CWBS Newsletter – Friday 8 May
Principal’s News Disclaimer
Principal’s News
Dear Parents
As you will have heard from the Hong Kong Government, the exciting news that we have all been waiting for is that some of the lockdown measures are being eased and some classes are set to resume before the end of the school year. As the ESF letter to parents on Tuesday outlined, how this will happen and what this looks like is still being worked out and will need to be negotiated by ESF with EDB. Please be assured that we will ensure that all the health and safety requirements are carefully considered and implemented so that students can return safely to school when that is decided and scheduled. I will certainly be in touch with more details when these decisions are made and plans finalised.
New Students
Welcome to those new students and families who joined us on 1st May. It is certainly an unusual way to start school…….by distance learning. However, I know that you will have met some of your new classmates in the check ins and check outs each day and already started building friendships. We all look forward to meeting all of you in person and welcoming you to your class and the school when school resumes.
BOOK WEEK 2020 – Reading creates Well-Being
Book Week this year was conducted online over the last five days, generating some imagination, creativity and a renewed love of reading. Our wonderful parent volunteers, staff, and of course our students embraced this challenge and I would like to thank them all enormously for engaging in many literary activities.
The activities undertaken over the last week included Short Story writing, Bilingual story sessions, Hong Kong Golden Dragon Award voting, Cookery/Construction/Art book creativity, Getting Caught reading in strange places photography and of course the Book Character Dress Up.
Bilingual Story Session
Get Caught Reading
Writing Short Stories
Cookery/Construction/Art Books
Book Character Dress Up
Online Guest speakers
A huge thank you to Dana from Plastic Free Seas who joined our Year 3 students during zoom sessions this week, to support the Sharing the Planet unit of inquiry. Dana met with each year 3 class, which provided the students with an opportunity to find out more about plastic in our oceans and how we can reduce this problem. Students were able to ask further questions to build their knowledge about how the choices we make can help sustain the earth’s resources.
Dana also hosted a zoom presentation and Q & A session with our Year 6 students last week. Dana engaged students with stories of her experience with this issue in the local area and beyond. Students posed questions and found this a valuable opportunity for note taking. The presentation was very informative, and it inspired many of our Year 6 students to select plastic pollution as their topic for inquiry during exhibition.
Another huge thank you, this time to Philip Thorpe from the United Nations Refugee Agency. Philip recently spoke to our Year 4 students about refugees and explained some of the reasons why people become refugees and why they might be forced to flee their home countries. Did you know there are 24 million refugees in the world, and lots of other people who are seeking to be refugees. Philip’s agency looks after 70.8 million people. His thought provoking talk deepened the knowledge and understanding of why some people are forced to migrate around the world. The talk was part of the Year 4 inquiry into ‘Where we are in place and time’.
Classes for next year
This is the time of the year when we start to focus on the make-up of our classes for next year. This year has been a very unusual ‘one off’ year with major disturbances in Term 1 due to the social unrest and again since Chinese New Year with the coronavirus crisis. This has certainly resulted in some fragmentation with classes being suspended and then resuming only to be suspended again for a much longer period.
As a result of these circumstances, students and teachers have not had the same time to build relationships, interact and develop strong friendships, bonds, and class cohesion as would normally be the case. Given this, we have decided to keep the class groups for next year the same as they are this year. This means your child’s current class group will remain together next year and have the opportunity to experience a whole year together. As always we will look very carefully at the allocation of teachers and try to ensure that we meet the needs of individuals and the whole class group as much as possible. However, please note that as a result of the above constraints it will not be possible to accommodate student placement requests from parents.
Best wishes
Chris Hamilton
Principal
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