june 2014
CONTENT WHOLE SCHOOL
Kowloon Bay
PRINCIPAL’S MESSAGE
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KELLETT NEWS
5-7
Congratulations Kellett Alumni Staff Leavers Welcome to Our New Staff Annual Fund
highlights
8-9
10-11
Kellett Fair 2014
Preparatory Prep Across the School
12-14
French ICT Music Pok Fu Lam
HIGHLIGHTS
15-19
Head of Preparatory School School Council Reception to Year 6
Arts & languages
20-23
Chinese Studies Music Art Highlights
Sport
24-26
Extras
26-28
ECAs Dress as a Character Parade The Easter Hat Parade
29-33
Head of Preparatory School School Council Reception to Year 6
Arts & languages
Libraries Kellett Cares Learning Central
FEATURE
HIGHLIGHTS
34-37
Chinese Studies Music Art Highlights
Sport
38-39
EXtras
40-41
ECAs KLB Campus during Chinese New Year Year 6 Assemblies
Senior HIGHLIGHTS
42-47
Head of Senior School Economics and Business Studies Learning Central Science Geography Maths Sixth Form History Student Leadership
Arts & languages
48-51
English Art Music Drama Design Technology Modern Foreign Languages
Sport
52-53
EXtras
54-55
ECAs Y9 Outward Bound Trip HKAYP
WHOLE SCHOOL
PRINCIPAL’S MESSAGE Bright Future for British Education in Asia Rarely a day passes in the UK media without a mention of proposed changes to the National Curriculum for England, alleged grade inflation, university entrance and the like. To the outsider it may appear that the English education system is in serious disarray and about to be spurned by its advocates. Whilst under the microscope in the UK, internationally British Education has never been more popular.
The Independent Schools Council (ISC) 2013 census reveals that of the 508,601 students in ISC schools 25,912 are non-British with parents residing overseas and that 31.7% of all overseas pupils originate from Hong Kong and China. The Federation of British International Schools in Asia (FOBISIA) member schools representing the majority of British International Schools in the region has experienced an interesting shift in its membership over the past fifteen years. FOBISIA was originally founded to support a number of the British Schools in the region, Tanglin Trust; Singapore, Alice Smith; Kuala Lumpur, Kellett School; Hong Kong to name a few, schools that educated the sons and daughters of British Nationals living as expatriates in their respective locations and in relative isolation. The FOBISIA schools of today reflect a very different demographic to those founded 50 to 60 years ago by expatriate parents seeking to avoid leaving their offspring to be educated in Britain. The majority of FOBISIA’ s newer members reflect a growing international trend of schools opened to provide an English medium, British education for host nationals. The International Schools Consultancy Group’s arm, ISC Research, reported in the September 2012, British International School magazine; Growth in the overall international school market in recent years has been dramatic. In 2000 there were 2584 international schools teaching close to 1 million students. Today that number has increased to 6,200 international schools teaching over 3 million students and by 2021 ISC Research predicts there will be over 10,000 international schools with over 5 million students.
Many of the original British Schools in the region grew from the Parents National Education Union (PNEU) movement; mothers home schooling children with materials shipped by the PNEU throughout the then British Empire. It was from the home schooling movement that many of the early British school’s grew. Tanglin Trust School’s first classes were taught in the Tanglin Club, Alice Smith taught classes in her bungalow and Kellett School’s origins lie in an informal pre-school held in a flat on The Peak. In common with their contemporaries these schools grew organically. Today’s British and British International schools rarely have such humble beginnings; they are most often proprietorial, operating under licence from UK independent schools, or operated by companies specialising in the development of British Schools. More often than not their target market is host nationals. There is little organic in the development of the new breed of British International Schools. These schools may be built in the likeness of the English Public Schools whose franchise they operate or
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KELLETT DRAGON NEWSLETTER ISSUE NINE JUNE 2014
may be developed in partnership with the owner by international school management companies like Nord Anglia, GEMS and World Class Learning for example. Just as the constituents of many British International Schools is changing so are the funding and operation models. ISC research goes on to say; Thirty years ago the market was dominated by expatriate children who filled 80% of international school places. The number of expatriate children continues to rise as a result of increasing globalisation, but it is the number of local children attending that is causing the most impact on the market. These children now fill 80% of the international school places; a complete reversal of the ratio three decades ago.
The growing importance of the business of education has long been recognised by the British Government. In July, the Department for Innovation and Skills published, International Education-Global Growth and Prosperity; promoting British Education in order to grow its GPD17.5 billion education exports industry (2011) and to further strengthen partnerships with other countries and emerging economies. Its executive summary notes; The UK has a reputation for high quality education with a number of truly international education brands. Our universities, colleges, awarding organisations and schools are recognised globally for their excellence…………………………………..Over 75% of export earnings came from students studying in the UK. There are also a number of indirect benefits from international education, including increasing the diversity of the UK independent sector, enhancing reputation and brand recognition of UK institutions and helping project UKs soft power.
There is little doubt in the growth of British International Schools globally, and especially in Asia, potentially it is these schools graduates who with all probability will look to Britain or further study.
Ann McDonald Principal
This article was originally published in the British Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong magazine ‘Britain in Hong Kong’.
WHOLE SCHOOL
KELLETT NEWS CONGRATULATIONS MARRIAGE babies
engagement
• Ms Ruby Cheung and Mr Geoffrey Cheng • Ms Cecilia Ngan and Mr Ronald Tang • Dani Jones – Kelly Evan Jones Skiff • Annette Malcolm – Jacob Malcolm - Bengey • Jimi Keyede – Sebastien Keyede • Miss Frankie Smith & Mr Luke Bromwich • Mr Elliot Silvester
Sebastien Keyede
Malco Jacob
lm - Be
ngey
Ms Ruby Cheung and Mr Geoffrey Cheng
Ms Cecilia Ngan and Mr Ronald Tang
Kellett Alumni Please take a moment to leave us your contact details so that we can keep in touch. You can fill in the by visiting https://kellettschoolhk.wufoo.com/forms.
Follow us on Kellett School Alumni on Facebook to keep up with the latest news and events.
Alternatively, you can email us at alumni@kellettschool. com. Visit the Kellett Alumni page on the http://www. kellettschool.com
School Website
Development Office
Alumni KELLETT DRAGON NEWSLETTER ISSUE NINE JUNE 2014
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WHOLE SCHOOL
KELLETT NEWS
staff leavers
Arundhati Sawant learning Support Assistant
carla stitch art teaching Assistant
Linden Dwyer French Teacher
Mandy Acton FOBISIA Administrator
Nick Deal Database Manager
Sannie Lau Uniform Co-ordinator
Lorna Frith - Teaching Assistant PFL
Welcome to our new staff
Billi Skiff Teaching Assistant PFL
Cindy De Oliveira assistant hr manager
Jane Yeung HR Assistant
Eunice Chan Senior Examinations Invigilator
Joanna Lau Administrative Assistant
Evelyn Tonry Communications Officer (Adoption Leave Cover)
Winnie Ho Examinations Invigilator
Anthea Whitehead - Learning Support Assistant Caroline Allams - Reception Class Teacher (Adoption Leave Cover) James Lo - Yearbook Co-ordinator John Whelpton - Latin Tutor (Maternity Cover) Lynne Gallacher - Art Technician
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WHOLE SCHOOL
KELLETT NEWS annual fund The 2013/14 Annual Fund continues to provide new and exciting opportunities for our students and staff alike, enabling Kellett School to enhance academic excellence, foster leadership, encourage creativity and build on personal aptitudes in ways that would not have been possible without the generous support of the Kellett School community. As part of the academic enhancement programme, Peter Sutton completed his second of three residencies. In this residency Peter worked closely with students to build awareness of the safe and proper use of Social Media. Peter also spent a significant amount of time with the Senior Leadership Team working on policies and procedures to ensure the school is up to date in the new and ever evolving world of social media. He also spoke to parents and staff about the importance of being good role models to our students in the social media space. There are some fantastic examples of this. Did you know that our Senior Leadership Team members each have their own Twitter account and have been tweeting updates live from their campus? Search for @KellettSchoolHK on Twitter to view each of their accounts and follow them for live updates. Staff members have started arranging the courses that they applied for and one is already underway! The Learning Support department have put together a fantastic course which is open to all Teaching Assistants. It comprises 5 separate sessions, which are run by individual specialists in various areas of special needs, further adding to the expertise in every prep classroom. This course started in the spring term and will continue on through the summer term. We were delighted to welcome Dr Robin Hanbury-Tenison to Kellett School last term. Dr Hanbury-Tenison is an explorer, conservationist, broadcaster, filmmaker and author and he shared many stories with our Year 6 and Senior School students about explorations of his own and of his good friends, some of whom came to Kellett through our first Annual Fund.
These included Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Sir Chris Bonington and Stephen Venables. The students were fascinated by the stories he shared and asked a number of extremely diverse and intellectual questions. Our guest speaker programme will continue next term and we are extremely excited to announce that we will be joined by Dr Kevin Fong, a doctor of medicine with a special interest in human space exploration and extreme environment physiology. Dr Fong holds degrees in medicine, astrophysics and engineering and has completed specialist training in anesthesia and intensive care medicine and has worked with NASA’s Human Adaptation and Contermeasures Office in Houston. You may also recognise Dr Fong from his various TV appearances as a presenter for both BBC2 and Channel 4. Dr Fong brings with him a wealth of experience, expertise and most importantly, passion and enthusiasm for his subject areas. The insights and stories that he will share with our students will be invaluable. We look forward to welcoming Dr Fong to Kellett School in June. More information about his visit will be sent out on the eBulletin.
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highlights LIBRARies VISITING AUTHORS Author and illustrator visits are something we very much value at Kellett School. There is absolutely no doubt that the visits promote reading for pleasure. The effects of an author speaking and reading to the students percolates for years: from an immediate uptake of the books written by that author, to a general increase in books borrowed in that topic area, from modeling positive behavior in reading and writing to, most importantly, the validation of students’ own creative writing. The list of visiting authors to the Preparatory Libraries includes established Hong Kong based authors such as Sarah Brennan, new Hong Kong author Matt Cooper, author and illustrator Gail Clarke, author and photographer Jan Latta, and international based author Marjorie Sayer. In addition, the Senior School has had the opportunity (via the Annual Fund) to hear historian and author of Atlas of the transatlantic slave trade, David Richardson, and explorer Robin Hanbury-Tension, editor of The Modern Explorers. All of the books written by the visiting authors are held in the Kellett Libraries, and are available either for reference or to be borrowed.
