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In most international schools, Year 11 is considered to be one of the most important years on a student’s learning journey. This is the year in which students complete their Cambridge IGCSE exams. These exams can seem extremely formal but this also makes them rigorous and fair - in fact, they are often the first (but not the last) externally assessed exam that students take on their educational journey.

Our first academic reports of the year are almost upon us, an event that can sometimes lead to anxiety for pupils, parents and teachers. It shouldn’t be that way, however, if we all understand the purpose and content of school reports.

As parents, nothing is more important than our children’s academic performance and wellbeing at school. And so at BCB, we understand that having those communication lines open between parents and teachers is crucial to the continued success of our students.

Ah the joys of multilingualism! I will never forget the day one of my students answered the question: ‘where are you from?’ He was a very blond little boy, whose mother was English and father was Swedish. They spoke to him in Swedish and English at home. This little boy spoke English at school and learnt Mandarin as a second language. His nanny was Malaysian and spoke to him in Malay. His best friend was Korean and they sometimes communicated in Korean. When asked ‘where are you from?’, this little boy answered: ‘I’m from Singapore!’ After some initial confusion and a little investigating, I discovered he was born in Singapore, had lived there for 2 years before moving to Vietnam and then to Malaysia. He identified as a Singaporean more than as Swedish or British as he had never lived in either country.

On Friday we marked UNICEF World Children’s Day with a non - uniform day whereby we all came dressed in blue to symbolise this special day. Amy Bater who is our Global Campus Lead has spent the last month raising awareness of this important and special annual event amongst students and teachers.

Our Year 8s have been pondering upon how Pseudocode is the first step to learning the skills of programming and creating logic which is a great method for uncovering unclear decisions and defining all inputs, outputs and interactions needed to effectively solve a problem.

Ten students from BCB are on their way to the annual global games competition in January held exclusively for Nord Anglia Education schools across The Americas. They will compete in a range of sports, from flag football to track and field, and swimming to sand volleyball and I have the privilege of accompanying them.

In the Y11 ESL classes, we were looking at spelling words and ways to learn new forms of vocabulary. We looked at several ways, from learning synanyms, to translating, to writing sentences in context and having dedicated vocabulary books. One of the more interesting ways to help us to remember words and spellings is by using mnemonics.  We found some of the examples we were given interesting and so I thought I wood share them here.

One of the many highlights so far this year has been studying Othello with the year 10s. No easy task, but with the momentum of energy created by the positive news of vaccinations, ease of restrictions and general global optimism have, I believe, been pivotal in the encouraging level of student engagement in classes this year.

All IB students have to do an “internal assessment” (IA) in mathematics in order to get their IB Diploma - this is a 12-20 page mathematical exploration on anything that the students are interested in. Some past examples of successful IA topics include: - Finding the optimal trajectory of a basketball - Exploring different strategies when playing Monopoly - Modelling the best “kick” in karate - An exploration into the number e≈2.718... - The mathematics behind shuffling cards - Exploring the birthday paradox

During the first 2 weeks back to school, starting a new academic year, we wanted to hear our students' voices and learn about their perspectives with regards to language learning. We used the Language Portrayals because each person has a particular connection to the language(s) they know along with their lives. What would that look like to our pupils? Is there a preference for any language? Which one do they prefer talking about? Or writing? Or listening to music?

Great learning in the Primary school is not about having all the answers or being the first to respond. It is exemplified by the learning behaviours that we instill in our students.

​​​​​​​Vaccines have shown to be crucial to the fight against diseases in the history of medicine. Throughout history, they have helped to significantly reduce the incidence of polio, measles and tetanus, among many other infections. Today, they are considered the most cost-effective strategy in the control of viral and bacterial diseases.

The closure of schools and the limits placed on the socialisation of young children has led to concerns about the development of speech and language skills in Early Years pupils. What can we, as a school, and you, as parents, do to help mitigate this effect?

In my first post of the new academic year, I want to take the opportunity to share and discuss our IBDP results from our first cohort of students to complete the course. I am sure you will have seen the headline figures as they were shared on the BCB instagram. However, I hope to share some context about what these results mean and what we have learned from the experience.

This week we held staff training on performance management. As a school we always strive to be better and to do this we all need to learn, reflect, and set targets to improve. We do this with our children on a daily basis, so it is important we do this as a staff.

It actually felt like my first day at BCB on Aug 16th, though I had joined a year back. For the first time, I saw most of the students, used a notebook and pen after a long time and actually had face to face conversations with my colleagues and students. Laughter, chatter, moving of furniture as the students settled into their classrooms all felt new but exciting. I know for a fact that the PE, ART and Science teachers were the most jubilant as finally they could actually do some actual practical teaching.

There is only one major thing to celebrate this week, your children. It has been fantastic to see how well they have returned to school and settled into a full capacity environment.

We are all aware of our core value at BCB of being ambitious and having a growth mindset as being part of the group of 73 Nord Anglia Schools but the purpose of education is not just about the self but wider society. Intercultural competence is something that has come to the forefront of international education but what does this mean for our teachers, students and parents as part of the BCB community?