News

Patterns in conversations and what they can teach us

Principal's Blog
[caption id="attachment_1194" align="alignnone" width="750"] Going further with your conversations. These two questions are posed to an Early Childhood 3&4 year-old class at HIS.[/caption] Our brains seek patterns. It’s the way we make sense of our world and it is also the way we learn. Conversational patterns are an important part of our world, particularly as they govern the nature of our interactions.  As we learn language initially from our earliest interactions, the ongoing conversations between parents and young children have a strong impact on not only our language development but of our view of the world and our place in it. We know that children of parents who speak to them a lot develop larger vocabularies. This seems like common sense. However, as Bari Walsh from Harvard Graduate School of…
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HIS Teachers – What qualities are important?

Principal's Blog
The question about what makes a great teacher is an interesting one, particularly as we don't really know the answer. It is also an important one as much research suggests that the individual teacher is the single most important factor related to impacting learning in the classroom (For example, see Hattie, Visible Learning, 2009). As an IB school, experience teaching in an IB program is an advantage of course for teachers joining our school, along with their breadth of experience, however one of the most important qualities that a teacher can bring to HIS is a genuine interest in the student as a person, as an individual. This is also one of the most important qualities our students look for as you can see in the comments in the video above.…
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The Crane 28 April 2017

The Crane
1. Principal's Message Dear HIS Families Our Grade 12 students begin their DP exams on Monday. It is always the start of May, so starts during Golden Week. All IB schools around the world do each exam on the same day and we have strict procedures to follow, including the maintenance of a relatively quiet space. For this reason, we will be asking everyone, at certain times, to keep the genkan a relatively quiet space. Signs will be posted. Thanks. I would like to wish the Grade 12 students all the best. It is a tough journey during these last couple of years, but all worth it in the end. Also, the newspaper Wendy came and interviewed me a couple of weeks ago and here is a link to the article that…
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The Crane 21 April 2017

The Crane
1. Principal's Message Dear HIS Families We had a fun Sports Day today. Thank you very much to the families who could make it to the stadium to support. A quick reminder that we have Student Led Conferences coming up on May 15 and some further details will be available in next week's Crane. Enjoy your weekend. Kind regards Damian Rentoule (Principal) 2. Crane Video 3. Secondary Science Fair Ms. Lee and I would like to invite parents and community members to the HIS Science Fair the week of May 8-12 and May 15th (Student-Lead-Conference's). Please come at your convenience to walk through the Science fair exhibit between the hours of 9 am - 4 pm. Science Fair Astronaut Poster Grades 6-10 have been working diligently over the past month on gathering data…
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The Crane 14 April 2017

The Crane
1. Principal's Message Dear HIS Families It has certainly been a busy week with all of the preparations for the HIS Festival underway. Thank you to our PTA and all the volunteers who have been working so hard to make the HIS Festival possible. We are all looking forward to a great day tomorrow and it looks like we may even get a little bit of sunshine. See you at the HIS Festival tomorrow. Kind regards Damian Rentoule (Principal) 2. The Crane Video 3. Spring Secondary Dates Some spring dates have been recently added to the HIS online calendar for our secondary program.  Here is a brief summary: May 29-June 2: End of year exams (Structured revision will take place the week before) May 19 DP Exhibition with Spring Concert. We…
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The Crane 7 April 2017

The Crane
1. Principal's Message Dear HIS Families We said goodbye, today, to our Comenius College visitors from the Netherlands. It was s great experience for our students and we hope to continue the relationship built with the school through this trip and send some of our students to visit them next year. Thank you again to all of the homestay families. We also have another school group visiting us on Monday - Westridge School Glee Club and parents are invited to come and see the performance. The details are below. Thank you to Takako sensei for organizing this great even once again.  Now we enter into the very busy lead up to the HIS Festival. Thank you to the PTA for all of the work that has been going into this…
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The Crane 31 March 2017

The Crane, Uncategorized
Principal's Message Dear HIS Families We have had an exciting week with the Rob Houchen workshop on Tuesday, which was an amazing experience, and then a visiting group of students from the Netherlands arriving at school on Friday. The EC class surprised our Dutch visitors by singing a song in Dutch as well as knowing how to say hello, good morning and goodbye in Dutch as well. The EC class has been learning about the Netherlands with Celeste, one of our student teachers, and about Canada with Chris, another of our student teachers. It is a good reminder that you never know when your learning is going to come in handy. Chris Suupa from Queens University, Canada has finished his three-week practical teaching with us and we would like to…
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The Crane 24 March 2017

The Crane
1. Principal's Message Dear HIS Families I hope you are enjoying some wonderful spring weather. Preparations are well underway for the HIS Festival, so I would like to thank all of the PTA for the hard work that is going into this event. We are all looking forward to it. Congratulations to our Cooking Club who were stars in a cooking show on TV, Thank you very much to both Jenny and Yumiko for your work with the Cooking Club. The show was great. Enjoy your week. Regards Damian Rentoule (Principal) 2. The Crane Video 3. Actor Mr. Rob Houchen Workshop @ HIS Tuesday, March 28  Mr. Rob Houchen starred as Marius, Les Miserables in London, West End.  Parents are invited to attend the Finale scene from 2:45pm in the Gym. I…
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The Crane 17 March 2017

The Crane
1. Principal's Message Dear HIS Families I saw a lovely graduation ceremony at Kurakake Primary School this morning. Congratulations to our Grade 6 neighbors. We have several of our HIS students attending Kurakake Primary School during summer holidays and they have been good friends to HIS over the years. I hope you all enjoy your long weekend. Kind regards Damian Rentoule (Principal) 2. The Crane Video 3. Actor Mr. Rob Houchen Workshop @ HIS Tuesday, March 28  9:00-15:15 Mr. Rob Houchen starred as Marius, Les Miserables in London, West End.  Secondary students who are interested in taking part as group/solo singers and actors are invited to sign up on the desk outside the Music Rm by Friday, March 17th. G3-6 (last year's group) choir will be joining for the Finale scene.     This is…
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The Crane 12 March 2017

The Crane
Dear HIS Families We are coming into an exciting part of the year with the upcoming HIS Festival. These types of major school events are organized by our volunteer PTA, and often a small group of people perform a very large amount of work. This group currently needs some support from our wider HIS community. Volunteers are needed for the HIS Festival. You can contact the PTA via the email provided in the PTA message below. Regards Damian Rentoule, Principal The Crane Video PTA News (Translated) 2017 HIS Festival  (日本語は以下に) We need more volunteers! - 10 or more volunteers for Game Corner( leader: Sumiyo Noji) - 4 volunteers for 100 yen Shop ( leader: Yasuko Yamashiro) Even a short period of time is fine.  If you have not signed up yet,…
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