9 Jan 2020

Newsletter #18

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

Student Achievements

Dear Parents, Caregivers and Students

What a wonderful start to 2020! The students and staff are happy to be back and are well rested and ready for the new term. What beautiful weather as well!

Campus Refurbishment

I’m delighted to share that over the holiday period ESF completely renewed our downstairs court area. You’ll see from the photo that the new surface looks fantastic, in contrast to our previous surface which was old and worn.

The SMT will be working with ESF and our School Council to write a 6-year redevelopment plan which will ensure other areas of the school campus continue to be upgraded. The PTA continue to raise funds for the School which is fantastic and some of these will be utilised to upgrade other parts of the school. The bottom playground, to the side of the new court area, will be one of the key priorities.

Keeping Healthy

As you know, we are now into flu season in Hong Kong. As a result, the Centre for Health Protection, via EDB, has issued proactive guidelines for managing communicable diseases.

Please read the section in this newsletter from our school nurse for further information.

Student Grant 2019-20 – Government Grant

Many of you will be aware of this grant. Here is an abbreviated version of the circular.

…As part of the $19.1 billion relief measure announced by the Financial Secretary in August 2019, a one-off student grant of $2,500 for each secondary day-school, primary school and kindergarten student will be provided in the 2019/20 school year to alleviate parents’ financial burden in defraying education expenses. The provision was approved by the Finance Committee of the Legislative Council on 6 December 2019.

In the full circular it states the method of claiming this subsidy. However, please hold off at this stage as ESF is currently in discussion with EDB to determine whether there is a more streamlined approach to this process given that we are such a large system. The ESF Communications team will communicate with all ESF parents by the end of this week to update you on the way forward.

Weekly Updates from Teachers

These updates will be sent as usual this Friday and will relate to the period from now until the beginning of the CNY holiday. The next update will be sent the week after CNY.

CNY Update

We have many exciting events lined up to celebrate CNY and to welcome in the ‘Year of the Rat’. Please refer to the email that will be sent to you tonight as this will have all the relevant details.

Kind regards,

Brenda Cook

Principal

Please find below important dates for your diary. These dates are more school-based rather than individual year group dates. More specific dates pertaining to your year group will be shared by your child’s teacher as part of fortnightly updates.

Tuesday 14 January – Year 2 Bake Sale

Week beginning Monday 20 January – Chinese New Year Celebrations (Details sent via email tonight)

Thursday 23 January – School closes at 3pm for CNY holiday

Monday 3 February – School closed for CPD (staff training)

Tuesday 4 February – School resumes for students

Medical Authorisation Form

Please click HERE

Student Withdrawal Form

Please click HERE.

PTA Winter Uniform Order Form

Please click HERE.

Happy New Year, everyone!!

Pneumonia Cases in Wuhan

Due to the current cluster of viral pneumonia cases in Wuhan, the HK Centre for Health Protection (CHP) has activated a Serious Response Level. BHS would like to maintain a healthy and clean environment at school by reminding all students to take even greater care of their personal hygiene to help benefit our school community’s as a whole.

CHP suggested to take heed of preventive measures as below:

Keep frequent hand hygiene, especially before mealtime; or after touching public installations such as handrails or door knobs.
Wash hands with liquid soap and water, and rub for at least 20 seconds.
Hand hygiene with 70 to 80% alcohol-based hand rub is also effective.
Cover mouth and nose with tissue paper when sneezing or coughing, then wash hands thoroughly.
If you are unwell after travelling, please consult doctor promptly and report to school which could help prevent spread of the disease.

To enhance surveillance for the communicable disease, please kindly keep your child home if he/she is unwell and only return to school when fully recovered. We strongly suggest you consult your doctor for professional management also it is essential to provide the doctors sick note to school nurse for our records.

Student should stay at home if any of these symptoms appear:

Fever (Temp >37.5 °C)
Headache
Muscle cramp
Sneezing
Coughing
Sore throat
Tiredness
Diarrhoea
Vomiting

Details information from CHP: https://www.chp.gov.hk/en/features/102465.html

Immunisation x Year 1 & 6

Immunisation for Year 1 and 6 (dTap-IPV & DTap-IVP) have been successfully completed this Wednesday.

All Year 1 immunisation record cards and parent advice notes were given back in your child’s diary.

For Year 6, all record cards were passed to students by their class teacher, please check with your child.

If you receive a yellow referral letter, please arrange an appointment to have an injection at a government clinic.

Thank you.

Nurse Crystal

IFF Grand Raffle

Our annual raffle is approaching again and we once again ask for your generous support towards the prizes. All proceeds raised will go towards improvements to school facilities.

We appreciate any donation of prizes (valued at $500 or more) or any cash donation which will be used to purchase prizes. We appreciate if any donated prizes are dropped off to the PTA office by 17 January 2020. A donation form has been attached to your child’s school diary and also attached below. Once again we thank you for your generosity.

Hot Lunches

Lunch order for February will open from 10-19 January. If you wish to order please login to your child’s account at DCK Lunch. DCK will not accept any orders after this date so please place order within the time slot.

A reminder that lunch cancellations can only be made through email and must be sent out before 8:30am on the day required. Please mail mealbox@deliciou sck.com stating school name, student name, class and cancellation date(s).

