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The Principal's Newsletter

Hanova’s Student Council finalised this week

By Mr Martin Hughes

Dear Parents and

Hanova Student Council. The members of Hanova Student Council were finalised this week. Executive members are: Gerald Kim (President), Collins Mbithi (Vice-President), Samuel Fu (Treasurer) and Julie Kim (Secretary). There are also Class Representatives for each homeroom from Year 3 through 13. We will have our first meeting on Thursday, October 30th in Room 303a from 11:50-12:30. Mr. Gallerno, the staff adviser of Student Council, will give an overview of meeting procedures and then allow the Council to suggest improvements that could be made around the school and brainstorm about Community Service projects that we could be involved in this year. Lunch will be eaten during the meeting and can be purchased from our Shangri-La lunch menu or brought from home. Mr Gallerno will also be buying pizza for Student Council members if they wish to have a special treat.

Secondary Friday Assembly. Last week we had a highly informative presentation by Ms Maggie Brackenridge from University of South Florida (USF). It was interesting to see how many IB Diploma points were required to get a full scholarship to study at USF – 39 points. Most students currently at Hanova in Year 11 would be able to achieve sufficient number of points to get at least a partial or 50% scholarship. More information can gained from Sharon Zhu (Sharon.zhu@his-xian.com), our University and Careers Counsellor.

This week, the focus is on how students will use the APA referencing system when they are completing Diploma Internal Assessments and MYP coursework. We also have an exciting array of MYP and Diploma student presentations. Parents are welcome to attend from 2.30pm in the Auditorium.

Parent Consultations. These three and two way consultations have been taking place over this week, with the Secondary Consultations on Tuesday, 21st and Wednesday 22nd October.  It has been so pleasing to see so many of you attending, indicating to your child how important their education is.  We received many positive comments about how happy and how much progress you feel your child is making.  Of course, the focus was on what needs to happen for their progress to be even better.  For a minority of children this was around them having better focus, making more effort or being better organised.  We hope you were able to make it and heard how your child is progressing and what the next steps are for them.  If you missed out on the chance or had further questions to ask, please do not hesitate to contact us if you have not already made arrangements. 

We tried a new approach with the Secondary Consultations making no appointments but having all the teachers available in the auditorium throughout the whole consultation period.  This system seemed to work much better with parents easily being able to find their child’s various teachers.  The amount of queuing was also minimal.  We hope you found this system better than that from previous years.  If you have any comments, positive or negative, we’d be very pleased to hear them, as these sessions are designed with your needs in mind

Primary Years Newsletters. We are trying out a new approach to Primary Newsletters to focus more on the Units of Inquiry.  You will receive a Unit Newsletter at the start of each new Unit.  This new form of class newsletter will review the previous Unit and inform parents of the forthcoming unit.  This is designed to both inform parents and help you focus on what you can do to support your child’s learning.  Please let us know what you think about these changes when you receive the new style letters. 

Extra Curricular Activities (ECAs). We intend to extend the length of time that the first round of ECAs, the current round, runs.  This is because we have a lost a few sessions with the Parent Consultations, staff training and the power cut.  Once those sessions have been replaced, we are into our Diploma Programme Verification Visit and then into our Primary Years Programme Consultant Visit.  Owing to the amount of focus the teaching staff would need to put onto these two visits, it would not be a good time to be involved with all the work that changing over of the ECAs entail.  ECA Block 1 will now finish the last week of November. Block 2 will begin soon after we return from Midwinter Break in January.  I realise that those students (and teachers!) who may be looking forward to a change of activity may be disappointed.  I apologise, but this decision has been taken to best support the development of the school.  Parents of students in a paid for activity will be approached to extend their payment by 3 weeks.  If you do not wish to do that please contact school and we will seek to make other arrangements for your child. 

Best regards,

Martin Hughes

 

Forthcoming events                

Thursday, 23rd                            Last day of Parent Consultations for Primary students

Thursday, 23rd                             No ECAs during Parent Consultations

November

Saturday, 1st                                Xi’an City Wall Marathon

Thursday, 6th Friday, 7th           IB PYP teacher training.  School closed for Primary, Open for Secondary


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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