamps, stickers, punched holes, dots and thumbprints! We got to show these off at Monday’s assembly so everyone could see that we are now “100 days smarter”!

We searched the room for 100 words we knew and wrote them down.

We made 100 day glasses and threaded 100 pieces of cereal onto necklaces.

We studied counting to 100 by using a 100 chart and putting counters on the numbers used counting by 2’s, 5’s and 10’s.

Thanks to the parents who supported us by helping out with the dressing up and facilitated the collections of 100 items.

It was a special day and a great week of learning about numbers in a fun context!

PRimaRy woRld languages During the first semester in World Languages classes students from kindergarten through fifth grade worked on the transdisciplinary theme: “who we are”. Students participated in a variety of oral, visual, auditory and kinaesthetic activities utilizing games, puppets, interactive video clips, books, songs, real objects and toys.

Students used the language to share information about themselves and others. They asked and answered questions about their favorite color, physical appearance, facial features, height, age, and nationality.

They practiced using their vocabulary words for the face and other parts of the body parts to communicate that something is hurting them. Students were able to speak in conversations and exchange greetings and farewells. They learned to identify and communicate what school supplies they needed and that they have in the backpacks.

Students participated in conversations to share their favorite hobbies. They learned the numbers and the vocabulary used to say his age and phone number. Participated in discussions and talked about the food they like and they do not like.

They also used oral and written language techniques for communicating basic needs and to express states of being such as being cold or hot. Finally, students understood and used oral language to describe their family.

Culture was also part of the learning activities. In Spanish class, students learned about Hispanic traditions such as “The day of the dead” and the “piñatas”. They set up a “Day of the dead altar” in the classroom and made piñatas.

In Mandarin class, students learned about the Chinese New Year celebrations, different meanings of colors in Chinese culture and the origins of some of the characters.

Spanish Class pictures:

Mandarin class pictures:

UNTIL NEXT TIME