IGB International School’s Weekly Newsletter - Issue 122. Week 4. August 2017.
Inside This Week Message from Head of School Mrs. Anne Fowles 2 Head of School .................................................... News from Elementary School Mr. Simon Millward 3 Elementary School Principal .................................................... News from Secondary School Mr. Michael Arcidiacono 4 Secondary School Principal
Meet the Teacher Evening ~ Pg. 2
Happening.
IGBIS Instrumental Music Academy ~ Pg. 3
++ Sat, Aug 26
MYP: Welcome to the New School year 2016-17 ~ Pg. 4
++ Tue, Aug 29
Class of 2017 ~ Pg. 5 Raising a Successful Child ~ Pg. 6 College Counselling News ~ Pg. 7 Upper Secondary School House Sports Competitions ~ Pg. 8 Admissions and Marketing News ~ Pg. 9 PVO News ~ Pg. 9 Photos: New Parent Coffee ~ Pg. 10 - 11
~ PYP Parent University: Play as a way of knowing @ PVO Room | 8:30 am – 11:30 am
~ Meet the Teacher | All day
++ Thu, Aug 31 ~ Public Holiday: Merdeka Day
++ Fri, Sep 1 ~ Public Holiday: Hari Raya Qurban
Message from Head of School
Dear IGBIS Parents and Community Members, The celebrations continue at IGB International School this week as news was received of our top five scholars of 201617. All five students achieved IB Diploma results of 40 points or more, putting them in the top 5% globally. Our highest achiever, Zoe Teh, achieved 43 points, which puts her in the top 1% globally.
(Magdalene College), University College London, Imperial College London, Kings College London, University of St Andrews, University of Edinburgh, University of Bristol, University of Warwick, Durham University, New York University, University of California, Quest University (Canada) and YaleNUS College.
Anne Fowles Head of School
The university destinations for these students is also outstanding with offers from the University of Cambridge
Meet the Teacher Evening
Tuesday 29th August: 5:00pm – 7:15pm
Our ‘Meet the Teacher / Back to School’ evening will be held on Tuesday 29th August from 5:00pm - 7:15pm. The purpose of the evening is to find out about the PYP, MYP, DP and CP and how they are being delivered in homeroom classes and single subject classes. Teachers will share the class routines, and discuss the role of single subject teachers. While this is not a time to discuss the specifics of your own child’s progress at this stage in the year, if you would like to meet the teacher for this purpose you may make an appointment for a later date. Please note that this is an evening for parents only, students are not required to attend. Elementary school will consist of three sessions, running from 5:00pm to 6:40pm. Sessions 1 (5:00pm – 5:30pm) and 3 (6:10pm – 6:40pm) will be the same. This will allow parents
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with more than one child in Elementary school in different grade levels to attend both of the grade level sessions. Session 2, from 5:35pm – 6:05pm will be a single subject presentation in the elementary school library as teachers talk about their programmes for the year. Session 3 will also offer an opportunity to experience a taster of the Parent University course that the PYP Coordinator, Ms. Aga, is offering this year. The evening for Secondary school will start at 5:30pm and finish at 7:15pm. This is to enable parents with children in both sections of the school to attend specific sessions. All Secondary school presentations will be on levels 6 and 7. Grade levels will meet for 20 minutes with their homeroom teachers, and then meet individual subject teachers after that. Refreshments will be provided near each presentation area.
