tintuc@unishanoi.org UNIS Hanoi’s Weekly Community Newsletter
NEXT WEEK… MONDAY, 9 JUNE MS leaver assembly, 13:15-14:00 G2 End of Year Party, 14:00 - 14:30, Canteen TUESDAY, 10 JUNE Faculty/Staff Appreciation Breakfast, 07:00 - 9:00, Centre for the Arts Foyer G1 Field trip to Cinema, 08:20-11:00 Grade 4 Movie Day, 08:30 - 11:00 Grade 5 "Moving Up" Ceremony, 08:50 - 10:30 Grade 1 Shared Lunch with Parents, 11:00 - 12:30, Canteen Grade 3 Shared Lunch with Parents, 11:30 - 12:30, 3AL & 3SE Homerooms Grade 4 Shared Lunch with Parents, 11:30 - 12:30, Grade 4 Homerooms WEDNESDAY, 11 JUNE MS awards assembly, 08:10 - 09:00, Theatre HS awards assembly, 09:05 - 10:10, Theatre K2 End of Year Party, 11:00 - 12:30, ECC Gym & Homerooms Discovery Shared Lunch with Parents, 11:00 - 12:00, Homeroom Grade 6 Party, 12:30 - 14:30, Patio behind the Sports Centre and Pool ES Leavers Assembly, 13:15 - 14:15, Sports Centre
Volume 20, Edition 36, Friday 06 June
K1 End of Year Party, 11:20 - 12:20, ECC Playground & Homerooms ES Reports available on ISIS Family, 15:45
THURSDAY, 12 JUNE Last Day of School 12:00 Early Dismissal Grade 7 End of Year Party, 08:30-10:00 D-12 End of Year Assembly, 11:15 - 11:40, Sports Centre FRIDAY, 13 JUNE SCHOOL OFFICES CLOSED from 14:00 LAST DAY OF WORK for Faculty, 08:00 - 16:00 Recognition Ceremony, 14:30 - 15:30
COMING SOON SUMMER HOLIDAY: 14 JUNE - 12 AUGUST TUESDAY, 12 AUGUST NEW FAMILY ORIENTATION DAY WEDNESDAY, 13 AUGUST FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL
IN THIS WEEK’S TIN TUC - The Highlights... Notes from the Head of School (p.2) Notes from the Board of Directors (p.2) Notes from the ES Principal (p.3)
MS Sports Awards (p.6-7) Notes from the Library (p.8) Fair Life End of Year Sale (p.8)
Middle School Day (p.4) Yearbook Cover Design Exhibit (p.5) Faculty & Staff Appreciation (p.5)
Notes from the School Health Centre (p.9) Summer Programme Updates (p.10)
With only one more week to go, I wanted to send you a link to a complete list of new teachers coming in next school year along with their photo and short bio. While we are sad to say goodbye to those faculty who are leaving, the principals and I are very pleased with the caliber of new people coming. Their strong backgrounds, breadth of experience and positive references bode well for them to be successful here at UNIS Hanoi beginning next year. The link can be found here. On another topic, I know that you may already be aware of the schedule for the final day of school which is Thursday, 12 June, but just in case here it is:
08:15 – Normal starting time 08:15 – 11:15 – Teachers and students will be going through regular close out routines, procedures and practices. 11:20 – 11:40 – All student assembly (D-12) in the Sports Centre 11:45 – Students return to their classrooms 12:00 – All students are dismissed, all buses will load up and depart, and the school year is officially over Best wishes for a cooler and restful weekend with all of the end of year functions. Respectfully, Dr. Barder, hos@unishanoi.org
Middle School Day May 30
This week, the Board elected the officers of the Board for the 2014-2015 School Year. They are: Board Chair: Ms. Sarah Garner Vice Chair: Ms. Nandini Oomman Treasurer: Mr. Nguyen Van Hieu Secretary: Mr. Craig Burgess
In August, I will provide more information about the Board’s plans for the new school year. This will include confirmation of the various Board Committees and Task Forces that will be assisting the Board to carry out its work during the year.
