DCIS Newsletter November December 2018

DCIS Newsletter
November and December 2018
‘Super Star’, A Nativity Musical by Year 1 and Year 2
Year 1 and Year 2 came together to tell the story of the true meaning of Christmas.
The audience were introduced to the Celestial Choir who all wanted the chance to shine in the nativity. It quickly becomes clear that it is not
all about being the musical’s main focus, but about playing the role of the amazing star that showed the way to the stable where Jesus was
born. As this special performance unfolded, the children shone a light on the traditional nativity story and pointed to Jesus being the true
superstar of Christmas.
2018-2019 Calendar Events and
Other School Information
2018-2019 Term Dates
2018-2019 A4 Calendar
DCA Parent Association
DCIS Facebook Page
DC Bear Facebook Page
DCIS Youtube Channel

Letter from the Principal:
November and December Highlights
Our Principal Christopher Short celebrates 16 weeks of
amazing learning and teaching.
Dear Parents and Carers,
Term 1 has been an extremely busy
and successful term. I have attempted
to summarise it below but, as you can
imagine, it is a difficult job to pick out
the highlights from 16 weeks of amazing
learning and teaching.
Mr. Craig Bull and his family joined us in
August as our new Head of Secondary.
He immediately got to work getting to
know students, staff and parents and ran
a number of presentations on his goals for
the development of the secondary section.
This coincided with the announcement of
the building of our new secondary block –
as I write this we are eagerly awaiting the
contractors to move on site to start their
work.
Our small Year 13 cohort have been an
excellent vanguard in our introduction
of the IB Diploma Programme. I was
fortunate to listen to presentations on their
Extended Essays that were superb and on
a wide range of intellectually challenging
topics. The students are also beginning
to receive some really exciting university
offers from around the world. This builds
on the tremendous success we had in the
iGCSE examinations this summer, where
just under 50% of all our grades in our
mainstream classes were A or A*. Joseph in
Year 13, is to be highly commended as he
received 3 awards for highest marks in the
2017 iGCSEs including highest score in the
world in Global Citizenship. We were very
excited to be involved in the World Scholars’
Cup Grand final in the USA. Ms Eaton and
3 students flew to Yale in Connecticut to
compete against schools from all around
the world. This is a celebration of Global
Learning involving amongst other things
2
the 21st century skills of Collaborative
Writing and Team Debates.
The Primary school continues to thrive
and I have really enjoyed being involved
in a number of the IPC exit point this
term. I have seen futuristic inventions,
dinosaurs, models of building from around
the world (including a Pink Floyd inspired
Battersea Power station!) and chocolate
making and selling. Key Stage 1 children
have been learning to ‘Fred Talk’ their
phonemes and Key Stage 2 teachers
have relished team teaching with their
learning support colleagues to help deliver
a Maths programme that is tailored to
the needs of all the children at DCIS. We
have also altered our EAL model in Key
Stage 1 for this year and this is proving
to have a great impact on the children’s
language acquisition, the model will be
adopted in Key Stage 2 next year. Another
memorable cameo for myself and the
other SLT members was when the whole
of the Primary School were introduced to
the school’s vision statement through our
superhero characters. If your child came
home talking about 7 staff members in
masks and capes, that was us – hopefully
they can tell you all about the 7 key
characteristics we were portraying (they are
also on our website as a double check!).
Our Global Campus and STEAM projects
across the school have captured the
imagination of staff and students and we
are really proud that a DCIS student is on
the front cover of the NAE Creative Writing
and Visual Arts Anthology for the second
year in a row. Congratulations to Reyna
for this accolade. A group of Secondary
students led by Mr. Northridge participated
in the first ever NAE Southeast Asia STEAM
Festival at Northbridge International School
in Cambodia. We were also honoured to
host Dr. John Durant, the Director of the MIT
Museum, earlier this term and he had the
opportunity to meet with staff and students
involved in our STEAM projects. Our House
Days have really been embraced this term,
Mr. Liperis and his band of staff organisers
have run a variety of house events that
included not only the traditional House
Sports, but also challenges in other areas
such as music and STEAM, have been
introduced.
