From the Head of Secondary 21.11.2020

Communication with the Secondary Team

As we all know there are various methods in place whereby we communicate with each other within the Secondary community. To add to that we will be making ourselves available every Tuesday between 10 and 12pm [Mrs Renshaw and Mr Hallas] and every Thursday between 10am and 12pm [Mrs Renshaw]. If any parent would like to have a virtual chat with us on any matter pertaining to school, please don’t hesitate to email me at margaretrenshaw@kis.edu.my and we will fix up the day and time.

Events

Many thanks for all the positive feedback on ‘Wellbeing Wednesday’. There seems little doubt that the aims of the day were achieved. I think that it exceeded expectations in the sense that having the opportunity to step away from screens for a few hours and relaxing in a way that supported mental and physical health was of greater benefit than we even thought it would, and this is something that members of the community have commented on.

Next week we will be focussing on the Global Goals and Internationalism. I am delighted by the way that our Prefect Global Citizenship Team have pulled together to produce a schedule of events, and has volunteered to run sessions in order to raise awareness. Each day will start with a Global Goals Quiz, there will be virtual drop-in lunchtime meetings led by students, various activities, 3pm presentations from local environmentalists, and an assembly to round it all off next Friday.

If anyone needs a reminder of what the Global Goals are, do take a look at https://www.globalgoals.org.

Christmas Angels

With Christmas on the horizon, our Student Council is again organising the annual Christmas Angels initiative, which is a KIS tradition at this time of the year. In this, we ask members of our community to donate gifts to the residents of the Sabah Cheshire Home.   ‘Sabah Cheshire Home & Services is a non-profit and charitable organisation, which provides care for persons with disabilities irrespective of race, religion and culture, working with them to help them to live independently, in promoting and implementation of independent living in exercising their rights.’ http://www.sabahcheshirehome.org

A letter has been sent to members of our community explaining how the scheme works, and I would like to thank everybody in advance on behalf of the Student Council, for their contributions. We will keep you up to date with progress in future newsletters.

Events this Week and Upcoming

Last Tuesday Mr Hallas gave an excellent talk to our Year 9 students and their parents about the IGCSE programme in Years 10 and 11. At this time of year the students make some initial choices about the subjects that they would like to take in Year 10. Once they have done that Mr Hallas constructs the timetable taking into account those choices and students will have an opportunity next term to make final decisions. We encourage all the students to read the IGCSE brochure carefully and discuss their thoughts with parents, family, friends and teachers before making any decisions. It is important that they choose subjects that they enjoy and can sustain for two years at this level. It is not an entirely free choice; all have to take Mathematics, English Language, English Literature, at least one Science [Biology, Chemistry or Physics] and one language. All students continue with non-exam PE and PSHE.

Teachers are currently composing the Term 1 Reports. These will be sent home during the last week of term in December and will reflect how the students have performed throughout this term. Parent Meeting Days are scheduled for Year 7 and Years 12/13 and more information about that will be sent out next week. We held the Year 8 Parent Day last term when we were in virtual school and it was very successful. Parents were able to make appointments throughout the day to speak to their child’s teachers via Google Meet. We encourage the students to also attend these meetings and listen to the feedback from their teachers.

On the 30^th November we will be holding the A Level Fair. This is an event whereby Year 11 students can access information about the different subjects that we offer at A Level, and this is the beginning of the selection process for this group. This is the first time that we have run this as a virtual event and Mr Hallas and the Heads of Year are currently working on the logistics. Again, more information will be sent out in due course.

Margaret Renshaw

Deputy Principal/ Head of Secondary

 “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” 

Two weeks ago I remotely supervised our 25 mathematicians in Years 12 and 13 as they joined tens of thousands of other mathematicians around the world in tackling the 2020 UKMT (United Kingdom Mathematical Trust) Senior Maths Challenge – a 90-minute multiple choice exam designed to get students thinking both divergently and convergently on their way to solving a problem.

These tests contain questions that grow in sophistication – to the point where the organisers happily admit that the last few are not for the faint-hearted! Calculators are forbidden, and incorrect answers receive negative marks.  As I watched, I was reminded of the above quotation attributed to Mark Twain, of all people. Of the 25 questions in the test, quite a number had starting points that were far from obvious. Happily our students have strategies that help in these situations – trying simpler versions of the problems, trying specimen calculations, alternating between algebraic and graphical forms of representation, to name a few.

Some questions like this one below rewarded brute-force attack and would be accessible to much younger mathematicians:

Some questions, such as this one, required a much more subtle approach, and rewarded those students who could dig deep into their memory banks and retrieve important facts about auto-inverse functions:

This question also provides access to a branch of algebra that would be new to our students – the study of functional equations. This highlights one of the many excellent features of the UKMT Challenges – they don’t require extra, specialist knowledge, but they do show tantalising glimpses of the “mathematics to come!”

Earlier this week we received our results, and they are truly excellent – with no fewer than 18 of our students receiving awards. This is an astonishing achievement.

The following students were awarded Bronze certificates:

Y12: Joseph Chang, Jed Chu, John Sathyamurthi, Wilber Wong, Victor Wong, Alex Woo

Y13: Jobin Dan, Koenraad Dols, Amar Falah, Bobby Wong, Peter Woo

The following students were awarded Silver certificates:

Y12: Celeste Chung, Hitoshi Iguchi, Daniel Veldman

Y13: Ethan McElhone, Lauren Seo, Pascal U

And special congratulations go to Suraj Kanpoori in Y13 who was awarded a Gold certificate.

Well done to these students, and to all the students who took part.

F J Davis (Head of Secondary Maths)