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WHOLE SCHOOL
highlights KELLETT CARES It’s been another busy term for Kellett Cares across both campuses. The Year 3 and Year 4 pizza sales have been more successful than ever, ably assisted by a band of parents. The Chinese New Year Dragon Scale Sale was also very well supported - and congratulations go to Amber Webb (PFL 1KR) and Emily Williams (KLB 4MR) who found the winning spots! The new Kellett tote bags, perfect for the beach or swimming, are flying off the shelves! A huge thank you goes to Kirsteen and Yoshka for designing and creating these bags, which will help raise valuable funds for Kellett Cares. The yearly ICM trip to Bacolod in the Phillipines was a great success: everyone who went along found it both incredibly informative and enjoyable, learning more about the school we support. Finally, the Kellett Cares stall at the fair added yet more funds to our growing total for the year. Next term we will have a second hand uniform collection, as well as pizza sales for Year 1 and Year 2.
learning central What is Inclusion? Inclusive education is about how we develop and design our schools, classrooms, programmes and activities so that all students learn and participate together.
The role of the Inclusion Coordinator The Inclusion Coordinator is responsible for: • The day to day running of the school’s policy •
Working with and advising fellow teachers
•
Coordinating education for students with Individual Needs
•
Maintaining records on all students with Individual Needs
•
Working with parents of students with Individual Needs
•
Contributing to the in-service training of staff
•
Working with specialists, including educational psychologists and medical professionals
•
Managing Learning Support Assistants
There are three Inclusion Coordinators at Kellett School; Emma Lovell at Pok Fu Lam Prep, supported by Learning Support Assistant Sharmila Rodricks; Helen Trethewey at Kowloon Bay Prep, supported by Learning Support Assistant Roxanne Groves;
Jean Spillane at Kowloon Bay Senior, supported by Learning Support Assistants Natasha Gragasin, Amber Tagari, Anthea Whitehead and Rebecca Seddon. The Deputy Head for Inclusion, Fiona McRobbie, leads the Inclusion Team and line manages the Coordinators.
Team Around the Student The Inclusion Team at Kellett School now includes two speech therapists and an occupational therapist. These professionals enable embedding of good practice and support for students within the classroom and facilitate a ‘team around the student’ who work in partnership with parents. Kellett believes that good communication between all professionals supporting a student maximises their potential. This can be demonstrated in sharing of reports, all professionals attending review and planning meetings with parents, specialists working in class and frequent communication between specialists and teachers to monitor individual progress. The therapists are currently delivering training to all teachers and teaching assistants. Parent workshops will be next – watch this space!
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FEATURE
kellett fair 2014 The Parents’ Association put on a spectacular Carnival at the new Kowloon Bay campus. Our beautiful campus was turned into an amusement arcade to rival any in Hong Kong. There was something for everyone, from laser tag to Ebeneezer’s Kebabs, on this fun packed family day out. Fair goers were greeted by clowns on stilts as they entered the campus while the Atrium was transformed into a big top filled with dozens of stalls offering everything from candy floss to face paint. Throughout the day student entertainers took centre stage to the delight of everyone. The sky pitch was transformed into a breezy summer park and families camped out, picnic style, on the 3G - football pitch. These mellow groups were audience to some great live music as they relaxed throughout the day. On the surrounding track were the stalls and games designed to entertain and feed the community. As the sun shone, it was clear that the ‘Dunk pool’ and ‘Soak the teacher’ were in particular demand. Many wet and bedraggled teaching staff and students slipped away as targets were hit to drench one and all. Luckily for these sodden individuals the sun was blazing and all were soon dried out and warmed up. The celebratory and community spirit that imbued the entire day added to the fantastic weather and amazing attractions to make this a marvellous event.
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WHOLE SCHOOL
FEATURE
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PREP ACROSS THE SCHOOL PREPARATORY
FRench The new year started positively for pupils studying French as they began new topics and worked towards fun and practical tasks to showcase the topics and vocabulary they had been studying. Year 3 began 2014 by revising animals and adding adjectives to them to describe their appearance. They then used this vocabulary to decorate fans and their own animals to celebrate Chinese New Year and really worked creatively to produce beautiful pieces. They also studied classroom objects, which consolidated previous work on gender and colour. We moved on to the topic of family and they can now confidently describe siblings as well as wider family members. They created their own family trees and these now make a striking class display. Other topics included learning the sports and body parts in French and the term finished with a look ahead to the holidays where they learnt clothes vocabulary in preparation for packing their suitcases! Year 4 revised animals after Christmas in order to allow them to learn adjectives to describe family members. They created Chinese New Year fans and zodiac animals to practise this grammar and vocabulary. They have since revised months of the year, higher numbers, completed assessments and studied the topic of clothes in detail. This included adjectival agreements, which made for an entertaining Fashion Show in Pok Fu Lam! In Kowloon Bay, they used their fashion vocabulary to complete research projects on French designers. The term culminated in a French breakfast during a morning lesson and they learnt plenty of food vocabulary as well as learning how to give preferences on food, buy it and practise their grammar.
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Year 5 recapped previous work on family at the start of the year and then learnt lots of personality vocabulary which enabled them to write descriptions of their own imaginary Chinese zodiac animals made up of photos of family members. They then successfully completed assessments and then looked at question words within the topic of family. Afterwards, a study of French weather expressions enabled them to perform excellent weather forecasts! The end of the term was spent looking at verbs in great detail within the topic of Leisure. At Pok Fu Lam, Year 6 completed the topic of where they live and produced some excellent pieces of extended writing to bring everything together. On both campuses they then spent some time studying French speaking countries which lead to learning vocabulary for both European and Asian countries in French as well as looking at their Geography. At Kowloon Bay, children learnt vocabulary for jobs and were able to conduct mock job interviews. Whilst at Pok Fu Lam, Year 6 looked at descriptions, both physical and of personality, which would allow them to talk about relationships with family members and friends. Well done to all on a great term’s work!
PREP ACROSS THE SCHOOL
If you’ve been watching students do their homework in the last couple of years, you will have noticed a change in the way that many of them carry out tasks. All students at Kellett from Year 3 upwards have access to a range of resources provided to them via Google Apps for Education. This suite of apps provides all of the basic requirements for students to work online, either collaboratively or individually. Students no longer need to have access to expensive software such as Microsoft Word, as Google Apps gives them the opportunity to use documents (Google Docs), spreadsheets (Google Sheets), and powerpoint (Google Presentations) as well as a suite of other useful apps and add-ons, such as Drawings, Form Creation, and even image and video editing. To keep older people happy, Google Apps even has email! As students progress through the school their use of Google Apps becomes much greater. Students and teachers are able to share documents with each other and comment on them, suggesting improvements within the margin as they work. The ability for students to work together, at a distance, marks a great change in the way all those involved in education view online learning.
PREPARATORY
ICT operates. The Google for Education Exams and Certification process involves staff members studying for and completing five 90 minute examinations on various elements within the Google Apps suite. These demanding examinations require an 80% pass rate. The exams are collaborative and are “open book” in their nature, which adds an extra challenge for those that consider themselves “mature learners”! All four members of staff found the exams to be extremely challenging but very rewarding to complete. The physical process of completing an exam with multiple screens and tabs open was new to all involved, but is an indication of the way that many institutions are beginning to frame their coursework and examinations. For staff, learning the way that our students will be expected to learn in the future was an extremely useful process. Congratulations to the four members of staff who have successfully completed all five of the exams and have now achieved Google Educator Level 2 status. Pictured from left: Tessa Bull, Terri Li, Frederic Yue, Clive Dawes.
Google Apps also offers our students considerable online space for photos and video, reducing the need for us to provide expensive network storage. The ability to work within this environment and to fully exploit the potential of Google Apps can be challenging, so with this in mind a number of staff have committed to obtaining certification to show their understanding of how the platform
music FOBISIA music On the 27 March 2014, 22 students from both the Pok Fu Lam and Kowloon Bay campus flew to Kuala Lumpur to participate in the FOBISIA Primary Performing Arts Carnival, hosted by The Alice Smith School. The theme this year was ‘Music from the Movies’. As well as rehearsing in the orchestra and choir, the students also participated in a number of workshops. We also had the opportunity to watch a rehearsal from the famous Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra at the Petronas Towers.
previe Joseph
ellett w at K
Fair
Joseph preview at Kellett Fair
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PREPARATORY
PREP ACROSS THE SCHOOL Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat This year saw the first dual campus Prep School Musical. Close to 100 people worked for almost a year to bring Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat to the new Kellett Theatre in Kowloon Bay. Joseph was a production that had fond memories for everyone. Many parents in the community were delighted when it was announced, as they had been in a production when they were younger, as had many staff! The show was originally conceived as a 20 minute cantata first performed on 1 March 1968. Since then, it has been reworked a number of times, most recently in London’s West End, following a reality TV show to find the new Joseph. Kellett’s production was the original two act version from the early 1970’s. Producing a show across two campuses was challenging but everyone rose to the occasion and put on a spectacular performance! Congratulations to the entire cast and crew!
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PREPARATORY
HIGHLIGHTS - POK FU LAM
On Track with En-Trak Early February saw the installation of the new En-Trak monitoring system at the Pok Fu Lam Campus. Supported by the Annual Fund, the system installation required a number of sensors to be attached to each of our electricity meters and a web portal activated to track our energy use.
But this is not just for the business side of the school. En-Trak is an educational resource that adds value to our curriculum provision through giving the students real life problems to solve. So what does En-Trak really do? They describe themselves as follows: “En-Trak is a real-time energy monitoring system and educational platform that allows any school to provide more effective environmental education, reduce their electricity bills and develop a strong reputation as a green school.” En-Trak Website We launched with an assembly to the whole school and a series of planned experiments to test different hypotheses on energy use. Each day was dedicated to saving energy on different devices to see how much electricity could be saved. Unfortunately, the experiment coincided with the coldest weather Hong Kong has experienced in eighteen years. Off went the lights but on went the heaters, giving us not so much an aggregation of data that shows how much we could save, but instead just how power hungry electric heaters are! Our initial set back aside, the system gives students an overview of power consumption on the campus in “real time”, updated by the minute. A breakdown of Ocean Wing and Mountain Wing adds an element of detail to help classes raise questions. Why does the Mountain Wing use more power than the Ocean Wing? What would the effect be of not using the lifts for one day? What time of day sees the most electricity use?
En-Trak can also break down consumption into different units, which for younger children may make more sense than traditional kWh. How many hamburgers would you have to eat to equal that usage? How many kilometres would you need to cycle to generate the same power? How much electricity do we use per person per day? How many kg of CO2 per person do we generate? All very practical comparisons for our Preparatory age students. The educational opportunities presented to us through the system are exceptionally good. Maths and science now have an abundance of data to use, which is not only real, but relevant. Everyday use in class from a social education/ sustainability perspective has a new, exciting and measurable outcome. And what of the “green school” claims? Our newly started “Green Team” have a fabulous system to generate their questions, actions and answers. We join a long list of schools using the system in Hong Kong, including well known International Schools and many from the ESF group. Kellett School is now also listed on the Case Studies tab of the En-Trak website. Each Case Study carries a brief overview of how the system is used and in some cases how much energy has been saved in each school. We look forward to Kellett’s Case Study and a positive message to our community and Hong Kong as a whole that sustainable development is critical for tomorrow’s world. I look forward to meeting with our “Green Team” members to work towards a responsible use of energy together.
