Parent Letter – Third Week of Online Learning

by BIS / 2020.03.02 Monday / Published in news & event

Special Notice

Based on the latest Announcement from Department of Education of Jiangsu Province on Feb 29th: All schools in Jiangsu Province should continue to postpone the reopening date. All schools should continue to conduct the on-line teaching activities properly. No off-line educational activities will be permitted to be conducted during this period. The reopening date will be determined based on the epidemic situation and safety conditions and be announced publicly one week earlier. All schools should be noted and plan and implement the teaching activities accordingly.

Message from Academic Principal

Dear Parents:

Boston International School hopes that this message finds all of you well. Our third week of online learning is moving along fully, and we wanted to provide all of you with a few recent updates in this regard:
• Based upon feedback that we have heard, all of our teachers are providing online availability for two hours each day. While students and parents can still email questions to teachers, they can also log in through online platforms and ask questions directly to teachers as well in order to receive quicker feedback from that teacher. All teachers have communicated to parents the times and online platforms that can be used; please contact your SCL if you have questions or did not receive a message.
• Teachers are continuing to monitor student progress and provide feedback to students. Teachers and SCL’s are also continuing to contact those students who are missing assignments or not logging in regularly. We would encourage all students to log in every day in order to continue completing assignments.
• Grade 10 students are now receiving information about the IB Personal Projects. The Personal Project is a student-led activity unique to Grade 10 and the MYP. Grade 10 students will also be receiving more information in the coming weeks about their IGCSE exams and how they can continue to prepare for these exams later in the spring.

We would invite all students/parents to continue to send feedback and pictures of student workeither to admissions@bostonis.org or to their SCL. We’ve seen and heard great things so far, and we are appreciative of all of the efforts that have gone into making our online learning successful.
As always, please do not hesitate to reach out if you or your child has questions!

Thank you,
Brian Rotunno
Academic Principal

Secondary Teacher

Our last weeks of online learning for Grade 8 – 12, English 1st language have been productive, challenging and an adventure! Lessons have had to be delivered through a new format of audio/screen files, together with PowerPoints, pictures and links.

During the second semester, the major focus across the grades, for English first language, is literature.

Grade 8 is finishing their study of George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

Grade 9 is coming to grips with various poems from the poetry component for IGCSE Literature.

Grade 10 is finishing their analysis of Romeo and Juliet.

Grade 11 has begun their journey through Martel’s Life of Pi.

Grade 12 is practicing essays for paper 2, focusing on their current text, The Visit by Friedrich Durenmatt.

Each week the students receive audio/screen files made by me. Here, they listen and watch a discussion of their lesson. I show them the text and how to annotate it or analyze the text through means of a PowerPoint or notes. Work based on what they have viewed is then set, sometimes formative, sometimes summative. Much of this work is then uploaded for me to comment on or mark. Online learning is hard work for students and teachers! All of this hard work has its rewards, as students have gone the extra mile in order to produce work of a high standard.

So far, online learning has been a positive experience, the facilitation of developing independent learners is an ever-evolving challenge. In the future, I hope to include recorded speeches for assessment and live discussion lessons through Microsoft Teams across the grades. But for now, my aim is to continue providing accessible content and being available as much as possible for assistance.

Primary Teacher

01 Reason and purpose of assignment

For maths this week I used videos to share teach my students the learning for the week. This was to tie in with our learning from our UOI 3 where we were learning about statistics.

02 Outcome

By the end of the week, students will be able to analyse a set of data and find the mean, median and mode.

03 Feedback

Students found the short videos I sent easy to understand and they enjoyed being able to refer back to them when they needed help.

04 Challenge

Students are doing an amazing job completing their learning tasks and I am enjoying hearing stories about how many parents are involved in their children’s learning. One thing that is challenging has been teaching students about balancing their time to ensure all of their work is completed.

It was nice to hear about how they all are and help them with their learning. I met lots of their family members, like cousins and grandparents that I would have never got to meet otherwise.

Parent Letter – Third Week of Online Learning

Parent Letter – Third Week of Online Learning

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