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THE PRINCIPAL'S NEWSLETTER

Online Teaching and Learning

By Mr Robert Muntzer

Dear Parents and friends

In this Issue:

  • News from the Principal
  • News from Primary School
  • News from Secondary School

News from the Principal. On behalf of the whole school community – students, parents, staff, management and the school Board – I would like to take this opportunity to thank and recognize the patience and efforts being shown in these current challenging times.

Our thoughts go out to our students, parents and staff in China and abroad who may be experiencing very traumatic circumstances; please be assured that we will do anything we can as a school to ensure the welfare of our community.

IB Diploma – News from IB. Many of our students and parents in our IB Diploma programme may be apprehensive about their rigorous on-going assessment, up-loading of Diploma Internal Assessment and eCoursework.

We are happy to confirm that IB has extended the deadline for the submission of Internal Assessment and eCoursework until Sunday, 12th April 2020. This means that students and teachers of our Year 13 Diploma cohort will have an extra four weeks to be prepared for their submissions of components such as Extended Essay, TOK Essay and all their subject Internal Assessment (IA).

In addition to this, the IB Adverse Circumstances team have reached out to all IB Coordinators around the world and encouraged them to report any difficulties they are having with any of their IB programmes. This may include our current Year 12, the Year 11 MYP Exhibition and the Year 6 PYP Exhibition.

The IB coordinators for PYP, MYP and Diploma at Hanova will keep you informed.

Whole School Calendar 2020-21. Before the Chinese New Year holidays the school’s Pedagogical Leadership Team (PLT) the school Board were close to finalizing and publishing the Whole School Calendar for 2020-21. However, the current developments have had impacts that will mean the calendar will need to be further reviewed before we can share it with our community. This will be a priority for PLT when we are able to re-convene and we will keep you informed as soon as we can about the next academic year.

On-line Teaching and Learning. You should all by now have received email, WeChat and/or Managebac information regarding our online teaching and learning programmes that have been operational since Monday, 10th February.

In the event that you have not received this information, please contact or Head of Primary, Mrs. Jeannie Rice, on jeannie.rice@his-xian.com or our Head of Secondary, Mr. Aristipo Rodriguez, on aristipo.rodriguez@his-xian.com

If parents or students are having difficulty accessing Managebac for secondary school, please contact Ms. Jane Lei on jane.lei@his-xian.com for Secondary Managebac.

Parents and students across the whole school will be receiving a survey asking for their feedback and advice to improve our current online learning programmes. The survey has been designed for parents and students in three separate programmes – PYP, MYP and Diploma – for your easier convenience.

It would be greatly appreciated if you could complete the questionnaire before the end of the week so that we can take your feedback to improve your children’s learning experiences next week.

As the following sections would testify, many of our students are benefitting from their online learning. We are thankful for the tremendous efforts of our teachers, students and parents around the world who have made this challenging time the success it is.

In Primary School, PYP classes are mostly being communicated through the online learning platform Edmodo with additional support given via the WeChat groups, while in Secondary, Managebac remains our main teaching and learning platform. However, please be aware that some teachers and students may not have access to Managebac from where they are around the world, and may therefore have to use alternative WeChat communications.

As you will note from the Secondary section, the use of Managabec will be augmented soon by the use of the ‘Zoom’ learning platform. In addition to teaching and learning taking place via Managebac, ‘the use of ‘Zoom’ will enable teachers and students to have ‘live’ video conferencing on a regular basis. Subject teachers in secondary will be sharing directions with their students over the coming week.

Preventative Measures being taken by Hanova. As you are probably aware, like all private and state-run schools across Mainland China, Hanova is unable to publish a definite re-opening date until the Department of Education authorities gives schools an authorized re-opening date.

As and when such a date can be confirmed, we should also understand that local government authorities have and may continue preventative measures such as a 14 day mandatory quarantine for all people – students, parents and staff – who return to Xi’an. This issue is being discussed at PLT and Board level, and we will confirm our guidelines as soon as possible.