The voting members of the Board are all volunteers and we depend upon other members of the community to
volunteer their time and talents for the benefit of the School. Whether that be as a class representative or serving in another School Community Organisation (SCO) position, providing home stay accommodation for visiting sport’s teams, helping to orient new families at the start of the school year or serving on the Board or one of its committee or task forces, your contributions are all extremely valuable and worthwhile. The Board invites you to consider volunteering on a Board committee or taskforce next year. To find out more about the work of this year’s committee and taskforces, click here. For more information, please contact the Board Assistant, Jennifer Sawyer, at boardassistant@unishanoi.org Best regards, Sarah Garner, Board Chair
Dear Parents and Guardians We have just one week left of school and the teachers are outing their finishing touches to the End of Year Student Reports. The reports are undertaken seriously as a reflection and record of the year past for their primary audience - you, the parents. However, they are also a record for the next school and this is particularly pertinent in an international school like UNIS Hanoi where the school population is, by its very nature, highly transient. With this in mind, and with our desire to make the reports as useful to as possible for both audiencesparents and future receiving schools, we have made adaptations to this year’s report which we hope you will find helpful. This year we have tried to improve the visual “at a glance representation” in the report. Achievement against grade level expectations is shown in a grid with shaded, numbered boxes for each subject where the number represents achievement against indicators from our curriculum goals and assessment outcomes. Student’s Achievement Level
NA
1
2
3
4
NA: Not applicable – Student was not at UNIS Hanoi when this learning outcome was introduced 1: Emerging - Student has been exposed to the learning outcome but has not yet developed an understanding of it 2: Developing - Student demonstrates a growing understanding of the learning outcome and can apply it with support 3: Consistent - Student is secure in his/her understanding of the learning outcome and applies it independently & confidently 4: Extending - Student is willing and able to apply the learned outcome in new and challenging ways
We have also chosen to report specifically on progress and engagement. UNIS Hanoi students come to us with a very wide range of background educational experiences and so we assess them as they start each new school year and each new Unit of Inquiry or unit in Mathematics and English to establish their prior knowledge, skills and understanding. This gives us a baseline from which to measure their progress. Each child is an individual with different starting points and, for this reason, we believe it is very important to reflect on their progress, not just where they are in relation to grade level outcomes. Engagement is of great importance to us too, as it is about attitudes and motivation which we know affect learning significantly. This was already being reported on in the MSHS and we wanted to include this for our students too as it is such a big part of being an IB student. Engagement is defined by UNIS Hanoi as follows: an engaged learner is a student who participates fully, collaborates willingly, inquires actively, acts responsibly and seeks challenges. Engagement considers the student’s approaches to learning and their characteristics as a learner in relation to the attributes of the IB Learner Profile. What follows each visual grid is a more personal narrative which gives the teacher an opportunity to explain aspects of the visual representation of achievement if necessary and may give some examples of progress and engagement. For most areas of the curriculum, the teacher then outlines one or two goals or areas of development for your child. With our increased emphasis on the teaching of Personal, Social and Emotional Learning (PSEL) this year, we have added some descriptors for a visual representation of these skills and attitudes as well as a narrative written by the teacher referring to how well your child is demonstrating the various aspects of the IB Learner Profile which is used to define the desired outcomes for every student who is at an IB World School. We hope you find the new layout of the report easy to navigate and more user-friendly and the information useful and relevant. The teachers have spent many, many hours contributing ideas for the design and adjustments to the new report and, more importantly, writing this level of detail based on all their ongoing assessments throughout the year. I want to take this opportunity to thank them sincerely for this work which, whilst part of their role, takes a tremendous level of energy and effort at the very end of the school year and adapting to changes takes extra energy and effort. With the changes we have made, we would welcome your feedback more than ever this year. When the reports are released next Wednesday, we will therefore include a link to a survey. Please do take a few minutes to compete the survey so we can continue to provide the best possible information for you. May I take this opportunity to wish everyone a wonderful summer break and my very best wishes to all those leaving UNIS. I hope you take with you fond memories of your time in Hanoi and your experience at our school. Warm regards, Carole Denny, esprincipal@unishanoi.org
Wednesday, June 11th 12:40 - 14::30 Patio behind the Sports Center and Pool To celebrate the end of a great year! All grade 6 Students, Parents and Teachers Schedule 12:40 – 1:30: Pot luck lunch and field games & HR and Parent Tug a War Championship 13:30 – 14:20: Pool 14:20 – 14:35: Clean up and Farewell Parents are kindly requested to bring drinks or food to share with about 6 people. There will be coolers available to keep drinks cold. Students should bring sun hats, swim suits and towels.
