The British Schoolof Guangzhou

Newsletter

To download a copy of this newsletter, please visit www.bsg.org.cn

Issue 3 - 2014/15

T h e B r i t i s h S c h o o l o f G u a n g z h o u

“Last term was extremely productive in music, with our three choirs and the new BSG Orchestra performing all around Guangzhou. We look forward to expanding the music programme further in 2015 .” Jonathan Haslett, Head of Secondary Music

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Dear Parents,

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As we say goodbye to 2014, I cannot help reflecting on what a successful term it has been. In so many schools, it is not uncommon to see teaching and learning replaced by time-filling activities in the final weeks. As I walked around our school before Christmas, I was proud to see that this was not the case. In fact, I was able to see many examples of high-quality learning with students and staff demonstrating our core values. As would be expected, much of the learning had a festive theme, with Early Years and Key Stage 1 preparing for nativity performances, and Primary classes enjoying ‘Christmas Crafts’ activities. I was pleased to note that a ‘love of learning’ was evident in all activities.

As Principal, I had the pleasure of attending one of the three Early Years performances. The level of commitment demonstrated in learning the words to their songs was impressive, and the students gave another memorable show. Performances by Miss Kathy’s team are always well attended and this was no exception with parents turning out in force to demonstrate their support to our school. I am sure by now the photographs and videos have been shared with grandparents and friends around the world, and will be cherished for years to come.

My next engagement was at the Hillside Building, where I had the privilege of seeing our Year 2 students perform their musical nativity. Their performance was truly delightful, and once again I was pleased to note so many smiles on students’ faces as they delivered their lines and performed their songs. It was clear to me that they thoroughly enjoyed their moment in the limelight, and the levels of confidence they displayed is a credit to the Key Stage 1 team, in particular, Miss Laura, who was responsible for directing. I imagine Mr. Andrew was very glad to get to the end of his first term as Head of Hillside Campus. I am sure the parents would agree that he has done an amazing job. His attention to detail and the level of care he demonstrates to each and every one of his KS1 students is admirable.

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Important information is often sent via email through school.If you’re not receiving emails, please contact our receptionist, Rainbow Chen, at rainbow@bsg.org.cn

norD anGlIa eDUcaTIon neWS

The Young Journalist programme has launched.

NAE have linked up with the Young Journalists’ Academy to offer exclusive courses for budding writers. More information can be found on our website by clicking here.

Not to be outdone, the Year 6 team organised a film awards event to celebrate students’ achievements in creating short films based around Greek mythology. The use of technology to enhance the learning process is something that we are keen to promote at the British School, and this event gave students a chance to demonstrate their iPad skills. While I was impressed by the use of technology, I was even more impressed by the levels of responsibility shown by the students in collaborating to create the finished films. With no time to spare, I dashed downstairs to join the Year 5 parents, who were sharing presentations from a topic on ‘ancient civilizations’, which looked at the lives of the Aztecs.

The British School has a reputation for providing a broad and busy curriculum. The Secondary team took that to the extreme this term. On the final day, Secondary students were involved in the NAE Global Classrooms project, ‘Make it Right’, which looks at every students right to an education. This project certainly caught their imagination and up until buses were leaving, students were sharing presentations around this project. I was delighted to note how inspired our Secondary students were by this project, and am indebted to Mr. Ruck and his Secondary team for their efforts to integrate our core values into the curriculum. It was without doubt a successful term for The British School of Guangzhou, and we look forward to the challenges of the coming term.

We had a tremendous turnout for the choir’s playgroup performance last December. Thank you to all those who attended.

The playgroup continues to be popular with parents of young children every Friday morning, with its age-appropriate play area and coffee shop next door.

If you’re interested in coming along, please see our website here for more information.

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Y charity Update

movember raised 12,521rmB for prostate cancer, UK. Thank you for all your donations and support!

GIVeS International food festivalSome of our Secondary students raised a fantastic 1,045.5RMB at the festival in November. Excited children queued up to play games they had organised. All of the proceeds were donated to support autism research and relief in China.

christmas Shoebox appealThe Shoebox Appeal is an opportunity to give to those less fortunate than ourselves at Christmas time. Hundreds of our students took part, donating presents for children at the local orphanage.

The Shenzhen Longgang Society Welfare Centre cares for around 100 children, providing a safe environment and education.

We launched the Shoebox Appeal in support of the centre at the end of November 2014, receiving a fantastic response from our international community.

Over 400 shoeboxes filled to the brim with stationery, toiletries, toys and clothes were donated, and a team of teachers delivered them all on 18th December, arriving to some extremely excited faces.

