DBIS News

Welcome to students, families and staff…

Dear Parents

Welcome Back

Welcome back to your school to start another exciting year of challenges, fun and learning adventures with your children.  I do hope that you all enjoyed a very special time with your children, whether on holiday in Discovery Bay or beyond Hong Kong.  I would like to extend a special welcome to our new families starting with us this term.  Discovery Bay International School is a community based school with an accent on proven quality teaching and learning in a family context.  We enjoy open spaces in a green setting, low class numbers and extensive resourcing.  All of our staff members are successful, energetic, highly qualified and looking forward to working with your children.

Our school continues to grow in size, moving towards 800 students in total.  We have all ten Nursery and Reception classes located in the Kindergarten building for the first time.  This year we will extend all Reception classes to full day from the beginning of the term and Mandarin will be taught in all Reception classes.  We also start our Secondary School phase with two Year 7 classes opening.  These extensions to our learning programmes are a key part of our growth plans to continue to meet the ongoing needs of our families living in Discovery Bay.

We will also be opening our new Discovery Centre at our Primary site.  Many of you are already aware of the advantages by way of physical spaces and additional resources that this facility will bring to our school.  We will hold an open day as soon as possible for you to come along and walk through our new building.  There will be a number of touch up jobs to be carried out in the first few weeks, while the special flooring for our gymnasium has been delayed one month.  We plan to have an official opening for our new Discovery Centre in term two, once all rooms are in full use.  Please note that the Primary School reception and administration area will now be located in the ground floor entrance to our Discovery Centre.
 
Settling into Class

All classes are mixed for the beginning of this school year.  The start to any new school year always brings a measure of anticipation as all students settle into their new classrooms with their new teachers and education assistants.  Existing friends and acquaintances will be nearby while new friendships will also be quickly started.  You will have the opportunity to meet with your child’s new teacher early in the term.  Please don’t hesitate in starting up this vital and positive relationship with a warm ‘hello’ at the start of the term.

As always, if you are unsure about anything, please ask.  Our staff can’t necessarily attend to all issues but we do promise to listen and to do our best to help as we seek to maximise the potential for and with your child.

Staffing Update

There are a number of additions and changes to update you with for the start of this school year.  We welcome six new teachers to replace those teachers who left at the end of last year.  We also welcome five teachers who will start in new positions this term.  There are some changes with Year Group Leaders and with the allocation of Senior Management responsibilities.

Three teachers will move into the vacated Reception positions:  Ms Lucy Backham joins us from Bangkok to teach Safari Reception; Ms Sevene Ghandour and Ms Rachel McDonald join us from the United Kingdom and will teach in Airport Reception and Garden Reception respectively; Ms Ruth Dalton takes over as Year Group Leader in Reception and will be based at our Kindergarten teaching Castle Reception; Ms Michelle Tai will be teaching Mandarin to all Reception classes.
 
New staff at our Primary and Secondary Schools are as follows: Ms Andrea Kavanagh arrives from Bangkok to teach in Year 2; Ms Mili Majithia and Ms Hannah Cole join us from the United Kingdom and will teach in Year 4 and Year 6 classes respectively; Ms Dawn Hulland, also from the United Kingdom, will be our new enrichment class teacher; Mr Keith Thoroughgood from Bangkok and Ms Louise Tyrell from Hong Kong are our new secondary teachers (Mrs Linda Pryce will teach Year 7 French and Mrs Jackie Tse will teach Year 7 Mandarin); Mrs Merridy Smits will carry on with us working in our learning support team.
 
Welcome to all of our new staff and to your families.  You join a very special and vibrant school community.  We all look forward to welcoming you and helping you settle into your new school and into life in Hong Kong.

There are three other Year Group Leader changes at Primary School: Mrs Tracey Smal will continue as our Year Group Leader for Year 2 classes; Ms Fran Walden has been appointed as Year Group Leader for Year 4; Mr Jason Edwards has been appointed as Year Group leader for Year 5.  Our congratulations go to these three teachers.

