The Tiger, November 3rd, 2023
Head of School Message
IB Evaluation Report
A few weeks ago, Stonehill received the official IB Evaluation report from the visit that took place in late November.
I would like to use this opportunity to share with you some of the things that the visitors noted.
The report was full of commendations for how we run the IB Programmes: here is a selection:
“The school prioritises the needs of learning and teaching within IB programmes in organising time and allocating resources.”
“The school incorporates academic integrity into learning and teaching as a matter of policy, and ensures the inclusion of the values of honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility. Teacher librarians conduct sessions on academic integrity for students.”
The IB also had a few suggestions for how we could further develop our programmes. These included strengthening the transition for students between programmes, creating more planning time for Secondary teachers to develop Interdisciplinary units, getting the PYP students out into the local community more often, and developing a more inquiry-based approach to teaching in some areas of the Secondary School. These all seemed like sensible suggestions to us and we will be working on them in the coming years.
All in all, this report was a very rewarding validation of all the work that our teachers do every day, the wonderful students that we get to teach, and the support that we have from the whole community.
Joe Lumsden
Head of School
Whole School News
Stonehill's 15th Year Anniversary Celebrations!
We are thrilled to invite you to Stonehill's 15th Year Anniversary celebrations!
Please join us for a memorable evening fun, food, music and dancing. Your presence will make this evening special.
Friday, 1st December, 2023
6 pm onwards at
Stonehill International School
(Open to students, parents and staff)
Tiger Spotted!
Introducing Tiger Spotted, a new initiative that aims to highlight the incredible diversity of our faculty and admin staff. Here is our first featured teacher in the series to follow.
PTA News
The PTA wishes to express our heartfelt gratitude to everyone who attended the Diwali Mela. We hope you had a wonderful time enjoying the festivities, cultural experiences, and delicious treats. We look forward to creating more memorable moments together in the future. Thank you for being a part of our Diwali celebration!
Primary School
Dear Parents and Caregivers,
In my last Tiger article I asked you to read an article from the UN about communicating with your child. I believe you will find the suggestions in the UN article very helpful when speaking to your child about bullying. I have shared eight suggestions below that build upon my last Tiger article.
These points should help build the bond between you and your child, and quip your child to deal with challenges that could arise from bullying, or negative behaviour. I hope you find them useful.
Open Communication
Encourage your child to talk about their experiences and feelings. This means you will need to make time for them to do this, and as I said in my last Tiger article, this can be a challenge. That said, by creating time you will help your child feel safe and comfortable discussing issues with you.
Listen Actively
When your child talks about bullying, listen without judgement or interruption. Validate their feelings and let them know you're there for support. In your mind, know that we in school will support you, so please focus your listening on what your child is saying, so you can listen to understand, rather than listen to respond.
Empower, Build Confidence and Teach Conflict Resolution
Help your child develop self-confidence and assertiveness. Share with your child what they can do and praise them when they accomplish something. Help your child understand the importance of conflict resolution and finding peaceful ways to address issues. You can do this by explaining to your child that they can use words to ask someone to stop doing something they don’t like. You can practise this with your child. This helps to teach your child how to stand up for themselves while remaining calm and composed and it encourages them to seek solutions rather than retaliate.
Involve us at Stonehill
Contact your Homeroom teacher to discuss an issue with them. We will work collaboratively with you to find a solution to the issue.
Encourage Friendship
Help your child build positive social connections by supporting their involvement in extra-curricular activities or clubs and by making friendships outside of school. Healthy friendships can provide a buffer against bullying.
Foster Resilience
Teach your child coping strategies for managing stress and emotions. Strategies like deep breathing, mindfulness, and positive self-talk can be beneficial. You might find this short clip helpful.
Online Safety
Monitor your child's online activity and teach them about responsible internet use. Cyberbullying is a significant concern nowadays, so please ensure you know how to report and block harmful online contacts or websites. You might find this short clip helpful.
PYP Coordinator
Young Entrepreneurs in Action
On the 20th of November, two groups of Primary school entrepreneurs along with their peers from the Secondary school, represented Stonehill at WeWork India Sustainability Summit 2023.
One group showcased their "From Seeds to Table'' project, and the other group introduced the audience to “The Sustainability Compass”, the thinking strategy supporting sustainable decision-making.