By: Gemma Campbell

“Be aware, be vigilant. Do not let differences between people, differences in colour, in religion, in ethnicity, in gender, in class be the deciding factor on how people are treated. Differences should be valued and respected.” Iby Knill

By: Charlotte Giles

On Thursday, 27th November, BSG was privileged to host a webinar with Iby Knill, a survivor of the Holocaust who lives in the UK. Iby has been speaking about her experiences for only four years, and in this time, has already spoken to around 26,000 people.

Having listened to an introduction to the Holocaust by the history subject prefects, Dalbert Ma and Linda Kim, the audience were then able to watch a TED talk that Iby had recently delivered, summarising her story.

Using a Skype connection, the students, staff and parents present were able to ask Iby questions about her life and about her thoughts on issues such as blame, current genocides and most importantly, the lessons that we can learn from the Holocaust. Overall, the event was a huge success, with students gaining insight from a unique opportunity that will simply not be available to future generations.

For more information on Iby’s story, please visit her website - www.ibyknill.co.uk

Iby Knill, holocaust Survivor, Speaks to BSG

“We all have rights and responsibilities. We are all responsible for the things we say, the things we do and the things that we fail to do.”

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ellie fukanoSEPTEMBER

Ivan WangOCTOBER

aiden chenDecember

movember Update By: Chris Eales

The concept of Movember originated in Australia in 2004, and its main aim is to raise awareness of men’s health issues. The word “Movember” combines the words “November” and “mo” (Australian slang for a moustache) and the idea is to grow various styles of facial hair over the course of the month to raise money for a chosen charity.

Generally this is done in the form of a moustache, but like many charitable attempts here in Early Years, we decided to rip up the rule book and take our own slant on proceedings!

Four brave volunteers (Mr. Alfie, Mr. Gavin, Mr. Thomas and Mr. Chris) put themselves forward to grow as much facial hair as they could in a month, for this to be ripped from their face by parents during the last assembly! I for one was surprised by the enthusiasm that parents had in their desire to undertake this task, and the donations placed in the four tubes that were located in the reception area showed the eagerness that the parents had to take a razor to teachers’ faces!

Overall, we raised 12,521RMB for charity, so I would like to give a big thanks from the BSG team to all of those that took part and donated, as well as a big thank you from our chosen sponsor, Prostate Cancer, UK.

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By: Katherine Weir-Davis

We are delighted to inform you that over the Christmas holidays, work was completed to make substantial improvements to our Lakefront Early Years Campus playground.

Many of the plants were removed in an attempt to reduce mosquitoes and there are new play structures installed and learning zones created to further enhance the children’s outdoor learning opportunities.

In addition to this, there is a new decked area outside the coffee shop for parents and staff to enjoy a cup of tea or coffee when they have five minutes to relax.

We also increased the amount of closed-circuit security cameras to the Lakefront campus to further increase the safety of our students, staff and parents.

All are exciting changes that the children, staff and hopefully parents will love!

early Years playground Improvements

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By: Alfred Creissen

This year, as part of Nord Star (the charitable arm of Nord Anglia Education), we have taken part in a shoebox appeal to help the community surrounding The British School of Guangzhou.

This act of kindness involves the children and families at BSG helping to provide a shoebox filled with lots of presents and useful items for children less fortunate than us.

The children we have been able to help this year are from a local orphanage in Shenzhen. We have had an amazing response and have managed to collect lots of boxes helping these children. It has been fantastic to see so many families’ getting involved to help those in need.

I have had lots of parents coming to me saying how much they have enjoyed finding gifts with their children, and explaining to them that there are some children in the world that are in need of support.

I know that as a school, we do a lot for others and try to help out in the community as much as possible, and it’s appeals like this that really do make a difference by putting   big smiles on the children who need them the most.

A big thank you to all of those who have contributed this year. You have given these children a much happier Christmas and positive start to the new year. 

Shoebox appeal

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By: Marianne Neel

During November and December, the Nursery 5 have been covering the topic of ‘Winter’. Everything became a little bit ‘Frozen’. From the giant ice cubes in the playground that the children explored, to the Frozen inspired display of Pumpkin carvings - What a creative bunch!

Not only did the children experience the giant ice cubes melting in the playground, they were also able to make their very own polar landscape collages. The classes dropped food colouring into water before mixing it into different shades of blue and purple into ice cube trays. Over night, our magical ice cubes froze, and then the following day, we melted them onto paper with the help of little hands. The children loved watching the colours merge as the cubes melted, which created a beautiful, wintery landscape to stick their polar bears onto.

One Assembly even included a visit from the cast of Frozen. Elsa was very brave and sang for the children and then asked if anyone from Nursery or Reception could do it too. High Performance Learning rocked and the children eagerly joined Elsa with a rendition of ‘Let it Go’.