Uniforms

If you wish to place an order please click on the link, fill in the form and hand in a cheque with you child’s name, class, contact number and uniform written on the back. We shall send the order straight to classroom as soon as the cheque is received.

Uniform Order Form (Winter) – CLICK HERE

Parent Talk

KGV PTSA have sponsored a parent talk on the topic ‘Creating an environment for your child to thrive’ by Hiren Khemlani, performance psychologist and have invited all parents from ESF schools to attend.

Hiren, will hold a workshop training parents to create a climate that fosters the development of their child’s personal qualities including motivation, confidence and concentration. Parents will be taken through some of the evidence for effective parenting practices, and will be encouraged to reflect on their own communication and parenting styles. They will also engage in activities to practice role-modelling positive behaviours and responses for their children to learn from, and will be guided in the use of different exercises to help their children manage adversity and develop resilience.

Details are as follows:

Wednesday 22 January 2020

LRC1, KGV School

6pm social time

6:30pm talk

For registration please sign up on https://forms.gle/zkYx5uMwi8sw6DhN7

Enquiries ptsa@kgv.edu.hk

Upcoming Events:

10-19 January – DCK February Lunch Ordering

22 January – KGV Parent Talk

BHS PTA

Tag Rugby Training January Sessions

Thursday 16th January – Morse Park – pick up from school at 4.45pm

Thursday 23rd January – No Training (start of the Chinese New Year holiday)

Thursday 30th January – No Training – Chinese New Year holiday

Mandarin Monday

Hope everyone had a great winter break. We will have our first Mandarin Club of 2020 on this coming Monday, 13 January. Since we are quickly approaching another major holiday, the Chinese New Year, we would like to share some interesting stories about the most festive season in Chinese culture. This coming Monday, we will talk about legends of the Stove God. In Chinese tradition, people worship or give offerings to the Stove God on the day of Xiao Nian, 小年, which falls on 17 January this year. Well, who is the Stove God? What does he do? Why is he related to the Chinese New Year? Why do people worship him on Xiao Nian? These may be questions going through your mind now. So, come join us on Monday and find out some interesting things about the Stove God.

Community Choir

Our BHS Community Choir has begun again! This is open to all parents of BHS students, BHS staff, and alumni students and parents of BHS. The choir will be rehearsing on Thursday evenings from 7pm. We would hope to perform at the Chinese New Year Assembly. No auditions or previous singing experience – just lots of enthusiasm needed! We start rehearsing on January 9th 2020.

If you are interested in joining, please click HERE.

For existing members, please click HERE for the audio clips.

Box of Hope

Action in the PYP is when students are inspired through their learning and their experiences to make a difference to their lives or the community connected to real life issues and opportunities. We would like to celebrate our students taking action outside of school. If your child has taken any action, we would be happy to share that with the BHS community through this newsletter and through our Facebook page. Please email details and a photograph to kannis.tsui@bhs.edu.hk

December 14 – Charlotte Yim (3H) and her family joined the Food Friend Action and they volunteered at the Shek Kei Mei wet market. She helped to collect and redistribute the “wasted” food to people living in poverty. This gave her an opportunity to have a close and in-depth interaction with the food recipients. This activity inspired her to have a behavioural change that engender respect for our precious food and “waste less” habit. Well done Charlotte!

January 4 – Tammy Wong (1G) and Khristie Turnwald (4J) participated in the charity event 聯光佛堂敬老日. They both helped out by giving gift packs to the elderly community. Well done girls!

At BHS we value the importance of developing the ‘whole’ child and this means valuing their achievement and interests outside of school. If your child has achieved something special, we would be happy to share that with the BHS community through this newsletter and through our Facebook page. Please email details and a photograph to kannis.tsui@bhs.edu.hk

December 7 – Anson Chiu (5W) has successfully been promoted to Black Poom 1 in Taekwondo. She demonstrated resilience and was courageous with 9 attempts (4 on each hand) to break the wood by hand then finally succeeded in the 9th attempt with tears whilst receiving much encouragement from friends, aunties, uncles and coaches. It definitely was not easy but she overcame the challenge. Congratulations Anson!

December 13 – Glamour Poon (3H) participated in the 71st Hong Kong English Speech Festival in the category of Solo Verse Speaking. This was her first time participating in a solo competition. During her performance, she remained calm and happy; the most important thing was that she enjoyed it. With all this, Glamour placed in 2^nd place. Congratulations Glamour!

December 22 – Gavin Lo (4F) participated in the go-karting IAME Series Thailand 2020 at Bira Circuit Chonburi. He was racing in cadet B class with IAME-X30, 60cc engine. Go-karting has had a positive effect on Gavin; it has helped him improve his concentration/focusing skills, his confidence has been boosted, his feel good factor has gone up, he’s become more responsible and being in control. Go-karting has also helped Gavin in making friends. Fantastic work Gavin!

December 25 – Twisha Srivastava (1G) took part in a ballet performance for Christmas at iSquare in Tsim Sha Tsui. Well done Twisha!

January 5 – Felice Man (1P) took her Taekwondo exam for her yellow belt. Felice started Taekwondo 4 months ago and this is the first exam experience she has ever had. Felice was a bit nervous at the beginning but soon got into the momentum and completed all the tasks required in the exam. She is proud of her very own achievement and couldn’t wait to put the yellow belt on. Well done Felice!

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.