The eagerly awaited UNIS Hanoi Yearbook will be delivered to all students on the last day of school - and this year more than 50% was created by our students, including the 'secret' front cover. The theme was 'social media' and all the designs submitted in our cover competition will be on display until Wednesday June 11 in the Centre for the Arts. The winner will be announced and receive their prize at the all school assembly on June 12
The School Community Organisation would like to THANK YOU for yet another INSPIRING year! Date: Tuesday, June 10 Time: 7:00 - 9:00am (stop by anytime) Location: Center for the Arts Foyer Fusion Oi will again arrange an amazing spread of breakfast food ranging from Vietnamese to Western dishes to satisfy everyone's breakfast cravings! The healthiest way to start your day is with a complete breakfast... Wish you all the best in these last two weeks of school!
The 2013-14 year in Middle School sports at UNIS has been another one featuring some significant successes. The most obvious successes came courtesy of our Middle School girls. In a year that featured only MRISA tournaments in basketball and soccer, we saw the UNIS girls crowned as MRISA Champions in both sports! Their chance of making it a clean sweep of the MRISA first place titles for UNIS was derailed when the MRISA Volleyball Tournament was unexpectedly cancelled at the last minute. The UNIS Boys and Girls volleyball teams were both looking like very strong contenders for the MRISA crown, but their potential will have to wait until 2015 before it can be realized. Success can however be measured in numerous ways. Perhaps the 150+ MS students who took to the fields and courts this year and represented UNIS is a measure of our success? Individual successes can be measured and used to determine the degree to which goals have been accomplished. Middle School athletes were asked to look back at their performances over the past year to judge the level of their own success. Perhaps a soccer goalkeeper measured their own personal success by the number of shutouts they earned in the season. A basketball player has perhaps challenged themselves to successfully make 85% of their free-throws attempts. A swimmer, who may finish last in their heat but has swum a personal best time, can certainly consider that to have been a success. Or perhaps a volleyballer, who maintained a 100% serving percentage throughout an entire match, can look back and say “I’ve had success”? Hopefully all of our young athletes will consider 2013-14 to have been a success in one way or another. Many individual successes will hopefully combine to leave us with the few team successes….like the MRISA titles captured by the girls! I encourage all of our athletes to keep up the good work and strive towards having those team and individual successes. During the Awards Ceremony, coaches presented “Coaches’ Choice Awards” to members of their teams who they felt were worthy of special acknowledgement. Students could be recognized as being the “Most Valuable” or perhaps the “Most Improved”, but in the end it is left to individual coaches to determine why someone earns a Coaches Choice Award. Congratulations to the following athletes who were presented with a gold medal:
Girls Volleyball – Uyen Trinh, Maria Rosenholm, Krisha Valle and Farah Hisamuddin Boys Volleyball – Mateusz Nguyen, Hjalmar Selin, Leonardo Cazanas Royo and Dominik Vagner Girls Swimming – Nikki Erken and Adelaide Charlier Boys Swimming – Peter Park and Chinh Mai Girls Basketball – Saskia Brennen, Daniella Miller, Sunu (Isabel)
Kim and Nadia Stevenson Boys Basketball – Mateusz Nguyen, Kevin Gibney, Ky Anh Nguyen and Li Zhang Yip Girls Soccer – Uyen Trinh, Ava Pilgrim, Nadia Stevenson and Hazel Kevlihan Boys Soccer – Santtu Savila, Kevin Gibney, Charlie Wood and Thien Lam In order to be eligible for this award, candidates were required to meet the following criteria: • Participation on at least 2 MRISA sports teams • Exemplify the qualities of sportsmanship and leadership • Maintain academic eligibility • Demonstration of a high level of skill and athleticism The worthy recipients this year are two Grade 8 students – Saskia Brennen and Mateusz Nguyen! Both Saskia and Matti participated on three MRISA teams and were outstanding ambassadors for UNIS! Each of their coaches was full of praise and compliments in their descriptions of these two sportspeople. Congratulations to two very deserving “Phoenix Athletes”! Many people have contributed to what has been another successful year for the Middle School Sports Program. On behalf of the Activities Office, I would like to send out a big THANK YOU to the following: • UNIS Parents & Host Families…for opening their homes to our guests and all their support • UNIS Operations and Transportation Staff…for all that you do when no one is there to see it • UNIS Nurses and SOS Clinic…for taking care of all the knocks and bruises so students can keep playing • UNIS Activities Office Staff…you’re what makes all these things possible for our students • All student-athletes…for being great young sportspeople and representing UNIS in the “Phoenix” way • The UNIS Coaching Staff…for your love of sport and passing that along to your athletes. Good luck to the Grade 8’s as they make their way up into the high school next year! Have an enjoyable summer everyone! August will bring the start of a new sports season - Middle School Basketball and Swimming and High School Volleyball and Tennis. UNIS will be hosting the MRISA Senior Boys and Girls Volleyball Tournament in October and the APAC Boys and Girls Basketball Tournament in February. Let’s make 2014-15 another memorable year!