Ciaran Harrington Head of Preparatory School, Pok Fu Lam
KELLETT DRAGON NEWSLETTER ISSUE NINE JUNE 2014
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HIGHLIGHTS - POK FU LAM PREPARATORY
school council In the last few weeks of School Council, we have been thinking about enhancing the Reception garden because not many people are using it. We have added a book box, chalk, colouring pencils and plain paper for drawing on. We have looked at how to make the garden better and have made a list of things that we would like to buy. We do not have enough money in our budget at the moment so we are proposing a sponsored event to be able to raise some money. We are writing a letter to Mr Harrington to ask if we are allowed to do this!
We have also decided to have part of the playground as a football pitch. School Council would like to buy proper football goals so no one will get hit. The football pitch is divided into three equal parts, so the people who want to play football can play in an area but other children have complained because they don’t have enough space to run around in. These are the kind of problems that we encounter every meeting. Recently we have received complaints about people getting hurt on the climbing frame because there are too many people on it. We have put a timetable up to tell each year group when their turn is on the apparatus.
RECEPTION We thoroughly enjoyed our theatre visit to watch ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ and did some excellent drama work re-telling the story when we got to back to school.
The Reception children welcomed the Year of the Horse by making lanterns, painting cherry blossoms and lai see packets. Everyone looked brilliant in their special clothes to celebrate Chinese New Year in school.
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All of the Reception children were AMAZED to discover that an alien spaceship had crash landed in the Reception Garden! It certainly started our Space topic off with a bang! Each Reception class had an alien egg to look after and the children were absolutely fascinated by what the alien might look like when it hatched. There was lots of fantastic learning involved in this topic with the children designing aliens, constructing rockets and learning facts about the planets in our Solar System. One of the highlights was the children’s visit to the Astro Dome.
PREPARATORY
HIGHLIGHTS - POK FU LAM
YEAR 1
Year 1 started the term learning about Dinosaurs at the HK Science Museum. We had so much fun learning all about the different dinosaurs. We learnt about herbivores, carnivores and omnivores and the different time periods dinosaurs lived in. We even became palaeontologists for a day! We have also learnt about pirates! We started the topic with our very exciting pirate day. We dressed up as pirates and learnt some sea shanties. We were excellent at solving clues to the treasure hunt. We have learnt about real and imaginary pirates and we are looking forward to learning all about using coordinates on a treasure map.
YEAR 2 Year 2 have had an action packed term. All three classes have had their Class Assemblies. Y2LA’s assembly theme was Healthy Eating, Y2VA’s explained why germs can be problematic and Y2TF told us all about the life and times of Florence Nightingale. Our topic for our class work has been ‘Healthy Eating’ and now the children know what a healthy balanced diet should contain. They have also learned about the benefits of exercise for your health. The highlight of this topic was when the mums came in to help make healthy pizzas with the children. It was hardly surprising that these pizzas were so delicious that most of them were eaten in school and few made it home to be shared with family members. After Chinese New Year the children learnt about certain individuals who changed the world. Year 2 focused on Florence
Nightingale, Mary Seacole, Alexander Graham-Bell and Rosa Parks. The children also considered what the difference was between a famous person and a significant person. The students also discussed different ways that you can become famous and we certainly agreed that some people are certainly more deserving of their fame than others. In Literacy, the children continued to make their creative writing more descriptive by adding adjectives, adverbs and similes to aid description. The pupils also had a poetry focus in which they learnt about riddles, rhymes, onomatopoeia and alliteration. The children also continued to join up their handwriting so that most children can now join up when they write and most children are now writing neatly.
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PREPARATORY
HIGHLIGHTS - POK FU LAM
YEAR 3 Some children experienced their first ever sleep away from home and got to share this event with their best friends. After an activity packed day, including the making of their own bed, the children had time to relax while the wonderful parents who volunteered to come on the camp prepared the BBQ for approximately 120 people. No easy feat! Under trying circumstances the BBQ was a huge success and was finished off with toasted marshmallows.
Year 3 from both campuses went on their yearly camping trip to Sai Kung. What an adventure that was! The activities ranged from rock-climbing to hiking, from cycling and roller-skating to scavenger hunts, from trampolining to archery. There were some good shots _ so parents beware!
After the children had a surprisingly good night’s sleep, the activities continued. These included a talent show and interclass team competitions between both Pok Fu Lam and Kowloon Bay. We then said our goodbyes to friends from both sides of the water and headed home after a memorable time indeed.
YEAR 4 Over the Term, Year 4 has been exceedingly busy being: Junior Navigators, finding our way around the globe; Scientists, looking at how different organisms live and depend on each other in their Habitats; and Explorers, going on camp! We started the term with an educational visit to the Hong Kong Wetlands where the children were introduced to ‘Habitats’ and animal adaptations. At the end of February, we enjoyed our camp on Lantau, having the opportunity to use some of our map skills as we completed a treasure hunt and a long walk from The Big Buddha to Tung Chung Fort. We also visited Tai O and completed a number of fun, confidence building challenges including: Wall Climbing, Archery,
Orienteering and a very demanding Ropes Course. Each class also performed in our own assemblies : 4-KG used their class research to retell the amazing true life survival story of the explorer Ernest Shackleton and his Endurance crew; 4-MH were next with their assembly based on their Lantau camp experiences; and finally 4-NM had a rhyming assembly, which took us into the world of poetry. We would like to finish by saying a ‘Big Thank You’ to all the Parents who came on camp and worked so hard to ensure that the children had an enjoyable, safe experience, as well as all those parents who contributed to our class assemblies, helping with costumes and make-up.
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HIGHLIGHTS - POK FU LAM PREPARATORY
YEAR 5 We have been busy preparing for our upcoming educational visit to Beijing by studying the topic ‘The Last Emperor’. Throughout this unit of work we have learnt more about the human and physical geographical features of China, compared rural and urban areas and examined urbanisation and the factors that affect migration. In addition to this we have looked in detail at the Hutongs and explored how people’s lives are affected by the changes. Children from Hok Shan School recently visited Year 5 and they enjoyed playing outdoor playground games together, followed by craft activities in class. Children from both schools enjoyed the opportunity to practice their language skills. As part of our games based learning we played Rollercoaster Tycoon, which helped us to custom build our own theme park attractions. Inspired by famous theme parks around the world, we created our own persuasive descriptions and reviews to advertise our rides to potential visitors.
YEAR 6 This term has seen the busy Year 6 students at Pok Fu Lam designing holiday resorts, investigating plant growth and food webs whilst trying to avoid becoming hypnotized by the Demon Headmaster! Ok, so Mr Harrington didn’t try to take over the world by hypnotizing the children, but the students did study the fantastic novel ‘The Demon Headmaster’ by Gillian Cross and rewrote part of the story as a play - they also performed to their class. As well as this, Graffiti was also a topical discussion throughout the Year 6 classrooms. The students investigated the history of Graffiti, had the opportunity to design colorful tags and used their knowledge to write speeches and letters about the issue. Did you know that the use of Graffiti dates back to the Ancient Greeks? If graffiti wasn’t enough, the Year 6 students then joined a touring rock band! That’s right! Whilst studying journalism, the students created rock stars that they interviewed and wrote articles about. Our topic ‘Destination Investigation’ saw the students looking at tourist patterns and factors, both environmental and cultural, that affect where we choose to go on holiday. They had to design a resort that was economically friendly but also use information that they gathered, by conducting a questionnaire, to inform their final design. Later in the term, their DT skills were tested, when they made a scale model of part of their resort.
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ARTS & LANGUAGES - POK FU LAM PREPARATORY
chinese studies
ian Beijing Xinx Kellett and n ee w et b ing nuary. Some bond eir visit in Ja ts during th en ud st g Huton
The Principal of Beijing Xinxian Hutong primary school, Ms. Sun Wen Yan, was admiring the teapot presente d to her school by Mr. Ciaran Harrington.
Reception stude nts learnt to recognise the ch aracter, “mother ”, through its 2 co mponents “fema le” (radical) and “h orse”.
ok their H d to by a re g bein enjoyed tudents s tt e ll e K arts. ounterp Shan c
In January, our Beijing sister school, Beijing Xinxian Hutong Primary School, visited us. Kellett School has visited Beijing with Year 5 students for the past 14 years and this was the first time that a school from Beijing visited us. It was a real honour to see them in Hong Kong. Joint-schools reading activities with our local sister school, Hok Shan Primary School, are always enjoyed by all. Recently, we had an English Game day at Kellett School and the following week, Year 5 students paid them a visit for a Chinese Game day as a warming up exercise leading up to the Beijing Educational visit in May. 20
KELLETT DRAGON NEWSLETTER ISSUE NINE JUNE 2014
er’ t to write ‘moth 1 students learn writing In ‘Family’, Year by t rn had lea plied what they and they then ap rs. rds to their mothe Mother’s Day ca
When studying the topic “Body”, Year 2 students roleplayed doctor and patients “What’s wrong with you?”
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ARTS & LANGUAGES - POK FU LAM music This has been a very busy term music-wise - from the instrumental recital evening back in January, to performances by the choir at the school fair, and rehearsals galore for the school production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. This term has also seen the start of two new instrumental ensembles- the Advanced Recorder Group and the brand new Pok Fu Lam Prep Pre Orchestra, which is an ensemble for children who are in the early stages of learning an instrument, before they are ready to play with the main orchestra.
Pok Fu La m Prep pre Orchestr
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ARTS & LANGUAGES - POK FU LAM Art Highlights Year One Pirate ships and Dinosaur cityscapes have invaded Year 1 Art lessons this term amongst an array of other fantastic exploratory topics, which successfully challenged our artistic skill. We have been busy painting, drawing, printing, cutting, and patterning to create art works full of excitement and colour. Our artist of focus this term was Gustav Klimt and we thoroughly enjoyed learning to weave with fabric in beautiful gold’s and bronzes, in keeping with the familiar colour scheme of the artist. The finished results were fantastic to see. Golden drawn trees with paper collaged metallic backgrounds were also made in the style of Gustav Klimt culminating in beautiful mixed media finished pieces, clearly demonstrating the children’s observational drawing and cutting and sticking skills. We look forward to the challenges of next term!
Year TWO Henri Matisse was introduced to the children as part of Year Two’s, ‘Healthy Living Unit’. We took our inspiration from this amazing artist’s collage work, or as he called it, “drawing with scissors”. Printmaking has been a focus in our Art Curriculum across the school and our term was enhanced by Sam Carle, a parent and senior art teacher, who helped us to create beautiful prints with Chinese characters. 3D sculptures have been created, papier mache islands and autobiographical clay tiles made at the beginning of the year showcased our fine motor skills when trying to achieve 3D form. Georgia O’Keeffe flower studies followed and we experimented with chalk pastels to explore the different drawing effects we could make, attempting to create texture within our artwork. We are learning that texture is an element of art and next term we will take cameras outside and investigate how many different examples of texture we can find in the outside world, and we will photograph our discoveries. Look out for our work on the Kellett Art Studio blog!