The igloos the children made looked good enough to eat because they nearly were. Made from tiny marshmallows, it was difficult to stick the igloos together when all the children really wanted to do was put the marshmallows in their mouths. This was connected to not just our winter theme, but the letter ‘i’, which we had been learning about.

Penguins also featured on the agenda, as we sang ‘Penguin Attention’, whilst the children wore their penguin hats. They did look incredibly cute. However, the children continued to sing ‘Let it Go’ throughout our Wintery weeks. Winter and all things frozen might be a topic that we have finished but it definitely is not a movie forgotten about by The Nursery 5.

nursery Gets frozen

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Soup-ermarket Sweep!By: Helen Jones

As a concluding activity to our “Food, glorious food” unit of work Reception visited Aeon Supermarket in December. This was the first trip of the year for the children and they were very excited. The children went to the supermarket to buy vegetables to make vegetable soup based on our story of the week- the traditional tale of Stone Soup. This story teaches us about teamwork, cooperation and sharing, which links perfectly with our High Performance Learning focus this term of ‘Collaboration’.

Prior to our visit the children learnt how to make a shopping list and in small groups they collaborated together to list all the vegetables they wanted to buy to make vegetable soup. At the supermarket they consulted their lists to make sure they had selected the correct vegetables. The children then had to put their vegetables in a bag and ask to have them weighed and priced before placing them in their trolleys.

We then played a game called ‘Find me.’ This game involved the children finding a selection of grocery items found in a supermarket and writing the aisle number of where they can be found. The children had such a great time doing this task and they enjoyed the challenge of finding the items as quickly as they could, helping each other and displaying teamwork skills.

All too quickly it was time for us to return to school and prepare to make our vegetable soup. After purchasing and cutting the vegetables then watching the soup and smelling it as it bubbled away in the pot, it was finally ready. The children gobbled it up in minutes eagerly scraping the pot clean with second and third portions. “Scrumptious!” exclaimed Jolie and “May I have more please,” said Yordan. Who would have thought going to the supermarket to buy vegetables for soup could be so much fun?

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Santa Visits early YearsBy: Vicky Whieldon

It was two weeks before Christmas and the Early Years children were working hard in their classrooms like busy little elves.

All of a sudden came the jingling sound of a sleigh, the clip-clopping of hooves on the roof and a very loud and jolly ‘Ho Ho Ho’!

The children threw down their tools, pencils, glitter pens, lego, you name it and ran to see if it was really who they thought it was!

IT WAS! SANTA HAD ARRIVED!

The teachers hurriedly gathered their children and present wish-lists and frantically started checking who had been naughty or who had been nice!

There were a few tense moments, but would you believe it, every child in Early Years made it onto the ‘nice’ list. Santa was delighted and congratulated Miss Kathy on such excellent results this year! He insisted on visiting every classroom in person to hand out a gift to every child.

The children were over the moon by their encounter with the big-bellied hero and made some lovely comments after his visit:

“Santa gave me a present and I like him. He was kind” (Jolie, Reception Seahorses)

“I like Santa because he gave me a Santa hat” (Zachary, Reception Seahorses)

“Ho, ho, ho!” (Henry, Pre-Nursery).

What a fun and festive day – Thank you, Santa!

Santa was later spotted in the area again at McCawleys just down the road. Reports say he was tracking down teachers who have been especially ‘nice’ this year during the Staff Christmas Party, but that really is a story for another time…

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n By: Judith Sanderson

Take some stars, angels, kings, a donkey, Santas, elves and any other Christmas character you can imagine. Stir gently with Christmas songs. Leave to simmer for several rehearsals. Pour out slowly onto a stage. Serve with an excited audience of VIPs.

I’m sure you’ll agree this festive feast has left wonderful memories. So many proud teachers, proud parents and lots of very ‘proud of themselves’ children.

a recipe for christmas magic

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n By: Katherine Weir-Davis

On Sunday, 7th December, it was the annual Family Christmas Lunch, which this year was held at the prestigious Shangri-La Hotel.

Early Years and Primary families were invited to join us for an afternoon of festive fun. There were Christmas craft activities for the children, Gingerbread Man decorating and of course Santa and his Elf were there with a gift and photo opportunity for everyone.

The Lower-Primary Choir entertained us with a repertoire of songs, and the Early Years children delighted parents with some of their favourite Christmas tunes.

Ms. Helen’s Christmas story time was a popular event, attracting a stage full of excited and engaged children.

All in all, a wonderful time enjoyed by everyone!

Due to popular demand for this event, next year we will be searching for a much larger venue to avoid disappointment at not being able to get tickets. Apologies if you were unable to join us this year – but do not worry, next year’s Christmas Family Lunch will be bigger and better than ever!

