This is a speech at HS Assembly on March 6 2023
At the beginning of each month, I always do two things. One is to choose a new education theme for the month, and two is to summarize the House Points competition results of the previous month.
I choose the themes of month from the 12 learner attributes of the school and 5 types of learning skills. We must understand that these attributes and skills are crucial to your current study and future lives in this new century. I feel no one can negotiate with the changing course of the history; you have to adapt to it. Therefore, you must develop these attributes and learn these skills for the sake of your future.
The first 22 years of the 21st century saw a lot of new breakthroughs in sciences and technology. These changes are significantly influencing our lives and our approaches to many things including education. The internet, smartphones, wearable devices, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and others could completely reshape our ways of studying, working, and living. Therefore, as the generation who are born into this new world, you must always keep a clear mind in observing what the world is evolving to because of these new technologies and what you should prepare.
I have been promoting these important learner attributes and learning skills over the past three years, and I have been encouraging students to make connections with your academic study and extra-curricular activities. Your teachers are also asked to help you develop learning skills and reflect on learner attributes while they teach you knowledge, concepts, and understandings in a variety of subjects.
Your teachers will do more of this by asking you questions such as what thinking skills you applied in this project or how would you communicate your thoughts more effectively to the class. Please know that these questions are equally important as those subject matter questions such as how to solve this differential equation or what is Newton’s 1st Law of Motion. I am glad to see many students have picked up these attributes and skills and write learning stories to reflect on them. The first collection of the stories will be published by the library soon.
For March 2023, I will choose Communicators and Research Skills as the theme.
Communicators. (Development domain: Learn to Live Together)
You understand and express ideas and information confidently and creatively in more than one language and in a variety of modes of communication. You work effectively and willingly in collaboration with others.
Research skills.
You demonstrate information literacy such as finding, interpreting, judging and creating information. You also demonstrate media literacy, interacting with media to use and create ideas and information.
I spoke about Communication Skills last month; however, to become Communicators requires more than just basic communication skills. You must express yourself confidently and creatively, and you must also purposefully apply these skills for better productivity in teams. That is to say, good communicators are the people who are able to apply communication skills effectively.
Research skills are important to your current and future study. Especially when we live in a world loaded with unlimited accessible information and media, we really need to be able to know what to believe and not to believe, what to say and not to say, and when to share and not to share.
These skills are also applicable to your social life including your activities in the social media. When you write something, for example, my dog ate my computer, and are about to post it to a public social media, you should consider what the audience would think when they see it. When you say something, for example, Kate is an ugly girl, and are about to shoot it in a Wechat group, you should consider what harms these words could cause. If you are not sure about the impact, you should probably stop posting the message and maybe begin by talking with a friend or a teacher who can help you see consequences more clearly.
Next, I will announce the results of the House Point competition of January and February 2023. I believe the competition is very important activity for this high school because every point is linked with teachers’ expectations for the students, including academic efforts, school rules, and learner attributes.
Shakespeare House won the competition by earning 238 individual merits. Ren Bonian House follows very closely with 232 merits. The third is Einstein with 217 while the fourth is O’Neil with 181. Congratulations to the S House, and thanks to all the S House students who contributed to this win by following school rules, demonstrating learner attributes, and showing good efforts in learning activities. I also want to say thanks to all the teachers who diligently recorded these points and showed our clear expectations to the students.
As a result, S House now has 10 House Points, R and E both have 9 Points, while O House has 7 at this stage. The S House head and house captains, please come to the stage to receive the certificate. I have asked Heads of Houses to look at the records and discuss individual points within Houses.
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