Secondary Newsletter 10 – October 4, 2019

BIS Events Calendar

Message from Principal

DP Corner

Counselor’s Corner

World Scholar’s Cup

An Infographic Tour of Argentina

CAS Corner

Dear Parents,

Today marks the end of a fantastic Term 1. Thank you to all parents who attended the Secondary 3-Way Conferences on Thursday. We had an impressive 91 of a possible 106 Secondary families attend. We would like to receive your feedback in this short survey so we can improve any aspects for future conferences. Please have a wonderful week away from school and enjoy some time here or abroad with your loved ones.

Ross Ferris

Secondary Principal

DP Corner 

A big thank you to all the parents who were able to find the time to attend the IB DP Core presentation on Wednesday, October 2. All the terminology that is used in the IB can be quite daunting for the uninitiated at times so I hope that the presentation was able to clarify everything. The presentation that was given on Wednesday can be accessed by clicking on the image to the right. Please pay particular attention to the notes section as there are links to further information from the IB. Please do not hesitate to contact me should you have any further questions regarding the IB DP Core. 

Counselor’s Corner

October break is finally here and we can spend some time relaxing and enjoying time together as a family.  This is also a good time to re-think-and re-set some of our habits, specifically, how much time we spend on our smartphones! Our children are watching, modelling after us, and suffering too from our “addiction”. Check out the article below by Dr. Catherrine Steiner-Adair who I have mentioned in some of my Parent Sessions.

Catherine Steiner-Adair, Ed.D. is a Boston-based, clinical psychologist and co-author of The Big Disconnect: Protecting Family and Childhood Relationships in the Digital Age. This book is now available in the BIS Library.

9 Tips Help Supermom “Beat My Addiction”

College Counseling

BIS is very proud to have hosted two back-to-back, very successful College Fairs this week, welcoming over 60 global universities to our campus. These fairs are an excellent opportunity for our students to speak directly to regional College Reps, the same people who will be reading their applications. We were pleased as well, to invite six other schools from around Bali to join us at the fairs, with the aim of providing educational opportunities to more and more students here. The college application season is already well underway and this week saw early applications sent out by three of our Grade 12 Students in time to beat the October early deadlines in the US, UK, and Taiwan.

BIS hosts regular college visits throughout the year in our College Counseling Center and these are always open to Secondary Students and Parents. Please check out the regularly updated college/university visits calendar here. This document has pages for scholarships, summer programs, and other opportunities for our students as well.

World Scholars Cup Trip to Manila

Amieca Joustra and Calum Leys 

World Scholar’s Cup is an international tournament that invites thousands of scholars from different regions of the world to compete in fun, yet challenging events. From a gameshow inspired quiz about the topics discussed to a scavenger hunt where you have to complete tasks with your assigned team, ranging from easy, difficult, to nonsensical, the WSC has it all. The main aim of WSC is to empower the great young scholar’s of this generation, to help them think creatively and critically, while also letting them have some fun. The WSC team travels all across the globe, hosting a hundred or so Regional Rounds every year. These Regional Rounds are important to nominate people for Global Rounds, and Global Rounds are important to nominate people for the ULTIMATE GLOBAL ROUND, held at Yale University in America.

For this year’s global rounds, Bali Island School participated in the Global Rounds in Manila. Organising the trip was eventful as we had difficulties in getting the right documents and organising flight tickets was harder than expected. Even with the difficulties and tight schedule we had for organising the event, we managed to get 12 students from Bali Island School to attend the round in Manila.

We arrived in Manila on the 4th of September at 4:a.m in the morning. Getting from the airport to the hotel was fairly easy as there were walkways to get straight to the hotel. The first day was spent unpacking, sleeping and catching up on our homework. The next few days were of course spent on the conference where we debated, did challenges, and watching performances. Our highlights of the conference were the scavenger hunt that took place on the first day of the conference which allowed to make friends from other countries and delegations. Another one of our highlights took place out of the conference but it was swimming with manta rays in an ocean park. We enjoyed seeing the different attractions in the aquarium and seeing different species of fish.

My favorite experience from World Scholar’s Cup was the Scholar’s Ball because it was a chance to have some fun and dance through the night after 2 long and quite stressful days. It involved beach balls, alien dolls being thrown around, photobooths, and a dance floor which was packed with people at all times. It was a great way to end the competition and it got my mind off of the Awards Ceremony.

An Infographic Tour of Argentina

Miss Taylor

Grade 12 Ab Initio Spanish have recently researched into different cities in Argentina. The work they have produced researched different tourist attractions and activities they could do in these different cities. Students have written in Spanish to describe what you can expect and here is Malaika’s infographic for this task.

CAS Corner by Iona Leys

16th August 2019

Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS Experience 

This Taman Bacaan was the first time I came as a 12th grader, which added more responsibility and more seniority. So I had to show the younger grades how the activity worked and how it could benefit them in terms of Service of Action. There were some new kids from grade 4 and grade 6 and basically I explained to them how the activity worked and showed them how to interact with the children. Their parents were also there which added more pressure, but they also helped with suggestions of activities. I also prioritised in making the kids more active and learning, so I definitely implemented the game Simon Says with body parts to help them improve on muscle-memory and also make it fun as well. I also decided to be more organised in terms of the duration of the entire activity.

Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences 

I did not want to be able to run out of time or have more time left over. So I created a schedule at the beginning of the activity and allocated appropriate time towards the different things we were doing. Such as 30 min reading, 25 min teaching/fun activities and 5 min playtime for the kids at the playground approximately. Sometimes, the kids would complain saying that they wanted to play in the playground for the entire activity. However, I would coax them to not be too swayed by the allure of the playground and actually learn something from this lesson. Taman Bacaan is not only fun, it also has tons of educational benefit. Something that I feel sad about is that I probably will not be able to go to this activity every week, due to my busy academic schedule. I hope next year when I have graduated, one of the younger grades or potentially a Grade 11 can have a similar passion to me and be able to continue what I have started and make it much better than I have ever done.