News

Items: Introducing John Savage; Contributing to HIS; Festive Eve Survey; Syrian Refugee Winter Clothing Drive; Sakura Medal; 1. Principal's Message Dear HIS Families I hope you all have a happy and safe holiday. Please make sure you keep up a consistent routine of reading through the holidays (English & Japanese) and also practice that kanji. Just a bit each day can make a big difference over time. See you all back in January. Kind regards Damian Rentoule (Principal) 2. Crane Video 3. Introducing John Savage Here is an introduction from John Savage who will be joining HIS as MYP Coordinator/Secondary Vice Principal in 2018/2019. We are all looking forward to seeing you here next year. As a Canadian born educator, I spent the first part of my teaching career in…

Topics: Festive Eve; Kanji Club update; Japanese Culture Day; Soccer Opportunity; PYP Cleaning Day; Otafuku Visit; Hirosho Department Store; Soccer Coaching in English 1. Principal's Message Dear HIS Families Thank you to the HIS families who are organizing the Kanji Club, an opportunity to create some time for children to practice kanji. The kanji club has sent home an order form for a kanji book that will be used for this practice.  The book can only be ordered through a school, so we will place one order for anyone who would like a copy. This does not follow the units of inquiry in our program but has a range of kanji that parents may find useful to practice. Your child's Japanese teacher will be able to let you know which kanji…

Topics: Jessy Bosman's last week at HIS Contributing to HIS web-page DP Open Day MYP consultation visit - parents panel Japanese Workshop follow-up letter 1. Principal's Message Dear HIS Families I hope you all receive the Crane email this week. We have been having difficulties with Crane email and embedded link bouncing back with a 'This message has been blocked' notification. This started about a month ago. We seem to have solved the problem by creating a new email address and last week the emails seem to have gone through. We are all very excited as Festive Eve Fever grips HIS. The students are rehearsing scenes, singing songs, creating props, planning for sound and lighting, sorting and sourcing costumes, stressing and laughing to name just a few of the actions…

Items: Bentos; Vocabulary Study; Typhoon; Netherlands Student Exchange; Coffee Morning Workshop 27 October; Secondary Halloween Party; Japanese survey; 1. Principal's Message Dear HIS Families I hope you have all enjoyed your week. I received a question this week at the PTA meeting regarding the reason why HIS is considering a boarding program. I thought I would say a few words about that today. Firstly, a boarding program has been discussed by the Board of Directors for a number of years. The main benefit of a boarding program would be to boost the number of students in our upper Secondary classes to stabilize enrolments at HIS over time. Historically, enrolment numbers have gone up and down, year-to-year. When student numbers go down, the costs of running the school do not. For this reason, if…

Topics:  Exhibition; PE Shirts; Guardians Elections to BOT; MYP & Japanese Workshops; The Netherlands Student Exchange Meeting; Bento Orders; 1. Principal's Message Dear HIS Families Thank you to all of the parents who came in this morning to help with feedback for the PYP self-study. We also had a quick look at the set of Approaches to Learning (ATL) skills that we can target to support learning at home. For example, if the all-important reading is not happening at home it could be a case that the development of organizational skills (time-management/goal setting) may be needing some support. Many of the definitions are not perfect translations, such as a term like 'critical thinking/批判的思考' with slightly different connotations in English and Japanese, however below are the official translations which are a…

Topics:  Boarding Facility Search; ISA Testing; Japanese survey; Bento reminder; HIS Student/Parent Handbook 2017/2018; IB overview documents; 1. Principal's Message Dear HIS Families We welcome back our Grade 4/5 students and their teacher-chaperones from Hamada Camp. They all had a great time and made it back safe and sound. These camps are a major adventure for our students and a very important part of their program, developing their social skills and becoming more caring, adventurous learners in the process. I would like to share a video, produced by the IB, which provides an overview of the programs and gives you a sense of the array of schools offering the IB around the world. You can see this video underneath. I would also like to thank the parents who have been very proactive…

Topics Bento Program; Student Teacher from the Netherlands; PYP Reading Carousel (4 October); PYP Parent Meeting (6 October); PYP Swimming PYP Gr 4/5 Camp at Hamada 1. Principal's Message Dear HIS Families We were happy to see the safe return of our travellers from the Netherlands. They had a very successful trip and all came back safely, albeit a bit sleepy from the jetlag. One request I had this week was for all parents to please contact your child's classroom teacher directly if you have any questions regarding the classroom. This will help keep communication constructive and positive.  We really need to make sure we communicate directly with the person who is most closely connected to an issue, rather than talk about it with others. This is what we teach…