3 Mar 2017

Newsletter #24

Beacon Hill School latest newsletter available to read now. Find out the latest news around the school and upcoming events.

Other News

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Dear Parents, Family and Friends,

I hope that you found the Student-Led Conferences today informative. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules to attend them – it is an important part of the children’s learning, empowering them to take the lead, share their learning and explain their targets. It gives the children a real sense of ownership of their learning and we also hope that it provides an opportunity to learn more about the progress of your child. It is always worth continuing these conversations at home when you can.

International Food Fair

The raffle tickets are selling very well but there is still time to sell even more. Remember the two classes that sell the most tickets will win a prize – a day out for the whole class! All proceeds are put back into improving Beacon Hill School, so please do what you can to help.

Action

Starting from March 13th we will be celebrating books and reading in our annual ‘Book Week’ which this year lasts for just over a week! We will be having author visits, exciting activities for the children to take part in and as part of this event we would like to support Heifer organisation and their ‘Read to Feed’ programme. You can find details about this and some resources and a sponsorship form to download later in in this newsletter. I hope that you can encourage your child to read more books and help foster a love of reading whilst helping those less fortunate than ourselves.

BHS 50th Anniversary – ‘design a logo’ competition

We will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of BHS throughout the 2017-18 academic year. We have a planning committee who are already working on some special events to mark this milestone. One important feature is to use a special BHS 50th anniversary logo which will be used on publicity materials, communications and items linked to the anniversary. We are opening this up as a competition – anyone may enter; students, parents, ex-students, teachers, educational assistants, site staff; in fact anyone with a connection to BHS. The only criteria is that it is represents BHS 50th year. Entries may be submitted in any medium and either electronically or by hand. Please send entries to:

james.harrison@bhs.edu.hk

or post to Beacon Hill School, 23 Ede Road, Kowloon Tong

or hand in at Reception.

The closing date for entries is Monday 8th May.

Here are some of the upcoming events to note:

IMPORTANT DATES

Home Learning at BHS

We are reviewing our Home Learning policy (you are probably more familiar with the term ‘homework’) to ensure it aligns with our philosophy. We value parental input into our policy formulation so would appreciate just a few minutes of your time to complete this very short survey.

https://goo.gl/forms/ZrGQKRrsvGi3BjFm2

Heifer Read to Feed – Reading for Empathy, Reading against Poverty!

We are delighted to inform you that BHS is participating in the Heifer Read to Feed program, an educational fund-raising program that fosters a love of reading in students while empowering them to make a difference in rural China. We hope you can support your child to join this meaningful program. The sponsored programme will kick-off on Monday 13th March, the first day of our Book Week and run until Tuesday 18th April, the first day back at school after the Easter holiday.

Students taking part are encouraged to read while collecting sponsorship from parents, relatives and friends based on the number of books read or a single donation. Funds collected this school year will be used to assist impoverished families in Wadu Township of Baoshan City in Yunnan Province. The money will be used to help them become self-reliant by providing livestock and training with the ultimate goal of helping more families in the community from “Passing on the Gift” – that is recipients donate their animal offspring and pass on their new animal husbandry knowledge to other villagers.

We appreciate your encouragement and support of your child while he or she participates in Read to Feed, allowing them to enjoy reading and helping others for a better world. Thank you!

Please click below to download a sponsorship form

Read to feed Sponsorship Form.pdf

Please click below to download a Reading Record sheet

Read to Feed Record Sheet.pdf

Best wishes,

_

James Harrison

Principal

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Third Unit of Inquiry Reports for Year 1

Year 1 via the Beacon

The summary page will look like this:

The Evidence tile will take you to the entire ePortfolio on Evidencer. The second highlighted area is the reports.

You will see evidence of learning from their units of inquiry as well as from some single subject teachers. We would welcome any feedback you may have on this new system. Please email susan.chung@bhs.edu.hk. If you have any issues with accessing the Report, please email derek.mcalpine@esfcentre.edu.hk

Third Unit of Inquiry Reports for Years 2-6

The report for your child’s third unit of inquiry is now open for viewing on the Gateway. To do so, you will need to:

Log on to the Gateway – tg.esf.edu.hk
Click on the ARR tab and Click on ARR Report
Click on the Printing Tab
Select the current year (2016/17)
Select your child’s name
Select UOI comments

Please remember to share this with your child also.

