IGB International School Newsletter, Issue 3, April 2014

IGB International School Newsletter - April 2014

Inside Newsletter Message from Head of School Anne Fowles, Head of School News from Elementary School Claire McLeod, Elementary School Principal News from Secondary School Secondary Matters Lennox Meldrum, Secondary School Principal School Updates Peter Syme, Director of Academic and Support Services Updates from Admissions Michelle Ostiguy, Admissions Manager

Igniting Minds

Upcoming Events May, 2014 Open Week 7th - 25th July, 2014 Summer School 18th August, 2014 Start of School For more information please contact Admissions at 03-6730 7788

IGBIS Head of School, Mrs Anne Fowles, with our scholarship recipients and their families.

Impacting Lives

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Message from Head of School Mrs Anne Fowles, Head of School Dear Parents and Community Members, In just a few days we will be moving our office into the school. The interior design of this area has parents and children in mind and gives a fabulous view of the Olympic swimming pool and deck. Anyone visiting us from May 16 on will have a peek at this, with full tours taking place during Open Week at the end of May. Those of you who have been supporting us during this lead up period will have first invitation to tour.

IGBIS scholarships in collaboration with the Dato’ Tan Chin Nam Foundation Some truly outstanding students were shortlisted and interviewed for the IGBIS Grade 11 scholarships.

We are pleased to announce the five students who have been chosen to date. These are:

Seongjin Bien

Cindy Leow

Tsiu Khoon Lim

Yong You Woon

Cheng Zai Chern

Each of the student scored in the top five percent of the online assessment with several of them also achieving ‘A’s in SPM or predicted ‘A’s in IGCSE (although IGCSE and SPM are not prerequisites for IB Diploma Programme entrance). They have additional talents to bring in sports, the arts, mathematics, physics, entrepreneurship and community service.

Mr Meldrum has been invited overseas three times in the last month to assist the International Baccalaureate in the delivery of workshops for teachers being trained in the new DP Physics guide. I have been out also to lead a session for Heads of Schools at the recent IB Asia Pacific conference and later to attend the IB Board of Governors meeting in Singapore. It is an exciting time to be involved at the global level of the IB as we look to the next phase of the IB’s strategic plan.

Our recent parent information sessions were very well attended and we look forward to having more space for these in the school building.

I look forward to meeting more of our new parents and students as they come in to visit over the coming weeks. I am sure that you will be very impressed when you see inside the school building!

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Igniting Minds

Impacting Lives

News from Elementary School Mrs Claire McLeod, Elementary School Principal As l write this newsletter the school site is a hive of activity with contractors finishing classrooms, floor surfaces and inbuilt furniture being installed and painting happening everywhere. The beautification of the site has started with large trees planted along the boundaries; the excitement is building!

It was wonderful to see so many parents visit our office recently to attend the parent information sessions. Whilst the sessions provided a broad introduction to the school and the curriculum, I thought you’d like to know a little more about the development of critical thinking skills in Elementary School.

The constant “But why mummy? Why daddy?” questions that we all hear can really get under our skin at times. However, we may be able to manage these better when we view these questions as the start of a child’s critical thinking skills.

The ability to think critically is often considered a key skill for success in everyday life and contributes to academic success. To be able to think critically we need to be able to ask different types of questions that will drive our thoughts underneath the surface of everyday activities.

In the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme (IB PYP) critical thinking skills are developed through the commitment to a concept driven curriculum as a means of supporting inquiry. “A concept driven curriculum helps the learner to construct meaning through improved critical thinking and the transfer of knowledge” Making the PYP Happen: A curriculum framework for international education International Baccalaureate Organization (2009). The concepts are central to the curriculum and are in the form of key questions that are broad and open-ended.

The key concepts are: Form: what is it like?

Function: how does it work?

Causation: why is it like it is?

Change: how is it changing?

Connection: how is it connected to other things?

Perspective: what are the points of view?

Responsibility: what is our responsibility?

Reflection: how do we know?

Teachers explicitly teach and encourage students to think about and use the different types of questions. Rather than the usual closed questions about what something might be like, how many or maybe what color, excellent teachers model and encourage students to ask higher order questions such as why is it like this, how is this connected, how do you feel or maybe how do you think other people may feel about this. Actively involving students in reflection and evaluation through the questioning process, in group and individual settings, promotes the development of the critical thinking skills. The simple habit of asking, rather than telling, can make a crucial impact.

Along with the IB PYP key concepts, the development of the IB Learner Profile attributes of students being inquirers, thinkers, open-minded and reflective supports the development of critical thinking throughout a student’s life in an IB school.

For the May newsletter I will be writing to you from the Administration section of the school building, so I will look forward to sharing some photos of our new school.