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News from the Elementary Principal Building Community At IGBIS we want to grow the communication and relationship between home and school: we see it as a partnership. To help students we need to know if anything has happened that may affect student learning, for example a grandparent may have visited but over the weekend they returned to their native country. This could have an impact on a student. Likewise something may have happened at school that you as parents should know about. The classroom teachers would be communicating with you also. One of the structures that the school has in place is the ‘Class Representatives’. In the Elementary school each class has a class rep and part of that person’s role is to be a welcoming face to new families, as well as supporting existing parents, building a community both in and out of school. As families move to Malaysia or even to Kuala Lumpur, knowing where to have birthday parties or to visit places on the weekend is valuable information. As a community we can assist not only with our knowledge but possibly by going to these places with them. Within school, families may need help with where to or whom to go to for a variety of different reasons, for example they may have forgotten who runs the Instrumental Music Academy
programme (Mr. Suffolk), they may not know how to get to the ‘Splash Page’ to register either. Your assistance as a class rep would be to guide and help them settle and navigate the ‘new’ school. At this morning’s New Parent Coffee some of you signed up and indicated you would like to be considered for the class rep role, if you didn’t sign up, but after reading my article you are interested. please contact Julie Arcidiacono at julie. arcidiacono@igbis.edu.my to register your interest. Once I have class reps for each class I will hold a meeting where we can talk through the role in greater detail. Your help to build a strong parent community at IGBIS is much appreciated. The buzz/feel at the coffee morning was wonderful and I hope we can grow and develop this further. I look forward to seeing you on Saturday 26th August at the first ‘PYP Parent University’ session and also the ‘Back to School’ evening on Tuesday 29th August. Just a reminder that school will be closed on Thursday 31st August (Merdeka Day) and Friday 1st September (Hari Raya Qurban).
Simon Millward
Elementary School Principal
IGBIS Instrumental Music Academy Jon Suffolk Instrumental Music Academy Coordinator ............................................................................................... Online registration for Semester 1 is still open. The number of students returning to the Instrumental Music Academy this year is very encouraging. The work of our wonderful tutors in encouraging students to continue to learn, practice and perform is a credit to them. There are also many new students to IGBIS who have chosen to register for lessons.
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Registration may be completed online via the Splash Page. Parent emails must be used for the registration document, not student emails. Our finance department will soon be sending out invoices for Semester 1. Semester 1 schedules will be shared via the Splash Page by next Wednesday. If anyone would like more information about the Academy, please email me at jon.suffolk@igbis.edu.my.
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News from the Secondary School Principal Dear parents, It was a pleasure to see so many of you at our Parent Coffee this week - maintaining strong communication with our parents is critical to the success of our students. This connection was
brought home for me when there was an opportunity to slip out of the Parent Coffee and see our 2016 award winning students for a quick picture. Their outstanding achievements have been supported by our school-home partnership.
This Friday I am sharing with parents the first of our communications for our Secondary Camps. These camps are a fantastic experience for our students, to challenge themselves and forge stronger friendships with their classmates. We will be speaking more about Camp at our Meet the Teacher or “Back to School� night this Tuesday. I hope all parents can make it, as we have planned a very nice evening for you, to learn more about what is happening for your son/daughter this year in their classes. We build this sense of spirit in our student community through camps, and many other activities, such as the house sports competitions that took place this week.
safety at pickup and drop off - we are constantly checking that we have students wearing seat belts on buses, wearing their bike helmets if they have ridden to school, etc. Please help us continue to have a safe environment here at school. Lastly, students should be sure to bring their ID cards every day to school, as it is essential to all of our school routines (entrance, cafeteria, printing).
I remind our students and families to take extra care to ensure
Secondary School Principal
Sincerely yours,
Michael Arcidiacono
MYP: Welcome to the new school year 2017-18 Phil Clark Middle Years Programme Coordinator ............................................................................................... Welcome back to another year at IGB International School. It has been lovely to see so many familiar faces around school these past couple of weeks as returning families came back from their long vacation. It has also been wonderful to welcome so many new students, parents and teachers into the IGBIS community. Our new Secondary School teachers have quickly settled into life at IGBIS, ably assisted by our team of returning teachers who have been eager to ease transition for their new colleagues as we all prepared for the start of school. Comments from new
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and returning teachers indicate how excited everyone was for students to return to classes and for us to start our fourth year together. It has been a very positive start, with students speaking highly of their new teachers, and the teachers being equally impressed by our students. This week we introduced the MYP Community Project to Grade 8 students and the MYP Personal Project to Grade 10 students. MYP projects are a key component of the Middle Years Programme. They are student-centred, age-appropriate projects that students conduct for an extended period during their own time. Students engage in practical explorations through a cycle of inquiry, action and reflection. The Community
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Project focuses on community and service, encouraging students to explore their right and responsibility to implement service as action in the community. The Personal Project encourages students to develop an area of personal interest, to consolidate prior learning, and to practise and strengthen their approaches to learning (ATL) skills. Grade 8 students will conduct their Community Projects during Semester 1 while Grade 10 students will conduct their Personal Projects during
Semesters 1 and 2. I will share more information about MYP projects in future newsletters. We look forward to meeting parents again on Tuesday 29 August for our annual “Meet the Teacher” evening, when parents will have the opportunity to meet with their child’s teachers and find out more about what and how their child will be learning this year. Throughout the year I will also be offering a series of parent workshops for parents who would like to learn more about the IB Middle Years Programme.
