Anglo-Chinese School (Independent)

[unclebao]

Thanks autolycus.


Just to clarify
- excluding the compulsory "Odyssey of the Mind", are they left with only 3 free courses?

[clayman]

Hi autolycus,


My son was informed by the teacher that the fulfillment of 30 hours of CIP is part of the promotion criteria to Year 2. May I know what activities will fall under CIP, besides being in the class committee, which I understand will log you 12 hours.

Thanks.

[autolycus]

unclebao:

Thanks autolycus.


Just to clarify
- excluding the compulsory \"Odyssey of the Mind\", are they left with only 3 free courses?

If I'm not wrong, it's Y1 compulsory OM, Y2 compulsory something else (I think it's still the business module) and 2 free options. Four in total.

[autolycus]

clayman:

Hi autolycus,


My son was informed by the teacher that the fulfillment of 30 hours of CIP is part of the promotion criteria to Year 2. May I know what activities will fall under CIP, besides being in the class committee, which I understand will log you 12 hours.

Thanks.

It's also community service (e.g. helping out at various homes and charities, flag selling, or activities like charity walkathons). The school creates and/or manages many such activities to ensure that every student has more than enough opportunities to reach 30 hours. It should not be particularly onerous. In fact, the reason why pastoral care periods are at the end of the day is so they can be used for an early lunch before students are transported off-campus for service activities, hence off-setting the time spent on such activities with curriculum time.

[clayman]

autolycus:

clayman:

Hi autolycus,


My son was informed by the teacher that the fulfillment of 30 hours of CIP is part of the promotion criteria to Year 2. May I know what activities will fall under CIP, besides being in the class committee, which I understand will log you 12 hours.

Thanks.

It's also community service (e.g. helping out at various homes and charities, flag selling, or activities like charity walkathons). The school creates and/or manages many such activities to ensure that every student has more than enough opportunities to reach 30 hours. It should not be particularly onerous. In fact, the reason why pastoral care periods are at the end of the day is so they can be used for an early lunch before students are transported off-campus for service activities, hence off-setting the time spent on such activities with curriculum time.

Many thanks autolycus. You've been a real treasure trove of information for all the ACS parents here.

[clayman]

Mandarin:

wormy:

Time table is split into week a and week b, not told if they represent odd and even week respectively

They represent the odd and even weeks within the school term. 10 weeks in each term, so you always start with week A.

Hi Mandarin,

Any reason why the school needs to have 2 sets of time-tables? And even though school supposedly finishes at 1.20pm on Wednesdays, my DS's time-table for week B has him finishing at 2.40pm instead and he was late for his 3rd Language class.

[autolycus]

clayman:

Any reason why the school needs to have 2 sets of time-tables? And even though school supposedly finishes at 1.20pm on Wednesdays, my DS's time-table for week B has him finishing at 2.40pm instead and he was late for his 3rd Language class.

The reason for this is greater time-tabling flexibility.

Examples:

If the school has decided to allocate 3.5 periods for a subject, it can be 4 periods in Week A and 3 in Week B for one class — and the other way around for another class. Also, it means that a class need not always suffer 'last period syndrome', where some poor teacher always has the last period of the day and everyone is tired — now that can be alternated with some other poor teacher.

Essentially, if you have a 10-day cycle to play around with instead of a 5-day cycle, you can do lots more. Or at least, that's what I thought when I decided to do it that way; I got the idea of the 10-day cycle from one school and the 20-min increment from another school and put the two concepts together.

So the best way to handle it is to think of it as a fortnightly timetable, rather than a weekly one...

[jtoh]

So Autolycus you are/were in charge of time-tabling in ACSI.

[autolycus]

jtoh:

So Autolycus you are/were in charge of time-tabling in ACSI.

Oops. Well it was a very long time ago. I believe I was the first person to actually write a report on it, targeting inefficiencies and other problems in the timetabling process. Nostalgia...

[jtoh]

autolycus:

jtoh:

So Autolycus you are/were in charge of time-tabling in ACSI.

Oops. Well it was a very long time ago. I believe I was the first person to actually write a report on it, targeting inefficiencies and other problems in the timetabling process. Nostalgia...

Are you still actively and directly involved in the school or are you more of an advisor now?