Volume 4 11/09/2020
Newsletter of International School Suva
Principal’s Report
Inside this issue:
Dear parents, students, and staff,
ECH & Reception Fun Day
The one thing we can state with certainty is that we have had a very interesting 2020 school year! As we prepare for the start of Term 4, we must recognise that this year will probably be remembered as a memorable and strange historic event! The past nine months of Covid pandemic have challenged how we teach and learn, and I expect education will be a little different from now on globally. I think we will continue to use online resources better and we will be ready to teach online if that becomes necessary. However, for Term 4, we are planning to return a bit more to a normal school programs as we almost entirely focus on campus, face-to-face teaching and learning once more. Most of our online students have returned or are planning to return, and we are eager to reunite with families that have been gone for some time!
ECH - Fun With Math's
Year 1
Year 2 - Space Adventure
Growth mindset
Year 5 Exhibition
Shark Tank Presentation
I hope the coming term will be the time when we begin to leave Covid far behind, but we hope to learn from all this and to hold on to some good practices we have established. I am sure we will be having school with more infection awareness, more social distance, more sanitation, and more hand washing. We will continue trying to improve our public health measures even post Covid! As we keep saying, our hand-washing, sanitizing, disinfecting, and keeping social distance will help protect us from the common cold and seasonal flu as well as other future health threats. So, let’s continue these basic infection control measures regardless of what else we do!
PYP Curriculum Corner
USA Embassy and Asia Foundation
Design Catch up
MYP Corner
The International Baccalaureate's Theory of Knowledge
As part of our return to normal, this week we will have our first end-of-term assembly since Covid started. Those assemblies have been a tradition for many years at ISS, but they were prevented the last two terms by restrictions on gatherings and events. We are pleased to return to that tradition even if we will be doing much of it digitally. By the time you read this, I hope you will have “attended” our assembly through our live streaming link and also enjoyed some of our new school video productions. This is an excellent example of how Covid practices might enhance our future practices; our assembly was not only available to parents here in Suva, but it was also viewed by grandparents and other family members! As always, we are focusing more than ever on our students and their learning. The demand for creating video documentation has led to many wonderful new resources that can be enjoyed over and over. In fact the music video, “We Will Rise” has had more than 135,000 views so far! Looking ahead, we hope to move into some of the new building classrooms for the start of the new 2021 year. So far that project is on track for that and is also under budget. Sometime in Term 1 of next year, we hope to have a grand opening. Please plan to join us for that when it happens! Best wishes!
Stephen Cathers, Head of School
Service to the Community Review of Poetry Anthology Launch, Rising Tide Reflections - Wai- Makare Forest Farm Term Dates