Their impactful display and confident presentations not only inspired the audience but also encouraged a broader perspective on integrating comprehensive strategies into our daily practices for a more sustainable future. This experience prepared our students for the real world and reinforced the importance of sustainability in their future endeavours, fostering a generation committed to making a positive impact on our planet. These children felt empowered by demonstrating their skills as leaders, communicators, thinkers, innovators, and entrepreneurs. They stole the show at the summit and presented their initiatives with great passion and dedication.
PYP Counsellor
Helpful Hints for Parents to Address and Prevent Bullying
Last week, in anticipation of Anti-Bullying Week which we've just observed from Oct 30 - Nov 2, my PSE (Personal and Social Education) classroom lessons were focused on helping students understand the distinctions between rudeness, meanness, and actual bullying. We delved into what constitutes bullying, how to become active upstanders rather than passive bystanders, and how to report bullying incidents at school. However, it's crucial to remember that this is only part of the equation.
Grasp the true nature of bullying
Children often use the term "bullying" quite loosely, and some adults do as well. It's worth taking the time to comprehend the distinctions between rudeness, meanness, and bullying. This understanding will enable more meaningful conversations with your child if they ever confide in you about being bullied. Remember, bullying is always intentional, sustained, and involves a power imbalance.Â
Recognise the warning signsÂ
There may be times when your child is hesitant to speak up about being bullied. Initiate discussions with them about school, their classmates, playtime, and relationships with others. Pay attention if your child appears reluctant to attend school, makes excuses to avoid certain activities, or exhibits physical symptoms that could indicate emotional distress. While these signs may not definitively confirm bullying, they offer insights into what might be happening.Â
Discuss bullying with themÂ
Engage your child in open-ended conversations about bullying. Utilise picture books or social stories that address the topic. Don't wait for your child to encounter bullying before broaching the subject.Â
Teach them how to speak up against bullying
Let your children know that it's perfectly acceptable to say "No" or "Stop" when they feel unsafe or uncomfortable. Emphasise the importance of their voice. Use role-playing to help them understand how to speak up if they witness or personally experience bullying.Â
Encourage them to be upstanders, not bystandersÂ
Our children need to understand that they have the ability and responsibility to speak up, even when they are not the direct victim of bullying. Encourage them to say "No" or "Stop" on behalf of someone who may be unable to stand up for themselves. Stress the importance of reporting such incidents to a trusted adult without delay.
If you need additional support or resources to address this issue with your child, feel free to write to me at neeti.sarkar@stonehill.in
Neeti Sarkar
PYP Counsellor
Primary News
Student Support Services
What is Rude? What is Mean? What is bullying?
This week, our whole-school has been celebrating anti-bullying week. This year’s theme included developing our student’s understanding of the difference between being rude, being mean and being a bully. Our PYP Counsellor has spent the last two weeks working with individual classes across the Primary school to help them understand these terms.
Understanding the distinctions between rudeness, meanness, and bullying is crucial in fostering a safe and respectful environment for our children.
Rude behaviour involves unintentional impoliteness, often due to lack of social skills. Mean behaviour, on the other hand, is deliberate, aiming to hurt someone's feelings without a genuine reason.
It stems from a child's negative emotions, yet doesn't involve a power imbalance, unlike bullying. Bullying entails repetitive aggressive behaviour, intending to cause harm, fear, or distress, and often involves a power imbalance where the aggressor targets someone unable to defend themselves effectively.
The Student Support Services has built upon these lessons by designing various activities for the students to participate in this week. This has included working together in groups to create a person showing the difference between feelings of kindness and feelings of bullying. They also created chains of kindness to pledge not to bully and choose to be kind. Students were also encouraged to participate in various dress-down days allowing students to express who they are as individuals.
On the 2nd of November, the PYP students participated in our whole-school Kindness March where they were able to show that it’s cool to be kind! The students marched out to the field and all homerooms across the school connected their individual class chains with the kindness chains of other classes. This meant that all 680 students and teachers were able to come together and create one giant Stonehill kindness chain to show how our Stonehill community chooses kindness and strives to create a sense of belonging for everyone in our community!