I was sad to miss UN Day - one of our
biggest events of the year. As part of a
CIS accreditation team, I was travelling to
Adelaide, but I thoroughly enjoyed seeing
all the fantastic photos and hearing the
children tell me all about what an amazing
day it was. I am extremely proud of our
diverse community and how we celebrate it.
As we continue to develop our education
outside the classroom initiatives, Year 5
and the Secondary school ran their trips
this term. They visited 4 different countries
which gave each year group the opportunity
to challenge themselves. These trips extend
skills and competencies starting with the
Year 3 sleepover at the zoo and will lead
to the Gold Duke of Edinburgh’s Award
expeditions in Year 12.
Our Performing Arts programme continues
to go from strength to strength with Ms
Dodson leading the introduction of the
Juilliard Dance programme. We had our
first visit from a Juilliard dance specialist,
Donna Costello. She is back in March and

we look forward to arranging time for her
to showcase Juilliard Dance to parents. We
were also delighted to welcome hornist
Michal Emanovsky who ran a number of
workshops and performed together with
our school orchestra. The Juilliard visits
are very inspiring for the entire school.
The choir and orchestra have had a busy
term culminating in the Christmas Concert
as part of the DCA Christmas Fayre. The
weather was less than kind but spirits were
not dampened and they made everyone
feel very festive. The choir once again
performed at the Remembrance Service at
Kranji. They did a fantastic job representing
the school at such a moving and poignant
service. I am grateful to Ms Whittington
for leading both these music activities.
We were also pleased to be involved in
the IN Art exhibition at the Australian High
Commission. This is a joint exhibition across
all international schools in Singapore and
so the standard was understandably high.
Ms Kertrestel was very heavily involved
in the exhibition, which runs through
the Christmas holiday and I thoroughly
recommend a visit. We look forward to our
drama production later in the year – we
saw an amazing number of students to
the auditions and are looking forward to
following the work of the cast next term.
We have seen a number of student-initiated
charity events during the term, with a bake
sale for Sulawesi, a canned food drive, our
own Green Team getting us to ban plastic
straws and last, but definitely not least,
Grace, in Year 12 having her hair shaved off,
live on stage, during a Secondary assembly.
This was to raise money for the community
work she will do in Tanzania later this
academic year. It is heart-warming to see
the enthusiasm and willingness to help
others amongst our students. They truly are
caring, global citizens.
The voices of our students were also heard
during World Children’s Day, where I had
the opportunity to meet with the various
committees of our student councils and
listen to their suggestions for an even better
Dover Court.
Our sports programme continues to be very
busy and successful. We have completed
ACSIS season 1 and we are now half way
through ACSIS season 2, having gone up
a division from last year, in a number of
sports.
Our first victories were with our cross
country teams. We had about 75 students
from Under 8-Under 19 represent us in
the ACSIS Cross Country Championships.
Particular highlights included Isa from
Year 4 winning the Under 9 girls race as
well as many top 10 places in the primary
categories. Our outstanding Under 12 boys
claimed a gold team medal for the first time
in DCIS history – Zac and Zach coming first
and second respectively. A superb effort
by all competing against 22 ACSIS schools.
The netball games have been underway
with many fixtures played from Under 9 –
Under 14. We have entered 7 teams with
the highlight so far being a 3rd place finish
with our Under 12 girls. Touch rugby was
represented with our first ever Under 12
DCIS touch girls team. A number of great
performances have seen improvements in
each game. On the rugby field our Under
12 and Under 14 teams battled to some
superb victories. The highlight being a
silver medal in Division 2 for our Under 14
team. Basketball started in November and
currently all of our Under 12 and Under 16
boys and girls teams are contenders for
medals. In the pool, the ACSIS High school
championships saw many Personal Bests
broken. In this vein we have attended
many galas and the standard of our
swimmers keeps on getting higher and
higher. The biggest sport at DCIS in terms
of participation is football. We have fielded
an incredible 17 football teams for both
boys and girls from Under 9 - Under 16.
