Island School E-Newsletter Thursday 30 April 2009

Message from the Business Manager

The school will have quite a busy summer this year with Summerbridge classes, some outside hiring and the Summer Works.

The Sixth Form area outside the Psychology rooms by ‘zoo steps’ will be covered to create a nice outdoor area for our Sixth Form. The boys and girls changing rooms will be refurbished with more dry area changing space. Student toilets on Blocks 4 and 5 playgrounds will be refurbished in the same way the Visitors Toilets were done last summer.

In terms of teaching areas, both Physics labs and one Junior Science lab will be refurbished as part of the ESF rolling programme. The two music rooms on Block 2 will be converted into one spacious music suite with a movable partition. The movable partitioning design allows flexibility for two individual teaching areas or one larger space for group practice and rehearsals. The GPA area will turn into a TV Studio! More details in the next E-Newsletter.

Both the school main entrance and the school office will have a smart new look after summer. And the PTA Bookshop will be moved next to the PTA Uniform Shop – a one- stop shop idea.

It will be an exciting summer and we shall look forward to the new fabrication of these areas when we return after the break.

Rebecca Yip
Business Manager

Digital Citizenship in Year 7 and 8 ICT

Digitally delivered content is a major part of any students' life. Indeed, as Island School continues to orient teaching and learning opportunities around the use of technology through its 1-2-1 laptop program, their engagement through digital content is likely to increase. As society changes so too must education, as it should always be the goal of education to prepare students for the world they are growing up in. Additionally though, schools must also try to keep one eye on the future and try to prepare students for the world they will be facing, and nowhere is this more true than in Technology Education where change is the only constant.

Whilst Citizenship is a core strand in our PSHE program, nowadays students are engaging in interactions, communication structures and relationships that require them to have a deeper understanding of how our ideas of citizenship evolve in the digital world. As such, this year the ICT curriculum has developed 2 projects for Year 7 and 8 students in the area of Digital Citizenship. In Year 7 students have just begun exploring the idea of "Netiquette", looking at guidelines for how to behave on-line (email, forums, chatrooms etc) and through SMS text messaging. Year 8's are exploring the wider concept of Internet Safety. In both cases the students have been asked to identify for themselves a specific research area and to produce, as a result of their research, a multi media outcome for a particular audience - in the Year 8 example the audience is you, the parents!

Some examples of typical research questions that are currently being tackled are:-

• What are the dangers of spending too much time on the Internet?
• What do we do if the relationships with people we know turn bad on-line?
• What are the differences and similarities between on-line and off-line friendships?
• Is it possible for parents to block explicit content effectively from their children? What are the systems and their limitations?
• How do you keep personal information safe on social networking sites?
• What are the issues to do with downloading and sharing files through the Internet?

More information about these project can be found at the following support sites developed by the ICT teachers at Island School.

• http://sites.google.com/a/online.island.edu.hk/internet-safety/
• http://sites.google.com/a/online.island.edu.hk/netiquette/

Technical literacy is an important part of any students development and Island School students are fortunate to have the opportunity to study different dimensions of it through the range of technology subjects offered here - Design and Technology, Food and Textiles Technology and ICT. This faculty is committed to developing students' technical literacy and giving them necessary skills and understanding to engage successfully with our increasingly technical world.

Interim Week 2009

This year we have made an early start to planning Interim Week. The actual date of the week is established in rotation with ESF in order to avoid all the secondary schools clashing. This year we were the last school to get our date (last year we had 1st choice). However, the late date actually suits us for the better as it will be cooler and not clash with the inter-school swimming heats.

Due to the financial crisis we have tried to choose a range of mid-priced overseas trips so that families will be able to consider the possibility of overseas trips. In addition, all trips will meet one or more elements of the CAS criteria of Creative, Action, and Service for I.B. In fact some trips meet all three elements.

Once students are away the onus is on them to challenge themselves, develop their leadership skills etc. For most students Interim Week is probably the most exciting, challenging and memorable week of the whole school year.

