Read Our Stories of Learning at the Alice Smith School
Primary Weekly Highlights: Our Multilingual Learners
Diversity is a major strength of our school community and can be seen in so many different ways. One of these is the range of languages spoken by parents, students and staff. At JB we feel fortunate to have so many multilingual members of our community and in particular our aim is to nurture our multilingual students.
Hamish Chalmers, a leading researcher in the field of..
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Developing 21st Century Skills
Workplaces today and in the future need people who can collaborate and offer creative solutions to complex problems. Educators are increasingly looking for ways to equip their students with those skills within an environment that encourages active learning behaviours.
Teaching methods are evolving, with classes regularly employing group projects and individual work along..
Part 1: Questions to ask when choosing an international school
As a parent searching for schooling, considering an international school for your child is a good idea. With rising demand for international schooling, particularly in East and South-East Asia, according to ISC Research, forecasts suggest that international schools will host almost 7m pupils by 2023. This can make your job of picking a school difficult and you may not know..
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Primary Weekly Highlights: Primary Art
It has certainly been a busy year in the KLASS Primary Art Room! You need only walk along the JB Campus where the Diamond Jubilee Art Celebration is currently being exhibited to see the wide range of artistic skills that our talented JB artists have on display.
The students have enjoyed learning a variety of print-making techniques – ranging from monoprints in Year 3 to..
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Primary Weekly Highlights: Reading Developments at JB
Here at JB we are committed to being an evidence informed school. This means that we examine the best available research and evidence, we consider our context including our students and setting and we reflect using our own experience and expertise when making decisions around learning.
We have spent the last 18 months reviewing our curriculum with a view to becoming more..
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Primary Weekly Highlights: How strong is a piece of spaghetti?
Our Year 6 students have just completed a brilliant Design and Technology unit focused on structures. The aim of this unit was for students to know that;
- Structures can be supported with guy lines and flying buttresses
- The shorter the piece of spaghetti, the stronger it will be
They would be able to:
- Construct a flying buttress to support a tower
- Use appropriate lengths of..
Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee Celebrations at JB
We always encourage our students to learn about important events in history and this week we have dedicated time and focus to the incredible reign of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom.
Several events have taken place across the week and today this historic occasion. These have included the most brilliant timeline display dating back to the date of her..
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Primary Weekly Highlights: Learning through play in Year 1
Play is an extremely important part of every child’s early development. When children play, they learn. Here at JB, we consider our Year 1 to be an extension of our Early Years. In this week's blog Alexis Farrell, our Year 1 Leader tells us more about how this happens in practice.
Play is an extremely important part of every child’s early development. When children play, they..
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Celebrating student success in the Bronze Medallion Lifesaving Award
Since the start of Term 2, our Year 9 Sports Leaders have been focusing on lifesaving, working towards achieving their Bronze Medallion Lifesaving Award. In this week’s Secondary Blog, Alice Curwood (Head of Curriculum PE) and Mark Atkinson (PE Teacher and Lead teacher of the Sports Leaders Elective) share their insights into this valuable student learning pathway.
The..
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Sustainability at EP: What have we been up to?
The two KLASS values that resonate most with our Eco Club are kindness and respect - to ourselves and to our planet Earth. In this week’s Secondary Blog, our student Eco Club members, Meeraam, Alexa, Letty, Noshin and Risa share how KLASS and the Eco Club are working towards a more sustainable future and how you can get involved too.
The increasing amount of non-recycled..
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Secondary Weekly Highlights: STEM Week ‘22: Ready, aim, FIRE!🧑🔬🚀
STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) week at Equine Park was a colourful and explosive affair this year, starting on Monday 14th March 2022. Our Head of Faculty for Science and DT, Aaron Bridges, and the STEM team can’t wait to tell you more in this week’s Secondary Blog. Enjoy! In Physics, students were dazzled by the bright lights of various cathode ray tubes,..
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Secondary Weekly Highlights: Mindful versus Mind Full 🧐🧠📝
At a time when young people are being over-stimulated by screens, the process of examinations and just being a teenager, they are in danger of being overloaded satiated and stressed out! Mindfulness can be a tool that helps young people - all people - find calm in the present, regulate their emotions, self regulate their thoughts and actions and develop compassion for..