Year THREE The exploration of ‘Colour’ as one of the main elements of art has been a focus in Year 3 this term and we were able to produce large scale peacocks in fantastic colours, all of which we scrunched up and covered in coloured inks to achieve a paper batik effect. We moved onto sculpture and used fabric on a wire armature to make abstract shapes, which we then painted in personalised designs trying to achieve a colour fade as further exploration into how to create different colour values. We have been enjoying learning about printmaking with a session from Sam Carle and then creating our own print blocks to look like Hong Kong buildings and transport to link with our class work. We added stamped letters to print words onto our work, creating annotation. Clay owls were made most recently as part of our investigation into malleable 3D materials. What a hoot we had creating texture within our clay pieces! What a busy term Year 3, well done! 22
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ARTS & LANGUAGES - POK FU LAM Year FOUR Shoes, Shoes Shoes! What a lot of work Year 4 have done on drawing their shoes, pencil shading their shoes in a tonal range, and finally making their individual shoe designs out of clay as a 3D sculpture. It was a big project for us but we did it, and the final shoes were amazing, full of individual creativity and showcasing our clay slab building and cutting skills wonderfully! We even had an ice skate on display! It was a lot of work, but well worth the wait. Printing for the school fair was tackled with the help of Sam Carle and her team of mums achieving beautiful Chinese character painted squares. We have also looked at how to achieve effective colour tonal landscapes as part of our colour perspective unit, and more recently the children have been looking at how to draw their own self-portrait using the basic framework for drawing a face. Well done Year 4!
Year FIVE We have perfected the techniques of Chinese Brush painting this term, concentrating on bamboo and cherry blossom designs in particular. These were then collaged across a canvas and the children then created their own Beijing Opera mask inspired by their forthcoming trip to the Chinese capital. We looked at the traditional colours and facial designs of the masks and the meanings behind them. We then created our own using mod-roc to create relief areas for our individual designs. Look out for our work hanging up at the Year Five Beijing evening. Junk boats were tackled as part of developing our observational drawing skills, and we experimented with a variety of watercolour techniques to achieve different paint effects within our boat sails. We really enjoyed looking at what happened if you added salt to the watery paint. Have a go at home and see what effect it makes within your own work.
Year SIX Year 6 became Rock Stars this term when creating their own guitar designs as part of the class topic, ‘Guitar Hero’. Perspective drawings were tackled and we created some fantastic designs focusing on drawing from a one point perspective. We have recently been studying the American artists Jacob Lawrence who inspired us to look at simplistic figure drawings of people in movement. The children created fantastic collage tissue paper backgrounds and added their figures on top. More recently we have studied the painter and photographer Chuck Close, who has an amazing portfolio. We looked at his “cell” paintings and learned to use a grid to replicate images. These will then be put onto a canvas and painted with acrylic paints to achieve the final effect. We look forward to seeing the finished results.
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SPORT - POK FU LAM sport Spring term has been a productive and busy one on the sports and PE front. In January the FOBISIA Games trials were completed and teams were announced. This year trials included two campuses and therefore many more children. It was wonderful to see the competitiveness and sportsmanship throughout the trials. Well done to all those involved. Congratulations to the squad who competed from 21 - 23 May in Hong Kong this year.
Squad lists
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Year 4 Boys
Year 4 Girls
Year 5 Boys
Jacob Abate
Sophie Henchman
Felix Turl
Luca Marriot
Olivia Woolhouse
Sebastian Thorp
Harry Nichol
Tacita Dare Bryan
Tyler Ward-Rees
Toby Hughes
Jocasta Spooner
Charlie Henderson
Jack Derrick
Lucy Kimbrough
Ben Edwards
Aidan O’Malley
Georgina Fleming
Finn Bremner
Year 5 Girls
Year 6 Girls
Year 6 Boys
Emily Marchand
Alexandra Mayall
Clancy Steains
Clara Doubleday
Emma Reed
Do Hoon Kim
Scarlett Cowley
Malin Leven
Joseph Steward
Katie Robinson
Maia Peacock
Ted Champion
Pia Walker
Isabel Henchman
Tobey Turl
Zoe Pyott
Elizabeth Abelman
Ronan Reynolds
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SPORT - POK FU LAM
The ECA programme has been as busy as usual with the Rugby and Cross Country season upon us.
Rugby The rugby players enjoyed the weekly training sessions from two professional coaches from the HKRFU, Matt and Adrian. It was great to see the children participate in the training and friendly matches against Bradbury School. Two main tournaments, the DBIS Beach Touch tournament and the Kellett 7’s Contact tournament were both cancelled due to the wet weather that has been experienced this term. PFL Prep represented the school at the CIS touch and the ESF Tag tournament this year with mixed success. Although the numbers attending the Year 5 and 6 ECA were low this year, the team who competed were certainly full of rugby spirit, energy and determination. Well done to those who have played in friendly and competitive events this term. We also enjoyed a one off training session with the HSBC Penguins coaches who were in HK for rugby week, with the Penguins team competing in the HKFC 10’s tournament. A great experience for all involved.
The girls’ football team have also been working hard on Wednesday afternoons and have enjoyed the Bradbury girls weekly attendance to train and play with. Thanks to the Minisport team for providing us coaches for this activity. ECA swimming this term has also been well attended as usual. The participants have been working on stroke technique, starts, turns, finishing and improving both their speed and stamina in the pool. The hard work has certainly been paying off with all children showing improvement over the course of the year. The cross country members have been clocking up the kilometres this term. The Friday morning sessions have certainly woken everyone up at the end of a long week! We have enjoyed friendlies at Happy Valley and also at Stanley Ho. There have been lots of improvements and successes during these sessions. The CIS road race in March was a great success for both the Kellett teams. With individual and team podium finishes, they did a fantastic job. There were over 700 children involved in the morning and in some year group races more than 100 runners! Well done to all those involved. KELLETT DRAGON NEWSLETTER ISSUE NINE JUNE 2014
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SPORT - POK FU LAM
Netball Netball continued this term for Year 3 and 4 and the girls have been showing good progress in their positional play and understanding of the game. They have been involved in friendly matches against ISF and FIS this term, we hope to get further matches organised for next term.
Curriculum PE All year groups have been working through their gymnastics levels and enjoyed attempting more challenging skills and making progress over the term. It was excellent to see the results after the hard work! In Games sessions, Year 3 have been working on skill progression in Netball, Year 4 have enjoyed their football unit and participating in competitive small sided games, Year 5 have been coached by our HKRFU coaches developing their tag skills and Year 6 have been working hard on their games play in field hockey. Year 5 enjoyed a competitive swimming gala in February; it was great to see the classes battling it out for the participation award!
ECAs
Knitting Club
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EXTRAS - POK FU LAM dress as a Character day
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EXTRAS - POK FU LAM PREPARATORY
the easter hat parade
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HIGHLIGHTS - KOWLOON BAY Our Dragon The Kellett Dragon is an instantly recognisable and memorable symbol of Kellett School. It adorns the exterior of our buildings, forms the letterhead on our stationery and is worn proudly on our uniforms. This distinctive red and white creature is a unifying symbol of the three schools and catches and embodies the spirit of Kellett.
Our dragon is a fire dragon, the school having been established during the Year of the Fire Dragon in 1976. This type of dragon is the most energetic, passionate and dynamic of all the Chinese dragons. It is described in the Chinese Zodiac as fearless in it’s pursuits and single minded in following it’s passions; a wonderful representation of our aspirations for our students. A cherished tradition of the school is the presentation of their own Kellett dragon to all students as a welcome to the Kellett Community. These are to be loved and nurtured and kept always as a reminder of being part of a unique community. This year we began a lovely new tradition of our Sixth formers, the oldest students in the school, presenting our students in Reception with their dragon. On occasion, guest speakers are also presented with a dragon as a thank you. Notable Kellett dragon owners now include Donald Tsang, former Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Andrew Seaton former British Consul General and Caroline Wilson, the current British Consul General in Hong Kong! This year we have also had two large sized dragons produced for each school. These have been enthusiastically received in the Prep Schools, with exemplary assembly behavior in Key Stage One being rewarded with care of the dragon in their classroom for a week. The Senior School have been equally delighted with their large dragons which now accompany teams to sporting competitions as a mascot and even found their way recently into an AS level drama production! Our dragon is an enduring and much loved symbol of Kellett School, helping to unite our community and give us a distinct public identity.
Jo Lauter Head of Preparatory School, Kowloon Bay KELLETT DRAGON NEWSLETTER ISSUE NINE JUNE 2014
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HIGHLIGHTS - KOWLOON BAY PREPARATORY
school council The school council has had a fantastic and busy term. We have been meeting to discuss the children’s ideas. Our big success of the term has been our new routines at playtime. The School councillors held class meetings to gather ideas for new rules and ways to make new areas on both the sky pitch and covered playground. They fed back their ideas and with the help of Mr Keeling posing some difficult questions and scenarios, they came up with 5 rules for each area and a great rota system for year groups to use different equipment and areas on each day of the week. They then worked hard to implement this on the playgrounds and be great role models to their peers. Well done School Councillors!
reception It has been a busy term in Kowloon Bay Reception! We have had two exciting topics; Animals and Space. During our Animals topic we had visits from some of the children’s pets. We were lucky to have a dog come to school and we were able to look closely at its features, such as its ears, paws and its wet nose! During our Space topic, we made rockets, found out about the planets and have enjoyed working with the Year 6 children who have supported us with our learning about space. We particularly enjoyed learning to write like an astronaut under the table and making our own space playdough! The covered area has a wonderful rocket and the children have enjoyed using their imagination to blast off into Space! We also had an amazing experience in the Space Dome, looking at the night sky and all of the stars and planets! One other exciting moment during the term was our celebration of a German Carnival. We were joined by two Kellett Dads, Stefan Sonntag and Johannes Duttenhoeffer, who told us the story of the carnival. They told us how people dress and when it is celebrated. All of the children made masks and had lots of fun! We have all been trying our best with our reading and writing and are looking forward to our assembly productions next term. We are all getting bigger and taller and are nearly ready for Year 1!
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HIGHLIGHTS - KOWLOON BAY PREPARATORY
YEAR 1 have learnt how to classify dinosaurs into different time periods and even made our own volcanoes and fossils!
This term has continued to be exciting and engaging in Year 1. In January we learnt about our local environment during our topic ‘Hong Kong’. Did you know that 70% of Hong Kong is green space? We compared old and new Hong Kong and plotted how it has changed on a timeline. Our studies culminated in learning about the traditions associated with Chinese New Year. We read the traditional story, made dumplings, dressed up and participated in lots of craft activities. We have become ‘Dinosaur Detectives’! We had a fantastic trip to the science museum and saw real fossils and learnt about carnivores and herbivores. We
During our topic about treasure and pirates, we have learnt about famous pirates, including some local pirates from Hong Kong. Did you know that Cheung Po Tsai was a pirate around Hong Kong in the early 1800s? He used to hide his treasure in the caves around Hong Kong. We have made our own treasure maps and used descriptive words when writing ‘wanted’ posters for ferocious Year 1 pirates! We look forward to continuing this topic in the summer term. Book week was a highlight of our spring term, we dressed as book characters and we shared our favorite stories with our buddies from the other class. Another event enjoyed by Year 1 was the spring fair. It was lovely to see all the children having fun at the first Kellett Fair held at our campus.