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and shall look forward to welcoming everyone back to school in 2015!

family christmas lunch

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By: Nicola Butler

Did you know that Mercury is the closest planet to the sun? Did you know that the planets orbit the sun?

These are some of the fascinating facts Year 1 have been learning as part of their ‘Light and Dark’ topic work. As part of our learning, we looked at storybooks about light and dark, including ‘The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark’ and ‘Beegu’, and used these as starting points to discuss how we can be kind and helpful to others. We made space maps, created our own aliens and used marbling effects to make space pictures.

To celebrate the culmination of our topic and capture some of the things we have learned, we made special space-themed treats. Year 1 children worked together to design and make edible delights. We made Moon Rock Cakes, Candy Apple Planets, Pizza Planets and Lollipop Aliens. We were so proud of our creations, we couldn’t wait to take them home to show our parents … although some of them didn’t make it all the way home!!

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Year 2: canton crazyBy: William Gomm

Guangzhou, the place we call home, is a city that most people from outside of Asia have rarely heard of. It is however one of the biggest and richest cities on the planet, and Year 2 were keen to learn more about it!

Last term, our topic focus was on Guangzhou, and we learnt about the many different things that make our city great; from the buildings we see every day to the food we love to eat. We learnt ancient tales about the 5 Rams and the background to some of the most famous buildings in Guangzhou. Our topic culminated in three very different but equally fun trips.

First we went to Yuexiu Park, home of the 5 rams statue. There, the children got to wander the park looking at the various flora and fauna. We then had a look at the ancient city walls before we ended the trip with a walk up to the 5 rams statue, where the children were able to test their artistic skills.

Guangzhou is renowned for its culinary delicacies, and Year 2 were not going to miss out on this! So with rumbling tummies, we headed off to the Garden Hotel where the local chefs were ready and waiting to teach us the intricacies of dumpling making. The students’ culinary skills were most impressive, especially the Turtles very own Alex, who showed signs of a potential Masterchef. Next was the moment we had all been waiting for - the Garden Hotel very kindly put on a Chinese banquet for our hungry chefs, and the children devoured every morsel! With our bellies full of delicious Dim Sum, we headed back to school.

Our term ended with a trip to the Canton Tower. Standing at over 600 metres tall, the children stared up in awe at the mighty colossus. Once the lift opened, we headed up to the highest viewpoint and looked down on the city. The students were amazed at the sheer size of the city and the mixture of man-made and natural wonders. Some students were even brave enough to take a walk over the petrifying skywalk. Much braver than Mr. Will who clung onto the edge for dear life!

Our next topic is called ‘Party Time’, which is guaranteed to be just as fun!

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arY Key Stage 1 Show: a christmas crisis

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arY Year 3: Vicious Vikings

Do you want to learn about the vicious Vikings? In 800AD, frightful Vikings lived in Scandinavia – Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Read this exciting report to discover why they used long boats, where they lived, how they made their armour and weapons for their bloodthirsty wars, plus other AMAZING FACTS! By James Jeong and Jonn Teoh

Viking armour and WeaponsAll Vikings own weapons and most Viking men wore armour in battle. Vikings used weapons to defend themselves, attack their enemies and raid. Viking men and women trained to fight when they were little. Viking weapons were generally made from iron and wood. The most favourite weapons were the sword, spear and axe. Did you know that when Viking warriors died, they buried their weapons with them?Armour was made to protect people. Rich Viking men wore chain mail and ordinary men wore padded clothes and leather jackets. When they went to raid other countries Vikings wore helmets to protect their heads. Vikings also used shields to protect them. Shields had an iron boss in the middle that was surrounded by round wooden planks. The shields were decorated by painting. Vikings learnt to overlap their shields to quickly create a defensive wall when in battle.By Thomas corr, peter hempel, Insiya Vakharia, audrey Kong, meya Zhang and Venisha pursnani

Viking raidersRaiding is attacking, fighting, battle and war. Some Vikings went to war, but all Vikings were trained to fight. When Vikings raided they stole loot, they burnt other people’s houses, they murdered monks, they captured slaves and terrified everyone. The Vikings often raided early in the morning when everybody was sleeping. 793 was the first Viking raid and it took place in Lindisfarne, England. Guess how the Vikings got to those places that they raided…? On LONGBOATS! The Vikings sailed miles away from home. Bjorn Jarnsmida and his companion Hastings spent 3 years raiding with 62 ships in Spain, North America and France.By priya panicker, Jonn Teoh and Isaac Seet

