DBIS News

Special notice to families - 19 June

 

Special Notice - Friday Update

 

19 June 2009

Dear Parents

We have had just over one week of the school closure.  Staff members continue to be working solidly on a range of tasks at school and we are all enjoying the ‘drop in’ meetings with parents and students.  Please remember that all teachers are available to make a time to meet with you.  Kindergarten teachers can schedule meetings between 9:30 am and 12:30 pm.  Primary and Secondary teachers can schedule meetings between 9:30 am and 3:00 pm.

Year Book:  A reminder that our 2008 – 2009 Year Book has arrived and is available for collection.  Could all Kindergarten families collect your copy from the Kindergarten Office.  Could all Primary and Secondary families collect your copy from the School Office.

Collection of Student Books:  All teachers have your child’s books and belongings ready to be picked up from their respective classes.  Please call in as soon as possible to collect your child’s books and also return any school library books or reading books.  Thank you for your assistance.

School Reports:  School Reports will be ready either for distribution or collection next Friday, 26 June.  If our school is allowed to be open, we will be able to distribute most of the reports.  If our school is unable to open, reports may be collected by you as the parent, or by an authorised person on Friday (a note from parents will be required in this instance).

School Reports that are not distributed or collected Friday 26 June will be posted out to parents on Monday 29 June.

Paddyfield Book Club:  For those families who have ordered books through the Paddyfield Book Club the books are due to arrive on Thursday 25th June ready for collection on Friday 26th June.  Could Primary and Secondary students please collect your books from the main School Office.  With books ordered for our Kindergarten students, please collect their books from the Kindergarten office.
 
If you are unable to collect the books on Friday the School Office and Kindergarten Office will be open between 9 am – 3 pm in the following week.


Many thanks - Kate Basford (Librarian)

 

Kind regards

Grant Ramsay

Principal

 

 

 

June 15 Newsletter 

Dear Parents

School Closure Information:  As indicated in the weekend, the Government announced closure of our school is required to remain in force until 25 June.  At this stage, and subject to further reviews by the Education Bureau, we plan to be open on our last day of term, Friday 26 June.  If we do manage to open on the last day, we will proceed with our Year 6 Graduation Ceremony, albeit a little less rehearsed than is normally the case.

In the meantime we are managing our way through what is clearly a very disappointing end to our wonderful year thus far.  All staff will be at work and teachers are available to meet with you as required.  Our teachers have been preparing a range of review and reinforcement learning activities on our school website.  The focus is on reading, writing, mathematics and a topic focus.  

We ask that you also direct your children to the specialist’s web pages where further consolidation and extension activities are presented.  Please assist or encourage your children to visit their class web page on our school site. Teachers will be updating this site each day during the closure.  Students are not required to submit any completed work to school during the suspension of classes.

School Reports: Reports will either be issued if we are open on the Friday 26 June or they will be posted out to you.  

Class List for the 2009 – 2010 School Year:  Your report envelope will also contain the 2009 – 2010 class list for your child.  Teachers have been continuing to work on the class lists for your child.  In past years we have been able to accommodate some of the small number of requests from parents.  This year, the small number of requests has grown to the point of being impossible to apply.  Teachers are able to carefully prepare classes based on a range of considered criteria.  In future years, requests for class placements will not be applied as is it simply impossible for the number of such requests to be met.

Planned School Trips:  Unfortunately, all school planned trips, visits and events are required to be cancelled.

Room Organisation:  Staff are taking down displays and returning all resources to their respective storage areas.  All student equipment and belongings are being organised to allow for ease of collection.  Please come along to Kindergarten or School from Wednesday onwards this week to collect your child’s books and equipment.

Return of School Resources:  The closure of our school requires us to enforce no access into the school grounds by all students for the duration of the closure.  As such it needs to be treated as ‘out of bounds’ for students.  

Should you have school resources that need to be returned eg: library books, school reading books, sports team kits etc.  Please arrange for them to be placed in the collection box outside the school offices (Kindergarten and Primary).  The box will be emptied at regular intervals and all resources will be returned to the correct place on your behalf.

For those families who currently hire a musical instrument, this too will need to be returned to school.  For safety reasons we would prefer these not be left in a collection box.  Instead we ask that you contact the school office to arrange to have the instrument dropped off at school and collected by a member of our office staff.  All instruments must be returned to school by Friday 26 June.

School Year Book  - 2008 / 2009:  We hope to have your complimentary copy of our School Year Book available for collection from either the Kindergarten office or from the main School office, starting on Thursday of this week. We will contact you by email if the Year Books arrive any earlier.

Thank you all for your patience and understanding at this time.

We will keep you updated with any information as it becomes available.

School Awards for 2009

Every Year, a number of students are nominated by our teaching staff for a range of awards.  This year we decided to increase the number of awards, with a focus in Year 3 through to Year 7 on literacy, mathematics and performing arts.  In total, a further 14 awards have been presented this year.  Our School Awards Ceremony was held on Friday 5 June, with the parents of the recipients joining us to celebrate the respective successes of our students.

We also present a Principal’s Award each year to the Year 6 girl and boy who have demonstrated consistently high achievement or participation in the four areas of citizenship, academic achievement, the performing arts and sport.  These awards are normally presented at the Year 6 Graduation Ceremony.  Given the uncertainty of this event taking place, we presented these prestigious awards during the most successful Year 6 Science Fair evening held last week.

Congratulations to all of our special achievers for your recognised efforts throughout this school year.