YEAR 2 Technology in the Classroom During this term the children have enjoyed using various types of technology in our Literacy lessons. Whilst writing a report about Florence Nightingale, the children used Word to type up their heading and subheadings. They were also able to change the size and font. On the iPad the children enjoyed finding pictures of Florence Nightingale and Scutari hospital on Google and then imported them into another app, Strip Design, to add captions and labels.
Healthy Eating! One of our topics this term was ‘We Are What We Eat?’ The children did a fantastic job designing a pizza using a selection of ingredients. They had to ensure that their pizza was healthy and explain why they thought their base and toppings would be a better option to eat. After the design process was complete, the children enjoyed making their pizza in the cooking room, with the help of some parents. The pizzas smelt and looked delicious!
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HIGHLIGHTS - KOWLOON BAY
YEAR 3
Smile!
Rock ‘n’ Roll
Learning all about teeth this term has been a real highlight for Year 3. In this Science topic we discovered the different names of our teeth, their position in our mouth and the jobs that they do. A timely visit from dentist Dr Jennie combined with fair-test investigations involving eggs (as their shells have similar properties to the enamel on our teeth) really revealed the importance of looking after our teeth and we learnt some rather frightening facts… ask a Year 3 child to find out more! In our English lessons we read Sandi Toksvig’s Troublesome Tooth Fairy and used this as inspiration for our own encounter with a Tooth Fairy. 3-AW presented this unit in their assembly and thoroughly enjoyed sharing their learning and making their audience smile!
To kick start this second unit, Year 3 took part in an amazing transport race to The Peak. Using Google maps, each class planned their route, the forms of transport they would take and maximized opportunities for earning challenge points! This activity was a huge success and a fantastic start to learning more about Hong Kong. Through reading and exploring an iBook, we have since researched the history of Hong Kong and how land use has developed over the years. Travel tour guides 3-BN even took the Prep School on an A to Z tour of Hong Kong in their assembly, presenting a broad range of information about our region in a fun and entertaining way.
YEAR 4 Year 4-MR delivered a fantastic assembly sharing their learning from the topic, Habitats at Risk. They acted beautifully, portraying the sensitive subject of our endangered planet. Having been to camp on Lantau and not seen any pink dolphins in Tai-O, the Year 4 classes are becoming increasingly aware of how human construction is destroying the Chinese dolphin habitat. The children shared information about endangered animals, habitats that are being destroyed and steps we can take to ensure that we protect our world and change it for the better. Year 4–EJ took us back to the times of the Ancient Greeks by presenting a fabulous assembly, sharing information about ancient myths, legends and even an Olympic Games. The children bore their
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chests to participate in the Games and sang and danced depicting the Ancient Greeks’ love of music and drama. The Year 4 classes had a fantastically successful camp adventure to Lantau in February. The children took part in a variety of activities, such as climbing up to Big Buddha, visiting Tai-O and hiking to Tung Chung Fort. We had a wonderful time back at the hostel, experiencing dormitory life, archery, rock climbing and orienteering. All five Year 4 classes from PFL & KLB, thoroughly enjoyed the three day experience and have created beautiful memoirs in the form of camp books. A fabulous time was had by all! Many thanks to all the staff involved and to the parents for accompanying us on our adventure!
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HIGHLIGHTS - KOWLOON BAY YEAR 5 focusing on our fair testing skills. Year 5-BF performed a fabulous and informative assembly on how to successfully persuade people to invest in their theme park. Year 5-VA entertained their audience through presenting a variety of inventions to a terrifying ‘Dragons Den’!
Have you ever wanted to know anything at all about Ancient China? This term Year 5 have put on our time travellers caps and sped back to over 2000 years ago through our topic of ‘The Last Emperor’! We started the topic with a fun ‘China Day’ where we all dressed up in traditional Chinese clothes, played Chinese games, had ‘chopstick jelly challenges’, listened to traditional music, ate delicious Chinese food and created beautiful artwork paintings, lanterns and paper cuttings. We had such fun! Apart from all our China excitement, we have also been working hard in Science, looking at changes in state, the water cycle and creating our own experiments,
As well as expanding their general knowledge about the world around us and, more specifically, their understanding of the dynasties of Ancient China, the children have been writing extended fiction set during the Han Dynasty. Carole Wilkinson is an Australian author who we have been lucky enough to speak during book week via Skype. She is the writer of our class novel, ‘The Dragon Keeper’. Over the last term, the classes have been introduced to the book with several questions in mind: ‘Who is the story aimed at?’, ‘How does the book appeal to it’s reader?’ and ‘Why do you think the author made particular writing choices?’ among others. Through these great topics, we are now thoroughly prepared for our upcoming trip to Beijing in May!
YEAR 6
writing unit! our Journalistic Rocking out for
We are really enjoying mentoring our reading buddies in Reception.
We’re Rocking Year 6!
We’ve had another busy term in Year 6! We kicked off the new term preparing for Kowloon Bay Preparatory School’s very first assemblies. 6SB wowed us with their writing skills in their performance of “Varjac Paw” while 6FS celebrated Chinese New Year with a performance of Phillip Pullman’s “The Firework Maker’s Daughter.” Throughout this term we’ve explored our literacy units with some really fun themes. As part of our journalistic writing unit, our pupils became rockstars for a couple of weeks. We interviewed our rockstars, wrote biographies, and reported on some pretty scandalous stories in the newspaper articles we wrote! We were also lucky enough to have Catherine Shaw, Kellett parent and writer for the South China Morning Post, join us for an inspiring talk about her life as a journalist.
Next up, we became graffiti artists, exploring the arguments surrounding this topic. The children loved designing their very own “tags” and having a go at graffiti themselves! We wrote letters of complaint, persuasive speeches and balanced arguments. The quality of work the pupils produced within these two units really was impressive and reflected the enjoyment the children took from exploring these units- well done Year 6! Our curriculum topic this term has been “Destination Investigation.” We kicked off by becoming travel agents, designing a customised holiday based on a brief. Having explored both the physical and human impacts of tourism and learnt about sustainable tourism, KLB Travel Agents is now officially up and running! Pupils were then given the mission to find the perfect new destination for a new holiday resort and prepare a pitch to a panel of bankers for funding. This project marked a culmination of the geographical skills pupils had acquired within this unit. Year 6 at KLB have also enjoyed their new roles as “Reading Buddies” for the Reception classes. It has been lovely to see the older children taking an active role in encouraging the younger pupils to read and share their learning. Well done Year 6 on another busy, productive and exciting term’s work!
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ARTS & LANGUAGES - KOWLOON BAY chinese studies At Kowloon Bay, the children have been actively developing their cultural awareness through engaging in different Chinese New Year activities. Traditional paper writing, lion dances, role plays, writing Chinese New Year couplets and a parent talk on celebrating Chinese New Year all took place within the school. The children also showcased their understanding of how and why people celebrate Chinese New Year through participating in a quiz game during a Chinese New Year assembly.
It was rea lly fun to play a board game dur ing the Year 6 Chi nese Conjunctio n unit!
g ong Xi greetin ay: Gong Xi G Year 1 role pl
Year 2 Good Luck orange tree
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KELLETT DRAGON NEWSLETTER ISSUE NINE JUNE 2014
Year 3 students making their fa mily tree.
on occupations. doing research Year 5 students
Year 4 Chine se Dragon colla ge.
Reception finger printing peach blossom tree
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ARTS & LANGUAGES - KOWLOON BAY music
debut at the school fair. The KLB Prep Orchestra made its
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ARTS & LANGUAGES - KOWLOON BAY Art Highlights Year One Year 1 have gone from strength to strength this term. An exciting piece of news was that a student from Year 1, Seraya Boggis, was a winner in the photography competition! We are very proud of all artistic endeavours and can’t wait until our class photography work next term. We have done some observational painting work and created mixed media pieces by collaging and embossing. Our artist focus this term was Gustav Klimt and we looked at the beautiful earthy and metallic colours he used. We created our first textiles art, weaving a gorgeous piece, and then painting our own trees of life to hang with them. We have also investigated printing methods and with our own found objects we had great fun making multi-print wrapping paper. Our dinosaur class topic was finished with beautiful silhouettes over colour washes.
Year TWO In Year 2 we opened the term looking at the work of Henri Matisse. We took our inspiration from this amazing artist’s collage work, or as he called it, “drawing with scissors”. We have had a big focus on printmaking and our term was enhanced by Sam Carle, a parent and senior art teacher, who helped us to create beautiful prints with Chinese characters. We went on to explore the art of Georgia O’Keeffe in different media, including mono printing! We used watercolour pencils, chalk pastels and different printing inks to explore the effects we could make. We also had our first photography outing. We took our cameras to Kowloon Bay Park and searched for opportunities to photograph different textures in our environment. We took the pictures back to school and worked on replicating them in our painting. We are learning that texture is an element of art and to talk about it when we work on new projects!
Year THREE Year 3 have worked extensively on colour mixing this term and we were able to produce large scale peacocks in amazing colours, all of which we mixed ourselves! We can talk about changing the value of a colour, which is important because value and colour are elements of art. We moved onto sculpture and used fabric on a wire armature to make amazing shapes, which we then painted in the style of famous artists. We enjoyed learning about printmaking with a session from Sam Carle and then creating our own print blocks to look like Hong Kong buildings and transport to link with our class work.
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ARTS & LANGUAGES - KOWLOON BAY
Year FOUR Year 4 have had a long sculpture unit where they have learned a range of clay skills. We started by drawing our own shoes and learning about creating form in a sketch. We looked at shading and gradients and highlights and tried to capture them. The next step was to create a pattern for cutting out shapes to help with the sole and uppers. Then we started in clay. We learned about working the clay to get rid of any air, how to use the scratch & slip technique for joining, creating designs in relief and imprinting and smoothing and embellishment. Finally we leathered the shoes, glazed and sent them to Pok Fu Lam to be fired in the kiln. Amazing! We moved on to learning about value and creating tonal paintings, mostly landscapes. We are now learning to draw the human form. Ask us how eggs and sausages help us to do this!
Year FIVE We have had a long term of artwork which enhanced our learning in the classroom as we prepare for our Beijing trip. We have practiced the techniques of Chinese Brush painting, learning a few of the classic animals and plants. We went on to study the traditions of Chinese opera and made our own mask designs, using the colours and talking about the meanings of the colours. (Most of them mean, fierce or strong!) We then used mod-roc, which we moulded over a face shape, to build our own plaster mask. We transferred our designs in acrylic. We have used our ink painting skills on fans, and our practice pages have been used as part of the mixed media canvases we have made.
Year SIX Our term began in the chilly winter days, painting winter watercolour landscapes. We moved into the guitar hero unit, and designed and painted our own guitars, adding strings and embellishments. We have been studying the American artist and photographer Chuck Close, who has an amazing portfolio. We looked at his “cell” paintings and learned to use a grid to replicate images. We have used this technique to replicate our own portraits from a photograph onto a canvas and are using his style to paint the “cells” in several colours. This is so exciting – they are looking great already and will be incredible when they are finished!
