Primary School
Cultural Carnival
On the day of the Lantern Festival, Year 2 organized a large-scale team building activity - Cultural Carnival - which aimed to help students better appreciate different cultures and broaden their horizons.
The activity is divided into parts: "performance," "food," "games" and "music," aiming to develop students "respect," "appreciation" and "curiosity" character.
· Respect teachers and TAs' hard work, and the extra work that the maintenance staff do
· Appreciate cultural diversity
· Express curiosity of the origins of culture and how the activity works
Students from each class walked into the venue wearing costume pieces of
different countries
The students tasted food from various countries: English crepes, German sausages and pretzels, Irish scones, American doughnuts, Chinese spring rolls and tangyuan, a traditional glutinous rice dumpling eaten during the Lantern Festival.
Teachers from different countries provided recipes, and the restaurant prepared authentic foods from different countries.
The teachers also prepared traditional games in their respective countries, games with pots, walking on stilts, snapping mice, chestnut games, memory master, etc.
Based on their performance (measured in points) in their xueyuan, students received coins they could use to participate in the various games. This provides them with an incentive to always be on their best behavior.
The students displayed the lanterns that they made themselves, singing and dancing to celebrate the Lantern Festival.
"Outstanding
Young Pioneer
Organization"
Recently, the Young Pioneers of YK Pao Primary School were awarded the title of "Outstanding Young Pioneers Organization" in Changning District. All teachers and students at Pao School share this honor. The school is grateful to Primary Deputy Principal Crick Chen and Zhang Hongyan, Wang Chunhui and the team counselors, as well all the young pioneers for their hard work.
Tea Expo
China’s tea culture has a rich and long history. During Chinese Culture Week in the Primary School, Year 4 students immersed themselves in tea culture. They studied the "The Classics of Tea" and learned about many aspects of tea culture in China, including history, types, tea-drinking utensils and tea ceremony art. As part of Tea Culture Week, Year 4 students also held a tea expo, highlighted by tea preparation and tasting. The students produced a wide variety of promotional materials to support the event, including PowerPoint presentations, posters and videos.
Middle School
《Pao Paper》
Five Year 8 students launched the monthly magazine Pao Paper this year as a way to show Middle School campus life through students' eyes. The magazine covers a wide variety of topics of interest to students, such as extracurricular courses (CCA), teacher interviews, monthly school activities and write-ups of important events such as Halloween Dress Up Day and International Vision Week that feature interviews with organizers and participants.
It was hard work getting Pao Paper off the ground. During the magazine's first semester in publication, its staff and teachers met during lunchtime every Monday to discuss the magazine because they were all too busy during CCA time. Later they used their free time to work on production of the magazine from soup to nuts: writing, editing, layout, and printing. During the second semester of the year, the Pao Paper team found a CCA time that worked for everyone with the help of the Office of Student Life, so the production process has become more efficient.
After Pao Paper developed an enthusiastic readership, the team decided to add new members. There are now 12 students from three different Years working on the magazine, compared to five students from Year 8 at the beginning. With a larger and more diverse team, Pao Paper can now produce content that has an even wider readership among Pao students.
Pi
Activity Week
International Math Week was held March 8-12 this year as those were the closest dates to March 14, which corresponds to the number π (pi): 3.14. At the Middle School, International Math Week also served as Pi Activity Week, and featured a series of fun math-related events designed by teachers. During that week, Year 6 students Sky, Chloe, Edwin, Ethan, Kevin, and Tom introduced pi and some of its applications.
Activity picture of a six grade student
Year 7 students wrote a poem about π inspired by their mathematical knowledge and Year 8 students did 24-point calculations and played both Sudoku games and the "coin rotation paradox."
A picture of seven-grade students writing poems
In addition to the classroom games for each Year, several Year 8 students organized a Pi solitaire activity after class. Further, Candy, Nemo, Lucy and Yuki designed pi posters and decorated the corridors and classroom entrances on the second and third floors with them. Eva composed a song using pi for numbered musical notation, recorded it and then let the school use the audio file as the school bell. At the March 12 assembly, Rony, Max, Matt and Quincy even performed the rock song "June."
A picture of eight-grade students performing
High School
High School Book Week
The High School Book Week was a resounding success, featuring a wide variety of activities covering Chinese books, foreign books, calligraphy works, bookmark-making competitions and more. Book Week also included the calligraphy charity sale and an awards ceremony to honor outstanding readers.
