BSB.CONNECTFriday 18th April 2014ISSUE 22www.britishschool.org.cn

INSIDE: Year 11 students tackle the International Award, Easter Egg rolling, pen pal

exchanges in Spanish and the Charity Ball

BSB ADVENTURERS

From the PrincipaL

Dear Parents and Friends,

Welcome back to school after our short Spring Break holiday! I hope it was a good time for everyone, wherever you were, enjoying the fine weather at the start of the week in Beijing or going further afield. I also hope that our examination students found the period helpful in really kicking off the revision season – final iGCSE examinations have started this week and seem to be going really well.

I should like to take the opportunity this week to address two very different issues. Firstly, I am delighted to announce that the recruitment process for the new Headteacher of the Primary School is now complete, and we have appointed Mr Philip Allman, who is already an experienced Headteacher in the UK. Philip has been Headteacher of two schools, both of which have made excellent progress under his guidance, and both of which have embraced our own BSB values of high standards combined with a real love of learning and a commitment to ensuring our learners are happy, well-mannered and socially aware young people. I am also very pleased that he has found the time to write a short introduction to himself, and his family, which appears on the next page.

The second issue is one which concerns me greatly and that is the matter of school attendance. Whilst I would never wish to stop students and parents from enjoying family life to the full, nor for that matter would I wish students to attend school when they are too sick to do so, I believe it is my duty to bring to your attention the compelling evidence about the impact of absence from school on academic achievement. There has been extensive research on this in the UK and the most stark statistic I can give you is that a student who misses 10% of his/her time during the iGCSE years will achieve, on average a whole grade lower in those examinations than a student who does not. To put 10% in perspective, that is one day per fortnight or just under four weeks during the year. The student, therefore, who has a two week holiday out of school, has already missed over 5% of the school year. Please do give this your very careful consideration before allowing your son or daughter to miss lessons for whatever reason.

I wish all our students and families a very happy term, and look forward to seeing our students of all ages complete the year with stunning success in every avenue of their lives.

With best wishes,

Andy PuttockPrincipal

FRONT COVER PHOTO... Year 11 students involved in the International Award went on a 2-day hike in preparation for the final expedition which starts this weekend. All the best to the students embarking on this excellent learning experience.

Our new Primary Headteacher, Philip Allman,introduces himselfI graduated in 1992 from the University of Bedfordshire with a Bachelor of Education Degree. Since then I have worked in six different schools in the UK catering for children ranging from 6 months old to 13 years within both the state and independent sectors. The last two posts have been as Headteacher in highly aspirational state schools. However, as an educator my passion is combining the highest of expectations and academic standards with the broadest and most engaging curriculum possible. This is one of the main things that attracted me to BSB, Shunyi with its focus on High Performance Learning. Every child brings a unique ability to a school. It is my job as Head of Primary to provide the environment to allow them to flourish.

As a Headteacher I have spearheaded projects to enliven children’s learning especially using technology with an emphasis on providing both a broad and balanced curriculum and developing cross-curricular opportunities. As a believer in teaching the fundamental key skills required for the 21st century, I am passionate about the role technology can play in enhancing children’s learning so children ‘Know what to do when they don’t know what to do!’

Outside of school life, I am a father of three children, although two of them are university age. Our youngest daughter, Naomi, will be coming to Beijing with my wife Nicki and me. Naomi, is very excited about completing her GCSEs and undertaking the IB in the future at BSB. In our spare time we enjoy exploring new areas both urban and rural, often off the beaten track. Beijing and its surrounding mountains offer us the opportunity to do just that! As a keen sportsman I love both participating and watching, particularly rugby and cricket.

As a family we are immensely excited to be moving to Beijing and we can’t wait to become part of the BSB family. I look forward to meeting everyone in due course.

Phil Allman

Philip Allman

BSB community NewsRed Carpet fun at Charity Ball

The BSB Parents’ Association Charity Ball was a fantastic success with the evening raising 217,000 RMB for its chosen charities, the Jing Cai Migrant School and the Surmang Foundation.

Party-goers embraced the Red Carpet theme and enjoyed the downtown elegance of The Regent Beijing with more than one photo during the evening taken with the Hollywood superstars (cardboard cut-outs) who lined the red carpet on arrival!

Many congratulations go to the PA for their efforts in providing a fun social evening for the BSB community.

A few photos of the gala event are on the next page.

