Take Me To Your Leader Mr. Garnett's Blog 

Welcome to my Principal blog.

This blog is designed to provide the latest in news and updates on the happenings at Peak School along with information on a number of topics related to education.

Enjoy!

Bill Garnett

As previously published the student led conferences run this year from May 6th to May 15th.  Parents need to access Gateway to make the bookings as in the past and the bookings will be open up until 36 hours before the conference is due to take place.

This is the first year that we are also making available the portfolios so please allow time after the student-led conference to go through this with your child.  We have set up the room in the library with laptops so that parents that are able to stay on a bit longer can go through the portfolio with their child.

Here is the timetable for the conferences;

Below is an outline of how the Student-Led conferences will be structured and the main aim of the process.   

Student- Led Conferences  (Term 3)

The purpose of Student Led Conferences is to share all elements of the student’s learning and progress both academic and social.  The student is encouraged to lead the meeting and have ownership over sharing and discussing their learning with their parents and teacher.  The main aim is the discussion between the student and his/her parent.

The student will prepare for the meeting with the teacher to review and set appropriate next steps and targets which are to be shared with their parents when the teacher is present.

The Students are then responsible to share their work and portfolios as evidence of their learning and own self-reflection of their learning process.  The student should be pro-active in explaining what they have learned, how and why it is important and what they need to do next.

All teachers should be involved in supporting, guiding and preparing the students to share their portfolios and other relevant work ready for the conference.

In the early years the Student Led Conference may be organized more like a 3 way conference due to the students needing more scaffolding by the teacher.

However, the aim is that as the students progress through the years they will become more independent and eventually be able to lead the conference.

As with the 3 way conference, time will be made available for the parents to discuss their child’s progress with both the class teacher and specialist teachers with or without the child present depending on the nature of the discussion; e.g. 10 minutes with the student present and 5 minutes discussion with parents and teacher.

Last term we published the draft ESF 2013-2014 Academic year calendar and now that the public holidays have been finalised by the Government we are in a position to publish the final version of this calendar.  There are one or two changes from the draft, the most noticeable is the change to the CNY holiday.

Please click HERE to view the calendar as presented on the ESF official website.

As a school we still need to add two CPD days and once we have decided upon these dates they will be added to the calendar.

The Faust Festival is taking place from May 21 to June 16th and whilst we don’t normally promote outside providers we do have a number of our students involved. Also one group (Group P) who are performing Gulliver’s Travels are actually using our school hall to practice on a weekly basis.  Gulliver’s Travels is on June 13 and 14 at 8pm and tickets can be purchased at www.urbtix.hk.  Congratulations to all Peak School students who have been working so hard on their acting and scripts and we wish you all the very best for your shows.  Break a leg!

Please appreciate that this is not a paid advertisement and actually came from a parent of the school.  Whilst we can not accept any liability for the quality of the shows on offer, I do feel the ones that involve Peak School students will be great!!

I came across this article earlier this week about the shift to allow time at school for students to learn about something they personally are interested in.  It talks about how Google have  a 20% approach where basically one day a week the employees are given the scope to explore ideas they are interested in – that is to focus on what ever the person wants to learn more about.   Interesting to note that by 2009, 50% of new innovations, including gmail, came from this one day a week.

Schools are starting to appreciate the value in this and the article explores this further.  We have some classes at school who have set aside a small amount of time each week to allow the students to explore ideas or concepts that they are interested in.  The beauty of this approach is that it allows the teachers to focus on the inquiry cycle so it is still a very structured approach.

The article refers to an expanded KWL chart that many schools use.  Called the KWHLAQ (name probably needs work) it ensures the children follow a certain approach that will help guide their independent inquiry.  Perhaps something that could be initiated at home during the holidays or a long weekend where the children are complaining of having nothing to do!

Click HERE to read the full article.

The April edition of our library newsletter is now out.

To read it please click HERE.

Covered in this issue;

• HKYWA
• Library Bay design winning design announced
• Visitors to the Library
• Art in the Library
• Book displays
• Fantastic resource for finding books
• Did you know?
• and…. A quick reminder!

You will have no doubt heard about the earthquake in the Sichuan Province which claimed the lives of over 200 people and injured over 11,000 others.  This is the same province that was hit by the earthquake in 2008 that killed over 70,000.  The school is saddened by these events and wants to help.

As a school we felt it was important that we do what we can to support the people from Sichuan.  We have decided to hold a special assembly on Friday to hold a minute silence so we can be grateful for what we have and to send our wishes to the families affected.

We would also like to donate money to a charity that is currently there assisting on the ground.  We are asking all children and staff to bring a small donation on Friday so that this can then be passed to the appropriate charity.  Some of the charity organisations are currently under the media spotlight for using the funds inappropriately and we are aware of this and will support one of the charity organisations that has a proven record.

At the assembly on Friday we will also be encouraging the children to take their own action and to think about how they can help those affected by the earthquake.