GO PHOENIX!!! Dirk Kraetzer, Director of Activities da@unishanoi.org
GO PHOENIX!!!
Dear Parents, ALL Library Books are OVERDUE!! Please return ALL books that you borrowed from the Library immediately. OVERDUE Books = NO Report Card!! Thank you, Julie Conroy and Joyce Miller, Librarians PS: Staying in Hanoi over the summer? Ask your librarian about summer checkouts!
END OF YEAR SALE Bamboo Lacquer Products
This is organised by the MSHS Social Enterprise & Microfinance Students. Get all the cool bamboo housewares you can. You will not want to miss out!!!! The sustainable handcrafted products from Cat Dang village by the members of Fair Life. All proceeds will go back into supporting the Cat Dang village in the form of fair wages and microloans.
The Community Education (ComEd)'s baseball programme for children is expanding. We are looking for baseball coaches. If you are interested, please contact Ms Ha Thien Ha, ComEd Officer at comed@unishanoi.org or Mr Brian Bulloch at bullochb@gmail.com
The School Health Centre is open Monday – Friday 8am6pm and Saturday 8am-1pm for Saturday Soccer. The SHC is primarily available to provide first aid to students, staff and visitors. We encourage all new parents and students to meet with the School Nurses either before or on the first day of school. This is a good time for you and your child to locate the SHC (near the Elementary School Office, Building 9) and also to discuss any health related matters.
All returning students that have not had a medical updated in the past 2 years must complete and provide to the SHC before starting school (August 1st, 2014). All Medical Forms must be signed by a licensed physician and include proof of mandatory immunizations. Please provide the school nurse with any updates to your child’s Medical Forms, to include updated immunizations or changes in health status. New Medical Forms are required for returning students in Kindergarten, Grades 3, 6 and 9 and 12 (If have not been attended in past 2 years).
UNIS provides adequate facilities to handle accidents and minor emergency situations that occur on campus. Children will be sent home for a temperature of 38 or higher, vomiting, diarrhea or any other illness preventing them from participating in school activities. Children must be kept home in the event of: Temperature of 38 or higher. Children must be fever free for 24 hours without medication before returning to school. Vomiting or Diarrhea. Viral or bacterial conjunctivitis. Head lice until treated. Infectious diseases. For the complete Exclusion Policy, please see the portal under School health Centre. Please report all cases of infectious diseases i.e.: strep throat, chickenpox, rubella, measles, mumps, flu and lice.
All notices regarding health matters should be sent to the nurse’s office or nurse’s email and will be treated confidentially.
Students who are taking regular medication while at school must do so through the school nurse. Students are not allowed to possess, distribute, or consume medication during the school day unless it is dispensed by the school nurse. If your child requires medication during the day please provide: student’s name, class, medication name, dose, route and time of day to be given and duration. (Form available from SHC)
Please fill out an Emergency Medical Authorization Form found in your enrolment package to include emergency contacts (not parent or guardian) and return them before starting school. Please update your emergency contacts in the event they have moved away from Hanoi. In the event of a medical emergency or accident, and a parent or designee cannot be reached, the student will be taken to the most appropriate medical facility. In certain circumstances, an ambulance may be necessary for transport. Fees resulting from the above will be the responsibility of the parent.
For any student health inquiries, please do not hesitate to contact the School Nurse. Room G44, Building 9, Elementary School across from the Elementary School Office Phone: 3758 1551 ext. 8911 Email: nurse@unishanoi.org
Summer Program registration for all students will close on June 6. Students currently on the waitlist (non-UNIS students who signed up after May 22) will be contacted by June 9 if places are available. Grade 8-11 students wishing to sign up for the "Sports and Fitness" or "Personal Project and Extended Essay" programs after June 6 should contact summerprogram@unishanoi.org
CLICK HERE for more information and to book your place!
Please note that Boutique's last days of sale are: Monday, June 9th and Tuesday, June 10th from 08:00 - 09:00. We reopen for New Family Orientation with new and exciting stock! HAPPY SUMMER!