Shanghai International High School
Every year during the list season, the halo of famous schools will always become a traffic password that attracts everyone's attention. On the one hand, we are happy for the students who have received offers from their dream schools, but on the other hand, we have some faint worries: the more we chase famous schools, the more we seem to want to summarize the "Oxbridge formula" and "Ivy League school template".
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This nature of "starting with the end in mind" may also have good results, but it always doesn't feel right. Is it true? After interviewing three students and a teacher at The British School of Shanghai Puxi (BISS Puxi), we made some discoveries.
Reia, Matan, and Emily are all students in Biss Puxi High School. At the end of the previous academic year, they took the IGCSE Global Examination organised by Pearson Edexcel Examinations and achieved excellent results:
Matan and Emily received the highest marks in History and French respectively in China;
REIA received the highest score in the world in Mathematics and was the best out of more than 70,000 candidates.
Pictured with teachers at The Pearson Outstanding Learner Awards, three students, from left to right, are Matan, Emily and Reia
Why did they achieve such great results?
As students in international schools, do they need to brush up on the questions?
In the initial stage of the domestic system, are school teachers and parents keeping an eye on it?
With the above questions in mind, Jingkids interviewed three classmates and found some commonalities from them.
Part 1 Yourself
Good at reflecting and summarizing learning methods
Toppers usually have their own unique secrets, not to mention being diligent, and good at reflecting and summarizing.
We have the impression that the learning atmosphere in international schools is usually very chill, and it seems that brushing questions has nothing to do with them, but in fact, it is not true.
Reia, who got the world's highest score in mathematics this time, said that she usually spends twenty or thirty minutes a day doing math homework, but during the preparation for the exam, she will also brush up on the papers of previous years.
It's just that this "brush" will pay attention to a certain method, such as seeing a question, first analyze which knowledge points it wants to examine, and then see where the questioner places the "trap", and so these two steps are almost completed.
Matan, who got a high score in history, was not ideal in the mock test, and only scored 9 points in the 16-point three-stage essay question, so he took the initiative to analyze what the problem was.
After comparing the scoring table and looking at the requirements of the two gradients of 10-13 points and 13-16 points, I found that I had a good grasp of the historical facts, but the answer structure was lacking. So he focused on the training of the answering structure, asked the teacher for advice during the first doubtful time, and improved the answering norms little by little.
Mattan in Focused Learning
As a fake J person, Emily especially likes to make to do lists, and will put the hardest and least wanted things to do first, without giving procrastination a chance at all. Considering that learning a language is a cumulative process, she spends a little time every day reviewing her French, maybe just 10 minutes, but she persists and thunders every day to maintain her sense of language.
Part 2 Parents
The desire to control is not strong, but the support is unambiguous
During this time, "East Asian parents" has become another hot word on the Internet, and this group's high expectations, strong control, and habitual disappointment of their children have triggered accusations of "laughter and tears" among their now adult children. But this chat with Reia and Emily, two classmates who were born and raised in Chinese families, broke our stereotypes about the concept of family education in East Asia.
Both Reia and Emily are people with a wide range of interests.
Reia, a math expert, uses the words "artistic" and "athletic" to describe herself. She loves to doodle and draw, and will "itch her hands" from time to time, spending hours painting a picture when she has plenty of time on holidays. She also plays the piano, but mostly to vent her emotions.
When it comes to sports, she loves badminton and basketball, and most impressively, she also competes in triathlon and competed in three amateur tournaments and one professional tournament last year.
And all of this is out of her own love, "my parents never forced me to do anything," she said.
Reia, who won a medal in the triathlon, is also quite talented in drawing.
When it comes to enumerating her extracurricular activities, Emily's list is longer. From piano to cello, from swimming and basketball to tennis, fitness, drawing to drama to debate, and so on. However, these are not pushed by her parents to study, they just try their best to support her according to her wishes.
A variety of activities are based on Emily's own interests and passions.
In fact, during the most stressful period of Emily's IGCSE preparation, it was her father who proposed that every Saturday be Emily's "charging day". Dad's advice is: study hard from Monday to Friday; On Saturdays, the whole family exercised and went shopping together, ate delicious food, and recharged; Do a review on Sunday, and wait until Monday to start a new study with full energy.
