Weekly Update: May 17 – 24

On Saturday, May 11th a group of 20 people from SSIS went to ben Tre to help build a playground at the local municipal government building.  Representing the HS were William Medina, Cassie Armstrong, Adrienne Angland and her husband Jeremy, Daniel Keller, Ms Hang, our Guidance Secretary, and Timothy Chute.  It was a hot day to work outside but we helped to make a small difference for a community here in Vietnam.

Thank you Nomer, Nathan Rebecca, Daniel F., Thomas and Scott for helping to make this year’s MS/HS Art Exhibition a huge success.  Fantastic work by our students was on displayed for everyone to see and greta music to listen to too.

Please try to have your report card comments written before the end of May and tweak the few students who may do well or poorly on their exam.

Tim

Friday,  May 17th
Day 5 – CDAB
HS Faculty Breakfast- Sunshine Committee

IB English Lang & Lit exam AM
AP Micro Economics exam AM
IB Physics PM

Saturday, May 18th

Sunday, May 19th

Monday, May 20th
Day 6- GHE Adv F
Advisory Day
IB Physics exam AM
IB Computer Science exam PM
ArtViz event 3:00pm in the Plaza

Tuesday, May 21st
Day 7- DABC
IB Computer Science exam AM
IB Spanish B exam PM
End of Year Update from Dr. Moran 8:15am in the MS Library
HSLT Meeting, 3:15-4:45 (HS Conference Room) Agenda Here

Wednesday, May 22nd
Day 8- HEFG
IB Spanish B exam AM
AP English Language AM
IB Chemistry exam PM
HS Divisional Meeting 3:15pm

Thursday, May 23rd
Day 9- ABC Adv D
Advisory Day
IB Chemistry exam AM
AP Late Exams AM

Friday, May 24th
Day 10 – FGHE
HS Athletics Celebration for Season 2 + 3 3:15pm in the Auditorium

On the Horizon

• Last Day for AP/IB Courses Students, May 17
• HS Principal Recruiter on Campus, Meet with HS Faculty, May 23 (3:15)
• May 24th Group 4 Project 11th grade students will not be in classes
• Send Final Exams to the Copy Center by May 20
• Printed Final Exams Due (with cover page) to Huyen, May 24 by 3pm
• Prom, May 25
• No HS Faculty Meeting (report card/comment) time, May 29
• Final exams S2 begin, May 31
• Graduation, June 1 at 4pm

Staff Action Needed

• HS students should not be missing your class to talk with on elf our College Counselors.  Students are expected to book an appointment with them.
• Review end of year tech process
• Complete “predictive grades” for all IBDP Y1 Students (here are the directions)
• Begin your comments for grade 9-11 students (IBDP Y1 see special format below)
• Review Master Schedule for 2019-20
• Review the end of year information sheet for Seniors
• Read the IB/AP and Matrix sections of the Dragon’s Lair
• Nominate a colleague for great work via Kudos

Master Schedule– The master schedule has been mostly finalized and share with heads of department.  Here it is.  As a department, you should review room assignments (to ensure equity of sharing of rooms).  The blocks are locked into place and cannot change.  We have close to 100 singletons (class that is only offered for one block) and it amazing that we have put together a schedule that gets most students their schedules.  Special thanks to David Perkin and Nghi who supported our work in regards to this with PowerSchool.

Report Card Comments and Peer Review– The end of semester is almost upon us.  It is important to start and finalize your comments before final exams start.  You should set an internal deadline for yourself as May 24.  Your attention will focus on marking exams, projects and presentations at the very end of the year.  Most of the comments that you write before May 24 will have enough information for the family.  If you have a student that failed final exam, project or presentation all you would need to do was to add a sentence to the already written comment explaining this.  You do NOT need to write S2 comments for grade 12 students unless they dropped more than one letter grade from Q3.

Each teacher needs to share the draft of their S2 comments with a peer for review by May 31.  Most teachers share their comments via Google Doc with someone in their department.  Peer editing should include looking for grammatical errors, spelling, correct student names, and adherence to the HS comment writing format.  We have created a quick guide about comment writing that is more useable than the previous documents.

Grade 11/IBDP Y1 Predictive Grades & Comments– At the end of grade 11, students in IBDP courses receive a predictive grade 1-7 from each teacher.  Here are the directions to input the 1-7 mark.  The comments you make should provide context to the 1-7 grade you provide them.  Here is the format.  You can create a common 1-2 sentence comment for all of your students.  This comment will let the families know what has been covered this year and what will come in Y2.  An example of this is written in PINK below.  Then add 1-2 sentences specific to the individual student and their progress toward and IB mark they might receive at the end of Y2.  In the end, you are providing a brief context to the predictive score you will be adding to PowerSchool for Y1.  You can see an example of this written in the BLUE text.

Here’s an example- Lang & Lit students have done preliminary work on Parts 1 and 2 of the course and have completed Part 4. The predictive score reflects marks in those areas; next year’s score will change to reflect further assessment on Parts 1 and 2, in addition to the entirety of their Part 3 study. [Name] has completed assessments on Parts 1 and 2 that range from 4-6 on the 7 point IB scoring scale, has earned a 5 in [his/her] Part 3 study. Please discuss with your student what these scores mean and the percentages each is weighted; this information has been shared with [him/her].

Group 4 Project-  This is an interdisciplinary activity for all science students in grade 11. It is a collaborative venture where the emphasis is on interdisciplinary cooperation rather than the product of the project. Students will work in assigned teams to analyze a common topic. This year’s topic is photography.