From the Head of Secondary 16.05.2020

In this week’s newsletter there’s a reminder that some teachers are completing their own online learning at this time, not just students. Read on to see how Mrs Davis managed to complete two courses recently, one for teachers of Psychology A Level and one for the Council of International Schools. The Psychology course will add to Mrs Davis’ professional expertise and ultimately benefit her students and the CIS course qualifies Mrs Davis to be a qualified peer evaluator and she can now volunteer to visit other schools in the region to support their accreditation journey.

As everybody knows, we had to cancel this year’s school production of Macbeth. This was a tremendous shame as the cast and crew had put in many hours of rehearsal. Rather than allow all of that to go to waste, Mr Bryant has initiated a Macbeth project. This involves all of the cast recording themselves at home acting out a few of their sections of the script. Once this has been done, Mr Bryant will employ some technical wizardry to stitch it all together, adding some dramatic pauses and inspirational music to produce ‘Macbeth: The Lockdown Version!’. . I’ve seen some impressive  short videos already; well done to Ervin and to Tania….great job!  William Shakespeare would be very proud. He was no stranger to the dangers of disease in 16^th century England; his son Hamnet died at the tender age of 11 in 1596 from bubonic plague.

In addition to replacing the ‘real’ Macbeth’ with a virtual event, the Science department, headed up by Mr Colbeck, is putting together a presentation which will show some of the fantastic work that has been going on in Science this year. Watch this space for more news about that! We are also working on the Year 13 Graduation as we cannot let our most senior students leave us without acknowledging them and recognising all that they have contributed to the school during their time with us.

In Secondary students are continuing to put good effort into their studies. Occasionally some do forget to sign in or perhaps are not as active as they could be in completing and submitting work. As in normal times, sometimes they are feeling unwell and I do thank parents for contacting us should that be the case. On the whole students are coping well and doing very good work. Year 12 students are following their A2 transition lessons and lessons for Year 11 will commence after the half term break, when they will be starting Year 12 work in their chosen A Level subjects. Whilst we are all looking forward to getting back into school and being able to interact, albeit following the ‘new normal’ regulations, we have all learned a lot from this extraordinary time and we will take the time to reflect on the positive aspects of that moving forward.

Margaret Renshaw

Deputy Principal/Head of Secondary

My name is Mrs Davis and I am also an online learner.

From late January to end of March, I was following a CIE extension course for A Level Psychology and then from 6th April to 3rd May, I did a CIS course for accreditation of evaluators. In this article I will share a little of my online experiences.

Both courses worked on a module basis, one module per week. I was required to read a lot of information and then maybe test my knowledge with an online quiz. I quite often made notes and I also took screenshots as a backup resource. This is similar to students making notes from a textbook but also having the textbook to go back to. I did have homework to do. In the Psychology course, I had to plan a lesson and with feedback from my peers as well as learning new techniques, improve it. On the CIE course, we had to write aspects of an accreditation report: recommendations, commendations and narrative. Yes, students……. I did meet my deadlines!

Something that is perhaps a little different from our online learning were discussion forums. On both courses, I was expected to comment on the things I had read and learnt, as well as provide feedback on what my peers were writing. It was very interesting to read alternative viewpoints and receive the different perspectives on my work as well as share different ways of teaching a topic.

Something that was new to me was Zoom. On the CIE course, on a Wednesday, we attended a Zoom meeting.  I was quite anxious before the first one because I feared there would be no internet, that my computer would have problems as well as me just not knowing how the programme worked. The first day arrived and everything uploaded easily. I was able to see Mr Bromley and Mrs Mullan who were also doing the course but of course it was a professional meeting so we couldn’t wave to each other! It is quite hard to behave naturally on a conference call. We tend to look at the screen, don’t we and not at the camera? I’m nosy too, I wanted to see what my peers looked like because until then, I had only met them in a discussion forum so I was perhaps not concentrating as much as I should have. When I wanted to speak, I put my hand up!

Some bad practices I have picked up: slouching, not moving around enough, being easily distracted by the birds outside.

But where there is bad, there is always good and I try to have more good than bad. I was able to work at my own pace and to take time to think about the tasks I had to do, so I had time to plan. I was also able to reflect when I took a quiz, watched a video clip or received work back, on what I could do better. I could take my time making notes and making lists of what I would like to try next in class.

Now, I am waiting for that ping on the computer, to tell me I have an email with my results on my last assignment. Have I passed? It’s a nerve-wracking wait which reminds me of my school days and which KIS students experience too.