There have been many exciting matches
and even more goals scored. Each team has
competed well in their respective leagues
with some superb victories were recorded.
It is also great to see children bringing in
their medals from sporting events they
compete in outside of school. A number
have made it onto our social media pages –
an excellent way to celebrate success in and
out of school. In summary it has been an
extremely busy Term 1 for our PE team. We
have competed in around 125 fixtures so far.
We are very grateful to all of our supporters
and teachers who help coach teams for us.
We were very excited earlier in the term
when Monica Dolan and Charlotte Prince,
Year Group Leader of Years 2 and 6
respectively, were nominated as Future
Leaders at the BritCham Annual Business
Awards. Ten of the staff community were
delighted to attend the awards dinner and
so proud to hear Monica announced as the
winner. This is testament to the work we
do on Staff Development, an undertaking
coordinated by Mr. Rinaldi.
Finally, there is always a movement of
children at the end of each term, that is the
nature of international life in Singapore. We
wish all our departing families the very best
as they move onto another adventure and
we look forward to welcoming new families
in January.
We must make special mention of Annie
and James in 11RL. They graduate from
the school after 7 years and 12 years
respectively at DCIS and are going on to
college in Singapore. We wish them all the
best in their adventures and look forward to
welcoming them back to school so they can
tell us how they are getting on with the next
step of their learning journey.
As this lengthy term comes to a conclusion
I am very grateful to the entire staff body
who make all of the events detailed (and
many more) possible. Their dedication
to Dover Court and your children is
unwavering, everyone without exception
goes above and beyond every day. I am
also grateful to the parent community – I
know we have one of the most supportive
parent bodies in Singapore ably led by our
DCA. I am very proud this relationship and
pass on my thanks to the DCA executive,
volunteers and especially Karyn and Efe
as co-chairs for all they do to ensure that
our triangulated approach of child-schoolparent
remains at the heart of everything
we do as a successful school.
Have a great holiday, a Merry Christmas and
a Happy New Year when it comes.
Christopher Short
Principal
Check out the Dover Days of Christmas
video here: http://bit.ly/doverdays
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Primary School November and December
Highlights from Ms Lebihan
Ms Lebihan looks back over a busy and exciting term and highlights
some of the events that have been going on in the primary school.
With the Christmas break just around the
corner it great to look back over a busy and
exciting term, and to highlight some of the
events we have had going on in the primary
school. It has certainly been busy with never
a dull moment – just how a school should be!
Since half term there has been much to
celebrate across the school, with students
taking part in our very successful UN Day
which is one of our biggest and most popular
events of the year. As well as this, we had a
week of collaborative work during our STEAM
Challenge Week, which saw students involved
in designing wearable technology with their
class mates.
Our second ever Cross-Country House Day
went down a storm and it is lovely to see
that now featuring as an annual event in the
calendar, encouraging team work, healthy
competition and fitness for all. Those who
came to the DCA Halloween Event will know
what a huge success it was; I particularly
enjoyed bumping into some scary, and in
some cases some quite gruesome, looking
students around the school – thank you for
spooking me!
As well as these events, we enjoyed Deepavali
in school – a day of bright clothes and
celebration for all. Linking with the Global
Campus, we had our first ever World Children’s
Day at Dover Court this term, thank you to
Mr. Handley and Mr. Winkley for the work
they put into preparing the activities across
the school for this. To top it all off, our first
primary residential of the year headed off to
Telunas. I know Year 5 had a fantastic time
because the children, the staff and the parents
have told me that. The children themselves
returned with great stories of their time away
and I know they benefitted hugely from the
experience. A great big thank you to Mr. Odey
for planning the trip down to the finest detail,
and to all the teachers, TAs and not forgetting
our school nurse for attending and supporting
the children.