PA Day Trip - Maliandao Tea Market - Thursday 8th May

Following on from the popular outings to the 798 Art District and The Hutong Cooking School, the next PA day trip will be to the Maliandao Tea Market on Thursday 8th May.

A bus will depart from school at 8.30am and arrive back by 2.30pm. An English-speaking guide will take participants through the tea shops and local streets, explain about tea ceremonies and the many different types of tea.

The final cost per person will be announced soon. To express your interest in being part of this great cultural day, please email Caitlin or Annette.

seanandcait@btinternet.com (Caitlin) bellillomorheng@googlemail.com (Annette) Next PA Meeting - Tuesday 22nd April

The next Parents’ Association meeting will be held on Tuesday 22nd April at 9am in the Boardroom. All welcome to attend.

a few photos from the charity ball

more from the charity ball

From the Head of SECONDARY Dear Parents,

Summer UniformThis week saw the start of our summer uniform. Our students looked very smart, and will hopefully be a little more comfortable in the summer heat. There has been a supply issue with the white ankle socks which are part of the uniform for girls, but I am pleased to tell you that this has now been resolved and they are available in the uniform shop.

One small change to the summer uniform is the blazer – I have listened to comments from students, teacher and parents, and the general view is that the blazer is not necessary during the summer months. Although this is my first summer in Beijing, I have it on good authority that it will become very warm, and therefore I have decided that the blazer will be optional to the summer uniform. I should stress that the blazer can still be worn, especially in the cool of the morning, but students may choose whether to wear it or not during the day. Hopefully this will reduce the number of blazers misplaced every day on the playing field at lunch time – yesterday alone there were three! On that note, please remember to clearly label all of your child’s belongings so that they can be returned to them if mislaid.

Applying to Oxford and other UK UniversitiesOn Monday morning we welcomed Nazish Gulzar to BSB. Nazish is a research associate at the University of Oxford and a Dean at the Oxford Institute. She came to talk to students in Years 11 and 12 about the process of applying to UK universities, with a special emphasis on the top-flight institutions, including of course Oxford. I’m sure that all of those who attended found this useful – competition for university places is intense, and especially so for the very best universities, so it helps to be well-prepared and thoroughly knowledgeable. This of course is just the latest in an intensive programme of university visits to the school. Shortly before the holiday we hosted Yonsei University from Korea (which saw the Theatre nearly filled) and in the coming weeks we will be joined by representatives from Warwick (UK) and a series of US Colleges. All of these events are open to parents and students alike, so please keep an eye on the calendar.

Transitioning to Year 7I was delighted to meet with our Year 6 parents at our Open Morning this week. I hope that you enjoyed the tour of the school with your children, and that it gave you a sense of the wonderful work that goes on in the secondary school. For those of you who were unable to attend there will be another opportunity to look around on Friday 25th April from 08.30 onwards. I hope to see you there.

Best EAL Team I have ever worked withMany congratulations to our English as and Additional Language (EAL) students in lower school. We have received some absolutely brilliant results from the recent Cambridge KET tests. This represents a real milestone for those who are learning English as a second, third or even fourth language. The tests are set, marked and certified by Cambridge Exams in the UK, and so they have real international validity. The EAL team here at BSB is, quite honestly, the best that I have ever worked with, and this success is in no small measure down to their hard work, and of course that of the students and their supportive parents. Well done everyone, special thanks to Mrs Burraston, Mr Sheridan and Mr Burnham, and now let’s look forward to the next stage in our learning journey.

Art ExamsHow do you feel about long, difficult exams? Spare a thought for our Art students, who this week have been doing their practical assessments. The exams go on all day, and the work that is produced is the work that counts, so there is real pressure to perform. Thankfully, under the expert guidance of our excellent Art teachers Mr Thomas and Mr Harrison, our students have produced some outstanding work, and we are very confident that they will achieve top grades this year. We hope to exhibit this work later in the year, but for a taste of what our students are capable of, look no further than the excellent exhibition in the Foyer at the moment.

Hoping for good weather!This weekend our International Award students are departing on their expedition, led by the ever-busy Mr Bourne. This has been a long training process, and they are finally ready to put theory into practice in an outdoors context. I wish them well on this personal challenge, and I hope the weather stays fair, as they will be camping!