Part 3 Schools
Provide a safe, enriching, supportive learning environment
Reia has been attending Biss Puxi since Y1, and when we asked her to describe her school in three key words, she chose free, resourceful, and disciplined. If you want to string these three words together in one sentence, it is "give students full freedom and strong support within certain rules".
Speaking of "freedom", Reia feels that students who want to organize activities and start clubs on campus are basically green lights. Emily initiated the establishment of a club to rescue stray cats, and cooperated with surrounding pet clinics to vaccinate and sterilize stray cats.
Matan, on the other hand, liked the relaxed, open atmosphere of the history class, which felt less like a classroom and more like people sitting in a café talking about the past and the present, so he was happy to contribute his ideas. "Even if I make a mistake, it doesn't matter, the teacher will correct it, so I can learn something new. "His growth mindset is also impressive.
Speaking of "abundant resources", Reia mentioned that the school itself is an SAT test center, and there is no need to travel outside to take the test. Emily felt that the school had good teachers, not to mention their professionalism in the subjects they taught, and one thing that particularly touched her was that the teachers who knew French knew that she was learning French, and they would chat with her in French when they met her in the hallway, so that she had more opportunities to practice, and her Spanish students would have similar "treatment".
In addition, she is weekly.
The second, fourth, and fifth will also be followed by the teacher Mr. who has won the Olympic championshipMarlon Devonish trains, one day of long-distance running, one day of sprinting, one day of fitness, and the opportunity to train with top athletes like this is also very rare.
Physical Education Teacher MrDevonish is an Olympic champion.
Frank, who has been pre-admitted to Oxford University for a mathematics major, has shown a talent for mathematics since he entered the university, and has a very clear understanding of where he wants to go to university and what he wants to study.
Alexander Olya, Director of the University Counseling and Career Development Office, meets with him regularly to give advice on the overall application strategy, and some teachers who are more familiar with the Oxbridge application take time out of their own time to tutor him.
This year, Frank successfully received an offer from the University of Oxford
BISS organizes the University Fair every year to help students learn about the world's top universities and majors.
With MrWhen talking about the college application trend of Biss Puxi students, Olya mentioned that many students have applied for engineering majors in recent years, and they are not only limited to traditional mechanical engineering, but also expanded to chemical engineering, materials engineering, aerospace engineering, etc. In addition to the students' own families, he speculated that it may also have something to do with the introduction of engineering learning resources in the school, because of the opportunity to contact and learn, many students became interested in it, and one year even three students applied for aerospace engineering.
The school also organizes a visit to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Suzhou. There's a DNA learning center where students get to know the latest technology, listen to academic lectures, and even get hands-on with jelly electrolytes.
Almost every student who is interested in the biological sciences mentions that study in their application essays, because such experiments are closely related to their future studies in biotechnology, biological sciences, and even their future careers. ”mr.Olya said.
Biss Puxi students visit Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
Part 4 Conclusion
What is more surprising is that Reia, a master of mathematics, is interested in Western philosophy, Matan University, who has a high score in history, wants to apply for a major in computer engineering, and Emily, who is strong in French, also loves mathematics, and the university is considering zoology. This kind of interdisciplinary, open-ended thinking does not seem to be unique.
mr.After listening to our "discovery", Olya laughed: "These three students are amazing, and they know the importance of interdisciplinary learning for a world full of uncertainty in the future. ”
In fact, interdisciplinarity is becoming a new trend in the development of higher education. He particularly appreciated the flexibility of the curriculum of the National University of Singapore and the University of Hong Kong. Only about one-third of NUS's courses are major-related, while the remaining two-thirds are devoted to teaching soft skills and training technical skills, and students can take a variety of courses that interest them.
In an international school like Biss Puxi, because the educational philosophy of parents and schools is in tune, students are not under so much external pressure, but have more room to explore what they are really interested in, and enter the high school stage with a state of mental maturity. They have a strong self-drive and a personality that others can't copy, so they don't need to set a template for a prestigious school at all, as long as they grow freely, freely, and spontaneously.
Biss Puxi Admission 2024
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