It has been lovely to see the Cooper Hall in
action with lower primary rehearsals for their
Christmas productions going on. Although it
has been very tempting to do so, I have tried
my hardest not to pop in for a sneak preview!
It takes a lot of collaboration and patience to
put a performance together so a very big thank
you to the teachers and TAs for their work on
this over the last few weeks, and also to the
parents for their support with costumes and
learning lines.
You may have noticed the lovely Christmas
tree and decorations popping up here and
there around the campus. Watch out for the
cheeky elves, the gingerbread men and the
reindeer as you take a walk around school.
Thanks to the DCA for their continued support
in keeping the campus up to date with the
calendar!
As the term draws to an end, I wish all our
primary students, and their families, a lovely
relaxing break. For those moving on to new
adventures, a fond farewell from me and best
of luck with the journey ahead. To everyone
else, I look forward to seeing you rested and
refreshed in January 2019 for Term 2.
Happy holidays everyone!
Best regards,
Kara Lebihan
Head of Primary School
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Secondary School November
and December Highlights
from Mr. Bull
Mr. Bull reflects on an action packed first term at DCIS.
It has been an action-packed half term for
Dover Court Secondary and I am very proud
and grateful to the students’ and staffs’ hard
work.
We kicked off early in the half term with
UN Day. What a fantastic event! I was so
impressed by the efforts of students and
staff to make the day so successful and it
was great to see the Dover Court community
coming together to celebrate our diversity.
Our first of three MIT STEAM challenges for
Year 9, led by Mr. Northridge in Secondary was
excellent! It was great to see such innovation
and enthusiasm to solve the problems and
the end products were potential inventions
of the future. I am already looking forward
to the next one.
The Cross Country house day was a
particular favourite of mine. I was inspired
by the strength and resilience to keep going
by all the runners but even more so by the
care and collaboration shown by fellow
runners and spectators.
Over the course of this half term, Mrs.
Hyland and I have observed every teacher
across all subjects in the Secondary school.
We have been impressed by the standard
of teaching and learning going on in the
classroom and the very obvious passion
and enthusiasm for this by teachers and
students alike. There is such a varied range
of learning happening each day from Mr.
Woollard’s GCSE PE group learning about
the bones of the body through sticking postit
notes on each other to Ms Bennett’s Year
13 IB group understanding the differences
of realism and surrealism between Tennesse
Williams and Henrick Ibsen. Then on to Ms
Milton’s class debating whether the people
or the Government are responsible for the
environment…in French! and Mr. Dwyer’s
Music class conducting a musical appraisal
of a sonata by Beethoven.
We held our first ever IB Extended Essay
(EE) Coff-EE morning (see what we did?)
led by Mr. Jones, to celebrate the Year 13s
handing in a significant piece of work. The
Year 13s all did a short presentation on the
subject, method and findings of their EEs
to Year 12s students, parents and members
of Staff. This was then followed by a short
opportunity for questions and answers. The
event was a huge success and one which we
will continue annually. I was so impressed
by the standard of EE question, investigation
and presentation skills. Year 13 students
treated their IB teachers and EE supervisors
to lunchtime pizzas last week to say thank
you.
For Kindness Week, students became
RAKtivists, actively carrying out a Random
Act of Kindness to unsuspecting people
in school and in the community. It was
great to hear about them, the recipients’
reaction and how it made them feel by doing
something kind for others. It is also great to
see that these acts are continuing long after
Kindness Week.
I should at this stage, give a very special
mention to Grace in Year 12 who, during
a powerful secondary assembly, had her
head shaved on stage to raise money for
the community portion of the upcoming
expedition to Tanzania. Her hair has been
donated to Locks of Love and will be turned
into a wig. Well done Grace!
World Children’s day saw our students take
over! We had Student Council outreach
during form time, student-led agenda
meetings with the Principal and Student
Teachers running workshops on Football
Skills, Minecraft Programming and Theories
in the Future of Fortnite. I personally
attended the Fortnite workshop run by three
Year 7 students and was blown away by their
conspiracy theories and decoding skills.