The most popular 09/10 trips for students in Years 10 – 13 are:

• Vietnam – Mr. Rappel and Ms. Hemmings
  Two groups will be running due to the popularity
• Taiwan – Ms. V Ting
• Japan – Ms. M. Rei
• Kathmandu – Ms. Church
  This trip was heavily over subscribed due to its popularity and we have had to take the decision as a school that Year 12 students would get priority. Hopefully in the future all students who are interested will get the opportunity to visit Katja House and experience the marvellous opportunity of working with the orphans.
• Nepal Trek – Mrs. Boag
• Thai Scuba – Mr. Tudor
• Thai Golf – Mr. Windle
• Thai Sailing – Mr. Reed
• New York Art – Mrs. Halcrow
• Hong Kong Golf – Mr. Shaw
• Cooling in Hong Kong – Ms. Rasby
• Community Service in Hong Kong – Ms. Trevanna
• Fitness First (Hong Kong) – Mrs. Wathall
• New Zealand Outdoor Adventure – Ms. Leung
• Baiwan Community Service – Ms. Chui
• Music/video – Mr. Halcrow
• We have had to cancel the Art trip to Dafen this year due to a lack of interest but hopefully it will be available again in the future. Trips that are already full are Japan, Kathmandu, Thai Sailing and Vietnam. All the other trips have spaces. Therefore if your son/daughter has not signed up please do so ASAP.
• Year 7 and 8 students will be going on residential camps in the New Territories.
• Year 9 will be on an outward bound course around Hong Kong.

Carolyn Bean
08/09 CAS Coordinator

Senior Prize Giving Assembly 2009

Students and parents alike were treated to an elegant afternoon on Friday 20th March, as Year 11 to 13 students were honoured for their excellence within and outside of the classroom during the 2009 Senior Prize Giving Assembly.

Subject prizes, either in the form of Dymocks vouchers or actual books, were the first set to be presented. Heads of Departments took turns to go on stage to hand these awards to selected students, handpicked in acknowledgement of their exceptional effort and progress in the respective subjects. A number of particularly outstanding students also received prizes from more than one department.

While subject prize winners were informed beforehand of the award(s) that they would be getting, winners of the so-called “Special Prizes” – the next and last set of prizes presented – were completely unaware, and thus pleasantly surprised, of their achievement.

This year’s ‘Special Prizes’, recognizing students who have proved successful in and/or well beyond the academic framework, include the:

• David J. James Award - named after the former school principal. The DJJ award comprise of two prizes, each presented to one girl and one boy, and are students who demonstrate good, Island School virtues. The 2009 DJJ Award winners were Hassan Nasser (13D) and Isabel Day (13E).
• Council Prize for Excellence - an award presented to a Year 13 student for all-round excellence. The 2009 Council Prize winner was Nicola Inge (13W).
• Jimmy Kim Memorial Prize – an award commemorating Jimmy Kim, a bright former student who passed away in the 1980’s. This prize is presented to a Year 13 student who not only has an impressive collection of outstanding academic achievements, but is also warm-hearted, unassuming, and positive. The 2009 Jimmy Kim prize went to Frederick Law (13N).
• Nan Robertson Prize for Service – presented to a student who has done a great service to Island School. The 2009 Nan Robertson prize winner was Alicia Mou (13R).
• Wellesley Book Award – sponsored by the prestigious American liberal arts college Wellesley College. This award is given to a female student in Year 12 who has demonstrated exceptional academic record and character, and who has also made significant contributions to the school and/or community. The 2009 Wellesley Book Award went to Christina Yu (12F).

See all photos from the Prize Giving Assenbly here.

Maths Update

US Math Olympics

Congratulations to Anais Ross (11N) who gained a Distinction in the UK Olympics. Sang Jun Lee (10R), Ernest Lo (11R), Michael To (11M) and Alistair Webb (8N) gained merits. Entry to this contest was earned by excellent scores in the UK Intermediate Maths contest held earlier.

US AIME Maths Contest

The American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME) is a gruelling three hour maths contest open only to students who do exceptionally well in the US Senior Maths Contest. This year brother and sister Christina Yu (12F) and Jeffrey Yu (11F) both qualified for the contest after their excellent joint first in the UK Senior. They were joined for 3 hours of maths fun after school on 1st April by Mr. Paul Jackson and Ms. Katherine Chiu.

Island School IB Visual Arts Exhibition 2009

Congratulations to all the talented IB Visual Arts students who have successfully finished their Visual Arts Moderation. The Visual Arts exam takes the format of an Exhibition Space constructed by the student and a forty-minute interview with an external examiner. This year, we had the privileged to be examined by The Chief Examiner for IB Visual Arts, Dr Max Darby. We really enjoyed the opportunity to discuss our work with him and explain how we had progressed and developed over the two-year course.

On Wednesday the 23rd April we opened our exam exhibition to the school community and we wish to thank all our friends, family and teachers for supporting this event so enthusiastically. We also want to thank Mrs Halcrow, Mrs Palmer, Ms. Eustace and Mr Stevens for all their guidance, support, patience and time. We would also like to thank all the teachers who gave up their time to run mock interviews for us and finally we want to mention and thank Alfreda Poon, whose technical support we could not have survived without!

