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Year 5 unit on “How we organize ourselves”

Dear Parents and friends

Year 5 unit on 'How we organize ourselves' - Cities - written by Mr Jonathan Knibloe, Year 5 Teacher. Year Five did a wonderful job during this Unit of Inquiry.  Students made excellent connections between our central idea: Cities are organized by systems to meet the needs of the inhabitants and our AERO learning outcomes on forms of government.  How we organize ourselves is a unit on how societies make decisions and the different ways people all over the world make those choices.  Students dove into branches of government and how the laws we make can impact our communities.  It was an amazing thing to be part of as they worked with their MacBooks for the first time.  Not only did students organize how they made choices, but jumped into their digital literacy skills and synthesized information from various sources.

When I was in Year 5, my teacher told me, if I can understand my local government, then I can understand the larger government.  So, for our Summative project, we had students build their own cities.  They were randomly assigned to groups with different classmates, and each group had a different form of government.  We had an Oligarchy group, a Democracy group, an Autocracy group, that built a city to meet the needs of the people that lived there.  Students not only saw their vocabulary and learning come to life, but participated directly in what government means.  They worked with different ideas and followed the steps to create their own city.  This is what we mean by holistic learning here at Hanova.  Skills and content are excellent, but the way we treat each other and how we organize our decisions has a significant impact on those around us.  I would say, all the students are better people for it.  Up and onward Year 5!

"Coordinators Corner" - Ms Sandy Venter, Ms Amy Hou & Ms Sharon Zhu, PYP, MYP & DP Coordinators. We are delighted to share with you that on Wednesday 12 October 2022, all DP, MYP and PYP staff at Hanova came together to begin our selfstudy process, preparing for our IB evaluation next year. Our teams collaborated to discuss the strengths of the school as well as areas we want to improve, having staff from all 3 IB programmes reflecting on their successes and challenges and working on ideas moving forward.

The primary aim of IB programme evaluation is to support schools in continuously developing their capacity to implement IB programmes in order to have a greater impact on student outcomes through the development of teacher and leader practice. - Guide to Programme Evaluation (March 2020)

The self-study will run for a few months and we are hoping that the entire school community will be involved. Our findings and feedback will also be shared with you along the way. If you are interested in being involved in the process, please email your relevant coordinator:

PYP Coordinator - sandy.venter@his-xian.com
MYP Coordinator - amy.hou@his-xian.com
DP Coordinator - sharon.zhu@his-xian.com

Coach/Client Relationship in Action - written by Mr Paul Robinson, Director of Sports. Year 10 PHE students have recently completed the first unit of the academic year. As we only have 3 students we started with a unit of Boxercise. Boxercise is a method of combining elements of boxing with cardio exercise.

The students engaged with skills such as footwork, stance, guard, how to throw the 8 punches that are taught in boxercise and holding the pads for each of the punches with a focus on how to practice in a safe and technically correct manner. The students practice techniques through shadow boxing and developing combinations punching pads that are held by a partner.

Students demonstrated their knowledge and understanding through teaching the PHE department teachers as part of their summative assessment. They were required to teach the basic techniques, then observe their client punching while holding the pads and then give the client feedback on their performance. The clients commented on how well the students did in their coaching roles as knowledgeable risk-takers and caring communicators.

The students were also required to write a script for their session as part of criterion B planning for performance and perform and apply their skills in Boxercise as part of criterion C. Well done to Kevin, Nathan and Lucas for stepping out of their comfort zones and thank you to Mr. Dušan, Mr. Sam and Mr. Jason for being such good clients.

Year 2 is ‘Tuning In’ - written by Mr Graeme Noble, Year 2 Teacher. We tuned into our new unit on communities by drawing and labelling what we think a community looks like. To assist with this, the students were given several key words to stir the inquiry and thinking: people, work, live, together.

We made meaningful connections between literacy and our unit of inquiry by adding labels to our pictures. This has been an effective strategy to help us gain more practice with our writing.

 

 


Former Head of School


Mr James McCrory

Former Head of School

Mr James McCrory was Hanova's Head of School for the 2022-23 school year. James graduated from Demontfort University in 1988 and worked in the commercial Design sector in Ireland, UK and Spain. He has worked in education since 1994 after completing his PGCE at Goldsmith’s College, London. The last 30 years in education includes 4 years in the UK, with the remaining years working divided between Spain, Japan and Kuwait, as well as leading schools in China over the last decade.


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