I had the pleasure of being invited to 7
ML’s lunch restaurant a few weeks ago. I
was shown to my seat, given my student
made menu and treated to waiter service.
I thoroughly enjoyed my meal and will be
placing a 5-star review on trip advisor very
soon.
We have also had four exciting residential
trips to Gopeng, Vietnam, Borneo, and Laos.
It was great to see so many happy, smiling
and somewhat tired faces getting off the
coaches on their return. The students and
staff have spoken overwhelmingly positively
about the trips and I am very grateful to
the staff for their excellent planning and
organisation of these amazing experiences
for our young people. I even got to teach
some PE for the students back at school
during the week, which I very much enjoyed.
In other exciting trip news, our World
Scholars’ Cup Team recently visited Yale
University for the final round. The students
were the most fantastic ambassadors of
Dover Court and we are very proud of them.
Any students interested in joining in the new
year are welcome to come and see Ms Eaton.
I was very proud of the four students who
had their work selected to be displayed at
the International Schools Art Exhibition 2018
held at the Australian High Commission led
by Ms Ketrestal.
All in all, a fantastic but busy half term. It
just remains for me to wish all our students,
parents and staff a very Merry Christmas and
a Happy New Year!
See you all in 2019!
Craig Bull
Head of Secondary
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‘A King is Born’,
A Nativity by Nursery and Reception
The EYFS children made their parents and teachers very proud this week as they performed “A King Is Born”.
Our audience was delighted to see the
story of the very first Christmas come to
life as the children retold the Nativity. The
narrators and singers looked cosy in their
festive pyjamas and the cast dazzled in
their homemade costumes. We met bossy
Caesar, his census-takers, the angels and the
shepherds as they joined the Kings on their
journey following the star.
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World Scholars’ Cup
Three Dover Court students had the amazing opportunity to
compete in the World Scholars’ Cup at Yale University.
Dover Court’s first experience of the World Scholar’s Cup has come to an end. Despite it being our first year involved with the programme, our
students have been incredibly successful; first in the Singapore Round when every single student was selected for the Global Championship;
then in Kuala Lumpur where all students received medals; and finally, in the Tournament of Champions with our students being the most
incredible ambassadors for our school that I could imagine!
Our final leg of the journey was filled with beautiful snow, iconic tours and endless celebrations. Thanh-Lan, Amelia and Suhani all performed
at their best with medals being won by them all.
It is all beginning again in January with our new cohort starting to prepare and we are certain they rise to the standard that has been set! Any
students interested in joining in the new year need to come and see Ms Eaton in room C209 by Friday.
Olivia Eaton
Secondary English Teacher
Secondary School Assembly: Global Citizenship
by IB 12MT and 13AJ
The IB cohort had the challenge of preparing an
assembly on ‘Global Citizenship’.
The students began by sharing their own
previous experiences of global citizenship
whilst on their travels around the world. One
student, Grace in Year 12, did something
particularly special. She decided to take the
incredibly brave step of shaving her hair off,
live on the stage during the assembly. She
did this to raise money for the service work
she will be doing whilst on the Nord Anglia
trip to Tanzania, helping those less fortunate
than herself. She will donate the hair itself
to Locks of Love (https://locksoflove.org/),
a charity which produces medical wigs
for those suffering conditions which leave
them without hair, but could otherwise not
afford them. Students and teachers alike
donated over $700 during the assembly
and we hope that this will increase even
further, as the wider school community see
her and find out about the cause around the
school site. A box for donations has been
placed in reception, all donations are greatly
appreciated.
An incredibly selfless act
that moved everybody in the
assembly hall and was excellently
supported by the IB cohort.