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Viking homesViking homes were called longhouses because they were very long. The longhouses were rectangular, long and they had a door. Inside the longhouses they kept animals. Longhouses were made out of turf, stone and mud. Viking homes did not have windows because it was always cold. In the house, at one end, there were some animals in a barn. The Vikings slept on the benches or on the floor. Most of the Viking women weaved or baked and the Viking men collected wood for the fire or went into battle. All Vikings cooked with a pot that sat over a fire. In the roof there was a smoke hole to let the smoke out from the fire. Most Vikings hung their things on the wall or put them in big chests. The toilets were outside because they were stinky, cold and small. They thought if they put it inside it would be so smelly.By harriet Wildy, lucas Wang and henry Kwon

Viking longboatsThe biggest Viking boats were called ‘longships’! Longships were fast ships. Longships were used for fighting. Viking Longships had many names. Other names were ‘dragonship’ and ‘fastship’. The longboats were usually used for raiding, trading and could sail in shallow water. The front prow was carved with a dragon’s head. The Vikings carved the dragon’s head to scare away the evil enemies. Vikings always put their shields on the sides of the longboat when they were sailing to protect them.By ariel Wen, avia chen and James Jeong

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By: Matthew Champness

Last term saw the first ever Year 3 Inter-house football tournament. The children had been learning the finer details of the beautiful game in Miss Mitchell’s PE lessons, and on 12th December 2014, they got to put all their skills into practice.

The tournament: Split into girls and boys teams. Each Year 3 house team played each other, with the highest scoring teams going on to play in the finals for the prestigious and highly sought-after trophies.

There were too many outstanding players to mention here, and had there been medals for effort, we would surely have run out. There was truly admirable determination from every competitor. The teachers, cheering from the sidelines, were immensely impressed with the positive attitudes and great sportsmanship on display.

There could only be two winning teams:

The boys’ trophy was clear-cut. At the final whistle, as a result of deploying an elite mix from across the year group – the Romans won the day with a 3:0 victory over a valiant Norman team. The girls’ tournament was not so easily settled, however. After tying 0:0 in the final game, the Vikings and the Romans had an agonising wait while wins/losses and goal differences were calculated. In the end… it was a double whammy for the Romans!

Thank you to all the parents who turned out to support the children. Miss Mitchell and the PE staff also deserve a huge thank you for organising such a great event. We look forward to the next one!

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Mr. Champness wasn’t on the ball with this tackle.

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By: Michelle McCarthy

As part of their topic on Mongolia, the children watched a video about how the Mongols train eagles to hunt for them.

Fascinated by this, we decided to design and sew our own eagle feed pouches, which the Mongolians use as storage when training their eagles. The children looked at some examples of pouch designs and then drew 4 possible patterns they would like to create. From this, they chose one. They based this decision on the overall design and its practicality to make.

Next, the children drew templates of their pouches , cut them out of felt, sewed and decorated them to create their final Mongolian eagle feed pouch.

The children thoroughly enjoyed this process, especially the sewing. It was a great exercise in fine motor skills, teamwork and resilience.

What they produced was fantastically crafted, and all the children should be very proud of their efforts. Some possible designers brewing in Year 4!

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arY Year 4: mongolian eagle pouches

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arY Year 5: hour of code

By: Alasdair Carr

Between the 8th and 14th of December people all over the world were encouraged to complete an ‘hour of code’. This is a global event that hopes to promote computer science as a subject taught in schools with over 90,000,000 people taking part in the last few years.

In Year 5 we took part (with the help of some willing Year 11 students) and created our very own bat and ball game on our iPads using the computer programming language ‘Hopscotch’. The idea of the event is to provide students with the opportunity to have a go at the basics of computer programming; nurturing problem-solving skills, logic and creativity.

The students who completed their HoC were presented with a certificate and had a great time solving the problems as they arose as well as interacting with the older students. Miss Fish (our secondary Head of ICT) was also very impressed with the leadership shown by the older boys and that they were surprised at the problem solving skills of the primary students! Hopefully the numbers in Mr Carr’s Coding ASA will be rising accordingly as all students had a little taste of what can be achieved in just a short time.

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arY Year 6: ancient Greece film awards

By: Sheena Ling and Sophie Morath

Year 6 has been working very hard to recreate some Ancient Greek films. We had lots of fun during the process although it was extremely hard writing the script, making the props and finding the music, the hardest of all was the filming itself! But we enjoyed every single part of it.

Preparing the films was harder than I thought. It was pleasant to be able to let our imagination flow! We all had to get it done within a week, so we worked at double speed. Quite a lot of the students used characters on sticks. One group even used real fire on a candle to make their scene even scarier!

In my opinion, the filming was definitely the hardest. We had to practice more than a dozen times! It took quite a while to get things done. The hardest of all was when we had to change voices or act. For example, crying, excited or evil. 