Best wishes,

Steve Lewis

SECONDARY

SECONDARY

Hablamos españolFrom Ms Linda Bastien, Head of Modern Foreign Languages

This week one of the Year 7 Spanish classes has started a penpal exchange with the British School in Prague. They will be in contact with students their own age who have just started to learn Spanish. This will give them a great opportunity to use their knowledge of the Spanish language for a real purpose.

As a first project, they will work on the topic of family and will talk about themselves, giving details of who they are, which country they are from and their family. They were filmed around the school introducing themselves in Spanish.

They are looking forward to hearing from their penpals in Prague and finding information about them. How exciting!

Year 7 Spanish students this week began a pen pal exchange with fellow Spanish students at the British School in Prague. Along with the letters they will send photographs.

SECONDARY

The making of ‘Unterm Birnbaum’Native German in year 10 From Ms Lenia Fragoso, German Teacher

How can students use new media in order to analyse a criminal story? That was definitely one of the biggest challenges for the students in year 10.

During lessons students first analysed the criminal story “Unterm Birnbaum” by Theodor Fontane. Special focus was put on characterisation, “Leerstellen”, different perspectives of narration and “Literarische Zeit” (literary time).

In order to visualize their analysis, students decided to make a film version of “Unterm Birnbaum”. It was not an easy task, as they had to write a play script and fill in “Leerstellen”.

The students quickly realized that a film needs to show more detailed information than a text. The use of the two media was an intense and interesting learning process for the students, in which everybody was involved. Therefore we combined hard work with lots of fun and a great experience.

Students in Year 10 Native German class used film as a way to analyse aspects of a story, the characterisation and different perspectives of narration. Ms Fragoso said it was an intense and interesting learning process.

SECONDARY

The International Award students prepare with a two-day hikeFrom Mr Nick Bourne / Mr Samuel Gilmour International Award Staff Coordinators

On the 30th and 31st March, a group of Year 11 students successfully completed a 2 day hike and 1 night camp in the Yanqing hills, north-west of Beijing. This was as part of their Silver Award to prepare them to the main expedition that will take place in June in the Yaolon mountains near Hangzhou.

The route was up and down hills, sand dunes and past an area that has film sets that are used for movies. All this the students did while carrying 60 litre rucksacks. The students worked well in their teams and were a credit to themselves and the school.

A big thank you to Miss Hemming and Mrs Usher who helped plan the route and run the hike and to the parent Mr Jamie Cawley who let us use his car for the weekend.

all Art exam students are artists of the week!This week all GCSE and A level Art students completed their Art exam. Themes for starting points included ‘Order & Disorder’, ‘Layers’, ‘Earth, Wind, Fire and Water’ and ‘Growth & Evolution’. Students had between 6-8 weeks to prepare for their exam before working on their final piece under exam conditions for 10-12 hours. Students have worked extremely hard over the last 8 weeks leading to some excellent final outcomes that include sculptures, mini installations and some stunning paintings. You will be able to view the students work in an exhibition in the foyer on June 12th as part of the BSB Soirée.

SECONDARY

Pictured are GCSE and A level Art students concentrating and working hard on their full-day Art Exam

SECONDARY

Design and technology students produce great work in preparing for examsFrom Mr Christopher Cundall, Design and Technology Teacher

This time of year is an extremely busy one for the Design and Technology department. Students have now completed their practical work and are finishing the last few pages in their folders.

Both the Year 12 Product Design students and the Year 11 IGCSE Resistant Materials students have worked extremely well over the past couple of months. They have produced outstanding outcomes and examples are shown on this and the following page.

The final task remaining will be to prepare students for the exam section of the course and we will be looking at revision techniques over the next couple of months.

Examples of Year 12 Product Design Architectural Models

Erik Melander Newman Gan

Lucy EvansSteven Qi

Umer Ahmed

George Ngige

SECONDARY

Year 11 IGCSE Resistant Materials

Examples of Year 11 IGCSE Resistant Materials Practical

Matus Maruna

Femke Vriens

Tiffany Raab

JoshRaadwijk

James Frazer

Juliet Lam

From the Head of Primary Dear Parents,

A very warm welcome back to school and, for those of you who have been away, welcome back to Beijing. I do hope you all managed to have a relaxing break wherever you were and are ready for what is sure to be a very event packed final term.

This week started well with the news that, due to the number of books purchased by BSB families, the book fair held at the school before the holidays has given BSB over 3000RMB’s worth of books for the school library. This, in conjunction with the delivery of yet another reading scheme, ‘Project X’ has resulted in our library truly brimming with books.