Who We Are - P1 and P2
Our unit on Who We Are had our P1 and P2 learners inquire into how communicating stories helps to understand each other and how we can create and share our own stories with our friends.
We tuned into our unit with a mysterious basket filled with props which had a letter that said it was from the story fairy who needed our help collecting stories. This got our learners engaged in creating their unique stories.
We learned of different ways a story can be shared, through storybooks, number stories, by talking about our own stories or using our imagination, through puppets, props and even through music. We collaborated with some of the secondary learners who acted out different stories of the Indian festival, while some of them shared their favourite songs and rhymes when they were little and talked about how it made them feel.
Secondary School
This month is dedicated to the various celebrations and we have taken great care to create a festive atmosphere. While we have enjoyed endless festivities, we have also generated awareness. The Student Council's Spirit Week and the Anti-bullying Week ensured that students celebrated Halloween and Diwali while gaining an understanding of the impact bullying can have on one's self-esteem.
The anti-bullying week witnessed dress-down days, awareness projects, the Kindness March, and peer support programs through PSD lessons. It was quite a spectacle to witness a dinosaur among various eerie characters during the Halloween festivities in the MYP courtyard!
We were impressed with the quality of the presentations at the D2 Student-led conference. There were thought provoking discussions that the students showed us through their DP coursework. While some exhibited a completely unique take on a literary text, others showed their passion for school clubs and other initiatives. It was a showcase of talent, commitment, and perseverance from our DP fraternity.
The MYP courtyard was festive today with the Diwali workshops, led by the students, that included origami, candle, rangoli, mehendi, lantern, and diya making workshops. These activities played a crucial role in deepening our students' understanding of Indian culture.
Also, we are deepening our understanding of Sustainability. A team of teachers and students visited the Gopathi indigenous farm to learn about seed conservation.
The Inter-Disciplinary Unit (IDU) show was a testament to the high-quality learning taking place in the M2 classes. Weeks of hard work, detailed research, and exemplary presentations made it all worthwhile.
The students discussed the impact of war on culture and also spoke about the data involving mental health disorders post-pandemic. They chose relevant local and global contexts to showcase their learning. We are now looking forward to the IDU connections made by the other grades.
Stonehill students have made us proud by winning first place in the Binary Brawl at 10X International School. They developed a robot that was an integrated IoT platform to collect data for trees and soil in jungles & a data model using AI to check plant health.
Our students are independent learners and leaders and they proved so at Mosaic, an annual student-led Humanities fest. A team of more than twenty students led their peers, under the supervision of the Humanities department, and hosted a hundred and fifty students across six schools from Bangalore.
The competition provided a platform for students to think outside the box, collaborate, and develop innovative solutions to address contemporary global issues in Business, Economics, History, Geography, and Psychology. The students developed their team-building skills as they managed a variety of roles and responsibilities to make this event a grand success.
The Science Bowl event was also a great success. There were fifty teams from twenty-one different schools for the High school online event and twenty-eight teams on campus for the middle school event.
Secondary News
Language Acquisition and its connection to Well-being
Our ability to communicate, understand, and interact with the world around us is what Language Acquisition is all about. Over the years, there are numerous studies which explored the cognitive, social, and cultural aspects of learning a new language but one aspect that is often overlooked is the importance of well-being. Well-being plays a crucial role in Language Acquisition, because it shapes the way we learn, retain, and apply new languages. At Stonehill, we have decided to dedicate multiple units to the importance of well-being and we are connecting them to other subjects as well as the world we live in.
In French, we are currently learning mental health and we recently looked at how to reduce stress and anxiety. One of the most evident links between well-being and Language Acquisition is the role of stress and anxiety.
Learning a new language can be challenging, but learners who are in a state of well-being tend to experience lower levels of stress, making it easier for them to focus, retain information, and engage with the language-learning process more effectively.
Some of our learners are looking at the effect of yoga poses on our body and mind and creating their own poses using imperative and possessive concepts, others have inquired into mental health and tried to raise awareness by creating posters for the other students.
In Spanish, we are promoting positive learning experiences because it also plays a significant role in shaping the overall learning experience. Positive emotions, such as curiosity, excitement, and satisfaction, enhance the Language Acquisition process. Our M3 and M4 learners will be planning a trip to Spain or Latin America and through this process, they are more likely to persist, practice regularly, and seek out new opportunities to use the language.