Igniting Minds

Impacting Lives

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News from Secondary School Secondary Matters Mr Lennox R. Meldrum Secondary School Principal Within the IB programmes, research skills are emphasised as an important component of student learning across all age groups and throughout all subject areas. Linking with the IB Learner Profile, as students develop research skills they also become more knowledgeable, better inquirers, critical thinkers, good communicators, principled in recognising the work of others, open-minded about the range of opinions expressed, and reflective of the information they discover. Across the Middle Years Programme and Diploma Programme, research skills are embedded as part of the Approaches to Learning (ATL) that are central to the programme models. ATL skills provide a solid foundation for learning independently and with others and cover communication, social skills, self management, research, and thinking skills. Each of these are further expanded into skill clusters and for research skills these are information literacy and media literacy. Our teachers collaboratively plan for the development of all ATL skills throughout the programmes through modelling, providing clear expectations and developmental benchmarks, and having multiple opportunities for students to practice each ATL skill across a range of learning experiences with guided feedback to aid improvement. The aim is for students to develop clear and sophisticated understandings of how they learn best and how they can evaluate the effectiveness of their learning.

The IB also values research as a key component in the development of their programmes to ensure that they can be taught across 140+ countries by and to teachers and students from equally diverse nationalities. With the growth of IB schools averaging 14% per year for the past 15 years, the research division of the IB has continued to look into how to best provide a truly global education. The four main areas of research that are focused on are: •

Programme impact: these studies look at student performance during and after an IB education, comparison of student results in IB programmes and other national and international programmes, how schools adapt and grow when they adopt the IB programmes, and how the standards of education required by IB World Schools compare and/or integrate with other recognition bodies or national requirements.

•

Programme development: as the courses of study are continually reviewed across the IB programmes, this area of research provides relevant information on how other countries are adapting to new technologies in education, the changing demands of universities and the workforce, and how best to teach to the learning styles of a new generation of students.

•

Quality assurance: in line with the two areas above, the research team also focuses on how the approach to professional development of IB educators can be improved, what standards the courses of study should be measured against to ensure the globally comparable high quality is continually maintained, and how schools can continue to be assessed and monitored so all students are receiving the same outstanding level of education.

•

Assessment: with over a million students learning in IB programmes, including over 150,000 each year taking Diploma Programme examinations, consistency is a very important aspect to maintaining the high quality for which IB assessment is known and respected. The assessment research team works with universities and other examination bodies to analyse annual results and assessment techniques. Expansion into on-screen assessment has been a major area of research in recent years.

You can find more information at the IB Research website and I particularly recommend looking at the Programme Impact Studies for each IB programme and the Research Resources sections. I have listed the websites below, along with the link to an exceptional literature review on the ATL skills I mentioned at the start of the article. At IGBIS we constantly speak of the desire to produce lifelong learners and this not only refers to our students, but also our teachers, administrators, staff, and members of the wider IGBIS community. We are proud to be part of the IB who also live and breathe this aim.

IB Research website: http://ibo.org/research/ Programme Impact Studies: http://ibo.org/research/policy/programmevalidation/ Research Resources: http://ibo.org/research/resources/ ATL Literature Review: http://tinyurl.com/litreviewatl

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Igniting Minds

Impacting Lives

Building Updates Mr Peter Syme, Director of Academic and Support Services Facilities Report Well the month of May is finally here and the staff at IGBIS are very excited to be moving in to the school building.

Whilst there will still be some internal work happening, the total handover and completion of all the facilities are due at the end of May. The widening of Jalan Sierramas Utama has been a priority too and we hope that this will benefit the surrounding communities. Outside the school, the additional left lane will allow easy access into the school and the undercover car park, with the other lane allowing for through traffic towards Valencia and Sierramas West. The staff thank you for your patience over the last 10 days as the road works have taken place.

In the next Facilities Report there will be a comprehensive guide to our outstanding sports facilities which include our 50m competition pool, a 25m learn to swim pool, artificially-turfed football field surrounded by an 8 lane synthetic athletics track, tennis courts and an indoor air-conditioned sports hall, which houses 3 full-size basketball courts, including badminton, volleyball, netball and other popular indoor sports.

Updates from Admissions Ms Michelle Ostiguy, Admissions Manager We are moving!

Next week the IGBIS site office will be moving to our newly constructed Administrative offices in IGB International School. This week we will be busy with packing and unpacking but you can still reach us by phone (+6(03) 6730 7788) or email (enquiries@igbis.edu.my). Soon you can visit us at the school site. Please stop in or make an appointment to learn more about the school and the IB programmes.

IGBIS Open Week will take place towards the end of May. We will send invitations to our enroled families and we will share the week’s programme with other interested families and the wider Sungai Buloh community. We can’t wait to show you our wonderful school.

We had a great response from parents attending the recent April parent information sessions. Thank you to everyone who attended.

The uniform details are currently being finalised. We will share the uniform designs in the next newsletter.

Remember to check out our Summer School programmes running from July 7 to 25. There are many great activities for your children to participate in such as music performance and ceramics to robotics and culinary arts.

Please contact us if you have any questions.

Igniting Minds

Impacting Lives

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