News

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…

ITEMS: Introduction from James Steward (incoming Principal); HIS Alumni Presentations; HIS News. Message from James Steward (HIS Principal from August 2022) Dear Hiroshima International School Community I wanted to take this time to wish you a Happy New Year! I am presently still at Ridley College in Ontario, Canada where we are in the midst of a significant winter cold spell. Temperatures have dipped to -20’C recently. There are many people skating on the local frozen lakes and ponds in the region. I suspect that it is much warmer in Hiroshima! I have been meeting with Damian Rentoule regularly over the past couple of months. He has been keeping me up to speed with developments on the HIS front. I am truly looking forward to coming to Hiroshima next school…

ITEMS: A Special Visitor; PTA News. Principal's Message Dear HIS Community As we move into the winter break, I would like to thank the school community for being so supportive of all of our health regulations this semester. The COVID situation in Hiroshima continues to be very stable so we are hoping this continues through winter but will continue with the same health procedures into next semester. It has been a great start to the year and it is hard to believe that we are nearly in 2022 already. One of the challenges that we face in today's very connected society is that when provided with a choice between going to sleep and connecting with the world on their device, children may not select sleeping. We all know the importance…

ITEMS: PTA Message; Lots of Festive Eve videos; HIS Baseball Video; PTA News. Principal's Message Dear HIS Community We have just seen a wonderful Festive Eve performance including the Primary dance, Secondary Orchestra, and the Annie performance, of which you can see some footage below. You will also be able to see a professional recording of Annie thanks to the kind generosity of the Sonoda Family. The live stream cut off at two hours so my apologies for those at home who did not see the end of the show. We will send the link to the recording as soon as it is available. I would like to say three things about the performance. Firstly, congratulation to all of our students involved for being risk-takers not only for putting in…