On the day of presenting the awards, every one of us dressed up amazingly for this joyous event. The hall couldn’t have looked better! The white table cloths with champagne glasses filled with soda stunned us whilst the red carpet looked as if it really was for a king or queen. Girls spent ages and ages in the dressing room, putting on their glamorous dresses and applying lipstick and eye shadow on to themselves and chatting ecstatically. Boys wore neat tuxedos and put gel in their hair. Mr. Mikhail’s make over was so amazing that it made our jaws drop! 

All of the films were sorted into five groups with three nominations for each award. The awards were: Best Soundtrack, Best Voiceover, Best Visual Sights, Most Original and The Best Overall! Everybody was eager to know who, out of the three nominations, were going to win. House captains announced the winners and the people who won were given a certificate to show their fabulous work. The team that won the overall best, to out astonishment, actually managed to find an animation app which made the film more lively. This was the best film festival ever!!

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arY Guangzhou library Visit

By: Victoria Brooks

In December, Year 6 bundled onto a bus and ventured valiantly out to unfamiliar territory known as Zhujiang New Town! We were here for one reason and one reason only: to explore Guangzhou’s new, mystical, modern library…and that we did!

When we arrived we were stunned at the unique and contemporary architecture of the enormous building that stood before our very eyes. We had never seen a library look like this before! Once inside the remarkable building, we looked up to see, floor after floor after floor of unexplored mysteries! Is this the tallest building in Guangzhou? It must be with all these stories! What were all these floors for? What magical books could we find here? We were excited to find out!

Soon our tour guide gathered us around in a circle to tell us all about this new sensational library. Did you know it has more than 4 million books! Also, you can join for the excellent price of – FREE! What a great deal!

Next, we were able to go up to the top floor, which felt a thousand floors high but in reality it, was about nine! Here we found books from all over the world! They had books from Korea, Spain, Poland, Japan, England, Mexico and many more. The children relished finding books from their own countries and sharing them with their friends and teachers.

By: Donal Crawford

For 10 weeks in term 1, the EAL students in Year 6 took a course designed to help them improve their written and spoken English, and to help them improve their confidence in their use of English.

Students prepared, practiced and presented a speech in English. The topic of the speech was one of the BSG core values and it was delivered to an audience of their peers and teachers.

preparation: Students brainstormed and discussed possible core values that they could give a speech on. They learned how to outline and plan their speech. They wrote drafts of their speeches and helped each other to redraft and improve them. They completed a final written version of their speech.

practice: Students learned about presentation skills including the importance of body language, the use of the voice in delivery, and how to maintain eye contact and appear confident. They practiced giving their speeches with their peers and teachers, and improved their pronunciation, use of stress and emphasis, and pacing. They practiced delivering a speech without reading.

presentation: On Thursday, 11th December 2014, the EAL students presented their speeches to an audience of their Year 6 classmates, teachers, the school Principal, and the Head and Deputy Head of Primary. All students successfully gave their presentations, and received Certificates of Achievement.

Given that public speaking is often described as one of even native-speakers biggest fears, the students all did exceptionally well not only to successfully prepare, practice and present an original speech, but also to do so in a language that is not their first language. Congratulations to the prize winners (Rich Zhu – 1st place, Tony Zhang – joint 2nd place, Victor Huang – joint 2nd place), but especially to ALL the EAL students for their courage, determination, hard work and successful achievements.

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arY eal Speech contest

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music Update:new chamber Group & orchestraBy: Jonathan Haslett

opus! The new BSG chamber Group

In October 2014, the music department launched their new chamber group Opus! The group is made up of strings, woodwind and piano. Opus! recently performed at the annual Chamber of Commerce Christmas party on Thursday 11th December 2014 and took centre stage at Tai Koo Hui Mall for the annual Christmas performance.

The BSG orchestra!

In September 2014, the music department launched the BSG Orchestra. The orchestra has grown from strength to strength in a very short period of time and students have already performed at various venues across Guangzhou. On 27th November 2014, the Orchestra embarked upon its first performance at the ISMAG Christmas Concert in Guangzhou Cathedral, providing accompaniment to the carols and supporting the Upper-Primary and Secondary choirs.

New members are always welcome to join the orchestra. If you are interested in participating, please see Mr. Haslett or Mr. Sinclair. If you are a pianist and would like the opportunity to play a second instrument, simply ask the music department staff about the ‘Endangered Instruments Scheme’.

christmas choir performances

The performances leading up to Christmas were fantastic opportunities for the school’s three choirs.

All the students who took part were extremely committed, especially with it being one of the busiest schedules the school has seen.

The Sacred Heart Cathedral, Shangri-La Hotel, Garden Hotel, Canton Place and the ever-popular Taikoo Hui concerts were a huge success. Thank you to everyone who took part, attended and supported us. We look forward to taking our growing musical community into 2015.

