The Tiger, 18th February, 2022
Head of School Message
Namaste!
Welcome to this week's edition of The Tiger.
I’d like to welcome four new families who joined us this week.
As our student enrolment climbs, we continue to be cautious with preventive measures as best we can. Our students have been following COVID safety protocols and have been wearing masks, social distancing and sanitising their hands.
We are currently planning to bring back our After School Activities (ASA's) and after school sports programme. John Bertken, Sports and Activities Coordinator, will be sending out more information in the next few days. We are excited to extend opportunities for our students to participate in activities and sports once again.
Although gyms, spas, places of worship, restaurants, and malls are beginning to open up in full capacity in Bengaluru, our aim is to remain cautious. Please note that large gatherings or events on campus are prohibited for the time being. We continue to ask parents to kindly refrain from entering our campus. I want to thank our parent community for being so patient and supportive during this challenging time. We will gradually open when it is safe to do so.
Lastly, I would encourage families to purchase a few Rapid Antigen Tests (RAT) to have at home in case your child has COVID related symptoms. A link for the Coviself Rapid Antigen kit can be found here. All symptomatic students must be compulsorily tested using the RAT (Rapid Antigen Test). If a child tests positive, they will have to isolate at home until they test negative.
These last two weeks our students have managed to have fun and enjoy being together as a community despite restrictions. I want to thank all our families for their endless patience in the face of a constantly evolving situation regarding COVID. Your support is very much appreciated.
Dr.Brian Brumsickle
Head of School
Primary School
The Student Services Department
Head of Student Support Services
This is a whole school position. Our Head manages the Primary Student Support team through weekly collaboration, homeroom liaison and meetings, managing our Learning Support Assistants (LSA) and is a member of the Primary Leadership Team. She also spends time observing learners in action and supporting the P1 and P2 homerooms.
EAL in the Primary School
In our documentation and our presentations we constantly explain that English as an Additional Language (EAL) teachers are a part of the homeroom team. They do take EAL learners out for specific English instruction during the Additional Languages block but they also work with our learners within the context of the homeroom environment. They take additional intensive sessions, lead literacy groups and support learning across the school day, ensuring our learners get the support they need.
Learning Support in the Primary School
In our documentation and our presentations we constantly explain that there is a Learning Support teacher in every homeroom team. They work collaboratively with every team to ensure every child is receiving what they need in order to grow as a learner. A reminder; we teach children HOW to learn as well as WHAT to learn and WHY they are learning the content. The Learning Support team is instrumental in ensuring these skills are a part of our instruction.
School Counsellor
Our School Counsellor also works with all learners. She leads our Personal and Social Education programme, working alongside homeroom teachers. The programme ensures your child’s emotional and social development are on track to meet their developmental needs. One specific area we are focussing on at the moment is problem solving in a social context. Sadly, our little people have forgotten how to solve problems over the past two years. Our Counsellor also meets with small groups and individual learners to help them develop appropriate skills in getting on with each other and developing specific skills useful for human interaction.
Meet Our Student Services Support Team
Karen Crooke
Primary School Principal
PYP Counsellor
Helpful Hints for Dealing With Fussy Eaters
If you’re a parent of a picky eater, it’s possible you’re dealing with equal amounts of worry and frustration. These simple tips might help encourage your child to eat more and make better choices when it comes to food.
Start small, give choices
Does your child have a few favourite foods? Maybe you could give them options for what they could have for each meal or in general for that day/week. Your child gets to choose from that list so there is still some autonomy. If you are heading out grocery shopping together, have your child pick 2-3 vegetables and fruits that they might like to eat. Also, instead of a big bowl of salad, start with a smaller one, for example.
Get creative
The internet is teeming with ideas on how to make healthy food look more appetising for children. Many of these ideas are non time consuming. For e.g have fruit slices as a cereal topping or serve a vegetable they’re not too fond of in a bowl that they like or cut food into fun shapes using cookie cutters.
What’s not to love about a robot salad or heart shaped waffles? The options are endless.
Consistency is key
Try to ensure your child’s mealtimes are regular and consistent everyday. While weekend dinners and mid-week birthday parties should be accommodated for, try to stick to the routine as much as possible. As we always say, children thrive on routine.