A positive attitude fosters a sense of accomplishment, further fuelling motivation and perseverance in Language Acquisition.
In Mandarin, the students are enhancing their language learning skills by increasing their social interaction with native speakers and fellow learners. They baked a pineapple cake to celebrate the moon festival.
Good mental and emotional health can cultivate self-confidence and self-assuredness, enabling more open and meaningful communication. This, in turn, can expedite language acquisition through positive interactions and real-world practice opportunities.
Our Hindi students delved into the ways festivals and colors impact one's well-being, touching upon emotional influence, cultural ties, and social interactions.
Festivals and colors evoke joy, foster unity, and provide stress relief, which, in turn, nurture a sense of belonging and an appreciation for diversity. Additionally, they explored the role of aesthetics and creative expression in contributing to a positive impact on mental and emotional health.
The sum of our success: A team united by Math
The M1 students are busy making connections between fractions, decimals, and percentages with links to their applications in real-life situations. The M2 students worked on the Inter-Disciplinary Unit (IDU) in Maths and English.
The M2B students created posters to represent the diverse population of the Earth if it were shrunk to a community of only 100 people. The diversity included different food habits, economic and employment status, religions and literacy.
The M2 Math students celebrated the Interdisciplinary unit in Maths and English and are now working on the reflection. A glimpse of the same can be seen in the video here. The D2- Math AA HL students wrapped up their IA ideas and the same is seen in the video of the student led conference here. As part of proofs, the D1 students thought of identities they like and the same is seen in the video link here.
Greta Gomes
MYP and DP Maths & HoD of Maths Dept, TOK
The M3, section 3 students, were introduced to flowcharts. They were asked to create a game from scratch and explain the flow chart of the game they created. The students came up with ping pong and some adventure games.
Get a glimpse of it here.
Hemanth Rohan
MYP & DP Maths
Maths classes have a variety of learning experiences. The students are engaged with the initial inquiry process of the concept, sometimes in between exploration and sometimes wrapping up the concept with the application.
Maths beyond the classroom
The upcoming competitions include the Mathematical Association of America and the American Mathematics competition (MAA- AMC)-10/12-A and 10/12B on 8th and 14th of November respectively.
On the 28th of October, two D2 teams participated in the Infinity competition. We look forward to the platinum tickets as part of qualifying. Coming up are Celebrations of Shakuntala Devi on the 7th of November and the Fibonacci Day on the 23rd of November. The Math team is involved in a recce for a field trip for relevant grades. Stay tuned for more…
Mathematics Department
Boarding News
It has been an eventful week, focusing on community building, elderly care, and nurturing of leadership qualities among our students at Stonehill Boarding. At Stonehill, community building is more than a concept; it's a cherished value. The sense of belonging and togetherness is a unique aspect of our boarding life. Our students, tutors, and boarding staff harmoniously work to foster a nurturing and supportive environment.
During the past week, we saw two heart-warming experiences that show our commitment to building a strong community. On Saturday, 14th October, our Eldercare Boarding team had the privilege of visiting 'Little Drops,' a loving home for the elderly.
The students sang songs and served a special meal to the residents, emphasising the importance of caring for our seniors and the joy it brings to both givers and receivers. This act of kindness reinforced the bonds within our community and left a lasting impact on all involved.
The 'Furry Friends Club' continues to make waves with their compassion and dedication. This week, they visited 'Charlie's Care Animal Shelter,' creating a positive impact on the shelter's animals. The furry residents were overjoyed with the attention, care, and love they received, showcasing our commitment to nurturing empathy and responsibility among our students.
On the 26th of October, two of our M5 students, Trisha and Dev, had the incredible opportunity to participate in the ABSA Boarder Leadership Conference. This conference provided a platform for networking, learning from accomplished leaders, and gaining insights into effective leadership practices. These experiences shape our students into responsible and effective leaders of tomorrow.
The Intra House Boarding 'Talent Show' held on the 1st of November, was exceptional, featuring captivating performances by students from all three boarding houses. The event celebrated a range of diverse talents, uniting the entire boarding community through mesmerising displays of dance, song, and instrumental music. Congratulations to all the winners!
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