Class of 2017
Mary Boyd Diploma Programme Coordinator ...............................................................................................
Before they depart for the UK, we had the pleasure of seeing our 40 plus group together, with the exception of Soeren, to celebrate their fantastic achievements, placing them in the top 5% of the IBDP global cohort.
Well done to our graduated Class of 2017, and good luck to one and all, as you plan your imminent departure to the next chapter in your lives, or as you settle into university life for those already exploring pastures new. It was a delight to see many of our graduated students return, before they depart for universities in Canada, Singapore and the UK. Many have already gone to take up places in Australia, Singapore and Japan. We wish every one of them every good wish for their futures, and look forward to learning how they fare through our alumni group. We were unanimous in our joy celebrating Hwei Minn’s acceptance to read Natural Sciences at Magdalene College, Cambridge. A remarkable achievement, and a huge source of pride for us and her family.
Hwei Minn with her family, before she departs for Magdalene College, Cambridge.
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Our graduating students who achieved 40+ points, placing them in the top 5% in the world (missing from the picture is Soeren).
Last, but not least, it was a delight to see Zoe, to congratulate her for the top score in the school, 43 points, placing her in the top 1% of the IBDP cohort, in the whole world.
Zoe, our top scorer that placed her in the top 1% globally
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Raising a Successful Child Christopher Klesch Early Years to Grade 8 Counsellor ............................................................................................... I read a great book over the summer called, Becoming Brilliant: What Science Tells Us About Raising Successful Children by Roberta Michnick Golinkoff PhD and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek PhD. The book gives a great many tips about what you can do as a parent to help foster a creative and robust critical thinker at home.
petrol powered vehicles?”. Not only does this type of thinking motivate students to think uniquely and innovatively about things, it allows them to access the 6Cs that the authors believe are “the key skills that will help all children become the thinkers and entrepreneurs of tomorrow” (Golinkoff, Hirsh-Pasek, 2016, Introduction, Location 42/4959) . These 6Cs are collaboration, communication, content, critical thinking, creativity and confidence. I have found these qualities to be a key to success for the many students I have taught and counselled as well. Having taught in high school and worked as a university guidance counsellor, I keep in touch with many students and the ones that are the most successful are not always the highest performing students. They are the ones that best embody the 6Cs above. Students that do well on tests, assessments and exams do well initially but students that exhibit many of the qualities above can more easily ask for a raise successfully and navigate workplace challenges more effectively. How do you make sure students exhibit these 6Cs? I know that while the PYP, MYP, DP and CP do not include the 6Cs in reports, they are addressed through our Learner Profile which is omnipresent in everything we do at school. How do you help your child develop the 6Cs outside of the classroom? There are simple things that you can do as parents. Open questioning at home like, “What if people did not use money? What would the world be like?” helps students with their creativity, critical thinking and communication. Answering the questions with siblings, friends or other family members helps children hone their collaboration skills and it also helps them build confidence. Moreover, taking children to things and places that are new and that stimulate their curiosity is another basic way students can practice critical thinking and creativity and build confidence to name just a few benefits.
