The Week Ahead

Academic Excellence Snapshot

Academic excellence is a key pillar of the outstanding education offered to our pupils at Wellington College International Hangzhou. Excellent facilities, top-quality teachers and a progressive and modern curriculum are all hallmarks of the education we provide, along with world-class pastoral care and a golden opportunity for skill development and personal growth.  

A review of our written communication and social media channels over the past few weeks reveals a tantalising insight into the life of a Wellingtonian in Hangzhou. From the last month alone, you will find articles showing pupils flourishing in a whole range of dramatic, creative, competitive and sporting endeavours. While being immensely proud of each of the events, the school leadership team and I now wish to take our communication to even higher levels. We have done this by introducing our "Academic Excellence Snapshots". The first one was sent to all community members via DingTalk earlier this week.

The purpose of the snapshot is to enable us to more explicitly share how our pupils are achieving academic excellence across the school. We will send a short summary of our academic successes a few times each term to ensure that the whole community can be as proud of our pupils and their work as we are. This month the Primary team have written about PUMA Maths. In a few weeks, we will report back on the GL Education progress tests that pupils across the school will sit and then later in the summer, and we will share the early entry IGCSE Maths results. 

Should there be other aspects of school life or other items that our wonderful community would like to know more about, our doors are always open (virtually until the current restrictions are relaxed), so please let us know. We love to celebrate the young women and men we teach at every opportunity.

Stewart Brown

Head of Senior School

Over the year, we have had a series of guest speakers present to our pupils. They represented a range of universities and subjects and spoke passionately about their courses and institutions. Our speakers have included current university students, university admissions officers and representatives. The current students shared their first-hand experiences about their A-Level studies, moving abroad and adapting to university life. Our pupils were particularly enlightened by Jerry Liu (a Management student at the University of Manchester) when he spoke about his student halls. Alex from the University of Connecticut spoke about his role as an admissions officer and gave our pupils tips on applying to US universities. Recently, Frances from the University of the Arts London gave our pupils an insight into applying for creative subjects and their courses available.

Having external speakers present to pupils is an enriching experience for our pupils. They can widen their horizons and consider universities and courses that perhaps were not on their radar initially. Engaging with guest speakers can also raise pupil aspirations; hearing what other individuals who are only a few years older can inspire our pupils to reach that little bit further to find the course and university that is best for them.

Guest speakers have included:

We look forward to hosting many more in the future!

Upcoming Events

 

University of Oxford

 

Webinars for parents

Supporting your child’s Oxford application

[Primarily for parents, though students can accompany]

Book here 

Our next webinar for parents/carers will focus on supporting your child’s application to Oxford. It will cover information about the UCAS form, admissions tests and interviews, and opportunities to ask questions. It will take place Wednesday 18 May at various times. Parents who registered for our previous webinar are asked to complete this short survey to allow them to access resources.

 

Webinars for students 

Writing your personal statement 

[Students only]

Book here 

We are running an additional webinar series on Wednesday 25 May (various times). This ‘Writing your personal statement’ webinar will be interactive and is designed to help students with what makes an excellent personal statement, the role of super and extra-curricular activities, and what tutors look for. It will feature staff from the International Student Recruitment team and a current international student.

Live sessions for students will resume in September and will focus on the admissions test and interview preparation.

 

 

15 on the 15th Virtual College Fair 

Sunday 15 May 9:45pm (CST)

Link here

Whitman, Wesleyan, Wellesley, Union, Smith, Skidmore, Sewanee, Oberlin, Middlebury, Haverford, Colorado College, Davidson, Claremont McKenna, Carleton, Bates

 

 

We Care That You Care: 

Values Matter in Admissions

Tuesday 17 May 8:00pm (CST)

Link here 

Notre Dame, Fordham, Southern Methodist

 

 

Northeast Public Schools: Preparing to Apply (U.S.) 

Tuesday 17 May 8:00pm (CST)

Link here

University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania State, University of Maryland, Binghamton, University of Delaware, Stony Brook, University of Connecticut

 

 

 

Unifrog university fair
Tuesday 17 May 4:00pm - 6:30pm

Year 9 and Year 10 pupils will have the chance to hear from experts during live panel sessions and visit university booths and chat one-on-one with university admissions tutors. Pupils can sign up via the 'Unifrog Webinars Tool' once they have logged into Unifrog.