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SPORT - KOWLOON BAY RUGBY Year 3 Tag Rugby The Year 3 rugby team competed in this year’s Harrow Tag Rugby Tournament and showed a real desire to do well with a number of extra training sessions. The hard work paid off as they returned to Kellett as overall Champions with 2 victories and 1 game drawn.
Year 5 & 6 Touch Rugby We hosted the Japanese International School for a number of friendly touch rugby tournaments throughout the term. JIS are a school determined to improve but the Kellett Rugby team proved too much to handle with a number of wins.
Chinese International School We travelled to the CIS tournament in good spirits, coincidence or just fate would have it that we were to meet the Japanese International School in a battle for the division 2 Championship crown, but could we be victorious again…Kellett came away with a 1-0 win and Division 2 Champions.
Penguins Coaching Clinic We were very fortunate to have the Penguins RUFC coaches who were in Hong Kong competing in this years HKFC 10s tournament. They were able to put a number of our Year 5 & Year 6 rugby players through their paces during the afternoon coaching clinics.
ESF TAG Rugby Tournament The Kellett KLB Rugby team travelled to Sandy Bay for this years ESF TAG Rugby tournament after an unforeseen break from rugby due to the bad weather. With some very strong opposition Kellett KLB came away from the pool stages as Plate semi finalists, a victory against Beacon Hill School saw the team progress through to the Plate final. Kennedy ‘B’ team was all that stood in Kellett’s way of silverware; a strong and disciplined team performance resulted in a victory…PLATE WINNERS!
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SPORT - KOWLOON BAY CROSS COUNTRY CIS Road Race This years CIS road race was as competitive as ever and saw a record-breaking number of pupils taking part. Kellett had some fantastic runners taking part and they all performed exceptionally well.
Happy Valley Races During March the cross-country team travelled to Happy Valley for two races against Bradbury School, once again the Kellett athletes proved dominant and produced some outstanding performances.
BASKETBALL Renaissance College Basketball Tournament This year saw Kellett also enter the arena of Basketball, the Year 5 and Year 6 Basketball team travelled to Renaissance College Hong Kong (RCHK) for the annual Mixed Basketball Tournament. This was our first ever tournament and we came up against some very strong opposition but the pupils represented Kellett with distinction and we came away from the tournament a better team.
Bradbury School The Year 5 & 6 Basketball team travelled to Bradbury School for two tournaments in 2 weeks! With Miss Presnail as their coach, they proved to be stiff competition for the Bradbury team, all teams came away experiencing victory in a number of games. KELLETT DRAGON NEWSLETTER ISSUE NINE JUNE 2014
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EXTRAS - KOWLOON BAY ECAs Art club Many of our Year 1 and 2 pupils have enjoyed Art Club over the last term. They have had a chance to get their creative juices flowing with a wide range of projects. They have made beach scenes from real sand and shells, created sand turtles inspired by Theodora Whittington’s book and painted sunflowers in the style of Van Gogh to name but a few. It has been great to see how engaged the children have been and the stunning results of their efforts!
science club Our Science club continues to engage and enthral younger students with investigations into invisible ink; chemical dragons; bug hotels and work has begun on constructing the Kellett garden on the roof. It is our hope that before the end of the year we will be able to host a pizza party, using ingredients from the garden to top the pizzas!
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KELLETT DRAGON NEWSLETTER ISSUE NINE JUNE 2014
EXTRAS - KOWLOON BAY PREPARATORY
KLB Campus during Chinese new year
Year 6 assemblies 6FS Assembly 6FS chose to celebrate Chinese New Year with a performance of Philip Pullman’s ‘Firework Maker’s Daughter.’ The children up-leveled the script using their own vocabulary. The theme of the play is linked to some of the transferable skills we have been working on in class: being resourceful, resilient, reflective and reciprocal, taking risks in our learning and working hard. 6FS delivered a fun-filled assembly with lots of acting and singing- well done!
6sb Assembly Class 6SB were very proud and honored to be the class which presented the very first Class Assembly at KLB prep. We based it on our class novel Varjak Paw and linked it to the process of up leveling, which we use when doing Big Writing. We had the opportunity to showcase our acting, singing and dancing skills while having a lot of fun. There was even an appearance by Hollywood superstars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie! We really enjoyed the whole experience.
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Painting bright pictures and writing powerful scripts I have been talking with staff and students about the importance of everyone in our school community having high expectations for what we can achieve as a school.
Our high aspirations of student achievement and a student’s self-belief in what he/she can achieve make a significant difference* to student learning. As educationalists and parents, painting bright pictures for our students to aspire to and writing powerful scripts for them to follow is integral to pushing high expectations. At Kellett we have an expectation that each student will demonstrate an excellent attitude to learning, consistently throughout the academic year, across all their subjects. To support our students in achieving this aspirational goal, I have met with all the Student House Councils and asked for their input into raising the expectations, and indeed clarifying, what we collectively expect an excellent attitude to learning and a good attitude to look like. During these discussions we agreed that anything less than a good attitude to learning is not good enough for our school, and needs improving. The new and enhanced attitude
to learning descriptors will be ready for the new academic year, and will add another element to House competition, to which our students respond so enthusiastically. Our expected attributes of a Kellett Sixth Form student paint a bright picture for them to aspire to achieve. We expect our Sixth Form students to be intellectually curious and autonomous in their own learning. We want them to demonstrate personal integrity, resilience and have strong self-belief whilst being confident, articulate individuals who appreciate their responsibilities as members of the global community. To support our students in developing intellectual curiosity, I am planning to introduce a “Dragon Speakers” programme to run at lunchtimes. The speakers will talk on a personal passion to the students and staff and other members of the community, at lunchtimes in the Kellett Theatre. Such a programme of passionate speakers, will continue our push on encouraging intellectual curiosity across our student body. I will soon be encouraging members of our community to become Dragon Speakers and look forward to a vibrant programme being in place. It is with high expectations in mind that we enthusiastically move forward, as the Senior School continues to grow and go from strength to strength.
Simon Giddings Head of Senior School
*Professor John Hattie’s Visible Learning Research
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SENIOR HIGHLIGHTS economics and business studies A-Level Economics and Business Studies
IGCSE Economics and Business Studies Year 10 IGCSE Economics students finished studying the market system and had the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding in an internal examination. The question paper consisted solely of past paper questions, so it was a challenging test. Harry Ginns, Donald Leung, Ella Mann and Arisa Ogiwara performed brilliantly and achieved the highest grade (A*) possible. Well done!
Year 12 A-Level Economics and Business Studies students have been working hard to finish Unit 2 of their respective courses. In Economics, attention has shifted away from microeconomics to macroeconomics, and students have been learning about how governments attempt to manage the economy. In Business Studies, students have been learning about how to manage a business with roles such as marketing, operations and finance all being considered in detail.
Year 10 IGCSE Business Studies students have moved onto studying accounting and finance. They have been busy creating posters explaining how businesses raise finance and they have been practising their IT skills producing financial documents such as cash flow forecasts and break-even charts. Year 11 IGCSE Business Studies students have finished the syllabus and are currently in the process of revising topics and sharpening their examination skills. Best of luck to all of you!
learning central
Learning Central is an area within the Senior Campus where the speech therapists, occupational therapist, Senior School Inco., Senior School Teaching Assistants and the Deputy Head for Inclusion have their base. The area is used for a wide variety of activities, one of the most popular being the lunchtime Chill-Out Club, used by all students as a place to hang out and socialise. The Parent Committee has very generously equipped the club with the initial set-up of games and activities. We are on the look-out for a Wii, table-top football, a pool table, lots more Lego and other construction materials, craft materials, an iPod deck and anything else our teenagers love to do in their free time. Chill-Out Club runs from Monday to Thursday lunchtimes. KELLETT DRAGON NEWSLETTER ISSUE NINE JUNE 2014
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SENIOR HIGHLIGHTS science Students in Science at Kellett have had another outstanding term and all of the final preparations are complete for our Year 9, Year 11 and Year 12 students to sit their final exams. Practical work in the Kellett Science Faculty continues to go from strength to strength with approximately 70% of all lessons being supported by investigative skills based practical work. Some of the exciting things that our students have done included : •
Learnt how to best build a parachute
•
Investigated copper sulfate crystals
• Learnt about the exciting but dangerous chemistry of Group VII Halogens • Year 7 students gained an understanding of the scale of the solar system • Year 11 students carried out heart dissections (the old favourite) We also had a lot of fun on World Science Day – students were set challenges designed to test their ingenuity and determination, as well as testing their grasp of key scientific concepts. The results were loud, exciting and very, very messy. Well done to Youde house scientists who came out as overall winners!
geography Year 12 In February the Year 12s visited Sai Kung to collect data for their geographical skills AS level paper (Unit 2). On Monday 17 February students surveyed the Lung Hang river and its surroundings using river equipment to take width, depth and velocity readings. Initially some students headed straight into the water others were more conservative and opted to record data and sketch their surroundings! As the group made their way to the Lung Hang estuary however, all students attempted the river readings and enjoyed being out in the field. They studied how the river changed downstream, stopping at four different sites, and noted human and physical features which affected the flow and course of the water. Walking alongside the estuary students were able to take in the breath taking views on the edge of the Sai Kung Geo Park and were able to see the dramatic changes that happen when a river meets the sea.
Year 8 This term Year 8 have taken part in a River Cake competition creating a model river made only from cake and confectionary! The three Year 8 classes battled it out to see who could produce the best cake and came up with some exciting and interesting creations. The entries varied from rivers made of icing to tributaries formed of Haribo and the students very much enjoyed eating their final product at the end of the lesson! 44
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The following day, Year 12 geographers headed into Sai Kung Town to survey three areas of land use. They visited central Sai Kung, ventured into the Old Town and also up into the residential roads across Po Tung road. Pen and paper in hand, students recorded the land use by classifying buildings on the surrounding streets. They also conducted interviews with residents and tourists to discover whether the services of Sai Kung meet the needs of the people. Students were able to gain an understanding of how this historical fishing village has changed over time and delve into the lives of local people. Overall the two field study days were excellent and were enjoyed by students and teachers alike!
SENIOR HIGHLIGHTS SENIOR
maths Dragon Maths – Thursday 16 January 2014 This year saw Kellett take four teams to South Island School to take part in Dragon Maths. Out of 17 Hong Kong schools, we did well and finished 13th overall against some very strong competition. Congratulations to the students that took part: Year 7
Year 8
Year 9
Sean Hargraves
Sean Jaffe
Ethan Kim
Millie Krantz
Tommy Park
Daniel Storey
Golly Shepherd
Sophia Sumners
Jeffrey Turner
Cameron Ewins
Chloe Kim
Rebecca Heritage
Kirstie Taylor
Chin Kiu Pak
Georgina Jarrett
Ryan Whittington
Next year we will be hosting Dragon Maths at our Kowloon Bay Campus and look forward to making the most of our home advantage and improving on our performance.