News from Primary School. We would like to thank our teacher, parent and student community for their support in our first week of ‘remote learning.’ It has been a week of new experiences for all of us! We appreciate the effort of parents to help students get connected, create logins, and supervise tasks. As with anything new, there have been ‘bumps along the road’ and we appreciate your patience as we strive to make improvements.

All PYP parents will receive a survey to help us improve the ‘remote learning’ experience. Please take the time to complete the survey for each PYP student you have. I will post the link to the survey in your child’s class WeChat communication group. Please look forward to receiving that early next week. This is a survey for all PYP parents.

We hope you are all safe, healthy and happy! Please remember that these extenuating circumstances can cause stress for students and parents alike. Remember to take care of your mental health and emotional well-being. Talk to your children if they are feeling uneasy about what is going on around them. Please if you need any support, feel free to reach out to your child’s teacher or myself at any time. jeannie.rice@his-xian.com

Below are some samples of the great student work that has been coming through on our online learning platform. We are very proud of our students who are working hard from all around the globe!

Polina Lopatina from our Nursery class is practicing her numbers as demonstrated by her teacher, Ms. Kim.

Jun Kim in Year 1a shows off his drawing as directed in video instructions from Mr. D for Art class.

Josephine Krauss from Year 4a proudly shows her classmates the book she is reading for the “Daily 5” literacy tasks as assigned by Ms. Sierra.

Andrew Bae in Year 3b shares his Art project entitled “Space” with his classmates through Edmodo.

Vlad Nemytov in Year 1b demonstrates his knowledge of “loud and soft” in a piece created for Music class as assigned by Mrs. Hall.

Year 2 student, Max Zhou, proudly shares his Chinese work with his teacher Ms. Momo through Edmodo.

News from Secondary School. We hope everything is going well for you and your families. We would like you to consider that some students and members of staff are in different countries; therefore, we are doing our best in order to give support in real time to our students.

We are going to send you a timetable to have support in real time from teachers. We are going to use a platform called Zoom. Students have to create an account in https://zoom.com.cn Please, check messages on Managebac from your teachers with their “Zoom ID” to join their meetings.

Please be aware that some students and teachers in China are in quarantine, so some teachers at home do not have all the required materials – white board, video projector etc – to do an online lesson. Equally, some of the students at home do not have their materials, like laptop, textbooks etc. That is why we are using Managebac to upload the activities for the students to work properly, even if they do not have their materials at home. Teachers are doing their best to continue with their units plans to avoid any delay in their students’learning.

It is important for the school that parents help us to ensure that your children are working on their tasks and they are doing their best to cope with the work assigned by teachers. Students have to follow the current school timetable. Please remember Chinese New Year holidays are over, and even though we are not at school, we have already started working via Managebac. If students are not working, they are going to have significant problems with their learning and assessment process. Right now, students are working on formative assessments but, because we are not going back to school at least until March 2nd, some teachers are going to start applying summative assessments from next week, based on their previous formative assessments. You have to understand that each subject has their own methodology, and in some cases, it is difficult to do online summative assessments because they require strict supervision from teachers, so those subjects will continue with the summative assessment as soon as we go back to school.

This is what online learning and teaching looks like in the MYP.

We appreciate parent’s support during this Online Teaching and learning process to make it meaningful and successful.

Best regards and stay healthy,

Sharon Zhu Sandy Trull Amy Hou Aristipo Rodriguez

DP Coordinator MYP Coordinator Head of Curriculum Head of Secondary

Thank you again for your continuing support.

Yours,

Robert C. Muntzer


About our Head of School


Mr Robert Muntzer

School Principal

Mr Muntzer is the current School Principal of Hanova. He is highly experienced International Baccalaureate (IB) educator who has worked at Hanova as Deputy Principal, and Secondary IB Diploma Coordinator. His former posts include DP Coordinator in Dulwich College Shanghai, founding Director of Studies and IB Coordinator at Repton School Dubai along with Head of English and Head of Languages at schools in Thailand, Ethiopia, Zambia, India and Vietnam. He holds a Bachelor Degree in English from University of Warwick (UK). He has two children both educated in IB World School International schools


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