 

Participating universities

 

Hatty Leung

Head of Sixth Form

Friendships

Friends are vital to school-age children’s healthy development. Research has found that friendships provide children with more than just fun playmates. Friendships help children develop emotionally and morally. In interacting with friends, children learn many social skills, such as communicating, cooperating, and solving problems. They practice controlling their emotions and responding to the feelings of others, both positive and negative. They develop the ability to think through and negotiate different situations in their relationships. Research also tells us that keeping friends and building new friendships are essential.

Regular, routine mixing of classes helps foster and develop children’s relationships, helps to balance the classes and limits any ongoing friendship issues within classes which are not conducive to learning, allowing children to build better resilience and develop broader friendships in a safe and comfortable environment. At WCIH, we feel that by mixing the year group, the children will have the opportunity to make friends and see themselves as a year group team rather than just a class, thus building a stronger school community and pride in our school. 

Below are some of the curriculum modules we explicitly teach our children as part of our Positive Education Curriculum:

Over the next month, we will focus on designing the new classes, getting ready for the transition, and meeting the teacher days. Of course, pupils, parents and staff will be involved.

Matthew Coleman
Head of Primary School

Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. Whether you sing well or not, the critical aspect is concentrating on the vast benefits singing brings to us personally and as a community. When we sing, endorphins are released, which help to promote positive feelings. This is especially true when we sing with other people. Group singing also induces the production of oxytocin (the bonding hormone). As a result, singing can reduce stress and anxiety and increase trust and wellbeing.

Singing is a vital part of our curriculum and daily lives at Wellington College Hangzhou. Through singing, we bring our pupils together, support them in talking about feelings, likes and dislikes and promote our school values. We encourage our pupils to sing any music style that makes them happy and supports their emotional development.

SingUp is an online organisation and resource from the UK that places singing at the heart of teaching. It is one of the best in the world! Every year, they do “SingUp Day”, on which all participating schools across the globe sing a song, specially commissioned, to celebrate music, unity, kindness and many other beautiful values. These performances are then recorded and sent to the SingUp team, selecting the best submissions and creating a digital choir.

This year’s song – Love as our guide by Beccy Owen – is a rousing, uplifting, and optimistic pop anthem, exploring themes of kindness and being a person you can be proud of. Beccy’s clever lyrics acknowledge that we have all been through some difficult times, but together, with resilience and being kind to ourselves and others, we will make it through to the light on the other side.

Scan to view the lyrics

The Wellington College International Hangzhou Choir will take part in this extraordinary project. Please take a moment to look at the beautiful lyrics and listen to the song here. I want to encourage you to take this opportunity to discuss with your children the importance of kindness and love for others.

Alejandro Montoya

Director of Performing Arts

Research shows that children like to do things they are good at. No one enjoys doing anything if they’re constantly failing in their efforts. If children come to feel reasonably competent in their activity, they enjoy doing it. Conversely, if they never experience any degree of success, they won’t enjoy it.

Part of their success relies on developing fundamental movement skills from an early age. Just having basic movement skills (the fundamental movement skills) such as running, jumping, throwing, and catching can go a long way in helping kids to experience a sense of competence in a wide range of physical activities. At Wellington, we practice these fundamental movement skills in every lesson. In addition, these basic skills give our pupils the confidence to play games at lunchtime, after school and on weekends.

Timothy Schulze

Head of PE

Martin Bailey

Dukebox Presenter

Improving pupils’ dining experience will always positively impact the uptake of school meals. A joyful lunch experience will lead to a more significant contribution to pupils’ health and wellbeing inspection. This May, at Wellington International College Hangzhou, we upgraded the canteen with a brand-new menu. With this new menu, pupils will have a variety of food selections and points from which they can choose and collect their food. Warm noodle soup has been one of the top-rated, and it will be on the menu together with Wester/Asian/Sandwich every day. Two flavours of hot soup will be available. All the counters are refillable once pupils have emptied their first plate of food. With the new menu, we are also We are introducing the Food Traffic Lights menu guide. The Food traffic lights is a fun and easy-to-understand guide designed by Sodexo nutritionist for pupils that encourages them to make healthier food choices. It labels food items with colour codes and makes recommendations about how often they should be consumed. All food or dishes are labelled with Green, Amber, and Red according to the level of fat, sodium and sugar. We want to collect more feedback on the pupils’ dining experiences. All parents are welcome to contact us through Service.wcih@wellingtoncollege.cn directly.

Service Team