We celebrate another great week at Hanova in this newsletter.

As you can see, in Primary School, there were various events and activities going on, including ‘House’ competitions and EOTCs.

In Secondary School, we again collaborated and combined with another IB MYP school – Qingdao Amerasia International School – and hosted our joined MYP Personal Project exhibition. It was a great success and true testimony to the tremendous efforts made by our Year 11 students.

While something not so much fun was going on with our IB Diploma students; the Year 13 students successfully completed their IB Diploma ‘mock’ examinations last week. As is usual at Hanova, the students sat these examinations under authentic IB assessment conditions so that they could be better familiarized with what they will face in May this year. This meant that all the students were examined using authentic IB Diploma examinations, with the official durations and requirements.

The papers are being marked and grades and comments will be provided in the forthcoming Year 13 reports later this month. That being said, from what I have observed, our students’ results this year look promising.

News from Primary School.

PYP ‘Read-a-thon’. Primary School are happy to announce that we will be hosting the annual Hanova Read-a-thon. This is a challenge for our PYP students to get them reading more books at home and to foster a further love of reading. At school each student, with the support of their homeroom teacher, will set themselves an individual target of reading a number of minutes during the month of March. The homeroom teacher will notify you of your child’s goal. Your child may read in any language and may listen to books read to them by you. We want the whole PYP to participate!

The Read-a-thon will start on Monday March 4 and finish on Wednesday March 27th. Students will have almost a whole month to meet their reading target.

Read-a-thon is a month of fun activities to encourage students to read and enjoy reading! We will send out the calendar of events to let you know all the fun activities and when they will happen. Last year, students dressed up as their favorite book characters, decorated classroom doors as their favorite books and, most importantly, read a lot of books!!!

Year 1 EOTC. As part of their learning into How the world works, their current unit of inquiry, Year one students visited a Pottery Studio. The central idea of this unit is: The world is made up of materials which have different functions and uses. The line of inquiry this field trip relates to is: manipulation and application of materials for our use.

Year 1 children visited the Pottery Studio and used clay wheels to form their pots and figures.

Children thoroughly enjoyed this activity. This material is the same as ‘terracotta’.

PYP House Competitions – ‘A Minute to Win it!’. Last week students from Nursery up to PYP Year 6 had great fun having various ‘House group’ activities and games.

Each ‘House’ group took turns to play various games that lasted just one minute before they had to change games.

News from Secondary School. Xi’an Hanova International School teamed up with Qingdao Amerasia International School for the second year running, for a joint Personal Project Exhibition.

Students and teachers from Qingdao Amerasia arrived 2 days before the exhibition and on Thursday we took them to the Tang West Market and Museum to learn about our ancient city.

In the evening we welcomed our guests with a typical Shaanxi meal!

The exhibition itself on Friday was a resounding success! It was amazing to see and hear about how fellow students have undertaken and experienced the MYP5 Personal Project. Many of them reported it to be a profound learning experience, which has taught them as much about themselves as it has about the topic they chose to explore. It has been said, that the MYP is about learning for life!

Our exhibition certainly proved this statement. It was wonderful to watch the videos, examine the websites and read the stories that the students have created, however, what was most impressive is to hear the students reflect on how much they have learnt in the process.

Photographs and personal experiences will be shared on our school’s the website. Below are a few photographs from our exhibition.

William Dong examines Sky’s hand held charger.

Ms. Mashid listens to Jennifer speak about her experience making a website to explain the relationship between our physical and emotional selves.

Mr. Almon (QAIS) thanked us for all we had done to make this trip and the exhibition such a success.

After the exhibition our Student Leaders organized a social barbecue party for the Secondary School students and teachers. This is the first time we have had something like this, and it was a great success. Thanks to Mr. G for his hours over the griddle to provide us with such great food.

On behalf of our fantastic group of Year 11 students I would like to thank all those that came to support our exhibition and for all the support we received from so many here at Hanova, which made the whole experience memorable!

Thanks again for your continuing support.

Yours,

Robert C. Muntzer

 

Upcoming Events

Please take note of these dates. As soon as they are confirmed, we will inform you about any additional events and activities that may take place in the following weeks:

Friday, 8th March             Year 12 IB DP Interim Reports 1/2

Wednesday, 20th March DP Parental Conferences (Years 12 and 13)

Wednesday, 27th March Year 13 IB DP Full Reports 2/6

Friday, 29th March          MYP Interim Reports Issued

Friday, 29th March          Qingming Holiday begins