IGBIS Newsletter, Issue 287

Message From the Head of School

From the Elementary Principal

Personal Project Exhibition

Wellness News

Making PYPX Logo Process

Pre-Order Menu

Jason McBride, ES Principal

Hello IGBIS Community,

Many thanks to all of the staff and students who made today’s Chinese/Lunar New Year Assembly a wonderful collection of singing, dancing, traditions from around the world and somehow even a little bit about Squid Game! Our multicultural school was on full display, showcasing our talented students who constantly take their celebrating—but not themselves,—seriously. A special thank you to our MC’s, the Chinese Department and Mrs. Kim for pulling it all together.

Looking ahead at returning to school on February 7th, as we did with the December Break, we would ask our community to conduct a COVID self-test at home on the Sunday prior to returning to help keep our students as safe as possible. We encourage all household members to test and update their MySejahtara before we welcome everyone back. We’ve had a few cases in the community recently and after all the mixing that we know will happen in the holiday ahead, better to be safe than sorry.

With thanks and Happy New Year!

Jason

Simon Millward, ES Principal

I have to say I love getting into classrooms and seeing what is happening there. This week I managed to visit some of our single subject classes and Grade 1 as well.

The Grade 5 students you may have seen from our Facebook post were heavily engaged in coding. They were using ‘Microbots’ to code and then observe their creations. Sometimes they weren’t happy and had to modify their code so they got the desired result.

I watched two separate PE classes, the KG’s and the Grade 3’s. They were very different classes as you can imagine. The KG students were learning a new game ‘Line tag’. The object of the game is for the ‘catcher’ to tag other students, however, everyone has to run on the lines. Once they are tagged they stand with their legs apart and the other students free them by going under their legs. This game gives the students the opportunity to learn some rules and tactics for simplified games but also work on their spatial awareness. They did very well for a first try, however, they will need to play more of this as staying on the lines and freeing their friends was challenging for many students.

The Grade 3’s were practice some passing skills and then playing the game of benchball. The idea of the passing practice (chest pass and bounce pass) was a lead up to the game itself as often students find themselves in positions where someone taller than them is trying to steal the ball. Choosing the correct kind of pass is very important. In the game context, the students were encouraged to look for space to move into and have at least two options (people) they could pass to. I am sure the students will be playing this invasion game more often as they build their skills and have the opportunity to apply them in a game context.

I also dropped in on the Grade 1’s who were learning all about counting on. They were sharing strategies with each other in a safe, supportive and engaging way.

Finally, on Friday we had our Lunar New Year assembly. A big thank you to Ms Kim and the Chinese department for coordinating and producing all of the performances, and all the students and teachers who contributed some wonderful items as well. As a community, it is important that we celebrate and appreciate our diverse school community.

I hope you all have a relaxing and enjoyable Lunar New Year holiday. I look forward to seeing everyone back on the 7^th February.

Dates for your diaries

Monday 31^st Jan- 4^th Feb: Lunar New Year holiday: No school
Wednesday 9^th Feb: Workshop Wednesday: “How can children show their mathematical thinking?”

On Wednesday, the Grade 10s had their chance to shine and share their Personal Project products and learning to the secondary school students and teachers. It was a fantastic afternoon of inspiration and insight into what our students have been working on during the last 9 months.

The Personal Project is the culmination of our students’ MYP years. It’s their opportunity to connect and demonstrate the ATL skills and knowledge they’ve learnt over their years in the MYP and produce a significant piece of work over an extended amount of time.

While we were not able to invite the community in to participate in the exhibition as we have in the past, we would still like to give you the chance to view our students’ presentations.

Please click on the links below.

What is the Personal Project: More information about the Personal Project and a chance to gain a deeper understanding of what our students were trying to accomplish this year.

Student Presentations: Please click on the student’s name. After watching their presentation, it would be helpful to our students if you fill in their feedback form. This will help them with their reflections.

Gr.10 Congratulations: After taking the time to view some presentations, you can leave a message of congratulations to our students for their hard work.

Congratulations to our Grade 10s for all their hard work and thank you for taking us through your learning journeys. All of us at IGBIS are very proud of their achievements!

Ruth Spracklan
Athletics Director, MYP Wellness Coordinator

With wellbeing being one of our Five Pillars at IGBIS, we provide a well defined and broad wellness curriculum that covers topics from relationships and nutrition to first aid, emotions and more. As part of that programme, we are beginning our units on Sexuality Education on Monday 7^th February 2022, units similar to those that are taught in public and other international schools. The curriculum has been in the planning for over a year to ensure that it covers a wide range of issues whilst also maintaining sensitivity to us being a school in Malaysia. The overview of the curriculum can be found on the wellness splash site in the topics section, please take a look at the information included there and if you have any questions please do contact me or Ms Van Nooten.

Click these sites for updates!

Tamara, Sienna, Yewon (Grade 5)

Designing a logo was a challenge for all of us. The whole of G5 worked hard to make our logo design for the upcoming PYPX.

To get us started on creating the logos we had a special guest, Ms Sam! Ms Sam has been in the marketing industry for over 24 years and she has helped other G5 classes in different places around the world create logos too. She went through a whole presentation about colour choice, spacing, and fonts. She reminded us that the logo should immediately tell people who see it, “Who we are and what we are trying to communicate.”

After Ms Sam’s explanation, G5 students brainstormed ideas about what the message was that we wanted to share during our Exhibition. We wrote down lots of ideas on the board, and then we each picked 3 different ideas to work with. Thinking of ideas was fun! For instance; ‘we have to give back what we’ve taken’, ‘we are not famous but we can change the world’, and ‘we want a green future’. These and others were our inspiration behind what the PYPX is all about.

We started to make sketches of our first ideas and used our information about colour choices, fonts, and shapes. After that, Ms Sam came back to the G5 classroom and gave us some feedback to improve. Finally, we made improvements and changes to our designs and created our final logo ideas.

There are so many great designs and we worked really hard on these logos for PYPX. We all want to make the world a better place and share the shirts with pride and share the design in our PYPX presentations coming up in April!

Vote for the best logo! – CLICK HERE