20 Jan - Parent Webinar: I Can - I Will: Flourishing Life Skills for Children and Parents

10 Feb - Last school day before CNY, we have cancelled the IB workshop which was scheduled in our original school calendar

11-19 Feb - Chinese New Year Break

TBC - School Photo Days (by appointment only)

Dear Parents

I hope everyone has settled back into the rhythm of distance learning. It is a lengthy newsletter this week, with a number of items to keep you informed. I hope you can take a few minutes to read through the content. Please note that our newsletter will now be directly pushed through the App without the need to hyperlink to another website. You can access newsletter archives in the News tile that is on the main App dashboard. (If the tile is not labelled News, you may need to refresh your App dashboard by swiping it downward)

Based on the parent pulse survey results in November and also our research on the impact of distance learning, we have decided to increase our live zooms by adding social connect time to our daily schedule, including Fridays and Chinese days.

During traditional in-school Fridays, we normally will have year group assemblies or special activities to address wellbeing, social-emotional development and other parts of the curriculum. We have tried to replicate that by scheduling Friday assemblies on zoom and will now supplement this with a class social zoom as well. Hopefully, these arrangements will help sustain the classroom connections throughout the week. However, please note that some of these zooms are optional as we appreciate it could be challenging for different home situations to manage multiple sessions.

Thank you for your ongoing support. We are committed to make the most of the distance learning and are keen to ensure, with your support, that this remains a success. Let’s hope with the positive move of primary and secondary students returning, kindergartens can soon resume likewise. Again, if you have questions or concerns about your child’s learning, there is no need to wait for a parent-teacher conference or parent surveys. Please reach out to your child’s class teacher so that we can work with you to meet your child’s needs.

Kind regards

Audrey Tang
Head of School

Continuous Feedback & Reporting (New Parent Comment Box)

Your child’s mid-year report will be available for viewing by mid-January. We will send another reminder once it’s live online. Traditionally, for reports, teachers collect evidence of learning from daily interactions throughout the school year. However, we need to rethink this for distance learning. Teachers will not be able to assess the children via traditional methods, but instead, it is a collaborative approach between teachers and parents who are working together in this new unconventional virtual classroom. Teachers will be looking to the Google album for photos/videos parents upload, parent feedback and also referring to the Zoom sessions. On this note, we want to ensure the authenticity of the children’s work and remind our home adults while providing support, please remember not to give out immediate answers on behalf of the child. 

It is important to note that learning is not locked in one point, one year or a particular age, but is an ongoing continuum, based on the child’s readiness rather than a date.

We would like parents to refer to the Hillside VLE regularly. You can do this via the ESF App to access your child’s portfolio pieces, where you can find highlights of your child's work that showcase your child’s role in their learning. This could also reflect your child's conceptual understandings, knowledge or skills, as well as ideas for continuing the learning or next steps.

The portfolio pieces are supplemented by a written summary mid-year and an end-of-year summary report on the child as a learner framed through the lens of the PYP learner profile and Approaches to Learning (skills). This may include examples of a child’s learning in the classroom or from live Zoom sessions, as well as suggestions on the next steps to further the child’s learning. We also invite those parents interested to contribute to the report by adding your comment in the “parent response to learning” box.

As we welcome the cold weather, we are also now in flu season. The HK government has put in place a one-off special arrangement, to allow Hong Kong residents aged between 2 and 49 (except those who are pregnant, have low immunity or other contraindications) to receive influenza vaccines via some private doctors/clinics participating in the Vaccination Subsidy Scheme (VSS) on a first-come-first-served basis. Persons under eligible groups of VSS (e.g. Children aged between 2 years and below 12 years, or children aged 12 years or above who are studying at a primary school in Hong Kong) would receive free vaccination. If interested, parents may look up the details in the following website ([Web Link]) 

Please click on the links below to visit our class sites and learning blogs. You can also access these posts on the class site via the ESF App under the “Home Learning” tile.

K1 Class Sites: Dolphin ● Frog ● Panda ● MonkeyAM / Monkey PM

K2 Class Sites: Dragon ● Gecko ● Tiger ● Turtle

K1 Learning Blog ● K2 Learning Blog