Our Grade 12 class may have been small in number but they’ve made a big impression on the whole school.  Our congratulations go to Anna, Louna, Sarah, Robin & Mikael on their graduation.Our graduation ceremony had a number of “firsts” this year.  Our graduates hinted at a interest in Star Wars as they entered the ceremony to the sound of the Imperial March. We had donuts delivered to the graduates during an original and inspiring commencement address delivered by William Ledbetter.And we had a four-legged guest in the form of Archie the spaniel. Thanks go out to all the people who made the ceremony a success especially Jade Karali for all the the preparations and arrangements, Birgit Kress for hosting, Kathleen Macdonald and Allyn Raw for presenting and William Ledbetter for his commencement address.  

Thanks also go to all the family, friends and school staff who attended.  It was wonderful to see the large number of students from other grade levels who attended the ceremony, especially an impressive group of Grade 11 students.  

It was also great to have a number of past students attend, JoAnn, Roberto, Haixu and Herman – we loved catching up with them, hearing stories of their experiences at university.

Congratulations to Sarah for receiving the Academic Achievement Award, and to all our graduates, we will miss the Class of 2017 as they embark on the next stage of their lives. We look forward to seeing them again soon.

text: KW, photos: AS

The Grade 5 Exhibition evening was a wonderful event. Twelve (or more)  languages were used when the students gave their introductions. They skillfully used I.T. when making their presentations and communicated with confidence and passion. They shared their knowledge, talked about the action they had done or are doing, engaged their audiences really well, and in some cases, encouraged them to take action. Here is a selection of quotes taken from the students’ written reflections following the Exhibition:

“I had a fair amount of research. I managed to get a good presentation out of my research that I did……… because I already knew a little bit about screen time and I wanted to learn more.”

– Coco Babel

“You are very nervous at the beginning. However, during and after you find it very fun. That was exactly how I felt during the exhibition night.”

• ­Caera Campbell

“I chose Energy-Efficient Architecture…. because I thought it would be interesting to learn more about energy. I really like presenting.”

– Luka Savchuk

 “I feel that the exhibition was a good experience for me because of all the things I learnt along the way (not 0nly the info about engineering but also the experience that I took with me.”

• Jano Löffler

 “I would like to say thank you to Ms. Williams for being a great mentor and helping me throughout the exhibition. I would also like to say thank you to Mr. Cooper for helping me in the first couple of weeks. I say that this was the best unit in fifth grade and I think that I will continue to say that for the rest of the year and other years too.”

• Karli Kiesenhofer

 “I was really, really, really excited because I had never really spoken in front of so many people and I was frightened that something terrible would happen.

But at the end everything turned out well.”

• Moritz Degen

 “This unit has been fantastic. The research was hard but in the end, I was very proud of my work because I didn’t think that I would get it all done on time.”

• Katherine Franke

 “I got to design my own blog, got to research about things I really wanted to, and had some fun interviews, surveys and fieldtrips.”

• Lihi Shachar

 “In the exhibition we had a lot of fun because we got to choose the topic we were interested in. I was interested in food and why everyone needs it… my lines of inquiry looked at reasons why people don’t have enough food and choice.”

– Giulietta Gilmour

text: MB, Grade 5 photos: AS