The presentations of two well known writers, one Chinese and one foreign, were the highlights of Book Week. The Chinese writer, Mr. Li Jihong, is known as a top translator in China. Mr. Li's presentation, "Appreciation and Translation of English Literature," was well received by both students and teachers. He gave an in-depth explanation of translated works, covering authors' experience, creative background, and writing techniques. Mr. Li's presentation helped everyone develop a deeper understanding of some important literary works. Meanwhile, Matt Smith, who previously visited Pao School in October 2018, participated virtually in this year's Book Week. He gave a presentation entitled "Changing Perspectives in Comics."
High School Geography Works Exhibition
The High School's geography curriculum focuses on teaching students about geography in their everyday lives and its applications, as well as how modern technology is used in geography today. In Year 10, students either produce videos or build geography models, usually of the universe, the earth, rocks or landforms.
These hands-on learning activities help students master the key principles of physical geography. The activities are also useful for boosting students' confidence and proactive learning. The students respond positively to their peers' recognition of their hard work on these projects.
Botanical Garden Visit
Recently, Songjiang’s Year 11 and Year 12 students went to Shanghai Chenshan Botanical Gardens for an IB Environmental Science trip. The Year 12 students were in charge of leading and teaching the Year 11s how to use various scientific equipment, allowing both groups to practice using scientific equipment in a real-life setting. At the gardens, the students completed a number of scientific investigations to test and compare the health of the different ecosystems in the gardens. Over the course of the day, they did experiments such as testing the temperature and PH of different bodies of water and testing soil for different levels of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. The students also completed activities that applied knowledge they had learned in class, such as reviewing how greenhouses work, describing different types of medicinal plants, and considering the environmental impacts of a quarry.
Congratulations
Norman (Y10) achieved a Top Gold (Global Ranking) in the British Physics Olympiad Competition, whilst Bill (Y12) has achieved a Gold Medal in the Biology Olympiad.
In the Real World Design competition our students performed exceptionally well. Impressively, the team of Y9s finished first in the Shanghai region and have now qualified for the World Finals! The team had to design a drone and make a presentation to a panel of distinguished judges. They were competing against teams from other High Schools – including much older Y12 students - so their victory is a great achievement. The team was coached by Mr Coxon and mentored by Pao School alum Wilson (Class of ’20) who was judged to be the ‘best mentor in China’.
Tiger and Fiona (Y9) recently attended the Enreach Model United Nations Conference. In the Senior Division, Tiger received the Best Delegate Award, whilst Fiona received both the Outstanding Delegate and Best Position Paper Writing Award.
Fiona (Y11) recently took part in the Peter Cane Legal Reasoning Prize, which is a competition founded by Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Fiona has been shortlisted and her excellent essay was classified as "highly commended".
Congratulations to Pao School’s Y10 team, Gerhard, Cyrus and Michael, who were awarded the Youth Observation Presentation of the Year in the 2020 National Youth Observation Annual Contest.
Congratulations to our US Academic Decathlon (USAD) teams! This year, almost every student won an Individual Overall Award whilst two of the Y9 teams, including Isabel, Ailsa, Gavin, Daniel, Noah, Jerry, Vivian and Joyce, won a Gold medal in the National Overall Team Award. One of the Pao School teams, including Andy, Miller, Koda, Michael, Heather, Jenny, Zoey, Erica and Sarah, achieved the highest overall team score in the regional competition and have qualified for the global finals. Many thanks to Ms. Dream Xia and Mr. Yingkai Li for their support and guidance of all the competitors.
Tuding (Y9) was awarded the 1st prize in this year’s Shanghai Future Engineers Competition (Junior High School Group) due to his software design for a lunar lander. Congratulations also to Mr Wang Zhong, who was Tuding’s tutor for this competition, and was given the award of “outstanding tutor”.
Congratulations to Eric (Y10), who has been accepted into the Elite Programme organized by the Shanghai Association for Science and Technology. He will be mentored by Professor Wang Xiao Yang who is part of the Computer Science Department at Fudan University. Eric is one of 77 hiagh school students from Shanghai who have been accepted by the programme this year.
In late December Kevin and Allen participated in the NEC regionals and have now qualified for the China Round by winning the East-China Region Overall Team Silver Award. Kevin also won the National Top Scoring Challenger Silver Medal (Top 10% in China) while Allen won the National Top Rookie Individual Award.