As a parent myself, I too embrace the inquiry-based curriculum of the PYP, MYP and Diploma programmes. I believe that play, free association, investigation, problem solving and a multitude of other activities help make a more resilient and balanced student. Parents, however, can struggle at home with infusing a delightful sense of questioning and wonder into everyday life. Many of us snap back to a more rigid structure of schedules and defined expectations and this may be due to a parental muscle memory that we have adopted from our own parents, a lack of time and resources or simply being unable to see the forest for the trees.
A great resource for big questions is What If: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. Randall Monroe proposes great hypothetical questions like, “How many Lego bricks would it take to build a bridge capable of carrying traffic from London to New York?” that you can share with your child. The book also provides great, plausible answers. Becoming Brilliant: What Science Tells Us About Raising Successful Children can be found at amazon both in digital and print and What if?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions can be found both in digital form on iBooks and Amazon and in print from Amazon.
Golinkoff and Hirsh-Pasek give us instruction in how we can continue this inquiry process naturally and effortlessly at home. They imbue this sense of awe in the book by referencing the Marvel Comics series, What If?. This is relevant because the Watcher, Uatu, begins each issue with a hypothetical scenario like what would happen if Spiderman was a villain or Captain America was Russian. Fantastical and fun questioning can be used as a jumping off point for critical thinking and creativity. Golinkoff and Hirsh-Pasek ask teachers and parents to use similar hypotheticals in everyday life by asking questions like “What if my classroom was a submarine?”, “What if it never rained again?”, or “What if we could no longer use
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Resources Golinkoff, R. PhD, Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2016). Becoming Brilliant: What Science Tells Us About Raising Successful Children. [Kindle DX version]. Retrieved from https://www.amazon.com/BecomingBrilliant-Successful-Children-Lifetools/ dp/1433822393 Monroe, R. 2014. What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. [iBooks version] Retrieved from https://itunes.apple.com/ us/book/what-if/id839632923?mt=11
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College Counselling News Bill Mitchell Grades 9-12 School Counsellor ...............................................................................................
#1 Most livable city in world #33 Ranked Uni in the world
Grade 12 students were recently engaged in small workshops to help them understand UCAS, the application portal for the United Kingdom; and Common Application, a widely used application portal for the colleges and Universities in the United States. We will follow these sessions up with work on Personal Statements and Application Essays next week.
AEO Tour
http://www.unimelb.edu.au/
Grade 12 Parent University Meeting I would like to meet and update parents of our Grade 12 students on “our” progress thus far and provide an overview of the application processes that your students are undertaking. I will also need to enlist assistance from parents in a few areas relating to universities. When Where Time
- Wednesday, 6th September, 2017 - Level 6 Multi-Purpose Room - 6:30pm to 8:00pm
Please RSVP to bill.mitchell@igbis.edu.my so that I can ensure we have enough refreshments and seating for all. Grade 12 students are required to attend. University Visits Emerson and Simmons Colleges Emerson College and Simmons College, hailing from Boston, USA stopped in to chat about their Liberal Arts offerings and the Arts & Communications programmes. Of particular interest was Simmons’ FULL Kotzen SCHOLARSHIP - Kotzen Scholarship - Simmons College [http://www.simmons.edu/admission-and-financial-aid/ student-financial-services/financial-aid/scholarships/kotzenscholarship]
Regional Events Oxbridge Penang Outreach
University of British Columbia When - Tuesday 5th September Where - Secondary Library Time - 12:30pm – 1:30pm Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne / IE University When - Thursday 7th September Where - Secondary Library Time - 9:30am – 10:30am Follow the Secondary Calendar or see the College Counselling Events calendar for future visits and events. Kuala Lumpur Events University of Melbourne Information Day When - Sunday 27 August 2017 Where - Hilton Kuala Lumpur Time - 2:00pm to 6:00pm For more information, or to register, please go to INFO/ REGISTER [https://futurestudents.unimelb.edu.au/explore/events/ international/south-east_asia/malaysia/information-day]
