On a poetic and picturesque spring day, with warblers flying, grass growing greener, willows sprouting leaves and flowers blooming red, HZ9 students turned the Hangzhou botanical gardens into their English classroom for a Writers’ Retreat. In the stillness of nature, students opened their senses to feast on spring with their eyes, listen to birds with their ears, inhale the fragrance of flowers and plants with their nose, feel the warm spring breeze with their skin, and capture the rhythm of nature in their hearts. Students read aloud their favorite poems, enjoyed the tranquility brought by nature, recorded inspiration with their pens, and accumulated material for their final poetry creation.

As Hangzhou becomes green with springtime, HZ9 students are focusing on how to create a greener world for the future in the Collaboration inquiry, “Green is Gold.” This learning unit incorporates Individuals & Societies, Physics, and Film to help students to explore Hangzhou’s environmental protection measures and also to widely understand the electric vehicle market in Hangzhou. After learning relevant knowledge from Physics, students are now creating electricity, using recycled or natural materials like lemons and coke. As students learn more, they are beginning to truly feel the importance and feasibility of environmental protection, and they are gaining a deeper understanding of the environmental protection concept, "green water and green mountains are golden mountains and silver mountains".

On a poetic and picturesque spring day, with warblers flying, grass growing greener, willows sprouting leaves and flowers blooming red, HZ9 students turned the Hangzhou botanical gardens into their English classroom for a Writers’ Retreat. In the stillness of nature, students opened their senses to feast on spring with their eyes, listen to birds with their ears, inhale the fragrance of flowers and plants with their nose, feel the warm spring breeze with their skin, and capture the rhythm of nature in their hearts. Students read aloud their favorite poems, enjoyed the tranquility brought by nature, recorded inspiration with their pens, and accumulated material for their final poetry creation.

Poetry retreat video 

As Hangzhou becomes green with springtime, HZ9 students are focusing on how to create a greener world for the future in the Collaboration inquiry, “Green is Gold.” This learning unit incorporates Individuals & Societies, Physics, and Film to help students to explore Hangzhou’s environmental protection measures and also to widely understand the electric vehicle market in Hangzhou. After learning relevant knowledge from Physics, students are now creating electricity, using recycled or natural materials like lemons and coke. As students learn more, they are beginning to truly feel the importance and feasibility of environmental protection, and they are gaining a deeper understanding of the environmental protection concept, "green water and green mountains are golden mountains and silver mountains".

This week, all of our HZ9 students had the chance to go off campus for Links, HZCIS’s celebrated service learning programme. 

Links offers HZCIS students the chance to connect with our Hangzhou community by visiting and assisting at our various community partners, including autism centres, schools for migrant children, nature reserves, China Grassroots Football, and our host school, Greentown Yuhua School. On location, students work together with the community partners to lead activities like teaching football, frisbee and other sports activities; exchanging reading experiences; playing games with children; dancing, singing and drawing with patients; and even cultivating soil for organic farms and learning agricultural knowledge. 

Through Links, HZ9 gets to enhance service awareness and empathy, and also improve their leadership skills while cultivating a better social service spirit through organising and planning activities. Our students love getting out in the fresh air and working together with people from different backgrounds and experiences on Links days. They come back refreshed and reinvigorated from their days of service, filled with hope from the impact they made that day.

Spring Festival renews all things: 

After more than three weeks of rest, HZ9 students returned to Hangzhou campus on the afternoon of February 20. Our faculty & staff warmly welcomed them home, and all students enjoyed reuniting with those friends they hadn’t seen over the break. Students adjusted quickly to the Hangzhou routines and successfully started classes this week. We wish all our HZ9 students all the best in the new semester of the year of the tiger!

HZ9 celebrates first semester growth: 

This week, HZ9 students have been actively reflecting on their lives in Hangzhou from the fall and winter term. During Family Time and Home Time, they each carefully made a personal exhibition board integrating their individual character strengths and unique experiences in the Hangzhou program. Each photo carries beautiful memories, and each paragraph records their feelings about their own growth and change. The exhibition boards make our school more vibrant!

Beyond Launch! 

The most anticipated project of the Hangzhou curriculum–Beyond–kicked off on Saturday. Mr. Garrett, Director of Experiential Learning, began with a comprehensive introduction, then students took turns to visit five project introductions by different teachers. Finally, some HZ8 alumni zoomed in with us to share their experiences and feelings from last year's Beyond. Throughout the interactive morning, HZ9 gathered a better understanding of Beyond and started to get excited about their own specific ideas for this project. We look forward to further progress as we prepare throughout this term.

This week saw the culminating events for two of our major Collaboration projects: Hangzhou Hawks and Science Alive. Students have been planning, preparing, and rehearsing both their Hangzhou Hawks pitches and Science Alive performances for the whole term leading up till now. 

In Hangzhou Hawks, five parent judges joined us via zoom and to offer sage advice for key considerations and improvements on each of 13 teams’ final products. Students drew inspiration from daily life for ideas about what customers might need. They came up with creative solutions ranging from hairdressing tools to a sustainable solar cell phone charging bank, and from portable storage bags to seat cushions. Through research, they accurately positioned the industry and target market, identifying competitive advantages against the competition. The students in each group worked tirelessly together, and their pitches inspired all those in the audience. The five parent judges offered expert opinions on the students' business plans and products, and fully affirmed the students' creativity and contribution. Finally, the judges awarded selected prizes, such as Best Vision, Best Market Research, Best Display and Best Team. First prize, together with a majority of our initial investment money, was won by Pengreen, who created a sustainable solar cell phone charging bank. Congratulations to the winning students!

Over the weekend, our students also performed their Science Alive performances. In Science Alive, students first explored the biological causes and processes of Alzheimer's disease, cancer, and other diseases–examining changes at the cellular level and corresponding physical characteristics. Later, in drama class, students derived their own story scripts and scenarios and rehearsed them. The result was a vividly expressed dramatic piece which stimulated the audience's empathetic thinking, reminding us to cherish the present, help people and families trapped by these diseases, and continuously seek cures. The performance was live streamed to our HZ9 families in Hong Kong, and many parents were deeply moved after watching the live broadcast of the whole performance online.

HZ9 students finally visited some of their Links community service partners for the first time on Wednesday, 12 January. Although some of the Links project sites have been closed temporarily due to COVID-19 policy restrictions, students who were able to visit their service partners made full use of the opportunity to interact closely with agency personnel. Many thanks to China's Grassroots Football base, our two autism centres, and Green Zhejiang. We hope to visit the other Links partners soon! Through this first site visit, the students established trust with the partners, deepened their understanding of the needs of each organisation, and adjusted the follow-up service plan accordingly.

On Saturday, our STEAM Endeavor students showcased their projects in an afternoon STEAM Science Fair. Students enthusiastically placed their carefully planned, creative, and inspiring projects on display and introduced scientific principles behind the works to the participating teachers and students. Projects included homemade speakers, robots, telescopes, electromagnetic levitation, soilless plant cultivation, chicken incubation, food production, art and painting creation, game design, surgical suture, and more! What incredible projects we all saw, and very well-executed by all of our participating students. The experience definitely increased our whole community’s interest in exploring the mysteries of science!