Matthew Tuckley
Year 12MT Homeroom Teacher
Check out the Secondary Assembly Global Citizenship
video here: http://bit.ly/assemblyglobal
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UN Day 2018 Waka Waka Dance with 1AH
To celebrate our class country South Africa,
students in 1AH have been extremely busy
showing off their amazing creative skills
in both Art and Dance. They thoroughly
enjoyed having a boogie to ‘Waka Waka’ by
Shakira and were absolute super stars when
practising and being filmed! The children
have also experimented using different
types of media (tissue paper, oil pastels,
paint, finger paint, glitter and collaged card)
to create their South African flags. They have
made safari silhouette pictures using paint
for the sunset, cut out animals and black
pens to draw their trees. Well done to 1AH
for working extremely hard this week and I
hope you managed to see their wonderful
creations in the tent at UN day!
Miss Homersham
Check out the 1AH Waka Waka Dance
video here: http://bit.ly/doverwakawaka
Drive Away Hunger!! DCIS Food Drive
This week has been Food Drive Week at Dover Court.
The food drive was initiated and organised
by the Secondary Student Council, who
had done a great job promoting it. Every
morning during the week students have
been dropping off their donations of food.
The result was impressive and the Student
Council very pleased. All items have now
been sent to the Food Bank Singapore, who
will distribute the food to those in need.
A huge thank you to all who donated food
and congratulations to the Secondary
Student Council on a successful food drive.
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Full STEAM ahead as children embrace the MIT
Challenge set by Professor Leia Stirling
Last week has seen some extremely exciting learning opportunities for our students, during
our first STEAM Week of the academic year.
There has been a real buzz around school
as the children have worked hard to
develop their learning powers of curiosity,
creativity and problem solving (CCP). The
first challenge set, Epic Identity, which is
all about wearable technology, has really
caught the imagination.
Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 loved finding
out about superheroes and built some
impressive prototypes of wearable devices,
using circuits which included fans and
buzzers. In Year 3, students discovered how
to use Micro:bits and collected data using
smart watches. In Year 4, the students
made gloves with conductive thread and
tested their capabilities. Year 5 students,
inspired by the Singapore flying man (click
here to watch), built mini drones and then
programmed them. In Year 6, inspired by
google glass, the students built prototypes
of glasses with circuits that contained LEDs.
Our Year 9s also experienced a tremendous
day of learning and shared their innovative
wearable devices with our Year 5s.
We are fortunate to have a number of
parents who offered to assist us with our
challenge and we are grateful to Shweta
Agarwala for inspiring our Year 9s with a
fascinating talk about wearable technology,
Brendon Chase for running a Design and
Build workshop with 2RB, Simon Wise for
sharing his expertise with 1SG and NFD and
Simon Van Oortmerssen for talking to our
Year 5s, about his smart watch data and how
he uses it to enhance his performance.
We are already excited about next term’s
STEAM challenge…Super Natural, which is
about animal adaptions!
Richard Baines
DCIS STEAM Leader
Sports Week 2018
We had six superb days of sport during our annual school
sports week.
Starting with the Secondary Sports Day, our
secondary students competed in football,
volleyball, dodgeball, table tennis and
boccia, before the afternoon saw the whole
Secondary School watching the House 100,
200 and 800m events. It was a superb day of
competitive house action played in fantastic
spirit.
The week after saw our Primary Sports Days
take place. With the weather being unkind,
we had to rearrange 3 of the sports days,
however all were completed before the half
term break.
Our youngest children EYFS had a great time
competing in many events showing off their
running, jumping and throwing skills. There
was also an appearance from our favourite
Minion to make the occasion even more
memorable.
During the Years 1 and 2 sports days, our
children participated in a rotational carousel,
again showing off their talents in running,
throwing and jumping. Great fun was had
by all!
From Year 3 to Year 6, the competitive house
competition took place – the students
competed in various events gaining points
for their houses before the whole of the year
groups watched the sprint semi finals and
finals.
It was a wonderful 6 days of sport. As a
department we wish to thank the many
parents who came and watched (some more
than once due to the weather!).
Mr. Holmes
Head of PE
Dover Court International School (Pte) Ltd is registered with the Committee for Private Education | CPE Registration No: 197100313E | Registration Period: 05/07/2015 to 04/07/2019
The Committee for Private Education (CPE) is part of SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG)
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