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Primary Weekly Highlights: Term 2 Music 🎼🎶
Music is alive and well in Term 2, and our JB students are relishing the opportunity to make music together once again. Some of the term highlights include:Peripatetic Music LessonsBack in full swing, it’s lovely to hear the Music Department filled with the sound of instrumental music lessons once again. Learning a musical instrument improves brain function, spatial awareness,..
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Secondary Weekly Highlights: Reaching Across Borders 🌎 - Tackling global issues through Model United Nations 🇺🇳
Last weekend, our MUN students took part in the SEASAC virtual MUN Conference, working through global issues with students from a range of schools and countries. In this week’s Secondary Blog, our Head of Enrichment, David Morris, and Year 8 student, Caitlyn, share more about the experience of being part of the MUN community. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, our Model..
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Primary Weekly Highlights: Learning About Forces in Year 6 🧲🧐
Year 6 is determined to bring learning to life safely for every one of our students. The science topic, Forces, was the perfect way to develop the children’s understanding of the scientific process through a variety of hands-on experiments.
Hands-on science encourages the children to DO something – observe, ask questions, touch, experiment. Allowing children to really get..
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Primary Weekly Highlights: Learning in MFL at JB
At Alice Smith, students develop their intercultural understanding as they learn to value their own cultures, languages and beliefs, and those of others. In our MFL lessons, we ensure that students engage with diverse cultures, creating connections and cultivating mutual respect. We believe that understanding each other’s cultures is an essential part of living with others in..
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Primary Weekly Highlights: PE & Swimming at JB ⛹🏻♀️🏊🏼♂️
Physical Education at JB
What a week of learning we have had in PE; kicking off with a brand new unit of work for our Key Stage 2 students using the game of spikeball. This game will challenge the students to deepen their understanding of some key physical education skills, concepts and strategies. Students will be learning transferable movement skills including sending and..
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Secondary Weekly Highlights: Immerse-d in Education 📚🧑🏫
‘What is history's most significant invention?’ ‘Is stealing a loaf of bread to feed a starving family a crime?’ ‘Should all vaccines for all diseases be mandatory?’
These are just a selection of the interesting questions that some of our students at EP found themselves researching and debating in their entries for the prestigious Immerse Education Essay Competition in..
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Primary Weekly Highlights: Post Covid - Impact on Learning 📆
This week we began our series of parent workshops. Parents joined us in the session both online and face to face. To have parents back onsite was amazing!The focus of this first session was sharing our observations on trends and patterns we are identifying within our students. Has Covid, lockdown and numerous school closures and disruptions had an impact?
Our general findings
..
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Primary Weekly Highlights: Year 6 New Skill Presentation 🗣🎙
Year 6 New Skill PresentationThis week, as part of the Year 6 Challenge award, some of our Year 6 children have taken part in the New Skill Presentation event. This aspect of the Challenge asked our children to learn a new skill and evince their progress through a live presentation. With many parents watching eagerly online via a live Youtube link, the children seriously..
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Primary Weekly Highlights: Learning through Poetry 📖🎙
Our students get numerous opportunities to participate in academic events throughout the school year. Here at JB, our teachers often see this as more than a competition or event and will look to plan a unit of learning around the event theme or topic.
Over the last few weeks, our Year 4 and 5 students have been learning about Poetry in connection with an upcoming COBIS Poetry..
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Primary Weekly Highlights: Upcoming Academic Competitions 🥇🥈🥉
Alice Smith School is a member of many prestigious regional and international learning communities. These groups offer us opportunities to celebrate learning with other schools in Malaysia and around the world. This week in school, many of our students are preparing for competitions hosted by some of our linked organisations.
Primary Weekly Highlights: Music Moments 🎶
Music Moments has been a much loved staple in the JB Music calendar for a number of years. The event provides an exciting and high profile, yet low stakes performance opportunity, allowing students of all ages and skill levels to experience the joy of performing and share their learning and their progress with their peers and the school community. Performance is vital in the..
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Primary Weekly Highlights: The Highwayman
Over the last three weeks, our Year 6 students have been exploring Alfred Noyes’ classic narrative poem The Highwayman. The poem is about a highwayman - a robber, who steals from travellers and his lover, Bess. The poem focuses on the lives of these two main characters, their love for one another and their deaths. From this work, the children have learned the language features..
