Island School Newsletter - 24 February 2012

ESF & Alumni

24 February 2012

Island Time
Cultural Evening 20th Anniversary
YR10 PSHE Video Competition
Webb's Wonderful Maths Result
Prefects
Island School Athletics in the News
Parent Notices / Merit Award Winners
Chinese Newsletter

Island Time

Island Time so far!!

Island Time has been going ever so well. The first two units have been completed and we are now working with students on a project entitled "Truth and Lies". Whilst a more in depth report will be going out to all Year 7 parents we thought it was important to share some of these developments with the wider parent body.

Health: Use it or Lose it

"Exercise is the single best thing you can do for your brain in terms of mood, memory, and learning," says Harvard Medical School psychiatrist John Ratey, author of the book "Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain". There is no doubt the study of health is an important area as the implications are applicable to everyone. The key concepts for this unit were things like… What does it mean to be “Healthy”? How do I know I’m healthy? What are my responsibilities for health and fitness on a personal and a school level?

The Health unit kick started with a group exercise activity each week in the hall for 185 students and this was followed by several talks by the Captain of The Hong Kong Rugby team, Ant Haynes. Over the six weeks students participated in a variety of activities including designing a smoothie for different population needs, undergoing fitness tests and setting personal fitness goals, a Science experiment on how to identify macro nutrients, collecting data from around the school and understanding appropriate use of statistical averages. These activities were designed to prepare and equip students with the knowledge and skills to embark on an inquiry project determined by the students themselves. Some students presented their projects in the hall to the entire year group and this helped develop and nurture students’ communication, creativity, capacity to learn and their collaborative skills.

Cultural Identity Unit

In this unit students were asked to focus on questions such as… Why and how does my identity change according to circumstance? It aimed to look at ideas such as how self identity is shaped by a range of social, historical and cultural factors; to consider how communities and cultures form around beliefs and values. The most engaging issues from the perspective of students were those to do with being a “Third Culture Kid” and stereotyping. Discussions were deep and provocative around these issues. Reading some of the students' high quality Cultural Self portraits it was clear that they had reflected deeply about their own identity.

At the end of this unit the students hosted a wonderful exhibition of their work in which they were not only able to exhibit poems, photographs and other written work, but also to show their filmed news reports and perform their drama pieces to visiting parents. Please see the photographs of this event...here

Truth & Lies

In the current unit entitled “Truth & Lies” students are involved in a very wide range of activities that aim to build their ability to think critically. We are asking students to develop their ability to reason and use logic. At the same time we are asking them to reflect on when it is best to apply reason and when best to "go with one’s heart”. The underlying concept for this unit is “How do we separate fact from fiction?" - how we can be sure that information is not propaganda and that it has not been influenced by bias or selection.

Island Time Team

Cultural Evening 20th Anniversary

Come and celebrate our 20th Annual Cultural Evening on Friday 2nd March 2012 starting at 7:00PM! The aim of this show is to explore the Cultural Diversity we have here at Island School as we will showcase a total number of 14 cultures in one night as well as provide a range of food & drinks.

Ticket Prices
Students - HKD$60
Adults - HKD$80
Tickets can be bought on the night or during school hours - Open to everyone!

So come and celebrate as we step into the 20th anniversary of the annual Cultural Evening. The CULTURES we will be celebrating this year are... Australia, Brazil, China, Cuba, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Korea, Russia, Spain, Taiwan, United Kingdom and United States!

We will have all sorts of exotic acts such as Punk bands, Russian folk dances, Japanese Karate Attacks, K-Pop Choreos, Cuban drummers, Chinese dragon dancers and many more. There will be amazing food such as hot spicy Indian curry, Japanese seafood sushi and even American style subways!

All our profits will go towards Future Hope. Future Hope is a non-profit organization that provides care to homeless street kids who are left abandoned in the streets of Calcutta. For more information please visit their website...here

Take a look at the trailer for this event...here

Hope to see you all there!

Cultural Evening 2012 Committee - Ryosuke H & Heinok F

YR10 PSHE Video Competition

A video made by Yee-Jeung Yuen 10W, Claudia Chan 10D and Vinson Yew 10R about their CAS week trip to Yang Zhou won the Year 10 PSHE film competition this week. After a hotly contested final round where 6 videos were viewed and voted on by the whole of year 10 theirs was the most popular.

The prize for this achievement was $1000 to be given to the charity of the students' choice. After some consideration they have decided to donate their prize to UNICEF.

Please take time to view the video...here

Gareth Stevens - Vice Principal

Webb's Wonderful Maths Result

Congratulations to ALISTAIR WEBB (11E) who won the UK Intermediate Maths Contest with an excellent score of 112 (max is 125). Alistair was ahead of Haihao Liu (11W, score 106), Tommy Oh (11N, 105) and Vikki Vaswani (11R, 101). These four students qualified for the second round of the UK Intermediate contest, as did the following students: Dorothy Shin (11N), Nupur Chatterji (11R), Sergio Tham (11E), Gabriel Ng (10R), Brian Wong (10W), Odetta Li (9R) and Chun Yu Yiu (9W). The second round contest takes place on Thursday 15 March, practice papers from PRJ.

Congratulations to the above named students who all got Gold certificates, and to the many others who got silver or bronze. Full results are on the Maths notice board, room 415.

The next Maths contest is the UK Junior, open to years 7 and 8 on Thursday 26 April, 3:30pm - $25, pay on the day. Practice papers on ISLE: Maths Enrichment course.

Paul Jackson - Head of Mathematics

Prefects

The outgoing head prefects congratulating the incoming team

Congratulations to our new prefects this year. Ryosuke Hoshiyama and Hei Nok Fan are our new Head Boy and Head Girl and Aaron Lum and Tanisha Raj are the new Deputy Head Boy and Deputy Head Girl. We also have 39 new prefects who have been selected across year 12.

Jenny Hodson - Vice Principal

Island School Athletics in the News

The Island School Boys Athletics Team were featured in the Young Post of the SCMP on Thursday February 16th. The article gives credit to the Island School Boys Team for placing first in division 3 and being promoted to division 2. See the full article...here

Derek Bailey - Head of Physical Education

Parent Notices / Merit Award Winners

Congratulations to the following merit award winners!

Silver Award

7W - Wing Kiu CHAN

7W - Karen NG

Early Closure 28 February due to Y7 Parents' Consultation
We would like to remind all parents and students that the school will close at 1:10pm on Tuesday 28 February for the Year 7 Parents’ Consultation process. Lessons 1-4 will continue as usual, but there will be no lesson 5 on that day. Buses will take students home at 1:10 pm. If your child does not take the school bus, please make sure that arrangements are made for them to be picked up at 1:10pm.

Y7 Geography Fieldtrip Amendment

Please be advised that if you are intending to pick up your son/daughter from the ferry pier at the end of the Year 7 Geography trip to Cheung Chau, the ferry will arrive at pier number 5 at 3.10pm not the originally published pier 9.

Please could you also ensure that you have returned the parental permission slip to inform us whether your child will be picked up or make their own way home before Monday 27 February.

Students will need to bring their Octopus cards with sufficient funds to cover the cost of the public ferry which is $12.60 or $6.30 each way depending on whether your son/daughter is over 12 years old.

Chinese Newsletter

We would like to extend our apologies this week for omitting the Chinese version of this Newsletter.