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Upper Secondary School House Sports Competitions Vanessa & Alyssa Grade 11 ............................................................................................... As the sun was shining, the grade 9 to 12 students - decked out in their house colours - walked onto the field expecting to face each other in a football tournament. Instead, we were surprised to find that each of the eight teams (each house was divided into two) would be participating in a circuit of activities, modified to incorporate a football or football skills in some way. The PE department had set up a variety of activities where we found ourselves working as a unit, practicing skills, or simply using the football in ways we never thought possible before. The morning kicked off with teams shooting goals, moving footballs across the field using their foreheads, running in zig-zags having spun round 10 times, standing in a circle attempting to head the ball and much more. Each team moved swiftly between the activities, having to collect the most points (and the most fun) within the allocated four minutes. The activities differed in the ways you could earn points, such as collecting a point after every member of the team used their quick feet to make it across the ladder, or collecting two points if the football landed in the container having thrown it from a further distance. Everyone was inevitably determined to surpass the score of the team before them as we moved from station to station. The chants and cheers got progressively louder as well as we fought for bonus team spirit points and came to the end of our last station. Like the amazing race last week, this house activity created deeper bonds and memories across the grades - making it a memorable day only two weeks into the first semester. One of the events which everyone was hyped for was when six members (three girls, three boys) from each house were asked to volunteer to come forward to try and eliminate the other houses. Successfully, Terra had eliminated Aer within the first few minutes, followed by Aqua. With only two teams remaining, the event got so intense that the Head of PE (Mr. Bartle) had to put a stop to the never ending game. But the cheering in the background from all the other houses had made it worthwhile for each of the six volunteers. “It’s safe to say that the house spirit is well and truly alive in the upper secondary school at IGBIS. It was great to see the new IGBIS students warmly welcomed into their houses and everyone getting involved in the activities. I’m excited and looking forward to the Secondary School House Cross Country event on September 6th”, commented Mr Bartle. Though everyone had given it their all, it was Ignis who came away victorious, with only 10 points separating the first and third place. But more than the points, it was an eventful morning of working cohesively with people we may not have known all that well, repeatedly chanting our house names, sharing some good laughs and igniting that bit of house spirit in each and every one one of us. Drenched in sweat and knees red (from all the crawling) we walked away excited, knowing that this was the first of many house events to come - where the fight to end the year as champions is still any houses’ game.
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Admissions and Marketing News The New Parent Coffee was a great success and we were pleased with the attendance of both new and returning parents. Many of the staff were able to take the time to come and meet the parents and it was a very positive vibe to start the year. Mrs Julie Arcidiacono organised the morning beautifully and we thank Ms Stephanie Wafzig and her student assistants for getting us all moving with some line dancing.
your assistance in letting as many friends and colleagues as possible know about the Open Day as we would love to see a large crowd in attendance.
Wayne Demnar
Admissions and Marketing Director
Please tell all your friends and colleagues
Our first Open Day for the year will be held on Friday 15th September (from 9.00am to 12.00pm) and we would like
PVO News Julie Arcidiacono Community & Events Coordinator .........................................................................
parents, teachers and staff for joining us - I hope that you are as excited for this new year as I am!
What do you really know about IGBIS? Apparently, a lot! During the New Parents Coffee on Thursday, Grade 10 parents answered almost all questions correctly in this icebreaker activity, including the awkward question posed by Mr. Geoff Derry involving Mr. Wayne Demnar’s age. Almost 80 parents joined us for a fun morning that included lots of “Nice to see you again” and “Getting to know you” talks, and even country line dancing led by our own elementary teacher Ms. Stephanie Wafzig and her trio of Grade 4 students. Thank you
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All parents of students attending IGBIS are automatically members of the Parent Volunteer Organisation (PVO). Important information regarding our PVO can be found online by clicking on the PVO icon on the parent Splash Page. Please check the website and save the dates for our upcoming PVO meetings, Kopi with Principals, and for more information on our four exciting parent-run events this year, with the first one coming up on 3rd November - our Parent Mingle / Gala. We are looking for parent volunteers to organise this and other events, so I encourage you to sign up online.
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