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Primary Weekly Highlights: Learning through Block Play
Play is an important feature of learning here at JB. From Preschool to Year 2, our students' learning is supported by providing opportunities to play. We consider Preschool, Reception and Year 1 to be our kindergarten years and we adopt a very play-based approach to learning.
A significant focus for us in these years is on the personal and physical development of children..
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Secondary Weekly Highlights: A Sustainable Future at EP 🌏💚
We are delighted to announce that we have recently been awarded the Eco-Schools Bronze Award, in partnership with WWF Malaysia. This is our first big step in our journey towards becoming a Green Flag School and is truly a testament to our students’ hard work, resilience and determination. In this week’s KLASS Blog, our Eco-Coordinator, Hannah Richardson, tells us more about..
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Primary Weekly Highlights: Planning by Backward Design
Here at the Primary Campus, we use a curriculum planning approach called understanding by design or backward design. This was a concept developed by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. A ‘traditional’ approach to lesson design involves content being identified, along with a sequence of lessons and finally an assessment. In a backward design approach, what students should know and..
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Hook with a Book: The Great Chocoplot
At the beginning of term we heard from Mr. McCarthy, our Primary Principal, about the ‘Hook from a Book’ units which brought great excitement and interest amongst our Year 1 to 6 students.
In Year 4 Ms. Ferguson's class (4I) read 'The Great Chocoplot' by Chris Callaghan. It's the story of young Jelly and her family who live in the chocolate factory town of Chompton-on-de-Lyte...
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Primary Weekly Highlights: We are back! 🤩
Welcoming more students back on campus this week has brought such happy and positive emotions. Our students have amazed us in how they have readjusted to face to face learning. Visiting classrooms has been an absolute pleasure and the JB campus has been the most wonderful place this week.A big focus in our assemblies and PSHE lessons has been friendship and the character..
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KLASS Library Publishes Student EPQs
The Alice Smith School has offered the EPQ to Sixth Form students since 2009. It was initially a compulsory component for Sixth Form students but has more recently become optional. With universities now giving greater recognition of this qualification in entry offers, we are seeing a strong take up by our students.
Our results for EPQ have risen to a very high level with 54%..
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Primary Weekly Highlights: Launch of New and Exciting Units of Learning 📖
Recently the students have begun some new learning units at JB. This is always an exciting time for students as they discover what they will learn about through the steps of learning within their unit and the end goal.
Year 5 teachers have launched a brilliant unit focused on learning all about the Aztec Civilisation. The students had to develop their teamwork skills on..
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Primary Weekly Highlights: Drawing and Early Representation ✏️〰🖼
Drawing is a crucial activity during kindergarten years. It is a way for a child to express their understanding of the world around them. Drawing allows children to make meaning and freely express their ideas, thoughts and feelings. Children usually have a natural urge to draw and here at JB, we ensure our learning environments support this.
Across our kindergarten years,..
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Primary Weekly Highlights: Our Teachers
World Teacher Day was celebrated this week and I would like to thank all parents and students for showing their appreciation to their teachers in different ways. This day has made me reflect on how outstanding our teachers are here at JB.Our teachers are some of the most caring and committed people I have ever worked with. I was reminded of this recently, when we came together..
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Returning to School Safely
Finally our last few year groups are heading back onto campus. For many of these students it is the first time they have been into school since May having finished the last academic year, and started this one, with online classes.
It is great to see the students connecting with each other and their teachers in way that isn't possible on 'Zoom' or other virtual platforms but it..
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Primary Weekly Highlights: Our Students Return!
Yesterday was a special day. Our students across the kindergarten years returned and brought our campus back to life. Classrooms were full of happy and joyful children who embraced being back at school and brought smiles to everyone at JB.
I was so impressed with how instantly comfortable and settled our children were as they separated from their parents and strolled into..
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Primary Weekly Highlights: International Dot Day
ART ROOM BLOG
This week in the virtual Art Room, we have been celebrating International DOT Day! Dot Day is based on the book, The Dot, by Peter Reynolds which tells the story of a child called Vashti who resists creating art until her teacher empowers her to discover what a talented artist she really is! It is also a story of how even the youngest of us can ‘Make their Mark’..
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Secondary Weekly Highlights: Unveiling our EP Eco Code!
