Year 7 Newsletter

YEAR 7 NEWSLETTER

24th NOVEMBER 2023

 

Dear parents and guardians, 

As we approach the final few weeks of a fantastic first term on the secondary campus, I am sure many of our Year 7 students are excited to rest, take a break from their lessons, and enjoy some quality time with family. Prior to the end of this term, Year 7 will receive their first data report of the year. I discussed this with them in Monday’s assembly and encouraged them to reflect on their current practices ahead of the report on 7th December. 

Once you receive the report, please take some time to sit down with your child and have a two-way conversation to go over the information. Please listen to their opinion and find out why they got the grades they did. 

 

Effort & Collaboration Grades

Arguably the most important data items on this report are the effort and collaboration grades, which reflect the way students have approached their learning over the first 16 weeks of Secondary School.  At DBIS, we foster a love of learning; teaching our children how to learn successfully is central to this process. If you have concerns about your child’s effort and collaboration grades, please discuss this with them and set clear, achievable goals for next term. 

 

Questions you can ask are:

• In which subject(s) have you been most successful in your tracking grade and/or your effort and collaboration grades? 
• What are you most pleased with, and why do you think you were successful?
• Which subject(s) did you study today that you need to focus most on to improve?
• What do you need to do to improve in this subject/these subjects (it may be different for different subjects)?

 

Tournament of Minds

 

A note from Mrs Lewis

Last weekend, students from DBIS Secondary School attended Malvern College, Hong Kong for the ‘Tournament of Minds’ challenge. The students got to choose from one of four challenges. One group chose the STEM project – to make a flying “bird” without any motors or electronics. The other group chose the Social Sciences project – to merge two world events; they chose the invention of the gun and the shooting of JF Kennedy. The students had six weeks to work together and produce a 10-minute presentation to perform in front of the judges. They were competing against several schools from Hong Kong and Indonesia.

The second part of the competition was a spontaneous challenge. The students went into a room with the judges and were given the unseen statement “Less is more”. They then had four minutes to discuss and one minute to present their ideas. The whole process was marked. They had to show leadership, collaboration and time-management skills to score marks.

Both groups have spent every lunchtime and after school for the last two weeks completing the long-term challenges, and all deserve congratulations for the effort they put into this work! 

The Year 7 students from the STEM group were Viha Ashar (7D), Amelia Bay (7I) and Tim Pun (7D).

The Social Sciences group got an honorary mention during the awards for their effort in their presentation; another huge congratulations to Yevgeny Karpov (7B), Alexander Renz (7D) and Mejane Wan (7B).

 

Week Without Walls Celebrations

Two weeks ago, I challenged our Year 7 students who have an interest in video editing to capture the fantastic memories created during the Week Without Walls Camp by creating a short video. It was wonderful to see two students take this opportunity (this was completely optional). A massive thank you to both Shachar Sade (7I) and Alvis Yeung (7I), who both created short videos that celebrate some of the camp’s highlights. I have attached them below if you would like to view them. 

Video 1 [Shachar Sade]

Video 2 [Alvis Yeung]

 

As always, thank you all for your ongoing support of Year 7 during this first term at Secondary. I sincerely hope the conversations around reports are both productive and supportive. I will be in touch again prior to the Christmas break. Have a wonderful weekend when it arrives. 

 

Best wishes, 

Mr Ioan Morgan