This week has also been truly ‘eggciting’ for other reasons! Throughout the week entries for the egg decorating competition have been filtering in and are proudly displayed in the foyer. The competition has been tough and some of the ideas are truly brilliant, one of my favourites is the ‘Mr Puttegg”, very clever! The eggs have been judged and the winners will be announced in our celebration assembly on Monday, watch this space for pictures of our winners in the next newsletter.

Today was also the famous Egg Roll assembly. This is always eagerly anticipated by staff and children alike as each class rolls their class egg down the “Ramp of Destiny” to see which egg rolls the furthest. Both assemblies were excellent and the children loved the excitement of the competition. See page 18 for photos of this fun event.

The later assembly also included an Easter bonnet parade by our nursery and reception classes which was fabulous and their bonnets were a riot of colour. Thank you to all parents who helped make bonnets, decorate eggs and contribute to a fantastic set of events.

Finally next week the children will begin to see their input into high performance learning come to life. Over the past month the children have all been involved in discussions about what High Performance Learning means to them and how they would define the characteristics of HPL. The children have all used child friendly terminology to describe the different characteristics of HPL and these will now made into large posters to be displayed around the school and used in classrooms throughout the curriculum.

The children have also come up with the concept and generated High Performance Learning passports to record their achievements. These have now been sent to the printers to be created so that children have a permanent record of their HPL successes. This is an example of how students at BSB are leading their own learning, it truly is fantastic.

Have a wonderful weekend,

Christian

PRIMARY

BRIMMING WITH BOOKS.... During Book Week, the Star Kids book sale raised 3000 RMB for book purchases in our primary library, which is very much brimming with books.

“MR PUTTEGG!”...... Pictured are some entries in the Easter Egg Decorating Competition, including the very creative tribute to our School Principal.

PRIMARY

brilliant tales in german story writing From the Head of German Primary, Mrs Christine Riedl

School is all about making experiences and being challenged. German students of both the German Primary School and the International Section challenged their story writing skills in the second story writing competition between the British School of Beijing and the German Embassy School. The task was to write a funny or exciting story about an episode when you were disguised. More than 60 students in both schools took the chance to prove what great writers they were! And what a challenge it was for the DSP colleague and me to choose the best from it! But challenges are there to be overcome!

Congratulations toMalin Gratz, GK 1Nicolas Marcea, GK 2Niclas Spicale, GK 3for winning in their age group.

As a special treat and to celebrate their success, Malin, Nicolas and Niclas went downtown to the German Embassy School where they read their winning stories to the Primary students there! Their hard work truly paid off when they were allowed to go shopping for books and games afterwards.

Well done to all our story writers!

More than 60 students participated in the German Story Writing Competition between BSB and the German Embassy School. Three BSB students won in their age groups.

IT’S EASTER TIME... Foundation Stage students show off the cute Easter chicks they have been making this week.

lots of cute easter chicks in foundation stage!TeddiesThis week in Teddies we followed the children’s interests with a special focus on Dinosaurs! Our class this year have been fascinated by dinosaurs so it was a special treat in the last week of the term to focus on dinosaur songs such as We are the Dinosaurs Marching! And dinosaur stories such as Dinosaurumpus! We made marks on actual size T-rex footprints and used our joining skills to make T-rex and stegosaurus models. We also played dinosaurs in our small world play and we will also use paint to make dinosaur footprints.

NurseryBook Week at the end of last term was a fitting end to our ‘Once Upon a Time topic’. We read a different traditional tale every day. On the Friday we celebrated by coming to school dressed as our favourite character from one of the stories we read. It was a great week.

During the week we also did all sorts of different activities; walking over bridges, eating porridge, building houses, making towers, acting out stories, making role play masks and cooking. We talked about how stories start and end and who our favourite characters are.

ReceptionIn Reception we looked at a variety of traditional tales, Snow White and the Three Little Pigs. We have been performing role play and talking about the good and bad characters. Children have also made their own traditional tale story which begins with once upon a time and ends happily ever after. In maths the children have been counting, adding and recording number sentences, whilst in art the children have been making Easter egg mobiles and cute Easter chicks.

PRIMARY

PRIMARY

creative animal poetry in year 2 from Year 2 teacher, Ms Cristina Pasco

This week 2CP looked at a variety of poems and the different ways poems can be written. Then the children thought about an animal they liked and described it using their five senses, adjectives and rhyming words.

