Newsletter January and February 2020 - Letter from the Principal

We have had some lovely activities in this relatively short half term. There was some fantastic sporting success, including a bronze in the U10 Boys’ Football ACSIS finals, a gold in the U14 Boys’ Football and a gold in the U14 Girls’ Netball finals. Amazing results! We held our Year 3 and Year 4 swimming galas which were both hotly contested. Congratulations to Ubin for winning the Year 3 inter-house competition and to Jurong for winning the Year 4 competition.

We had some lovely celebrations for Chinese New Year, including our second temple fair, arranged by the DCIS Mandarin department. It was lovely to see our children, all wearing festive clothes, enjoy the traditional activities run by our staff and parent volunteers. The campus looked beautiful, thank you DCA for decorating our school. The DCA also ran the Secondary disco, which was enjoyed by all who attended. As always, we are very grateful for the support of our parent community through the DCA.

Our students in the exam years; Years 11 and 13 have successfully completed their mocks and are studying hard for their final exams later this year. A highlight of the IB journey, at least from a teacher’s perspective, is the presentation of the Extended Essays. Our Year 13 cohort shared their work with their peers, teachers and parents during a lovely CoffEE event. There was an amazing spread of topics, from The Fall of Singapore, to Exploring the Mind of Christopher Boone and Rap Music and its Evolution Through Time.

The first House Day of this term was a great success. The Primary students had a fun filled day of dancing, whilst the Secondary students had a more reflective day, focusing on the theme Enquiry.

We have seen numerous charity initiatives this half term, starting with the big fund raiser for those affected by the Australian bushfires and Indonesian flooding in the first week of term. This was followed by the Year 2 Charity Shops, where the children in Year 2 were selling baked goods and used toys and books to support the Red Cross’ work in Australia and Indonesia. 8MM and 11ML organised a Valentine Day’s Bake Sale, also raising money for the Red Cross and their work. I am very grateful to the Dover Court community for your generosity and willingness to help those in need.

The Secondary lunchtime performances ‘On the Spot’ have been a great success this year, we have some incredibly talented students in our school. This has also been seen in the newly introduced Primary version – ‘At the Splat’, where Kai and Haley have set the bar high, with two wonderful performances. The Secondary students travelling to Tanzania to do service work, as part of the Global Campus, have been raising money for their trip through various initiatives. Inspired by the ‘On the Spot’ performances the students ran a charity vote, where teachers with the most votes were invited to participate in a karaoke style show in the Red Dot. Mr Bull, Mrs Hyland, Mr Mainstone, Mr Jury and Mr Lindsay did a much appreciated performance, singing ‘Into the Unknown’ from Frozen and the Backstreet Boys classic, ‘I Want It That Way’. Seldom have we seen such a supportive and enthusiastic audience!

This past week we welcomed Abie Longstaff to the school to talk about her life as an author. Abie ran some fantastic workshops with the children in our Primary school, inspiring them all to become writers. Do listen to the interview with her in our podcast! As we had to rearrange a few things due to the current situation, I was honoured to be chosen to stand in as the Mystery Reader to read to one of our Reception classes. It was wonderful to see the excitement as the children discovered that Mr Shorts was joining them.