DR DAN’S DIARY

Dear SIS-PIK Families, 

I’ll begin by wishing you all a good start to the new term, and share with you how lovely it has been to see so many students return to campus on Monday.

Over the last two weeks there has been lots to celebrate. The launch of the SIS Film Festival, students being awarded ‘Virtual Learner of the Term’ for last term and finally the publication of our Five Year IB Evaluation. You’ll find out more about those in this edition of the Community Updates, and I particularly encourage you to read the details of our IB report, of which we are incredibly proud. 

Term 4 is a particularly important period for our examination year groups. Our BTEC students are hard at work completing their vocational assessments. Whilst once again, there won’t be IB written examinations this year, our students will be assessed through their project work, and the work undertaken in class. This is keeping them very busy, and I wish them all the very best. We are advised by Cambridge that the IGCSE written examinations will go ahead and this presents challenges for students who have been working from home on their laptops for so long. Our teachers are well-prepared to support them with specific strategies to ensure they are ready for these hand-written assessments. At SIS-PIK, we acknowledge how tough it is for students taking assessments throughout the pandemic. I admire their tenacity and resilience.  

The rest of our students will be taking Semester Assessments at the end of this term, and they will be planning how best to consolidate their learning to achieve maximum success. Part of this is their ability to reflect on their learning, to understand what they have done well, and how to improve on areas of difficulty. As part of our constant strategy of ‘Building Learning Power’, this week has been ‘Reflectiveness Week’. In all lessons, students have been improving their skills in distilling information and planning revision. We strive to make them confident and able independent learners. In a few weeks we will share some of these strategies with you in another of our popular parent webinars.

Very best wishes,

Dr Dan