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Students, parents, BSG community, lend Us Your ears...By: John Joyce

If you believe the history books, then the ancient Greeks mastered the art of public speaking some two thousand years ago. However, the ability to speak confidently and convincingly in public is still an asset to anyone. And for that reason, in English lessons, Year 9 pupils have been learning how to write and deliver a powerful speech about an issue they feel strongly about. The unit of work culminated in a speech competition held in the theatre. All Year 9 pupils participated, which is an achievement in itself and something we the English Department are very proud of.

The speeches were limited to a maximum of three minutes in length and were judged by four great talkers: Mr Howe, Mr McDaid, Mr Moore and Mr Ruck. Most students spoke for the full three minutes and the overall standard was pleasingly high. Us English teachers were pleased to see our students rattling off speeches including powerful openings, the rule of three, facts and opinions, emotive language, statistics, shocking facts and much more.

After all the judges score cards were totted up the top six speeches were: Duncan Lau, ‘Stop child labour; Start educating’; Elif Yolcu, ‘Guns: Better safe than sorry’; Ethan Zhang, ‘Cruelty to animals’; Jojo Guo, ‘The danger within: unmasking the internet on self harming teens’; Naomi Olivetti, ‘Speeches’ and Peter Chong, ‘Economical Inequalities’. And the winner was…Jojo Guo who spoke confidently, exhilaratingly and most impressively unscripted.

A big well done to Jojo and the rest of Year 9 on some great speeches and we eagerly look forward to this event next year.

Watch Jojo’s speech

by clicking here.

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hour of code

“Our policy at Facebook is literally to hire as many talented engineers as we can find. There just aren't enough people who are trained and have these skills today.”Mark Zuckerberg,Facebook Founder

By: Debra Fish

Computer science is driving job growth and innovation throughout our economy and society. More than half of projected jobs in STEM fields are in computing occupations; these occupations dominate “help wanted” ads; and computer science is one of the hottest degrees for new college graduates. With this in mind, before Christmas the Secondary School took part in the “Hour of Code” global movement, which reached tens of millions of students in 180+ countries.

During one week, each student completed a one hour tutorial in over 30 computer programming languages and learnt that computer science develops students’ computational and critical thinking skills and shows them how to create, not simply use, new technologies. This fundamental knowl¬edge is needed to prepare students for the 21st century, regardless of their ultimate field of study or occupation.

The week also encompassed several initiatives, one of these being a coding competition across all year groups. First place went to Luis Alvarez in Year 9 for his “Right triangle side length calculator with GUI” program, second place went to Lucas Bachmann in Year 10 for his “Dragon curve” program and third place went to Atirut Reungloikhan in Year 9 for his “Question Game”. A huge congratulations goes out to all students whom submitted entries, however a special prize was awarded to Andrew Ding in Year 10 for his Java application and continued commitment to his personal study and coding in computing.

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“Computer science is a liberal art. It’s something that everyone should be exposed to, everybody should have a mastery of to some extent.” Steve Jobs, Apple Founder

Year 10 and 12 Computer science students spent an afternoon teaching Year 5’s how to program in Hopscotch on their iPads. This had an excellent reception and some impressive results.

Throughout the weeks building up to an “Hour of Code”, Year 7 were learning how to program Spheros to move around in different shapes. They also underwent a mini engineering project and designed and created a bridge for the Spheros to pass over. During their Computer Science lesson for “Hour of Code” they completed a racing competition to program their Spheros around a race track built out of their bridges. 7A were the victorious winners with the best bridge designs and fastest track times! Well done.

Finally, Year 10’s created thought provoking posters to encourage girls into the field of coding and Year 12 gave an inspiring assembly about the future of technology and possible career opportunities for the future.

 

“Learning to write programs stretches your mind, and helps you think better, creates a way of thinking about things that I think is helpful in all domains.” Bill Gates, Mircrosoft Founder

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Key Stage 3 challenge: make It right!“All children have the right to an education...”

By: Aidan Edmanson

Many of you will be aware that Year 6 and all of Key Stage 3 were off timetable for the last week of term before Christmas, as they were occupied by a special challenge…

They were working on a Global Classroom and Oxfam-affiliated initiative called ‘Make it Right!’ In a nutshell, each House was set the difficult task of exploring every child’s right to an education, globally! Each House had the job of carrying out case studies on the issue in different continents around the world, as well as uploading their progress to Moodle’s Global Classroom, so all other Nord Anglia Education school’s could get involved and see what BSG were working on as we took over the ‘Student Zone’ for a week. All students involved worked diligently and showed definite levels of commitment, as they produced a plethora of work using different media (articles; blogs; art; posters; interviews; music tracks; diary entries; video logs; creative writing…) and they were also encouraged to spread the word on a global scale via contacting charities; NGOs; student-led websites; businesses, setting up Twitter pages and so on. Rikke Ronnow, a Year 9 students, even managed to have an article published on the front page of the website for ‘Guangzhou City Weekend’. Well-done Rikke!