Intermediate Maths Challenge – 6 February 2014 Students in Year 9, 10 and 11 again took part in the Intermediate Maths Challenge which, as a reminder, is the biggest Maths competition in the UK with over 600,000 students and 4000 schools taking part annually. Congratulations to the award winners who were:
International GCSE Results January 2014 For the second year in a row the early entry Mathematics students in Year 11 performed admirably maintaining a 100% A* record. William Munro-Greaves, James Baghurst, Yan To Or, Jimmy Pucci and Arisa Ogiwara (Year 10) were all thrilled with their A* result and were rightly very proud. Special mention must go to Arisa who scored perfectly in both exam papers, a fitting leaving present as she returns to Japan. We now wait upon the rest of Year 11 and more early entry students in Year 10 to try and follow up on this impressive standard in their exams this summer.
PI DAY 2014 On Friday, 14 March 2014, MacLehose staff and students celebrated International Pi day. All students took part in a form time quiz where they had to guess the phrase from pictures involving the Pi symbol. The Year 7s and 10s also watched a documentary about a Savant whose specialist skill is mathematics – he can recite Pi from memory to over 20,000 decimal places. We are looking forward to next year’s ultimate Pi day, where the date will be 3/14/15, the first 5 digits of Pi, the only day in our lifetime that this will happen!
William Munro-Greaves Naomi Carey Andre Hui Gold
Donald Leung Arisa Ogiwara Jimmy Pucci Kirstie Taylor Rebecca Heritage
Silver
Chloe Kim Ben Large Lauren Wood Emma Baghurst Emily Swindin Jacob Preston Lucas Chalk
Bronze
Mandy Lee Georgina Jarrett Harry Mowbray
A special mention must go to all the Gold Awards winners who scored so highly they qualified for the next level of competition, the Mathematical Olympiad. Only the very best and brightest sit this challenge and this is only the second year we have had students qualify. Students sat the challenge on 20 March 2014 and we should find out how they got on in a few months. KELLETT DRAGON NEWSLETTER ISSUE NINE JUNE 2014
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sixth form Year 12 – Focus on University Entrance After a busy and productive year students are now turning their attention to university applications. For those applying to the UK, applications need to be sent at the end of October. Those applying to US, Canada and some courses in Hong Kong must have their applications submitted by mid November. Those taking a Gap Year or applying to Australia or New Zealand have a little more breathing space but now is the time to be turning attention to the exciting world of Higher Education. UK universities have confirmed that A Levels remain the gold standard for university entry. Similarly, strong A Level grades, can earn credit in the US and Canada meaning that courses become shorter and hence less expensive in terms of tuition fees. We look forward to updating everyone on Kellett’s very first university offers so watch this space in the next edition.
Using Data to Maximise Performance Year 12 students are now working towards AS Level examinations which started on 12 May 2014 (with practical subjects commencing from 1 April 2014). The mock examinations (3 – 7 March 2014) have given students and teachers the opportunity to look forensically at performance to ensure that students are clear on how to progress from their current grade towards meeting or exceeding their predicted grade in the May/June examination series.
that lead students on the path to academic success. The work of educational data guru John Hattie identifies student engagement with their own performance as one of the strongest factors in improving student learning. Self-reported grades come out at the top of all influences. Children are the most accurate when predicting how they will perform. Hattie explains that if he could write his book “Visible Learning for Teachers” again, he would re-name this learning strategy “Student Expectations” to express more clearly that this strategy involves the teachers finding out what the student’s expectations are and pushing the learner to exceed those expectations. Once a student has performed at a level that is beyond their own expectations, he or she gains confidence in his or her learning ability. As we move towards our first set of AS level results at Kellett, we are confident that the strong partnership between student, parent and school will lead us firmly towards our stated aim of every student being able to access a course at their university of first choice.
Kellett uses a range of value added data to benchmark performances against similar students worldwide who have been part of the ALIS system in previous years. Students are strongly encouraged to be constantly aware of their current grade and the steps needed to improve. Engagement with data and self-reported grades are key parts of the jigsaw
history
enjoying the Year 7 students s Terrible Tudors Horrible Historie n as part of theatre productio . Kids’ Fest 2014
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Year 7 stud ents teaching each other about medie val monarch s.
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Professor ralled by th n e ts n e f slavery d subject o Year 8 stu g on the n ri tu c le , n Richardso . ave trade sl e th d an
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One of the three joint winners of Reg’s Trench Comp etition 2013.
y War siting Stanle 9 students vi ar Ye of el p efi ds Tour. One grou ordie’s Battl of Jason W rt pa as y Cemeter
Year 10 ass isted by th e House Captains in delivering the annual Ho locaust Mem orial Day assem bly.
Student leadership At the start of the next academic year we open for the first time with students from Year 7 through to 13. Upon reaching this landmark, we also launched our final Student Leadership model, which keeps student voice at the centre of our school, driving our House model and empowering our students. It provides significant positions of responsibility to our eldest students, whilst ensuring that students of all ages have the opportunity to develop leadership skills at every stage of their journey. We are very pleased to be able to outline to you the details of our student leadership model. To maximise opportunities for student leadership, we now have four House Councils, chaired by the House Captain and comprising of the House Captain, Deputy House Captain and the House Council leaders from each Tutor Group. The job of House Councils is to lead and inspire its students to have an outstanding House Spirit. Furthermore it will liaise with the relevant sports, music and environmental Leaders to ensure that the House is well prepared for each House event. Additionally, the House Council will feed ideas, views and opinions into the School Council to represent the views of each Tutor Group. The Senior School Council will now be chaired by the Head Boy and Head Girl and is made up of the Deputy Head Boys and Girls, House Captains and younger representatives from the House Councils on rotation. The School Council is the primary vehicle for the student voice and ensures that students are able to influence school policies in a positive way, delivering school initiatives and encouraging active community participation. It is a regular meeting point for student leaders and enables effective leadership and management within the prefect team, which in turn leads the greater student body. It is with great pleasure that we can announce our newest student leaders; the individuals entrusted with these roles are not only important school ambassadors, they are also to offer
immediate leadership to their peers and forge the blueprint upon which their successors are to build. I am sure you will join with us in offering your warmest congratulations and support to them as they embark upon their important and challenging roles.
Head Girl
Susanna Kidd
Head Boy
Andrew Howorth
Deputy Head Girl
Deputy Head Boy
Freya Darnton Rebecca Lim Cameron Taylor Thomas Cooper
Bowen House Captain
Alex Mortensen
Clementi House Captain
Praew Chanteerad
MacLehose House Captain
Maya Rolston
Youde House Captain
Sandra Zamora
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english On Wednesday 4 December 2014, Year 10 and Year 11 A/S English Literature and A/S Level Drama students visited the Lyric Theatre at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts to watch a production of ‘The Woman in Black’. The engaging, yet terrifying performance had everyone on the edge of their seats and, while there were a few screams, the show was enjoyed by all. The English Department had a host of activities to celebrate World book day on Tuesday, 4 March 2014. The Senior School were invited to dress up as a famous Literary Character and we had a Literature Quiz during morning registration. There were ‘word of the day’ starters in every lesson and a ‘spot the quotation’ quiz posted around the atrium. There was also a very tense and engaging Spelling Bee held at lunchtime and students entered a 50 word short story competition.
On 19 March 2014, Years 10 to 12 were invited to an informative talk by several members of our community highlighting how studying English at university has aided them in their careers. The students heard from people from the world of finance, publishing, drama and further education who reinforced the fact that good communication skills, gaining empathy, analytical expertise and of course the ability to spell and express yourself well are all crucial to a successful career, no matter what the field. Hopefully some of our students will be inspired to reap the rewards of studying English at A Level or beyond.
During the Dragons’ Den unit of work, Year 8 students worked in small groups to create an advertising and marketing campaign for a product of their choice. They worked closely on a range of non-fiction tasks that culminated in a persuasive product pitch that was delivered to judges from a range of Hong Kong businesses. Lots of parents also showed their support and came to listen to the pitches and look at their excellent displays. This year’s winning team was Holly Farrall, Max Irvine, Emilia Newman and Zara Hall for their product called X-Treme.
art The outstanding quality of the Year 7, Year 8 and Year 9 paintings on canvas is being celebrated with the hanging of selected works in the Senior School entrance, atrium and corridors at Kowloon Bay.
works to the Year 7 classes, sharing her artistic practice and explaining how she promotes and sells her works. Year 7 fully utilised Sascha’s ink drawing techniques with some outstanding results.
The Year 12 AS Art class have completed their 8 hour exam and our second cohort of Year 11 GCSE Art completed their 10 hour exam, both groups produced a diverse range of creative responses to the given themes. These works will be displayed in a final exhibition at the end of May as part of their preparation for the examiner visit from the UK.
Lucy Parris, a Hong Kong based lino print artist, presented her work to Year 8 students who were inspired by the fine detailing and reduction printing process used by Lucy. They will be applying these techniques to their own lino prints.
Continuing our endeavors to connect with practicing artists, Sai Kung illustrator Sascha Camille Howard presented her
Yvonne Pangello also visited the department to show her graphic designs and share her expertise with Adobe Photoshop. She met with Year 8 and Year 12 students to discuss their work and help further enhance their skills. Year 7 are now fully engaged in an exciting sculpture making task with a view to installing these in the senior atrium. Year 10 have been exploring fine detailed etching processes and stencil printmaking processes which led to an interesting curricular connection with their English studies. While undertaking their English Language coursework the students have studied an extract from Sebastian Faulks’ novel, ‘Charlotte Gray’ entitled ‘The Last Night’. This text explores the plight of refugees during the Second World War. They will now be using their understanding of these themes as a catalyst in order to create a collection of prints on the notion of incarceration.
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ARTS & LANGUAGES music House Music Competition 2014 This year saw the first ever House Music Competition at the Kellett Theatre in Kowloon Bay. With over 350 people in the theatre, students from Year 7-12 performed everything from Bach to the Beatles! Adjudicated by four professional musicians, the winning House was MacLehose and James Baghurst proudly collected the trophy. Recital Awards 1st Place Gwyneth Choy (Bowen) 2nd Place Sophia Mortensen, Leo Pucci, Gwyneth Choy (Bowen) Choir Award
International Schools Choral Music Festival 2014
1st Place MacLehose (Let It Be) 2nd Place Clementi (With A Little Help From My Friends) Open Award
Kellett Senior students once more made a significant musical contribution to the International Schools Choral Music Society Festival, hosted in Beijing. The Festival featured Christopher Tin, the two-time Grammy award winning composer who has composed for major Hollywood films such as X – Men. In addition to our strong set of singers, this year we featured our first ever instrumentalist, Gwyneth Choy, on the front desk of the violin section.
1st Place Counting Stars (Maclehose) 2nd Place Happy (Clementi)
The 350-strong choir and orchestra performed Haydn’s Nelson Mass and also a specially commissioned piece by Christopher Tin, Temen Oblak, within the Forbidden City Theatre near Tiananmen Square.
