Author: Damian Rentoule

ITEMS: Primary (Gr5) Graduation; Primary (Gr4/5) & Secondary (Gr6-12) Camp; Book Trailer Awards; PTA Message. Principal's Message Dear HIS Community We have the Gr11 students presenting the Theory of Knowledge Exhibition this afternoon followed by a student-led Charity Concert supporting the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. I would like to congratulate all of the students involved and you can look forward to seeing some images in next week's Crane video. This week, we also have the second in the Diploma Program Music Recital series featuring Sean (Gr11) which you can see below. Enjoy your weekend. Kind regards Damian Rentoule https://youtu.be/R5aMGl2Ecv8 Crane Video https://youtu.be/YxB8zKjULH0 Grade 5 Graduation The Gr5 Graduation will take place on Wednesday, June 15 (4:00 pm - 5:00 pm) at HIS.  We are looking forward to the ceremony to celebrate…

ITEMS: Charity concert to support Ukraine; PTA News. Principal's Message Dear HIS Community I hope you are all enjoying the warmer weather and the beautiful cherry blossoms. Here are some of our Primary students enjoying the lovely colors of spring. April, apart from having some lovely weather and flowers, is a time of year when we welcome a number of new students and several will be joining us over the next week. HIS is a diverse and inclusive school community where we all look after each other so we look forward to meeting our newest students and their families. I would like to congratulate the Secondary Music students, including our DP Music students, for the musical recital yesterday. Over the next few weeks, I will share some footage of our…

ITEMS: Bento Order Form; Theory of Knowledge Exhibition; HIS Idol Message; PTA News. Principal's Message Dear HIS Community We were very happy to receive so many entries for HIS Idol this great and I would like to thank Nami, Mr B, and Mr Washington for all of the work organizing this great event. It is a wonderful opportunity for children to express themselves in a variety of creative ways and we often see sides of our students that we may not see on a day-to-day basis. Well done to all you risk-takers out there. Speaking of our creative, risk-takers, below is a presentation by one of our HIS Alumni, Taiga Ishibashi, who is doing exciting work in the music industry. Taiga was kind enough to speak with our students about…

ITEMS: Concert by HIS students; New staff joining the HIS Team; Visual Arts Exhibition; PTA Message. Principal's Message Dear HIS Community Thank you to everyone involved in the Parent-Student-Teacher Conferences today. This is an important part of our reporting cycle reinforcing that very important relationship between child, school and family which is so important to support the learning process. We hope you all enjoyed the conversations. I would like to say thank you to Yoko Hiraki who has been at HIS for about 20 years and will be moving on to new adventures at the end of this March. Yoko has been a very valuable member of our HIS community and we will miss your happy and consistently positive presence in the school. We wish you all the best! Yoko…

ITEMS: HIS Idol; National Day of Unplugging; Kanji kentei information/日本漢字能力検定のご案内. Principal's Message Dear HIS Community We had another fun week at school with lots of learning happening across our units of inquiry. Please see the Crane Video for some action in the KG/Gr1 classroom looking at some mathematics skills as well as some great artwork. As we are a PreKindergarten-Grage 12, we see the whole learning journey of students and in this week's Alumni talk, you can hear from Elin who is now at university and talks about her pathway into the Arts, which started many years ago with her creative activities in the primary school, perhaps even making seed pictures. You never know where your artistic exploration will lead you. Many thanks to Elin for sharing her story with…

ITEMS: SENIA (Special Education Network Inclusion Association) Parent Group; Camps this year; PTA News. Principal's Message Dear HIS Community It is an important day for our Grade 10 students with the Middle Years Program (MYP) Exhibition. The Personal Project involves students applying all of the skills they have developed over the years in the MYP to an extended independent inquiry leading to this presentation. It is one example of students being able to apply their learning to an unfamiliar context while pursuing an area of interest. We are very proud of their work and you'll be able to see some of the action on today's Crane Video below. Speaking of applying our learning to unfamiliar contexts, this week we had another event in our Alumni Talk series. We are very grateful to…

ITEMS: We are all beautiful (Genkan Art Installation); Alumni Event; MYP Parent Information Event; MYP Exhibition; PTA News. Principal's Message Dear HIS Community We had a busy week with International Schools Assessment (ISA) for Secondary students and Primary (Gr3-5) finished their ones last week. We are expecting to receive the results sooner this year with the move to tests only being offered online so we will send you the results as soon as they come in. We also use this information as part of our program reflections so are very happy that we can access this earlier this year. Thank you to all of our volunteer Board of Trustees who are meeting tomorrow. We appreciate your generosity with your time to support HIS in this most-important governance role. In this…

ITEMS: PTA News. Principal's Message Dear HIS Community Firstly, a reminder that next week there is no school Wednesday-Friday. There are professional development days (Teacher Workdays) on Wednesday and Thursday, and a public holiday on Friday. We said farewell to Mika sensei on Monday and welcomed Mr B. on Tuesday. Thank you to the PTA for the lovely gift basket for Mika sensei. We will look forward to hearing from you, Mika, all about university life. We wish you all the best and appreciate your 16 years of service to HIS! Just like Mathematics, Science and all the other subject areas, the IB Arts (Visual Arts and Music) is focused on exploring concepts - developing our understanding of big ideas. This TED Talk by Katie Paterson is an excellent example…

ITEMS: Semester 1 Reports; PTA News. Principal's Message Dear HIS Community Thank you for your ongoing support of our health guidelines as we navigate the current COVID wave. Also, congratulations to our Gr12 students who have just completed their DP practice exams and will now spend a couple of months completing the last of their internal assessment tasks and preparing for their final exams in May. As another group of students get set to move out into the world, it is good to give some thought to the nature of the barriers that they may face. As an IB school, we define inclusion as the identification and removal of barriers to learning (or other opportunities) and I think this is a useful definition to look at when we are thinking…

ITEMS: Farewell to Mika Sensei & welcome back to Mr B; International Schools Assessment (ISA); Alunmi Event Slides; COVID Update; Clubs (Semester 2); PTA Update. Principal's Message Dear HIS Community We are in the middle of the Grade 12 practice exams at the moment as they get ready for their final Diploma Program (DP) exams in May. It is a very exciting time for them as they get ready for these final stages of their IB journey. Below, you will find the presentation slides from some of our HIS alumni who were kind enough to share their post-school stories with us last week. If you missed the video of the presentation, it is also embedded below. They are great role models for all of our students, especially our Grade 12s…