At the end they used their ideas and very creatively wrote their animal poem inside an animal template.

This is the result of their amazing hard work!

Students from 2CP show off their excellent art and poetry work they have been working on this week.

PRIMARY

buongiorno year 4!from Year 4 teacher, Ms Nancy Coxon-Smith

This week in Year 4 we have begun our new topic of Italy! We opened our English lessons on Monday with the traditional Italian tale of Pinocchio. We have been creating our own ‘role on the walls’ in groups, have been character detectives with our mystery boxes and have delved deeper into the psyche of our characters and completed ‘conscience alleys’. We are now fully prepared to write our awesome character descriptions, which will then contribute to our very exciting Year 4 Italian displays!

Year 4 students have started their new topic all about Italy. They have begun by studying the traditional Italian tale of Pinocchio and delving into the characters of this story using “mystery boxes” and “conscience alleys”.

PRIMARY

Welcome back from the holiday!from Primay Mandarin teacher, Ms Ellie Lee

In the foundation stage, Nursery has learnt the Chinese characters of ‘勺’and ’刀’by tracing the characters. They also have different kinds of the activities combine with the flower topic.

In primary school, the beginner level children in Key Stage Two have been learning the topic of eating out. They’ve well practiced the topic by doing some interesting role play and designing their special menu. In the role play, they say that ‘duo shao qian?’, ‘wo yao …’ and ‘wo yao he …’. The children are pleased to have this performance; they can speak excellent Chinese with clear pronunciation.

Students in KS2 Mandarin classes set up restaurants to help with their topic of “eating out”. Duo shao qian?

Touching the Void in year 6from Year 6 Teacher, Mr Scott Niehorster

For the past few weeks the children in Year 6 have been studying the book Touching the Void. The book tells the story of a friendship tested to the limits when one breaks his leg on a mountain climb. The other has to make a heart breaking decision as to whether to try to save his friend or to head for safety alone.

In class we have looked at the moral implications of the decision, discussed what our own reaction would have been and developed our sense of empathy with the characters. The children have also been using the text as a basis for their explanation writing, which is shaping up to be a great piece.

egg rolling down the “ramp of destiny”It’s an annual Easter tradition at BSB - the Egg Rolling Assembly. Check out the photos from this year’s event. Congratulations to Mr Blakemore’s class, the winners of Key Stage 2 and Ms Matthew’s class, the winners of Key Stage 1. The Multi-Purpose Room was filled with colour as Key Stage One also paraded their Easter Bonnets.

PRIMARY

more pictures from our egg rolling assembly

PRIMARY

students excel at fobisia music carnivalOur enthusiastic and talented Primary School Music Team travelled to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia recently to participate in the FOBISIA Primary Performing Arts Carnival with other international schools in Asia.

It was a fantastic experience for the 17 participating students with some playing their instruments in the combined schools orchestra and others performing in the combined schools choir.

Our Director of Music Ms Marguerite Chaplin said this year’s 2014 Primary Performing Arts Carnival was another huge success. “Our young musicians were exceptional ambassadors for our school and I was very proud of their commitment in the rehearsals and their contribution to an truly outstanding final concert on the Sunday,” Ms Chaplin said. A DVD of the final concert is coming soon. Here are some photos from the trip.

PRIMARY

Sport

bsb girls make a great start to softballU19 Girls China Cup Softball @ ISB (FRI/SAT/SUN)

From Mr Travis Washko, Head of Sport

This was our first ever Softball tournament, overall the girls finished 6th. We had some very good fielding and hitting and had as many as 15 girls playing over the 3 days.

The highlight was when we almost knocked off ISB Blue losing 6 – 11 in our last game.

Overall it was a great start to this sport.

Pictured is the Bear’s U19 Softball team in action.

HOUSE HOOPS IN KEY STAGE 3Here are some photos of the House Basketball competition held this week. Both Year 7 and Year 8 competed and the results were:

YEAR 7 GIRLS 1st - Saxons, 2nd Normans, 3rd Romans, 4th Vikings BOYS 1st - Saxons, 2nd Romans, 3rd Normans, 4th Vikings YEAR 8 GIRLS 1st - Vikings, 2nd Romans, 3rd Saxons, 4th Normans BOYS 1st - Saxons, 2nd Romans, 3rd Vikings, 4th Normans