School Award   Student Name

Principal’s Award Hain Yoon

Principal’s Award Barney Leung

E.A.L. The Todd Family Award: Henrique Fronza Quites

Cultural Respect and International Understanding 

The Kritika and Karen Nayar Award: Lauren McGill

Gymnastics The Barnett Family Award: Nicholas Basford

The Annabelle and Dominic Hsu Cup

for Special Achievement Y5:                                 Ruben Brons

The Thomas Mallet Cup for Special

Achievement Y6:                                 Mona Hui

The Year 7 Outstanding Achievement Award: Youri Penders

Y5 Sportsgirl of the Year John and

Robbie Bacon Award:                                Jemma Keefe

Y5 Sportsboy of the Year John and

Robbie Bacon Award:                               George Wyatt

Y6 Sportsgirl of the Year – Dr W H Yau and

Family Award:                                       Isabella Da Costa

Y6 Sportsboy of the Year – Dr W H Yau and

Family Award:                                      Andreas Thorsen

Netball The Wintle Family Award:      Napasorn Suwanwela

The Nock Family Award for Art:      Leo Davin

The Leenders Family Award –

Speech competition                      Steven Green

The Lam Family Award for Progress and

Contribution to Music:                              Benjamin Lew

The Science J.E.T. Marr Family:      Zoe Franklin

The Year 3 Performing Arts Award:      Liam Fitzgerald

The Year 4 Performing Arts Award:      Justin Heaton

The Year 5 Performing Arts Award:      Emi Kingan

The Year 6 Performing Arts Award:      Honor Easton

The Year 7 Performing Arts Award:      Edward O’Connor

The Year 3 Literacy Award:      Liam Postlethwaite

The Year 4 Literacy Award:      Sarah Moyes

The Year 5 Literacy Award:      Phoebe Whalley

The Year 6 Literacy Award:      Georgia Tan

The Year 7 Literacy Award:      Meg Bradley

The Stern Family Award for Year 3

Mathematics:                              Grace Blackshaw

The Year 4 Mathematics Award:      Emily Weinstein

The Year 5 Mathematics Award:      John Wong

The Kwan and Tam Family Award for

Year 6 Mathematics:                              Syarah Duggie

The Year 7 Mathematics Award:      Sandra Zamora

 

Year 6 children to ring School Bell – 26 June 2009

Y6BL Guy Jamieson                               

Marcus Lee

Barney Leung

Elysia So

Tristan Stenzel

Christina Weir

Y6EC Samuel Borrelli

Alexander Buffery

Mitchell Eves

Marcus Frohlich

Amane Kabbaj

Y6HC Syarah Duggie

Takamasa Hoshiyama  

                Aaron Lu

                Rebecca Wardle

Y6KS Steven Green

                Alexander Horne

                Katherine Maxwell

               Megan Pickles

               Michael Shipman

       Carver Wong

Clearing the Car Park:  Thank you all for your help in keeping the car park area clear at Primary School on Friday 29 May.  Your superb assistance allowed the five buses easy access to safely board all of our Year 1 students who were travelling to the Scotty and Lulu show.  Thank you also to the great group of parents able to help out on this trip.

Summer School Programme:  At this stage our Summer School programme will proceed, subject to any school suspension notification by the Government.  As already indicated, we also need minimum numbers attending the various classes in order to proceed.  We have extended the course closure date to Monday 22 June and we will notify parents at this time if a course is not going to proceed.

For further information regarding courses, dates, times, costs and application processes please go to the following page on our website:
http://www.dbis.edu.hk/our_school_in_action/our_classes/discovery_bay_international_school_summer_school_programme 

Art Exhibition:  What a stunning array of art work on display from all students and staff at our school.  We had art from our Nursery students through to our Year 7 classes.  Extending the exhibition over two nights certainly proved popular as we had huge turnouts on both evenings.

This Friends of the School event has now become an annual event on our school calendar.  This particular event is largely organised by staff.  Thank you in particular to Tracey Smal for your organisation and coordination of our Art Exhibition.  The focus of this event was to showcase our talented students and staff while entertaining our school community at no charge.  Thank you to such a large number of our parents for your wonderful feedback during and following our Art Exhibition.

Uniform Shop Update:  The Uniform Shop will continue to be open for parents at the normal times over the coming two weeks,  The Uniform Shop will close with effect from Friday 26 June and will reopen on 13 August, at the following special opening dates and times:

13 – 14 August 9:00 am to 1:00 pm

17 – 21 August 9:00 am to 1:00 pm

With effect from 24 August, the Uniform Shop will resume its normal operating hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 8:15 am to 11:00 am.

Advance orders:  We suggest that you take advantage of our ordering system.  Please fill in our attached order form and return it with a cheque payment to either the Kindergarten or Primary school office.  Orders can be collected from 17- 20 August at the uniform shop.

 

Kind Regards

Grant Ramsay

Principal

 

Community Notices

Disclaimer - The following notices are presented as a community service.  While the content is proofed and generally summarised, it is important to state that the information contained in these Community Notices in no way reflects Discovery Bay International School policy or practices.

PENNY SCALLAN SALE up to 70% off – EXCLUSIVE TO DISCOVERY BAY:  Medium Lunchboxes, Small Lunchboxes, Hats, Medium Back Packs (Navy Star design only), Small Back Packs, Aprons, Draw String Bags (Girl Stripe only), Overnight Bags, Multi-purpose Wallets.  Items available while stocks last and delivery will be within a week and is free of charge.

Call 6015 4050 or email for more details

Please visit http://www.pennyscallon.biz to view. 

 

STUCK ON YOU LAUNCH NEW FLU FIGHTER PACK:  An apple a day might keep the doctor away, but you can also help stop the spread of nasty bugs by limiting your exposure from other people. Initiated for use in their office, Stuck on You have just launched their new Flu Fighter pack of 6 large and 11 small sticky labels for schools and offices. A great way to ensure you aren’t sharing cup, glasses or any belongings, these labels are also microwave and dishwasher proof so you know they will last.

Order online at http://www.stuckonyou.biz or call 2549 2245.