Smooth Sailing into A New School Year!

What a great success for us all to smoothly start the new school year! The first week is concluding, hope everyone has enjoyed your return!

First Day of School

Filled with joyful music, warm welcome and big smiles, the morning of the first day brought the campus a lot of energy.

Assemblies

On Friday, Secondary School and Elementary School students gathered in the auditorium for their very first assemblies of the new school year. On the assemblies, achievements were awarded, new faces were introduced, houses were celebrated, and progresses were announced.

Staff Team Building

Same as the students, our staff is also proud of their houses. Before students came back, we held a team building activity that allowed all staff to collaborate with their teammates and fight for their own houses! Dressing in house colors, staff from different divisions had a great chance to work together, while also hailed by friends from other teams!

What new progresses we have from the beginning of this school year? To better facilitate our academics, some exciting resources were newly introduced.

 

Early Years – Literacy Bag

Literacy Bags were introduced to younger learner in EY3 and EY4, aiming in encouraging to read in a friendly and engaging way. The bags are sorted by topics and provide different activities and games that children can do at home under the supervision of an adult.

Early Years – Sensory Play

In addition to regular PE classes and outdoor activities, Early Years has included Sensory Play program in daily schedule. Sensory play is the method by which, throughout early childhood, children use their senses to explore and understand the world around them. Sensory play opens up so many learning opportunities and can help develop many areas of children’s development. Children will use their gross motors skills to coordinate their large muscles and use their fine motors skills to coordinate their small muscles groups.

Elementary School – IXL Math

The Elementary school implemented IXL as a platform to support our core subject learning so that students have the chance to play games at the same time as practicing their learned skills at home. We are also expanding the provision of IXL to include English language arts and also science and social studies. This will support all our learners, and particularly our ELL students, with vocabulary development and comprehension based around class content and expand their options for practicing outside the classroom.

Elementary School – Handwriting program

To compliment our students’ language learning, we will be introducing handwriting practice as part of our daily learning. Students will have a short time each day to practice their letter formation. The Getty-Dubay program takes students from KG to Grade 5 through a handwriting program appropriate to their age and fine motor skills development.

Secondary School – SpringBoard ELAR syllabus

SpringBoard is the College Board’s college and career readiness program for all students in Grades 6-10. Its flexible framework integrates rigorous instruction, performance-based assessment, and exemplary professional development. SpringBoard English Language Arts asks students to closely observe and analyse texts and then base their writing on evidence. This syllabus will push high-order questioning and engaging conversation. The student-centered instruction combined with flexible pathways makes this new program perfectly suited to the MYP program at Boston.

Secondary School – Bridge-U platform

In Secondary School, our College Counselling team has introduced a world-class university & careers guidance platform – Bridge-U.  The platform provides a range of personality assessment and career tools that help students to understand their strengths and aspirations. With the support of the platform, students find it easier to choose the schools that matches their expectations and prepare their application documents.

MAP Science for Grade 4+

BIS offers MAP testing, an international test used all over the world to judge students’ levels and see student achievement levels and growth. Previously, we offered MAP testing in grades KG-8 for reading and math. This year, we are going to start science tests beginning at Grade 4.

Student Behavior – ClassCharts

We know that a strong home school partnership is important to student success. This year we are going to use ClassCharts so that parents can stay up to date on the behavioral successes of their children. ClassCharts is an application to track student behavior because it celebrates their successes with parents and keeps them informed of any problems that might be happening in school.This week, we are rolling out ClassCharts to our teachers and students so they are familiar with how it works. After Golden Week we will be ready to give parents their own logins.

Boston Parent College

We are excited to bring parents an opportunity to familiarize themselves with their children’s IB program and with strategies to help them succeed in their learning. This year, we are launching Boston Parent College. Our teachers and leaders will take you through two strands: One academic in nature, the other based around student life.In the academic strand, parents can choose from EY, Elementary, MYP, or DP and will learn about the IB and their chosen program.In the student life strand, parents can choose from health and wellness for student success, support with parenting, college and career guidance, or technology for learning.

Boston Explorers – TRCSS

Our Approaches To Learning (ATL) skills at Boston International School take an exciting path as they integrate with our Boston’s Explorers program to create BE TRCSS (Thinking-Research-Communication-Self management- Social, pronounced as TRACKS). Approaches to learning are skills designed to enable students in the to “learn how to learn.” They are intended to provide a common language for teachers and students to use when reflecting and building on the process of learning. At least two ATLs will be implicitly and explicitly embedded into day-to-day learning experiences in BEs, so that students have opportunities to practice and develop a range of ATL skills. With this level of intentionality BEs now possess an added dimension and eventual end product per session. Boston Explorers are leaving TRCSS!

At Boston International School, we strive to nurture the curiosities and talents of our learners so they grow into confident, internationally-minded citizens in a diverse and inclusive community. Therefore, we do our best to optimize their learning experience. In this new school year, we are fully confident that BIS creates an outstanding learning environment for every lifelong learners on campus!