Year 11 visit to the United Nations, New York City

Five of our Y11 learners visited New York City as part of their UN youth project ‘Mission Possible’. For the last year Paloma, Anjali, Carlota, Maite and Ruichen have been educating the whole Nexus community to try to reduce their energy use. Through assemblies, competitions and other projects the school’s electricity consumption has reduced significantly. On completion of this project they were invited by the United Nations to present their project at the UN HQ in New York. Despite a very long flight the girls were keen to explore the city as soon as we landed! We spent the first three days sightseeing which included the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the Rockefeller Centre, a boat trip to Brooklyn, the Natural History Museum and the Empire State Building. We all agreed that the most moving part of our sightseeing was a visit to the 9/11 Memorial Museum.

After three days of sightseeing we arrived at the UN Headquarters to begin our three day conference. The conference included a variety of presentations and workshops led by UN officials including speakers from UNESCO and UN-Habitat who spoke passionately about the projects they have led. We also visited the Singapore Mission and met Singapore’s First Secretary to the UN who shared his experiences of being a young diplomat. On the final day our learners presented their project and were highly praised by all the observers. The trip has clearly shown our learners the positive change that they can bring about in the world and has inspired them to continue to do so.

Ms Vicky Holdcroft, Learning Area Leader: Humanities

IGCSE and IB Music Concert Trip

Visit to Jazz It Up With Gershwin, Friday 17th August 2018

A musical treat was in store for all the new learners in Year 10 who have chosen IGCSE Music: a concert of sublime Jazz by two composers. The concert was staged at The Esplanade and featured a full orchestra (the SSO) and the virtuoso pianist and conductor Andrew Litton.

The evening was full of soulful blues, wry humour and sparkling glitz of jazz from two different composers Gershwin and Shostakovich - worlds apart, yet crossing their rhythms. Attending the concert were Justin Ahn, Clement Boulier, Ryan Fix, Yazin Khan, Angel Lui, Joseph Loy, Seth Klinzing, James Richards, Yijia Sun (all Yr10), Phoebe Edgley, Noel Schlaefke (both Yr11), Udit Srivathsan (Yr12), along with ex-Nexus learners Li Jian and Martin Yong who both achieved the highest grades in their respective IB and IGCSE exams. A wonderful time was had by all!

Andrew Fordham, Music teacher

Learning in Chinese

Years 7&8

Year 7 and Year 8 learners are working together on the project of self-introduction and they are learning to use words such as childhood, future, social media, passion and so on to talk about their life in the current world. They are going to explore this theme further in the inquiry unit “How I present myself to the world”.

Year 10

Year 10 learners are learning new Chinese measuring words while reinforcing what they have learned previously. They are practising using the appropriate measuring words to describe the number of various items at home in preparation of the project “Renting an apartment”.