There will also be some changes to the Senior Management structure, recognising the strong and continued growth of our school.  As indicated last term, one of our Deputy Principals, Mr Judd McLauchlan, will be Head of Kindergarten and be located full time at our Kindergarten site.  Mr Ian Hunt, also in his role of Deputy Principal, will be Head of our Junior School (Years 1 – 3) with managing oversight for our Learning Support team and for all education assistants.  Mr Andrew Edwards will continue as Deputy Principal and Head of our Senior School (Years 4 – 7).  Mr Edwards will continue to manage the development of our Secondary School initiatives. We will also welcome back Ms Anna Shere at the beginning of term 2 as Deputy Principal.  Ms Shere will have managing oversight of all Specialist teachers as well as responsibility for the operation of our new Discovery Centre.

There are a number of other changes due to new education assistant and administration positions starting up this term.  These positions include health and library at the Kindergarten, art, science, design technology, ICT as well as additional learning support / EAL for Years 3 to 6 at our Primary School.  Year 7 classes will also have access to their education assistant.  We will update you with these staff members in our next newsletter.

Class Parent

Each class requires at least one class parent to assist in liaising with other parents of the class.  The class parent also acts as a link with our Friends of the School group where necessary.  The Friends of the School volunteers will contact class parents as required.  This is not an onerous role, but it is an important one.  Your child’s teacher will be responsible for establishing their class parent.  If you are prepared to volunteer, please contact your child’s teacher accordingly.
 
New School Website:  Please take some time to look through our new school website.  This project has taken over two terms to develop and I am sure that it will provide you with ongoing and important information on a host of issues and arrangements related to our school.  Please check out your child’s class page as they quickly develop throughout the terms ahead.

As also indicated last term, we will no longer be sending ‘hard copy’ newsletters home.  Newsletters will only go out by email attachment or on our website every two weeks.  We will be looking to further reduce hard copy communication where possible.

Building Work

Along with the major work being carried out on our new Discovery Centre, a number of other projects have been underway.  The new room for Safari Reception at Kindergarten has been completed, extending the previous music room area.  The music room in Kindergarten has been shifted to the second floor.  The ICT area on the second floor has been doubled in size.  Mr McLauchlan, our Deputy Principal – Head of Kindergarten, has had his office relocated to the old uniform shop on the second floor.

The previous Primary library area and adjacent learning support and office areas have been remodelled into two spacious Year 7 classrooms.  Each Year 6 class is having six additional computers added while the Year 7 classes will enjoy both desktop and laptop computer access.  The Primary staffroom has been relocated to the music room area on the first floor.  Our Mandarin room has been modified to provide two withdrawal spaces for group teaching.  The old staffroom space is being remodelled into our second Mandarin room.

The old Primary reception and administration area will become our property office and the space will also be our Learning Support base.  The previous Safari and ICT suite rooms will be remodelled into large classrooms early in term 1 to allow for further growth.  We will also look to begin the refurbishment of our Year 2 classrooms at the end of term two.

Our administration, property and cleaning staff have been extra busy during the summer break preparing for the new school year. 

They deserve an extra special thanks for their patience and hard work while both of our school sites have had comprehensive upgrades and renovations undertaken.

Uniform Shop:  As indicated last year, the Uniform Shop is now located at ground level on our Primary site, across the netball court and beside our Year 2 classes.  The Uniform Shop will reopen on 11 August on the following special opening dates and times:

• 11 – 15 August 9:00 am to 1:00 pm
• 18 – 20 August 9:00 am to 1:00 pm

With effect from 26 August, the Uniform Shop will resume its normal operating hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 8:15 am to 11:00 am.  Please note that the new uniform for our Year 7 students will not be available until 18 August.  Please accept our apologies for this inconvenience.  If the Year 7 uniform arrives any earlier, our office staff will contact all Year 7 families accordingly.

Once again, welcome to the start of a hugely exciting year at your school.  I look forward to seeing all of you at some stage and to meeting our new families very soon.
 
Kind regards

Grant Ramsay

Principal