Kowloon Junior School - ESF
https://www.kjs.edu.hk/newsletter-05-09-18/
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Newsletter- 05/09/18




Kowloon Junior School's latest newsletter is available to read now.

 

 

Dates for Your Diary


Friday 14 September                          KJS Lantern Festival & PTA AGM

Tuesday 18 September                      ESF Secondary Music Festival

Wednesday 19 September                 Scholastic Order Deadline

Monday 24 September                       Staff Continuous Professional Development Day - No school

Tuesday 25 September                      Mid Autumn Festival - No school

Monday 1 October                              National Day - No school

15 to 19 October                                 Mid Term Break - No school

29 October to 1 November                 Photo Days

Monday 5 November                          Staff Continuous Professional Development Day - No school

Wednesday 7 November                   Y1 Immunization

Friday 9 November                             Quiz Night / Bingo Night

15 and 16 November                          School Musical

19 to 21 November                             Y4 Camp

Friday 23 November                           ESF Orchestra Day

27 to 30 November                             Y5 Camp

3 to 7 December                                 Y6 Camp

Friday 14 December                           Last day of term - half day

17 December to 4 January                 Term Break - No school

Monday 7 January                              First day of Term 2

Friday 11 January                               Y6 Immunization

 

Dear Parents,

 

The last week has been incredibly beneficial for staff at KJS.

We enjoyed two days with Dr Helen Street investigating how we can develop contextual wellbeing at KJS. The overarching themes that came from the day were relationships, motivation and the learning environment.

Our ongoing challenge is to develop strengths based relationships with children, knowing them as individuals, their strengths, passions and interests and taking them from where they are in their learning now and stretching them to the next step, to success. A relationship focus means we also partner with you, the parent and find out as much as we can about your child so that we can work together to maximise their learning time at school. This is why the ‘Welcome Meetings' this week were so important and beneficial to us. We were delighted to have a turnout of over 90%! If you missed out please take the time to contact your child's teacher and see if an alternate time can be arranged to meet (this time would have to be within the hours of 8:30am to 4:00pm as per the Monday meeting schedule).

Our two days with Dr Street reinforced the importance of understanding what motivates children and fostering intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation. The most powerful and long term process to support success in each child is to enable them to love learning and be intrinsically motivated to be the best they can be. This is helped by growth mindset strategies, process feedback and by supporting student agency. Finally we need to ensure our learning environments promote student agency, wellbeing and learning. This requires we research best practice and allocate resources to design stimulating and motivational learning spaces.

How you can help at home to support your child's wellbeing and develop intrinsic motivation?

 

At her parent workshop on Thursday night Dr Street gave some specific advice:

  • Praise and give feedback on your child's effort and take time to look at what they have shown you. Rather than saying “Great reading, what a clever boy!” Try “ Great effort, I noticed how you used expression / re read words/ used the punctuation” (The “What to praise” section is helpful reading here)

  • Rather than, “I love your picture, it is beautiful, you are so talented!” try, “I can see how you used your colour there / tell me about your picture / I can see how you have focussed on detail”

  • Rather than stickers and rewards at home for expected behaviours just expect the behaviour and look for alternative connections! We should not reward children for doing the expected.

  • Talk with your child sharing experiences of what motivates you in your job or why you do what you do as a parent (you certainly don't get paid for it, nor do you get stickers or certificates!)

  • Encourage your child that learning from mistakes grows their brain, try things that are hard and celebrate mistake making as a learning opportunity. Dr Street reminded us: “Remember when your child was learning to walk? You didn't tell him/her off when they fell over, rather you encouraged them. The same should still apply now!”


 

Have a great week ahead, I am sure you have already spoken with your child about the visit to school and let them know what you shared.

Together we can achieve success for every child!



 

Kind regards

亲切的问候,

सधन्यवाद

Neill O'Reilly

Principal

 

IMPORTANT: Y6 to Y7 Transfer Application


This is an important notice to all Y6 parents. If you wish your child to transfer to an ESF secondary school, you are required to submit a transfer application for Year 7 (available only on Gateway 1) during the period Monday 3 September- Friday 14 September 2018.



Applications are processed according to current residential address at the time of application; change of residential address following submission of application and prior to entry to Year 7 will not be considered.

For further details, please refer to the information available on the ESF website at http://www.esf.edu.hk/year6-to-year7-key-dates/ for key dates and http://www.esf.edu.hk/esf-zones for school zones.

 

Chess Club


Chess Club is back!  KJS Chess Club is scheduled to start from next Wednesday 12 September in D&T Room (4/F). This year we have invited The Chess Academy to host the club at KJS. To sign up, please contact the company on 34804199/91787376/info@activekidshk.com. For more information, please refer to the attached flyer.

 

PTA Update


PTA Committee

We had our first meeting yesterday and it went well.  Our committee could do with more parent representatives.  If you are interested in attending our monthly meetings and getting more involved in your child's school life, please sign up to join our committee.

If it is not feasible for you to attend our regular meetings, you can sign up to be a volunteer at our events.  Please do help us whenever you can.

Email us at pta@kjs.edu.hk or pop into our PTA office and let us know if you would like to get involved by giving us your name, contact number, email address, your child's name and his/her class.

 

Lantern Festival and Annual General Meeting



Our first PTA event, the Lantern Festival is on Friday 14 September 2018.  We will be celebrating this festival by going green and creating our own lanterns, preferably using recycled materials and avoiding single-use plastic.  Please work together with us and the children as we help make KJS a sustainable school with minimal waste.

The big part of the Mid-Autumn Festival is family and family gatherings.  Siblings, parents, grandparents and other family members are all invited to this event.  Entrance is free.  Bring along a picnic with you - a mat, some food and drinks, preferably water in a reusable bottle, which can be refilled at school.  This will be an alcohol-free event; please refrain from bringing any alcoholic drinks.

We will start setting up from 4:00pm onwards on the day of this event.  The Festival begins at 5:00pm.  We will kick off the event by having our AGM in the school hall and reflecting on what the PTA has accomplished in the past year and how we have contributed to the school.  After which,  families can enjoy their own picnic in the playground.  We will begin gathering the children at around 6:00pm for our popular Lantern Parade, assisted by the teachers.

Please note that this is a family event.  We will not have any PTA volunteers on site and parents are responsible for their own children.  It is important that children stay with the group and teachers as they participate and move along the parade.

In continuation with our efforts in going green, please note that rubbish bins will be clearly marked with the following labels: food waste, plastic products and everything else.  Let's be mindful when tossing out our rubbish at the event.  We would like to bring awareness to the children, and possibly to ourselves as well, as to how much waste we create.

We look forward to welcoming you and your families at this festival.

 

Thank you.

 

Student Success


Momoka (5M) won 1st runner up at All Hong Kong Karatedo Youth Game 2018. Congratulations Momoka!



ESF and Other Notices




 



 
Disclaimer:

Kowloon Junior School, English Schools Foundation and its affiliates shall take no responsibility for any activities, events and services that are organised by other organisations or individuals and are mentioned in our newsletters..

 
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