FRIDAY NEWSLETTER from Secondary, Friday, March 23rd 2018

Week 31-Time for a rest!

11 straight weeks of learning and events, what an exciting and eventful term!  Now is a time to regroup and refresh before we come back for our final term and the culmination of our learning for 2017-18.  I know that our DP students will be taking this time to regroup after their many IA’s. They have also planned out with their teachers and during DP hour their study schedule and plan for the holiday leading up to the exam period at the end of April.  This is a time for everyone to recharge batteries and prepare for the challenges ahead. I am very proud of the way our students have finished this term, have a fantastic and well deserved holiday!

Spring Break Homework Expectations

This holiday is a perfect time for our students to reconnect with family, recharge their batteries and get ready for the final term of the year. With this in mind it is our expectation that students will have a break for this holiday!  There will be no work that is due and graded at the end of the holiday, students will need time to relax.  That being said, the holiday is also a great time to get back into a great book or review some of those math facts that have been pestering you this term. Our year year 2 DP students will be provided with study guides/past papers via Google Classroom, but there will not be any work that will be graded at the end of the break.

Second Semester Conferences

Our second semester Parent/Student/Teacher conferences were held on the 22nd of March.  This will be a non teaching day.  Our conferences used the same Student/Parent/Teacher format that we followed in the first semester. We were in both the MPR and the Music Room as we will be accommodating the IB Visual Arts Exhibition, what a lovely backdrop for our conversations! It was great to see so many student accompany you for these conferences, this is the best way for us to work together to help them continue to grow and succeed with their learning.  The second semester conferences were also a great time to speak with teachers about next year course selection.   Thank you for your continued interest and support or your child’s learning here at BIS.

IB Art Exhibition

On the 21st of March we hosted our IB Art Exhibition for the year 2017.  This event is the culmination of two years of hard work and the creative process. Our IB Visual Art students will be presenting their pieces as well as explaining their process and the relevance of their work.  I have been truly amazed at the type of pieces our students are working on and the level of talent and creativity that they exhibit. This wonderful event will be held in our MPR at 4pm. I look forward to interacting with our students and their art work, I hope to see you there.

IB Diploma Course Selection

Our students have had meetings with our counselor, their teachers and the IB coordinator regarding all of the different course we offer and what their choices can do as they start to think about university.  Over the coming weeks our DP teachers will present to all of our year ten students about their specific courses and answer any questions in a whole class forum. Students will come home with a full sheet of notes and ideas about all of the choices that lay ahead of them. Please speak with your student about the choices that they will soon be making.

BSSA Swim Carnival

On Monday, March 19th BIS will host the BIS Swim carnival.  This is a fantastic event that allows many of our swimmers from multiple grade levels to compete against one another to see who will represent BIS in BSSA and IISSAC.  We have a tremendous field of swimmers this year and I am really looking forward to watching them push themselves and represent BIS.  GO Dragons!

BIS School Fair

On April 12 we will host our annual school fair. Our PTFA does a tremendous job with this event. If you are interested in having a booth please check out their message on the Enews. This is always a highlight of the school year!

Grade 10 Personal Project Exhibition

Our grades 10s have finished their personal projects and are now completing the production phase of the project.  This is a time of celebration and we want to ensure that we have the largest audience possible for them.  We will be having the Personal Project Exhibition on April 12th-the same day as the School Fair. We have chosen this date as there will be many people already on campus and this will give our 10th graders a better opportunity to show off their learning to a larger audience.  Specific timings for the day will be forth coming.

Thank you for your continued interest and support of BIS and our students.

Kind Regards,

Justin Walsh

secondaryschoolprincipal@baliis.net

Secondary School Principal