The Crane, 26 May 2017
1. Principal's Message Dear HIS Families As we approach the end of another school year, one of the big questions that we must ask ourselves as parents is, how much has my child read this year? You can't do much about the past, but you can reflect on it and make plans for the future. If you look at the table below, some information related to the effects of reading can be seen. Reading strengthens language skills, which support other academic development. Parents control routines at home. Please make reading an important part of your child's routine. Source: http://www.dentonisd.org/Page/61217 Enjoy your weekend, perhaps with a book. Kind regards Damian Rentoule (Principal) 2. The Crane Video 3. Congratulations to our Grade 12 Students The graduation ceremony and dinner is on Saturday afternoon for…
The Crane, 19 May 2017
1. Principal's Message Dear HIS Families I would like to congratulate all of our Grade 12 students who have just finished their Diploma Program (DP) exams. The DP is a rigorous university preparatory program and these final two years of schooling hold numerous challenges that provide the foundations for success, not only in university, but throughout later life. You will still see a few students around school over the next couple of weeks as some of the CAS projects are completed and this is part of the perseverance that will be necessary in later life and one of the great lessons of the DP. We will bid farewell to our Class of 2017 next weekend at the graduation ceremony. The Class of 2017 received acceptances from a wide range of universities, which…
The Crane 12 May 2017
1. Principal's Message Dear HIS Families I hope you all enjoyed the beautiful weather over Golden Week. I wanted to remind everyone that next Monday is Student Led Conferences and next Friday evening is Spring Concert, so we have a week and for this reason, quite a lot of information below. On Monday, for the Student Led Conferences (SLC), we do not have a regular school day, rather students come to school with their families at the scheduled SLC time. On Friday, for the Spring Concert, primary students come home early - buses leave HIS at 1:00pm and the exact arrival times at each bus stop will be sent home on Monday. Enjoy your weekend and we hope to see you at school next week. Regards Damian 2. The Crane…
Patterns in conversations and what they can teach us
[caption id="attachment_1194" align="alignnone" width="750"] Going further with your conversations. These two questions are posed to an Early Childhood 3&4 year-old class at HIS.[/caption] Our brains seek patterns. It’s the way we make sense of our world and it is also the way we learn. Conversational patterns are an important part of our world, particularly as they govern the nature of our interactions. As we learn language initially from our earliest interactions, the ongoing conversations between parents and young children have a strong impact on not only our language development but of our view of the world and our place in it. We know that children of parents who speak to them a lot develop larger vocabularies. This seems like common sense. However, as Bari Walsh from Harvard Graduate School of…
HIS Teachers – What qualities are important?
The question about what makes a great teacher is an interesting one, particularly as we don't really know the answer. It is also an important one as much research suggests that the individual teacher is the single most important factor related to impacting learning in the classroom (For example, see Hattie, Visible Learning, 2009). As an IB school, experience teaching in an IB program is an advantage of course for teachers joining our school, along with their breadth of experience, however one of the most important qualities that a teacher can bring to HIS is a genuine interest in the student as a person, as an individual. This is also one of the most important qualities our students look for as you can see in the comments in the video above.…
The Crane 28 April 2017
1. Principal's Message Dear HIS Families Our Grade 12 students begin their DP exams on Monday. It is always the start of May, so starts during Golden Week. All IB schools around the world do each exam on the same day and we have strict procedures to follow, including the maintenance of a relatively quiet space. For this reason, we will be asking everyone, at certain times, to keep the genkan a relatively quiet space. Signs will be posted. Thanks. I would like to wish the Grade 12 students all the best. It is a tough journey during these last couple of years, but all worth it in the end. Also, the newspaper Wendy came and interviewed me a couple of weeks ago and here is a link to the article that…
The Crane 21 April 2017
1. Principal's Message Dear HIS Families We had a fun Sports Day today. Thank you very much to the families who could make it to the stadium to support. A quick reminder that we have Student Led Conferences coming up on May 15 and some further details will be available in next week's Crane. Enjoy your weekend. Kind regards Damian Rentoule (Principal) 2. Crane Video 3. Secondary Science Fair Ms. Lee and I would like to invite parents and community members to the HIS Science Fair the week of May 8-12 and May 15th (Student-Lead-Conference's). Please come at your convenience to walk through the Science fair exhibit between the hours of 9 am - 4 pm. Science Fair Astronaut Poster Grades 6-10 have been working diligently over the past month on gathering data…
The Crane 14 April 2017
1. Principal's Message Dear HIS Families It has certainly been a busy week with all of the preparations for the HIS Festival underway. Thank you to our PTA and all the volunteers who have been working so hard to make the HIS Festival possible. We are all looking forward to a great day tomorrow and it looks like we may even get a little bit of sunshine. See you at the HIS Festival tomorrow. Kind regards Damian Rentoule (Principal) 2. The Crane Video 3. Spring Secondary Dates Some spring dates have been recently added to the HIS online calendar for our secondary program. Here is a brief summary: May 29-June 2: End of year exams (Structured revision will take place the week before) May 19 DP Exhibition with Spring Concert. We…
The Crane 7 April 2017
1. Principal's Message Dear HIS Families We said goodbye, today, to our Comenius College visitors from the Netherlands. It was s great experience for our students and we hope to continue the relationship built with the school through this trip and send some of our students to visit them next year. Thank you again to all of the homestay families. We also have another school group visiting us on Monday - Westridge School Glee Club and parents are invited to come and see the performance. The details are below. Thank you to Takako sensei for organizing this great even once again. Now we enter into the very busy lead up to the HIS Festival. Thank you to the PTA for all of the work that has been going into this…