Be a good role model
Kids learn best when something is modelled for them. Reflect on your own eating habits. Where do you sit during mealtime? Do you skip meals? Do you avoid certain foods that you want your child to eat? Also, avoid having the TV on during meal times.
Should you need additional support, please feel free to write to me at neeti.sarkar@stonehill.in
Neeti Sarkar
PYP Counsellor
Primary News
恭喜恭喜! Gōng xǐ Gōng xǐ (Congrats! Congrats!)
2022 is the Year of the Tiger
This year, the primary students celebrated the Chinese Lunar New Year online. Our Chinese learners enjoyed and participated actively in our special programme.
The P4 students learnt about the traditional story of Nian. The P5 students learnt about the twelve Chinese zodiacs. The P6 students learnt how to make a 红包 hóng bāo (red envelope) and designed a banner with the elements of the tiger.
The P7 students learnt to make a paper cutting of 春(chūn ( Spring) and they also made an authentic video about the story of Nian.
The P8 students researched the Chinese New Year's customs and traditions. They learnt to write Chinese couplets to celebrate the festival.
After school reopened on the 7th of February every Chinese learner received a 红包 hóng bāo (red envelope) to experience the happiness of the festival.
We’d like to wish our Stonehill family a very 新年快乐 xīn nián kuài lè (Happy New Year) and 虎年大吉 hǔ nián dà jí (Good luck in the year of the Tiger!)
Edmund Ko
PYP Chinese Teacher
Secondary School
Intercultural Learning
In recent discussions with teachers, I looked at how our curriculum promotes intercultural learning in a meaningful way. Many schools worldwide see ‘international education’ or ‘intercultural learning’ as the celebration of festivals, the consumption of delicious food, and the displaying of flags.
While all of those things are fun and fine for a diverse community, ‘intercultural learning’ is a much deeper idea. Here’s how it progresses from shallow to deeper levels of understanding.
At a basic level, it’s important to provide opportunities for students to become multilingual and to work with colleagues from other cultures and backgrounds. This is fairly straightforward at a school like Stonehill due to the diversity of the student body and the language options available in the IB programmes.
At a slightly deeper level, schools need to provide opportunities for students to engage in the local community, usually in service projects (when Covid allows), as this exposes our students to the living realities of people very different to themselves. This again, is usually manageable, and these activities can be very powerful learning experiences for students. Students are also required to engage in global issues as they reflect on the impact of science and technology as part of their MYP courses.
Students from Stonehill collaborating with students from the Government school
Moving deeper again, it’s important to provide students with opportunities to discuss and reflect on cultural, linguistic, ethnic and social diversity.
This has been particularly relevant recently with the religious-political controversy over school uniforms in Karnataka. India is an incredibly diverse country in all respects, and our students need to think about what ‘diversity’ means and how it often conflicts with proposals for social unity and conformity. These discussions typically take place in ToK lessons, English classes and Individuals and Societies classes, and teachers select texts and materials in order to bring these discussions to light.
Finally, it’s always fascinating when you can engage students in discussions of the underlying structures that different cultures are built on. One of the objectives in our ‘Global Citizenship and Intercultural Learning Policy’ is for students to critically consider inequalities and power dynamics in inquiry, action and reflection — recognising the factors that influence the challenges faced by different groups (for example, women, youth, marginalised populations). This is the kind of work that our Gender-Sexuality Alliance and GirlUp group have been doing for a while. Hopefully, we’ll see similar clubs emerging in the future.
Girl Up Stonehill organised a Dress Down Day to challenge gender stereotypes.
Engaging with such controversial issues can be daunting for students, and it actually requires a high-level of language competence and background reading to meaningfully contribute to such discussions. I would like to think parents were having conversations with their children about the issues that they see in the news and, if not, I would strongly encourage you to do so. These conversations can be some of the most enlightening experiences in a Secondary School student’s education.
Joe Lumsden
Secondary School Principal
Secondary Focus
Service Within the Curriculum
Service is an integral component of the MYP curriculum. Whilst attending school online the M4 Visual Arts students worked in small groups. It took a while to implement the projects due to covid related restrictions. Below are a few completed service projects.
