Dear Parents and Guardians

I hope you have had a good week.

Thank you to all of you who were able to join us for the Learning Conferences. It was great to see so many signed up and I know staff enjoyed working with you and the learners. It really is so important that we work together to support the children during this exceptional time. We cannot ignore the impact the global pandemic is having on us all. Feeling connected and belonging to a community are so important when we are separated from family and dealing with uncertainties.

Ms Zanthe, our counsellor, shares in her Wellness Tips how our actions, gestures and words as adults influence children's self-worth. Please keep this in mind as we open up our Learning Management System (LMS) Canvas to you all; please remember to focus on feedback, not grades, when discussing your child's learning journey. It was wonderful to have so many of you online with us for the Canvas workshop and to hear how you can already see it making a difference to your child. Please don't worry if you were not able to join us as we have recorded the session and included it in the Recent Events tab.

Canvas helps us provide a window into your child's learning journey and is supported by a powerful app. Your login credentials will be sent out during the break. Once registered and logged in, you will be able to see what your child is learning, how they are doing and the feedback that is being shared with them. Canvas is used by many Ivy League schools and enables us to provide a much better experience for your child. Please remember we are learning too - this is a new system for all our community and will improve over time. You will receive real time feedback throughout the rest of this year from Canvas so please make sure you register.

Years 8 and above will receive their first termly reports at the start of term two. Year 7 doing MYP will receive reports at the end of each semester. Reports will be shared using the Engage parent or learner portal as before. These new format reports include data from the CAT 4 tests. Your child’s progress is being tracked against their own CAT4 benchmark data. Your child’s CAT4 score is an indication of how your child should be performing and is based on a large sample of International learners with a similar profile. You can find out more about CAT4 here if you are interested

Nexus aims to personalise tracking of individual learners' progress rather than expect whole cohorts to achieve the same level. This data does not limit the attainment of any learner and is used to initiate conversations around capabilities and guide learners as to how they are progressing. These grade summary reports are designed to help you track your child's journey throughout the curriculum they are enrolled in. By working together and building learner's sense of self-worth, we can reach our shared goal of having happy and successful learners.

Please read on to see more about the successes of our learners and opportunities available to our learners.

Wishing you all a great break.

Best wishes
Dr Heather
Head of Secondary