Anyhow, finally, after a challenging few days, all of their hard work culminated in a 15-minute presentation in the theatre on the last Friday of term, including a

10-minute campaign video to promote the issue. All Houses truly did themselves proud and should be extremely pleased with what they all managed to produce.

It was eventually the Normans (seemingly the team to beat on these occasions) who reigned victorious. However, this was much more than a House competition; it was so rewarding to see our students engage with a serious issue and aim to understand its global impact, whilst forming their own opinions on the topic.

Here are a few short comments from a few stars of the Normans’ team, stating what they personally got out of the project and how they managed to rise to the challenge!

During the ‘Make it Right’ challenge, I really looked at this problem from a different angle. So many children all over the world want the thing we have, but we just take it for granted and just throw it away. Education is golden, and I realised that when I found out that millions of children are forced to stay home and work hard when all they want to do is to be educated. It changed my opinion immensely, as we all have those lazy days and don’t want to go to school. We were able to put together so much: a video, a massive collection of posters, a youtube channel to raise awareness, a lesson for a year 5 class and an amazing board of everything we made. (Eunis Cheung)

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What happens next?

However, this isn’t all; it’s not over yet!

This is much bigger than the KS3 Challenge alone; this will lead to a whole-school entry to Nord Anglia Education’s Global Classroom ‘Make it Right’ competition (running in partnership with Oxfam). Thus, BSG will be taking it forward in the next two months, with Primary and the Secondary charity committee running certain initiatives, as well as there being an awareness and fundraising stall at the Spring Fair in March. This, along with sponsored walks to school, involvement of the secondary learning reps; our students teaching awareness lessons (promoting the issue) at a local Chinese Primary school and teachers looking to incorporate the topic within their subjects, really does give the impression that BSG truly does aim to ‘Make it Right!’

Any other ideas and support from our parent community and student body would be extremely welcomed. Please just contact Mr. Edmanson in Secondary.

Finally, our school’s ‘Just-Giving’ link is below. Please share this with whomever you can and if anyone is happy to donate it will be much, much appreciated and is for a very worthy cause. This will stay open until the competition closes in March.

Once again…a massive thank you for all of the support offered so far and thank you in advance for many of your efforts over the next two

Visit our Just Giving web page by clicking here.

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christmas chemistryBy: Yvonne McKenna

The chemistry department celebrated the Christmas holidays at the end of last term by having some Christmas-themed activities.

As part of the IGCSE chemistry course, students in Year 10 investigated the solubility of sodium tetraborate, more commonly know as Borax. Students investigated the effect that temperature has on the solubility of a compound and then used this idea to create sodium tetraborate snowflakes.

Students observed that an increase in the temperature of the solvent increased the solubility of a compound. Students also observed crystallisation as the saturated solutions were cooled back down to room temperature in order to create the snowflakes. The class discussed the concept of solubility and crystallisation linking this back to prior knowledge about purification techniques.

Students then carried out written exercises on solubility curves which included drawing solubility curves and calculating the mass of crystals that would crystallise out from different known concentrations of solutions.

Year 12 Chemists, as part of their redox topic, made a Chemistry Christmas tree. This involved the students carefully following a detailed set of instructions on how to prepare the different transition metal solutions. Each solution had to be prepared correctly in order to produce the desired colour.

Once prepared, the students had to name all of the chemicals that they had produced and give the oxidation state of the metal in each case. This provided the students not only with experience of following scientific procedures correctly but was also an excellent way for the students to review what they had learnt in their redox topic and provide a bridge for learning to their transition metal topic later on in the course.

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World aIDS DayBy: Eunis Cheung and Marlie Greenhill

The week leading up to World Aids Day we learnt about AIDS and HIV in lots of different lessons.

In history lessons, we learnt about prejudice and how different people have been discriminated against and we made posters to raise awareness of AIDS and HIV, which we put up around the school.

In geography, we were taught how many people, in different continents have Aids and were part of a video where we stood on a huge map to represent different AIDS and HIV statistics. Math’s lesson also looked different data and statistical analyses.

Finally in art, we studied Keith Haring’s style of drawing and made t-shirts based on his artwork, which we wore on World AIDS Day to raise awareness of the disease.

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Sports Day

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TSprimary christmas Sing-Song

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TSchoir: Sacred heart cathedral

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TSchoir: Shangri-la hotel

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choir: The Garden hoteleV

enTS

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TSchoir: Taikoo hui mall

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