As we celebrate Alice Smith School’s 75 years of history in Malaysia, now, more than ever, we must look to the future and ensure our community has the knowledge, skills and passion necessary to act in the defence of our planet. We must lead by example and demonstrate sustainable practices in all we do. In this week’s Secondary Blog, our Enrichment Leader and Associate Vice..
Primary Weekly Highlights: Our Students
As I reflect upon the first two weeks of this school year, it is our students who are foremost in my mind. Our students have yet again demonstrated incredible levels of resilience and strength in the face of some major challenges.
They have had to cope with a change of year group including new teachers and classmates while continuing to learn virtually. Speaking with our..
Secondary Weekly Highlights: Rise and Shine!
As we conclude the second week of our new school year, it is wonderful to see and hear of the opportunities and experiences our students are enjoying and preparing for. In this week’s KLASS Blog, our ECA Coordinator and House Leader, Danny Hodnett, is excited to share two such enrichment opportunities with you:
With every new start to a school year, Alice Smith never fails to..
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Secondary Weekly Highlights: Connecting and Reconnecting
It has been such a joyful week of connecting and reconnecting: students with teachers, students with students, teachers with teachers, teachers with parents, parents with parents. Learning has well and truly begun and so have the social interactions, debate, enthusiasm, discussion and creating that make up such an important part of that learning experience. It was wonderful to..
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Primary Weekly Highlights: Learning has begun at JB!
Students have made an amazing start to their year in this first week at JB. Our students in Preschool have shown such enthusiasm for their learning and adapted brilliantly to online learning with their teachers. Across Year 1 and Reception, children have engaged in a range of activities getting to know each other, their teachers and sharing information about themselves.
From..
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Primary Weekly Highlights: Our Students
Our students have been extraordinary this school year. Faced with so much change and challenge, they have continued to amaze me with their resilience and fortitude.
As Principal, I have been shared into countless examples of our students showing kindness and humility throughout the school year. Students have engaged in service to others through awareness raising, charity..
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Wi-Fi Upgrade and SSO - FAQs
Our IT team will be working throughout the summer to upgrade our Wi-Fi on both campuses and move us towards a Single Sign On (SSO) for school systems. The FAQs below give some more detail on this but if your question isn't answered you can also email our IT team directly who will be happy to help.
Is there anything else I need to know?
The iSAMS system will be offline between..
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Primary Weekly Highlights: Community
As we approach the end of a very challenging school year, I have been reflecting on my experiences as Primary Principal at Alice Smith. One aspect of our school has continually demonstrated its strength and importance; our community. I believe it is our community that has played a significant role in supporting us all through this testing year.
Here at JB we have strived to..
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Primary Weekly Highlights: Turtles 🐢
Our learning here at JB is always purposeful. We plan and teach units of learning through our cross curricular approach which are a combination of knowledge and skill building aimed at deepening student understanding. Our recent unit on turtles 🐢 in Year 2 was an example of all that is great about our approach.
The unit comprised a brilliant balance of knowledge acquisition..
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Primary Weekly Highlights: Music Matters!🎼📻🎶
Despite the ongoing challenges we are facing on a global scale, music making has continued to enhance the lives of many, including those within our school community.
The positive impact that music in its many forms has on wellbeing is widely documented. Whether participating or listening, music is associated with improved mood, reduced anxiety, lower levels of depression,..
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Six ways to help your child develop early maths skills
At
Alice Smith we know how important developing early skills are. Here's six ways you can help your preschooler to develop early maths skills and build important foundations for later number work:
- Counting: Understanding numbers will help children in all areas of maths. When children hear adults counting, using numbers and talking about quantity it develops their..
Cross-Curricular Learning in Action: The Hook
For their new topic our Year 6's were treated to inspirational messages from two very special guests connected with their new cross-curricular unit - Professor Peter Frankopan and Joanna Lumley OBE FRGS.
In Key Stage 2 our Primary curriculum approach uses flexible, well planned cross-curricular units to encourage students to make sense of their learning by creating links..
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The School Library in the age of Virtual Learning
In this week's blog our Head of Libraries, Rob George, looks at the how Alice Smith School library has responded to the challenges of the pandemic.
"Like all aspects of educational provision the school library has not been spared from significant challenges as Covid 19 forced a rapid transition to virtual learning. We pride ourselves on having an amazing library that..
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