October Newsletter

This is indeed the busy season for "IAs," so I wanted to share with you again the following:

We are required by the IB to distribute throughout the two years of the programme the assessments that are submitted to the IB in the Spring of the final year of the programme. Your children will often refer to these as "IAs" (internal assessments) and, sometimes, "EAs" (external assessments). The similarity is that they are both submitted to the IB; the difference is that only some of the IAs from a cohort are submitted for moderation based on our suggested marks, while all the EAs are submitted, and we do not provide an indication to IB examiners where we think students have scored. 

All of the draft and final due dates for the IAs and EAs have been posted to your child's Google Classroom calendar by their teachers. However, to give you a sense of what their workflow will likely look like this year, I have also prepared this document for your information. 

As noted in my introduction, the DP is very busy in Grade 12, and there are times when students are unable to meet deadlines. As a result, I want to share with you our late assessment policy.

To support students in completing their internally assessed work, we organize four days each October during which students are off-timetable and able to focus solely on the assessments they need to prepare for the IB. 

Many students used this week for dedicated lab time, while others completed university applications and works of art or wrapped up the final steps in the Extended Essay process. The students worked hard and took advantage of the time that was made available to them; we hope it helped relieve a little of the pressure that is part of the Grade 12 year.

• The CDNIS version of the World Exam schedule has now been created. It can be accessed here. 

• Any students with conflicts should wait until they hear from us about how the IB wants us to reschedule their exams.

The Extended Essay has now come to a close. All students have submitted their essays and are finishing their final interviews with their supervisors. 

We would like to thank the supervisors for taking on the responsibility of guiding students through the process. We also want to give a huge "thank you" to the students who hit all of our due dates. This is, of course, in no small part a result of the excellent leadership by our dedicated Extended Essay Coordinator, Mr. Perry. 

Grade 12 students should have updated their CAS (Creativity, Activity, Service) experiences from the summer and are now required to submit only one reflection for any CAS experiences they’ve engaged in since the start of the year. Individual interviews have helped establish a balanced approach to CAS for the remainder of the year. Parents are encouraged to discuss their child's balance of CAS for the rest of the year.  Most students have completed their CAS projects, while those pending are on track to finish soon. The November report card will provide feedback on each student’s CAS progress, indicating whether they meet the balanced portfolio, CAS project and completion requirements. For every student, the CAS programme should be completed by the end of January 2025. 

• August 29 - 30 - The DP Retreat at the Gold Coast Hotel

• September 19 - Curriculum Night

• November 10-17 - Experience Week

• November 19 - First Reports published

• December 5 & 6 - Parent-Student-Teacher Conferences

• March 4 - Second Reports published

• March 20 & 21 - Parent-Student-Teacher Conferences

• June 11 - Third Reports published

• Diploma Programme Coordinator - Brian Hull: brianhull@cdnis.edu.hk

• Head of Grade 11 - Jeremy Power: jeremypower@cdnis.edu.hk

• CAS Coordinator - Gregg Lee: gregglee@cdnis.edu.hk

• Theory of Knowledge (TOK) Coordinator - Chris Tyrrell: christophertyrrell@cdnis.edu.hk

• Extended Essay (EE) Coordinator - Dave Perry: daveperry@cdnis.edu.hk