New House Point policy and weekly updates

Photo taken in 嘉北郊野公园 in April 2021

Announce HP competition results of May 2021

We began to implement a new house point policy in May. Although there should not be any changes on the students’ side, teachers now follow more consistent criteria and indicators to give or take house points. We also encourage teachers to give more house points rather than taking away more points as we believe positive reinforcement is more effective than negative reinforcement.

You can take a look at a few examples of the criteria and indicators.

The new policy is now more aligned with ECNUAS Learner Attributes and with the areas of concern in the high school student behavioral norms. There are also suggested indicators for each criterion so that the teachers can refer to. The five special awards still remain, including points associated with SGL awards, most valued student house leaders, VP awards, Principal awards, and external achievement awards.

For students’ contributions at the school level, such as organizing or participating in high school level events, or earning honors in external contests, teachers now need to send student names with recommended house points to the Principal Office so the Principal Office will add these points altogether by the end of each month.

Teachers are still getting used to these criteria and indicators. Students also need to learn to work with these criteria and indicators. We will officially print the new house point policy at beginning of the next academic year. By then all teachers and students including new students who will join us in September will have to be familiar with the policy.

The winner House in the high school of May 2021 is O’Neil House. With all efforts by the teachers, House Captains, and students in O House, they earned 133 individual points in May. Congratulations!

Second place goes to S House, who was the winner of April. The third goes to R House, while E House is unfortunately the lowest in this month.

Converted to House Points and running to integers, O is 6, S is 5, both R and E are 4.

These total points include,

-the points that were given by high school teachers in May,

-the points generated by the high school sports day,

-the points that were given to the students who created the first edition of The Insight, which is the first high school magazine, including the chief editors Xuanli (Chrisitine) Ge, Mingyan (Ocean) Zhang, Yifan (Cathy) Cheng, and other editors.

-the points go to a few excellent students who made great achievements in May, including

· G10 student 施翊辰 Ethan Shi, who brought home a Best New Player Award as part of a FRC team that participated in a global FRC robot competition.

· G10 student 邱楚婷 Tina Qiu, who participated in and earned multiple awards in global Economics or investment related contests.

· G11 student 李书涵 Sophia Li, who published a book titled 大山小爱.

Let us present the May winner certificate to O House captain and the Head.

Students who earn more than 10 points

We began to identify and praise the students who earn over 10 individual points for their Houses. This month, we have 6 students achieve this, owing to their various contributions.

Students who lost more than 5 points

We don’t have students who lost more than 5 points within the High School building. However, two students lost more than 5 points in the dormitory. One is in S House, the other is in R House. Both are Grade 9 students. I ask the Heads of House and the Homeroom teachers to look into these two students’ attitude and behaviors.

Only E House did not lose points, combing plus and minus points, in the dormitory in May. Other three Houses all lost points with S House being the worst. While I will encourage dormitory supervisors to give more positive points, our students also need to reflect why some of you couldn’t follow rules in the dormitory properly.

Running total House Points January-May 2021

As a result of competition from January to May 2021, S House is still leading the game with 898 individual points in hand while O House follows very closely. Clearly, E House Head and Captains need to consider how to improve. We recall the E House won the 2020 year competition.

Weekly updates

The high school had an exciting week last week.

The graduation ceremony of the class of 2021 finished last week. We saw off 21 graduates, we applauded and felt proud for their achievements. Over 60% of them went to top 50 world universities, with Highest ranking in USA, 26, Highest ranking in UK, 3.

A good school must have hard working students, devoted teachers, and in particular, good students’ learning outcomes. While we applauded and felt proud for the achievements of this year’s graduates, we look forward to better student learning outcomes next year and the years to come.

I am confident to expect, next year, the current G11 students to break this year’s record (USA 26th, UK 3rd, 63% Top 50). We anticipate to be prouder of you, the students in the hall, and many more future students who will be joining us year after year.

We had a wonderful first CAS exhibition last week. Thanks to CAS clubs, CAS supervisors, CAS coordinator, it was a big success. I feel proud of our students, you should feel proud of yourselves too. This CAS exhibition showcased high school extra-curriculum culture to the larger ECNUAS community. It demonstrates our student leaders’ leadership skills and collaboration spirits, as well as many other students’ talents and potential. So many PS, MS students, parents, and teachers visited this exhibition and were so impressed by it.

For this week, a couple of AS and IGCSE exams continue. Our G9 students are still preparing their MS graduation exams. In the just passed G9 Social Study graduation exam, two of our G9 students, 赖星烨Jessmine and 仇梦雪Shirley, earned the top two scores among all grade 9 students in ECNUAS including students in the Zhongkao class and in the international stream. I think this achievement is significant because it proves if you work hard enough the G9 students in our international division are equally if not more competent than those in the local stream. Please remind yourself, most of you in this hall will go to Top 50 universities according to our school data; some of you will go to Top 30 even Top 20 or Top 10 universities, if you keep working hard.

This Friday, on June 11, you will see the first high school concert exclusively performed by our high school students. I know many talented students have been working on this project since the beginning of this semester. We look forward to yet another historical day of the high school on Friday.