Thank you for your support and as a school community I am hoping we can raise a significant amount for such a worthy cause.

The best way to describe the efforts of our three TOM teams on Saturday is “three ‘peat” and a “clean sweep”.

It was a “three ‘peat” as our Social Science team won their section for the third year in a row.  It was also a “clean sweep” as the other two teams (Language and Maths) also won their sections meaning that Peak School won all three sections on offer.

There were 14 teams in total from a range of ESF schools across Hong Kong and we were delighted when it was announced that we had won all three sections.  This is an incredible achievement and we were only one of two schools to enter 3 teams which says a lot considering we were the smallest school entered.  It is a real credit to the work that we are doing as a school and reinforces our program which is designed to ensure all children are catered for which is obviously working very well!

The Teams:

Language Literature: Natasha Mather, Charlotte Evans, Macey Higgins, Archie Collis, Jessica Wynn, Kate Cosgrove, Tia Carrett (Ms Maclennan)

Social Sciences: Daanyal Ebrahim, Aurora Corrado, Reema Patel, Emily Boyle, Clare Payne, Petronella Rowe, Cordelia Halcrow (Mrs Fay)

Maths Engineering: Edward Hudson, Christopher Chan, Daniel Leong, Arjun Mukherjea, Jack Rong, Leo Webb and Ambrose Lee. (Mr Garnett)

Here are some photos from the actual prize giving at RCHK on Saturday -

As previously published the student led conferences run this year from May 6th to May 15th.  Below is a table of the timetable of when each year group will be having their conferences.  We have split each year group into 2 sessions made up of an AM session and a PM session as we appreciate that not everyone wants to come during the day or indeed after work.  Parents will be able to access Gateway to make the bookings as in the past and the bookings will be open from Friday, April 26th (2pm) and up until 36 hours before the conference is due to take place.

Here is the timetable for the conferences;

As per our new assessment policy, shared last week, here is an explanation of how the Student Led Conferences work;

Student- Led Conferences  (Term 3)

The purpose of Student Led Conferences is to share all elements of the student’s learning and progress both academic and social.  The student is encouraged to lead the meeting and have ownership over sharing and discussing their learning with their parents and teacher.  The main aim is the discussion between the student and his/her parent.

The student will prepare for the meeting with the teacher to review and set appropriate next steps and targets which are to be shared with their parents when the teacher is present.

The Students are then responsible to share their work and portfolios as evidence of their learning and own self-reflection of their learning process.  The student should be pro-active in explaining what they have learned, how and why it is important and what they need to do next.

All teachers should be involved in supporting, guiding and preparing the students to share their portfolios and other relevant work ready for the conference.

In the early years the Student Led Conference may be organized more like a 3 way conference due to the students needing more scaffolding by the teacher.

However, the aim is that as the students progress through the years they will become more independent and eventually be able to lead the conference.

As with the 3 way conference, time will be made available for the parents to discuss their child’s progress with both the class teacher and specialist teachers with or without the child present depending on the nature of the discussion; e.g. 10 minutes with the student present and 5 minutes discussion with parents and teacher.

Dr. Bunhead, aka Tom Pringle, is an experienced secondary science teacher also trained in chemistry who has changed his career and is now a world famous performer.

He makes science fun for kids by creating explosive experiments, firing stunt hamsters from a bazooka to demonstrate the laws of gravity, and turning a banana into a hammer using liquid nitrogen.

Year 5 were very enthusiastic about the performance they attended and came away with different opinions of which part was the best.  The children we spoke to described it as, “Fun, explosive action”, “An exhilarating adventure through the evolution of science.”

Despite setting his head on fire and creating mini bombs, the safety precautions throughout the show were extremely high.  Dr Bunhead used ear muffs, goggles and gloves and ensured that children understood the dangers of some of his acts.

Dr Bunhead has performed over 1000 shows in countries as far away as New Zealand, Ethiopia and the UK.  He has been seen on Disney Channel, BBC, ITV, Discovery Channel and Discovery Kids.

The children thoroughly enjoyed the performance and clearly learnt a lot because Dr Bunhead made it fun and easy to understand.
-”I thought science was really boring until I saw Dr Bunhead”.  Eliza 10.
-”One of the best shows I’ve ever seen”.  Emile, Sam 10

By Eliza, Sam, Divina, Janice and Emile 5B

Recently the school has reviewed its assessment practices in line with a recent reporting to parents essential agreement established across ESF primary schools.

Ruth Maclennan had led the review and presented the updated policy at the recent School Council Meeting.  A copy of the assessment policy and appropriate appendices are located below.

We are sharing the policy with the school community in the hope that it will help you better understand our approach to assessment which includes assessing, recording and reporting.  The policy reflects our current approach and will be reviewed and updated annually.

Assessment Policy 2013

Appendix A – Assessment Timeline 2012-13

Appendix B – You Tell Us Parent Survey

Appendix C – ESF Assessment Essential Agreement