Subhi and Dhwani wanted to reduce paper wastage. They designed posters and put them up in Subhi’s dad’s workplace. The paper wastage reduced from thirty to twenty papers a week! They are now in the process of designing another poster in an attempt to reduce the wastage to zero.
Krishna and Ryo designed posters in relation to managing the pandemic.
Kriti implemented her project in the school boarding. She created a series of posters in order to motivate boarders.
Srividya, Shivani, Mehnaz & Aditri made posters to cheer up children undergoing cancer treatment at two local hospitals.
Ranmali Hapugalle
MYP & DP Visual Arts Teacher
Secondary Mathematics
Our M5 students, Hyunseok, Antariksh and Nevann took part in Infinity 2022, an inter-school mathematics competition held on the 8th of January 2022. It was organised by Aditya Birla World Academy. The competition is open for students studying in Grade 9, 10, 11 and 12. This year close to 300 schools participated and we are excited that our students made it to the top 50 in the seniors category.
Stonehill was runners up in the Math Challengers round in the South zone seniors category. Hyunseok and Nevann won the second runners up in the Clash of Mathematicians round in the seniors category. This round included ten questions which had to be solved in sixty minutes.
Here's a glimpse of a question:
Hyeonsuk shares his experience:
Antariksh, Nevann, and I participated in the INFINITY 2022, an annual mathematics competition. Ms. Greta introduced us to this event in November 2021. All of us practised over the winter break and surprisingly we managed to pass the zonal round for the South, and head to the final round. It was an exceptional, and meaningful experience for all of us as we got the opportunity to experience a competitive journey, interact with various types of questions that astonished us, and most importantly, cooperate with each other with our thoughts, beliefs, and strategies. We enjoyed every single bit of the event and we really appreciate Mr. Joe for encouraging us to participate despite our scheduled semester exam. I thank Mr. Jitendra for his constant support and encouragement towards such competitions. I express my gratitude to the teachers of the Mathematics department for helping us accomplish our journey until this moment (& further)!
Hyunseok, M5
Greta Gomes
HOD Mathematics
Boarding News
It was great to welcome our boarding students on the 6th of February. All are happy to be back and have settled into their routines.
I’d like to extend a warm welcome to our four new secondary students who joined us.We wish you all the best during your time at Stonehill.
A warm welcome to our new boarders
Thankfully, we have been able to organise after school sports and weekend activities to keep our students engaged. Weekday activities have been as pivotal as ever, encouraging teamwork and developing life skills.
Congratulations to one of our boarders, Geethika Tikkisetty,M4, who won the gold medal in the Junior National Equestrian Championship, under the Children-1 Category (under 14). A fantastic achievement and we are so proud of you!
On Saturday, twelve students set out to explore the local village of Tarahunise accompanied by Ms. Shelley. It was an amazing afternoon as they walked past Embassy Riding School and then through fields and plantations.
It was a wonderful walk to the local lake where the students saw storks, herons, egrets and many more birds.
They spoke to local farmers and discussed different harvesting techniques used by them.
It was a great opportunity to bond with the new boarders.
This semester, our D1 boarders will have the opportunity to participate in a Leadership course from ABSA. This will help them develop a range of skills such as entrepreneurship, diplomacy, goal setting, work/life and balance and much more. This will be helpful as they step into the outside world as active decision makers. The course will also teach them a range of personal qualities such as honesty, compassion, discipline, courage, loyalty, resourcefulness, perseverance and resilience.
Have a lovely weekend!
Glen Johnson
Head of Boarding
Whole School News
Reminder-Leaving Students Notice
To continue providing the best educational programmes, we need to have a good idea of class sizes throughout the academic year. To help achieve this, we request families who may leave during this semester, to notify the Admissions Department by email at: admissions@stonehill.in
This notification should be initiated two months prior to the last date of attendance of the student. If the notification is less than two months prior to the last date of attendance, US$ 300 will be withheld from the refundable security deposit as a late notice fee, in accordance with our Fee Policy.
Thank you for your support.
Admissions and Business Offices
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