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The Principal's Newsletter

First Semester student reports coming tomorrow

By Mr Martin Hughes

Dear Parents and

Students’ reports. Your child’s first report, and the first ever from Hanova, should be winging its way to you via email on Friday (25th January). We really hope you find these reports both informative and clear. Along with this report will come an invitation to the 2 and 3 way conferences with the teachers. This will take place on the afternoon of Tuesday, 5th and afternoon and early evening of Wednesday, 6th February. We encourage you to use these times to further explore any issues that may have been raised in the reports as well as to raise other questions you may have about your child’s learning and overall experience at school. The reports cover the first reporting period for this academic year, which ran from the start of the year on 3rd September to last Friday, 18th January. All reports have a comment for each subject, which covers such aspects as your child’s achievement, their progress and the next steps in their learning. There are also grades for each subject and, for some subjects, grades within that subject. In the primary the grades are measured against the phases of development as defined by the International Baccalaureate (IB). There are just four phases for the 8 years from Nursery to Y6 (5 phases for Language). These Language phases are for an L1 (mother tongue) speaker, so obviously their performance will be much lower in their L2 (second language – usually Chinese and/or English). As phases in all subjects often cover two years of good progress in the primary we have broken them down into three sections –
Beginning (B), Proficient (P) and Advanced (A). More information on this is being sent home with the reports. Over the years your child’s grades should gradually increase if they are making good progress. In the middle years and senior years a different final grading system is used. This is measured against the curriculum the students are doing and is a summation of the assessments they continually undertake. In the senior years a subject percentage is often given – please note the percentage required to achieve different grades varies between subjects. A comprehensive description of these grades may be found on the final page of this report. Over the years the grades should remain the same if your child is performing at a consistent level against the increasing expectations each year.

School photos. For our records we would like a current individual photo of each of our students in school uniform. We hope to be able to take these photos on Friday (25th January). Mr Rice will be in that day to do this.

Art exhibition. Our first art exhibition will be opening on Monday, 4th February. The exhibition will start with a short opening ceremony at 9:00am, to be followed by refreshments in the staffroom form 9:15-10:30am.

School driver. Some of you may be aware that our school car driver and security guard, Jacky Wang, was unexpectedly taken ill over the Christmas holidays. He is recovering in hospital and we hope to see him back at work in the not too distant future. It may take him a while to make a full recovery. We wish him, his wife and family all the best at this difficult time. In the meantime we have several of our support staff who are qualified to drive and are covering Jacky’s work, and another couple of staff, mainly Li Yong Xi, covering the security work. One of the other changes
is that Sam Quan is being trained to be one of the school bus teachers so that Maggie Wang can help with some of the driving of the school car, as well as her teacher assistant work in year 2 and her office work. Parents of students on Ms Wang’s bus will need to know Mr Quan’s phone number – it is 13891842523.

Parent volunteer programme. An email went out on Wednesday (23rd) to parents that have already volunteered their help in school. Parents originally signed up at a PSA meeting if they had specialist knowledge (e.g. running a company), special skills that might help in an ECA or at special events (e.g. cooking, painting scenery), a willingness to help in the classroom (e.g. reading stories in mother tongue), or in the office (laminating, library cataloguing, putting up displays). Please let us know if you are willing to be considered as a volunteer. Mrs Jeannie Rice and Ms Stacey Nunweiler are the parent volunteer coordinators.

There will be an informal meeting on Tuesday, 29th January 3:40-4:30pm in the staffroom to chat about parents ideas and vision for the volunteer programme. All are welcome to this meeting.

Chinese New Year Plans. The Chinese New Year planning committee has been working hard to arrange performances and activities to celebrate this important holiday. We hope that you put these dates on your calendar.

Event: Thursday, February 7th at 7 pm. We had our busy parents in mind when we set the time for this event. We hope that everyone in our Hanova community will be able to attend since it will be held in the evening instead of during the school day when most parents are working. We will have several acts from students and performers from Xi’an. We will be having a small reception in the school library after the event. Sneak peek: Wushu, Chinese songs by students of all ages, shadow puppets, and more!

Activity Day: Friday, February 8th from 9 am – 1 pm. We have 5 different activities related to Chinese New Year and Chinese culture planned that should be enjoyable for students of all ages. Parents are welcome to join. After the events, we hope that parents will be able to contribute to a Chinese lunch buffet. Sneak peek: dumpling and rice ball making, art exhibition, calligraphy workshop, and more!

Extra Curricular activities (ECAs). Please note that the last meeting for the current round of ECAs will be on Thursday, 31st January, as there will be Parent Consultations on the following Tuesday and the Chinese New Year event on the Thursday.

Best regards,
Martin Hughes

 

Forthcoming events
Friday, 25th Portrait photo for individual students

Friday, 25th Student reports emailed home and invite to Consultations

Tuesday, 29th Parent volunteer meeting 3:40-4:30pm

February
Friday, 1st Printed student reports sent home, appointment times for Consultations

Monday, 4th Art exhibition opening 9:00am, followed by refreshments 9:15-10:30am

Monday, 4th to Friday, 8th Art exhibition

Tuesday, 5th Parent Consultations 2:15-5:00pm

Wednesday, 6th Parent consultations 2:30-7:00pm

Thursday, 7th Chinese New Year event

Friday, 8th Chinese New Year activities

Friday, 8th School closes at 1pm for Chinese New Year holiday


About the Author


Martin Hughes

Former School Principal

Mr Martin Hughes was the founding Principal of Hanova from 2012-15. Prior to his time at Hanova, he already had 23 years of experience as Principal in the UK and China at five different schools - including posts at Wuxi EtonHouse and EtonHouse's flagship Suzhou school. During his time as founding Principal at Hanova, he helped support the initial IB Diploma Programme authorisation (2014) and used his educational vision to help plant our then brand new school on a firm foundation. Under his leadership, Hanova's motto emerged, "Enabling children to become independent, creative and lifelong learners!"


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