House Music Trophy 2014
Outstanding Performance (awarded by the adjudicators) 7 MacLehose Choir Most Promising Performer of the Evening Jeffrey Turner (Youde) MacLehose House
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ARTS & LANGUAGES Drama AS Drama and Theatre Studies Exam – Dr. Faustus Throughout the term the AS Drama and Theatre Studies students were busy preparing for their practical exam. The piece, Dr. Faustus was staged in the Kellett Theatre at 2:15pm on Friday 28 March. The group was fortunate to be presenting to a visiting examiner and delivered an emotive and entertaining piece that marked the arrival of Sixth Form Drama at Kellett. The buoyant audience of parents and students were taken on a spirited journey, following Dr. Faustus on his twenty four year long quest for vain pleasure. Having made a pact with Lucifer (in exchange for his soul) his finite existence came tumbling down. The challenging piece was very well performed; there were some strong character driven performances, some great comedic moments and some very memorable intense sections. It was all presented in a modified Kellett Theatre; the set was the brainchild of one candidate whom was marked on the stage design.
FAME workshop – Beauville Arts In early January all of the GCSE Drama and AS Drama and Theatre Studies students were involved in a Performing Arts workshop which looked at developing a range of performance skills. The two hour workshop culminated in a short ensemble performance which included dance, singing and drama. The workshop providers really motivated the group and their engagement in the activity was fantastic. The final piece was very interesting and proved how much our students can achieve in such a small amount of time.
design technology The Year 7 students put in a huge effort for the F1 in Schools event in April. The winning team, Fenix, set the new school record. The Year 11 Product Design students have completed some highly creative design projects. The Year 12 Product Design students have finished their AS Seating project and have produced some excellent chairs.
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ARTS & LANGUAGES Modern foreign languages It has been another action-packed term for the Languages Faculty and Kellett students. Year 10 thoroughly enjoyed their recent curriculum visits to France (Normandy and Paris) and China (Xi’an). As teachers we found great pride and satisfaction in watching our students communicate so aptly in real-life situations. All of the students involved gained a great deal, not only linguistically as they develop a valuable talent for their future lives, but also culturally and socially. In Mandarin, Year 9 enjoyed sampling Dim Sum and practising their language skills when ordering food with their peers. The remaining year groups celebrated Chinese New Year by making a variety of decorations to bedeck the Senior School Atrium. In French, Year 8 also enjoyed talking part in a ‘Parisian Cat-walk’ activity, where both the clothes and the language used to describe them were flamboyant! We now look forward to the forthcoming inter-house and global inter-school Language Perfect competition, where we intend to fend off our rivals. Year 7 will be sampling lessons in French, Mandarin, Spanish, German and Latin as they make their language choices for Year 8. Further up the school, Year 10 will be busy completing their first set of controlled assessments, as Year 11 and Year 12 prepare for their final language examinations – bonne chance and 祝你好運!
Eating Chinese Dim Sum On 18 December 2013, the Year 9 Mandarin group went down to the cafeteria to experience Chinese food and how to order and describe it in Mandarin. We ate stuffed buns, spring rolls, beef and loads more. We had to use Mandarin to ask for our food and ask how much it would cost. Some students pretended to be the owners and told us how much everything was and gave us the food in exchange for our “money” tokens. It was a great learning experience because we got to use the knowledge we had gained in class (and we got to eat instead of sit in a classroom and learn). Everyone had loads of fun and it was a great educational experience!
Chinese / English Language Exchange On 22 January 2014, HKWMA Chu Shek Lun Secondary School school joined us in our language lesson. The students from the other school were very impressed with our Chinese. We played a mixture of games ranging from general conversations to a memory game. I particularly enjoyed the conversation, as it offered us the opportunity to make new friends outside of school. After half an hour we changed from Chinese to English. I was impressed with how good the local students were at English. We had general conversations with the students and were able to converse in our native language. This exchange was both extremely successful and fun. It would be amazing if it happened again as it benefited the students from both schools massively. Max Angell, Year 10
Simone Morris, Year 9
Chinese / English Language Exchange On 22 January 2014, Kellett School’s year 10 students welcomed pupils from a local school for a Chinese-English exchange. Though the local students were a few years older, they managed to help us with our Mandarin through a wide variety of games and activities, such as describing a person and guessing who was being put on the spot, and we helped them with their English. Despite the language barrier, it turned out to be a fun and educational experience for everyone taking part. We hope to have an opportunity like it in again the near future. Meg Hicks, Year 10 KELLETT DRAGON NEWSLETTER ISSUE NINE JUNE 2014
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SPORT sport Term 2 has been as busy as ever for the Kellett Senior School PE Department. The PE curriculum has been ticking over through the term with pupils in Year 7 to 9 being introduced to or developing on their current skill base in Hockey, Football and Athletics. The older year groups have been involved in a slightly adapted programme concentrating on the importance of participation in physical activity. The work that the students have been doing in the curriculum has been having a positive affect on the sporting success that Kellett Senior School has achieved in a range of sports.
Netball We were able to build on our earlier Netball success at the beginning of the year when Kellett participated in their first ever Netball tour in March. A U16 team, consisting of girls from Year 9 through to Year 11 headed to Singapore to take part in the South East Asia Netball tournament. We were confident in the ability of this team but having never taken part in a Netball tournament on this scale we were unaware of what the standard of competition was going to be like. The first day of competition was a round robin where teams played everyone in group. There was no time for Kellett to get into their game as we were playing the defending champions in our first pool match. Kellett girls just thrive in situations like this and despite the hot weather we came away with a draw, which after a late night flight and an early start, we were very pleased with. This success continued throughout the day and, we were unbeaten by the end of the day and finished top of our pool. The second day of competition also consisted of a round robin style tournament but in much smaller groups. There were only 3 teams in a group and only 2 of these teams would go through to the semi final. This was not going to be an easy task but the girls were very pleased that they were playing indoors rather than outdoors in the blazing sun. We won 1 out of the 2 games in this pool, which meant that, we progressed to the semi finals where we came up against Alice Smith School whom we had beaten the previous day. It was a nail biter of a game, unfortunately time was not on our side and Alice Smith were the victors this time. To be so close but yet so far was a very tough lesson to learn. However we knew we had another game to play where we would be fighting for 3rd and 4th place. No one likes to finish 4th so the loss of that game was soon forgotten as we had to concentrate on our next match which was against the Singapore Sports School who we had seen playing throughout the weekend and they were a very organized and skilled team. This match was another close encounter but this time we managed to hold out and finish 3rd place over all in the cup competition. Our first Kellett Senior School sports tour was a resounding success, lets hope we can build on this success in our future tours. U16 Girls South East Asian Netball Tournament 3rd Place
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Rugby Another rugby season at Kellett School has been and gone and this will be our last in the developmental leagues as next year we aim to compete with the better-established rugby playing schools in Hong Kong. Grade D Rugby had a successful season with four tournaments in four weeks culminating with finals and a hope of being crowned Grade D Champions. The team competed extremely well throughout the four weeks and played some outstanding rugby. The last game proved one too many on a hot afternoon and loosing to WIS meant we came a respected and pleasing 2nd place. U12 Boys Rugby HKSSF 2nd Place Grade C Rugby also had a successful season this year albeit a short one, putting in some very strong performances against schools such as HKIS, RCHK and FIS. The climax to both the U12 & U14 season was a game against our toughest opposition to date‌FIS. The game didn’t disappoint and proved to be a physical encounter with the lead changing numerous times. Both teams dug deep and righted a few wrongs from our previous games, and both the U12 & U14 teams came away with well earned victories. Well done and thank you to all those boys who trained, played, and gave up their time to be involved with both teams this year. Next year brings bigger challenges on the rugby field so stay fit over the summer!
Basketball
Athletics
The climax of the Basketball season happened at the beginning of Term 2. Both U12 girls’ and boys’ basketball teams had solid performances during their Saturday basketball tournaments. It is a fairly steep learning curve for the Year 7s as it is a new competitive sport for the majority of the team. Despite this both teams qualified for the play off stages. The older girls had a very successful Basketball season with both the U14 and U16 teams making it through to the championship playoffs. The U14 girls finished third place overall out of both the Kowloon and Island side league. An amazing achievement especially when they beat a team that had already beaten them in the 3rd/4th play off.
We have recently just been involved in the ISSFHK Athletic championships which took place at Stanley Ho where we experienced Hong Kong weather. The first day of competition was greeted with rain and more rain, but during the second day of competition we were all basking in the sun. Despite the weather conditions, Kellett had a very successful championships with some outstanding performances by a number of our athletes resulting in the biggest medal haul that Kellett has ever had! A couple of outstanding performances came from Gina Marchand who did the double in the 800m and 1500m, she is actually unbeaten this year in all races that she entered which is an amazing achievement. Athina Zodl was another one of our athletes that did the double this time in the 1500m and 3000m in a very convincing style indeed. Sean Hargraves, Constatine Zodl and Praew Chanteraad also picked up gold medals in the long jump, discus and javelin respectively. The team picked up 7 golds, 1 silver and 10 silvers, this medal tally meant that the Girls U12 team finished 3 overall in their age group and the team as a whole finished 6 out of 16 overall. This was an excellent achievement!
U14 Girls Division 1 ISSFHK 3rd Place
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U12 Girls ISSFHK Athletics Championships 3rd Place
The U16 girls convincingly won their semi final and they met Renaissance College in the final. The team and coaches were a little nervous going into this game as we knew it could really go either way and we wanted to be successful in defending the title that we had won last year. Kellett did not have a great start to the game, Renaissance definitely had the upper hand. It came to the 4th quarter and having tried everything we were still down with time running out. However in the space of 1 minute Renaissance were getting a little bit nervous about closing the game. That they became a bit over zealous with their marking and tracking back which meant they tallied up a lot of team fouls which resulted in Kellett being awarded free throws. The very composed Sophie Krantz stepped up to the free throw line and with no sign of any nerves swooshed three free throws. It was at this moment that the momentum of the match completely changed and the Kellett girls grabbed the game by the throat and when the final whistle blow we were jumping for joy, as we were victorious. U16 Girls Division 1 ISSFHK Champions
Kellett School Athletics Team ISSSFHK Athletics Championships 6th Place
Football The football season has only just started so we are still in the early group stages. Despite this both the U20 girls and U12 boys are unbeaten. Both these teams have shown solid performances so far this season and it is looking promising that we are going to pick up some more silverwares before the end of the academic year.
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EXTRAS ECAs
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KELLETT DRAGON NEWSLETTER ISSUE NINE JUNE 2014
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EXTRAS Y9 Outward Bound trip The Year 9 students completed their Outward Bound trip in very tough conditions this year. They showed resilience and determination battling as a group against the cold weather.
HKAYP The Bronze and Silver HKAYP participants have completed their expeditions and are now focussed on finishing their Skill, Service and Physical Recreation activities.
KELLETT DRAGON NEWSLETTER ISSUE NINE JUNE 2014
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