Kind regards,

Susan Chung
Vice Principal

News from the English team

Seven days of ABCs and 123s

This year our annual Book Week is taking a Maths twist and the children will be learning about the Maths that can be found in many fiction books for seven days from the 13^th March. There will be visiting authors, special lunchtime activities and competitions. Your children will be finding out lots more soon but here are two important things to know:

Book character dress up day- 20^th March

Our traditional dress up day will take place on the 20^th March. All the children and staff in school will dress up in a book character costume. We encourage the children to be creative and imaginative with their costume. So please try and avoid football kits or the children coming as themselves! Here are some pictures from last year.

Photo competition- Closing date 21^st March

Seeing and understanding pattern is very important in Maths for many reasons, for example to improve our knowledge of shape and space, to help estimation and solve problems in algebra. Pattern is also very important in the English language, it can be seen in spelling, sentence structure and of course poetry. Many stories follow a pattern too and understanding this can help develop children’s comprehension. This year our photo competition celebrates pattern.

Your child needs to take a photo on the theme of pattern and send it to Ms Jeves at the following address: jevese2@beaconhill.edu.hk Please can you make sure the subject header for the photo contains your child’s name and class. Closing date: 21^st March.

Writing competition

Sarah Brennan, a Hong Kong based author, who writes about the zodiac animals books, has a new competition that your child can enter. It looks lots of fun and details can be found here: https://sarahbrennanblog.com/competitions-and-challenges/

Dance Off

Over the last three weeks, the Student Council and I have enjoyed watching lots of great dances. We would like to thank all our dancers for the hard work that went into creating their performance. The successful students who are through to the next round are listed below. These dances will be performed on

Thursday 9th March at 12:45 to 1:30 pm in the hall for Y1, 2 & 3

Friday 10th March 12:45 to 1:30 pm in the hall for Yr 4, 5 & 6

From these performances, 6 dances will be chosen to perform at the International Food Fair on Friday 24th March. All dances will be judged on the following criteria:

Well rehearsed
A variety of moves
Transitions – from one move to another
Dynamics – how you move

Dancers	Class
Rhys and Rory	1W
Anaya	1W
Khristie, Chloe and Sharon	1L
Finley	2G
Nicole	2K
Kaelyn	2M
Kiri	2M
Jessie	2M
Savina	3M
Karina & Jasmine	3M
Ariel & Anissa	3M
Charlie	3M
Alena & Cadence	3D
Aiden	3A
Alegra	4F
Lara	4F
Sophie	4W
Jade, Gabby and Leticia	4W
Gingerlily	4L
Samaa	5P
Nivana	5P
Krisheena	5P
Connor & Brandon	5M
Alexa, Sasha and Nikita	5Y
Couleur & Katelyn	5Y
Zoe	5Y
Ria	6H

Thanks

Andy Thompson

Vice Principal

Parent Volunteers Needed

Our Year 5 students are currently working on their big business unit where they are creating their own businesses and running a market day to raise money. As part of the unit the children have been asked to give a presentation to a panel of business experts. We are looking for volunteer business experts who can offer advice to the children and give positive feedback to groups of children. The presentations are held over two days, on Thursday 9th March and Friday 10th March.

If you are able to be an expert on either day, or even for part of one of the days, please email me at: chad.pheasant@bhs.edu.hk

Chad Pheasant

Vice Principal

Green Team

Thanks very much to the Green Team who have started up the compost initiative this week. The children have been collecting up waste from our student’s snacks and lunches, such as banana peels or apple cores. Please help your child add something to the bins by providing some fruit with waste in your child’s snack, such as unpeeled oranges, grapes still on their vines or apples, pears and kiwis just cut in half. This saves time at home and will be great for our compost. Please have the fruit brought to school in a container not plastic packaging.

Basketball

On 24th February, Praise, Jotaro, Ethan, Isaac, Kwan Yin, Courteney, Kirsty, Marcus, Ryan and Avina from Y6 were selected to participate in the RCHK mixed basketball tournament. They played 5 games in the first round against RCHK, CIS, AIS, Kennedy School and DBIS. The team won all but one of their games, came top in their round to make the semifinals. The children came in 4th overall in the tournament and had a great time competing against other schools.

ESF Primary Sports Day

I have received the photos from the official photographer and they can viewed here:

For photos of netball, click HERE.

For photos of football, click HERE.

For photos of cross country, click HERE.

Tim Teahan

Head of PE

Disclaimer: Beacon Hill School and the English School Foundation do not recommend or endorse any external events in this newsletter. There is no contractual arrangement between BHS/ESF and the event organisers.