With the Christmas holidays starting today, we wish all the students a happy holiday and that they have an amazing time with their families. It has been a long term and very busy. The students have worked well and now deserve to relax a little and enjoy their holidays.

The school reports will be made available this week and I hope that Father Christmas is happy with them and adds a few presents, we will see. We hope that all the students enjoy their Christmas holidays!

When educating students a lot of time is spent telling them how to do things, explaining why not to do them, helping them to understand what we are telling them and making sure that the information enters the space between both ears as we say! But the end product can be fascinating, especially when a student is able to learn by themselves, motivated to go further and to take the next steps by themselves.

This photo is of Rio, one of the students who can see the 'bigger picture' so to speak and has his own vision of design and the future of the automobile industry. In his free time, he built his model car, inside and out, from paper and worked on how to create the model he had in his mind. Today this may be a paper car, tomorrow the future of the automobile industry! There is also a similar story of a man and his apple...

The students will be competing in the annual Masterchef competion today, the 12th December. A popular competition, the students begin with a meeting concerning the rules, organisation and how the points are awarded. Once done, each team captain, a member of staff, will choose names from a bag, therefore, we never know who is in which group until we start! If your team is lucky, you may have students in the La Garenne cooking club who already have experience in cooking.

Each team has an envelope with CHF30.- in it to go shopping, buy ingredients and make a starter, main course and desert for one person. All the dishes will be judged at the allocated time with the students present. A trophy is awarded to each member of the winning team. We wish them the best of luck!

This Saturday we will be having our Christmas party for the students. Please find again the information below concerning the evening.

17.45 - Arrival of students at La Garenne

18.00 - 19.00-Dinner

19.00 - 19.30-Exchange of secret Santa presents

19.30 - Departure of Cubs, Minis and Juniors disco in Beau Site

20.30 - Depratures of Minis in Years 3-5

21.30 - Departures of all students in Years 6-9

Please don't forget to hand in your secret Santa present

Exams start this week at La Garenne. The children have had a busy term and they are now ready to demonstrate their acquired skills, knowledge and understanding. Formal tests are given in English, French, maths, science, IPC, humanities and sport.

Ongoing assessment takes places over each term, data is recorded and analyzed using Classroom Monitor (link). Each child's progress is reported in their termly reports and communicated during our Parents/Teacher meetings.

Good luck to everyone, try your best!