Please click on the links below to listen to Ariel Kaminsky (13R), Emma Mendel (13F) and Jenny Tillyer (13D) talk about their work.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxjYtCou6sQ
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8gjnZtTA14
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6P8vL-F4tA

Theory of Knowledge

To know one’s ignorance is the best part of knowledge.
- Lao-Tze 老子

Despite all the current talk of the IB learner profile and how education should be more about developing skills and competencies , the old metaphor of teaching being like filling ‘empty vessels’ with knowledge still seems to fit remarkably well. Students spend a lot of time in school being filled with knowledge and they spend much less time asking questions about the validity or origin of that knowledge. In the IB diploma the small part of the course called the Theory of Knowledge tries to rebalance this.

It is an area of the course most parents will be unfamiliar with, and an area many students (and non-ToK teachers) have most misconceptions about.

ToK attempts to ask students to question the way they “know” something, to look at the ‘filters’ they used to gain the knowledge. It reduces the Ways of Knowing (WoK) to four: sense, perception, reason, emotion, and language. Many of us, new to ToK feel uncomfortable, at first, with some of these. I, attached to reason, saw emotion as a hindrance to knowing but now find myself defending it to other critics. This can take students into areas they are unfamiliar with and uncomfortable with. We have many different cultures in the school and so the potential for disagreement and discussion is considerable. ToK encourages this discussion in an environment where nothing is sacred but everyone and everyone’s view is respected.

Students are taught 9 ways of justifying and testing what one knows: logic, sensory perception, revelation, faith, memory, consensus, authority, intuition, and self-awareness. They become aware that each of us has a different hierarchy of these and of how difficult it can be to use logic to argue with someone who knows something through one of the other 8 ways.

However, this is not relativism, all things are not equal, there are the tests of coherence, correspondence, pragmatism, and consensus which can be applied too.

Much of the course looks at the Areas of Knowledge (AoK) which are akin to the traditional western ‘disciplines’: mathematics, natural sciences, human sciences, history, the arts, and ethics. However, they are approached from a very different angle, a complementary angle. In natural science we look at the scientific method which the science teachers hardly find time to examine and in Maths at axioms and whether Maths is a language and whether we know 2+2=4 through reason or sense perception, which isn’t often covered in the Maths course.

At Island School a ToK group has one teacher, who is expected to deal with the areas they are not comfortable with as well as those they are. This means teaching ToK takes a high level of commitment, teachers have to work as a team and resources shared, lessons discussed. We have a number of schemes of work that teachers use as guides but each teacher will approach the subject in their own way. Each group will have a different experience.

However, whilst ToK is not as constrained by syllabus requirements as some IB areas, there is rigorous assessment. Students give a presentation on a knowledge question of their own choosing and write an essay from a choice of ten prescribed titles. The results are grades A-E and an E grade is a failing criteria for the whole Diploma! The ToK grade is amalgamated with the Extended Essay grade to give a student 0, 1, 2 or 3 points. Students looking at university offers should NOT rely on expecting more than 1 point from ToK/EE

“The most important truths are those which …
society at that time least wants to hear.” - W H Auden

Ric Faulkner
Teacher, Business Studies & ToK

Focus on Music GCSE Compositions

Music students in Years 10 and 11 follow the Edexcel GCSE Music certificate. Students are actively engaged in experiencing Music through the activities of composing, performing, listening and appraising. Compositional skills are honed using state of the art, professional standard, music processing software which enables budding musicians to more liberally experiment, redraft, evaluate and realise their musical ideas as part of the creative process.

The compositions of three of our Year 11 students are featured here for your enjoyment.

The following three links play compositions based on Area of Study One: Contrast and Repetition in Western Music. Here students are asked to construct a piece using the devices of the Classical period. As well as being Classical in design, these pieces each have a strong personal voice.

• 'Unforgettable Childhood' by Jason Wu 11E
• 'Fairytales' by Sherry Ho 11D
• 'Fun at the Amusement Park' by Nicole Wong 11D

By way of a contrast, Jason's second composition is an example of Club Dance music. His brief was to compose a piece of light-hearted upbeat dance music that would be suitable accompaniment for an aerobics workout! Get out those leotards!

• 'Technology Revival'

Good luck to these and all our students who have examinations coming up this term.

Swine Influenza

Please see this PDF article from Island School's school health professionals regarding swine influenza.

Key Dates