Bonn International School

Calling all Dragons (Alumni – this means you, too)!
🧺 Welcome Picnic 🌭
Friday, 28 August, 17:00 - 20:00 at BIS

Bring your family and a picnic and join us for our first community event of school year 2026-2027. We've got the grilled sausages and buns covered, so you only have to bring side dishes and a picnic blanket. Don't forget plates! You can purchase drinks on-site or bring your own.

We'll be treated to a performance from the International Voices Choir and the big top is in so children can take part in Don Melhoni's Circus School!

They're here !!!!!

The arrival of new faculty and staff members is always an August highlight. We love meeting our new colleagues and introducing them to our school.

What's on their schedule this week?
✅ Find their way around campus and meet the Admin team
✅ Set up classrooms, learn the nuts and bolts of Primary and Secondary
✅ Set up laptops and other IT, plus training on our IT systems
✅ Complete practicalities like registration in Bonn and signing up for insurance
✅ Intro to Bonn and German culture

Next week they will be joined by our faculty returning from summer break to have a week of joint preparation before school starts.

Our community welcomes you, new staff, and wishes you a wonderful time at BIS and in Bonn.

Summer Holiday Heros 💪

Even with students and faculty on break, it's a beehive of activity on campus this summer. Everywhere you look there is someone renovating, repairing, deep cleaning, organizing, reorganizing ... with just over 4 weeks until the start of the new school year, much has been done and yet there's still work to do.

A huge thanks to our awesome colleagues (a few pictured in this post) working during break to ensure that all boxes, deliveries and equipment find their way to the right place and that classrooms are ready in a few weeks time. Thanks as well to the BISSV team for another wonderful 3 weeks of summer camp earlier in July.

We look forward to welcoming everyone back on campus in August. Orientation Day for new students (yahoo!) is Friday, 21 August, the start of school for all students (double yahoo!) is Monday, 24 August.

The IB Diploma results are in! Every last one of you in the Class of 2026 should be very proud of yourselves, we are proud of all you have achieved in your time at BIS. We look forward to seeing where you go and what you do. Reach for the stars.

Go Dragons!

While school ended yesterday, all staff were on campus this morning for an event dedicated to recognizing service at school, saying a last goodbye to staff members moving on and applauding special colleagues entering retirement.

12 members of staff marked their 5 year anniversaries, 3 have reached 10 years, 9 were cited for 15 years of service and 2 from our Business Office were congratulated for 20 years on the BIS team.

The high point of the morning, however, was celebrating two educators who retire this summer.

Timothy Johnson has spent the last 15 years of his 35-year career in education at BIS. Mr Johnson has inspired and empowered hundreds of students in his time as an I&S Teacher and Subject Leader, as well as coaching various football teams and the BIS Cricket Squad. In recognition of this long-time commitment to our Co-Curricular Programme, he received the much coveted Coach of the Year award today – retroactively for the years 2011 – 2026.

Julie Winter has worked at BIS for an incredible 19 years and brought a special sense of warmth, fun, love of music and dancing joy with her to work every day. We are so grateful to her for the amazing impact she has had on her students and indeed staff in her time here as a Teaching Assistant. Ms. Julie will still be around sometimes as a Cover TA.

We wish Mr Johnson and Ms Julie all the best in their new chapters. To our BIS Dragon community, we wish you all a wonderful, regenerative summer.

It's the end of an era! Our Grade 5s have completed the PYP, and their Promotion Ceremony celebrated all they have achieved in that time as well as the memories they have made. This has been an exceptional cohort, inspiring the community to action and empowering each other through friendship and reflection. We are so proud of all of you!

Congratulations and all the very best of luck for starting in the MYP next year!

We have a wonderful resource to share with our BIS Community. This cookbook is the culmination of our Grade 7 Nutrition Unit, during which students explored the roles of macronutrients and micronutrients, learned how to interpret nutrition labels, and discovered how the body obtains and uses energy from food to stay healthy and meet its daily needs.

To conclude the school year, each student selected a recipe from their home country, analyzed its nutritional value, and prepared it to share with classmates during our Cultural Lunch. This special event celebrated the rich diversity of cultures represented in our community and gave students the opportunity to experience the unique flavors, ingredients, and traditions that make each dish meaningful.

In this cookbook, you will find recipes that you can recreate at home, along with the stories behind them. These personal reflections explain why each dish is important to the student who chose it, offering a glimpse into the memories, traditions, and cultural heritage connected to the food.

We hope you enjoy exploring these recipes and celebrating the diversity, creativity, and learning that made this project so memorable. Enjoy!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yrf71IzpD1J9TpC_W_vBqAcAzRl9GiG_/view (Viewable only when logged into your BIS Google account.)

Thanks to our Parent Volunteers

What a year it has been for our Parent Volunteers, and for BIS because of them! Today’s PV Annual General Meeting gave us pause to really understand the breadth and depth of their immense impact on our school.

When we think of PV, we often think of the memorable experiences they make possible each school year, from International Day to a multitude of spirited cultural events. And these are indeed peak moments.

Yet our Parent Volunteers do ever so much more.

They welcome and onboard families new to Bonn and BIS, provide a broad range of services like language lessons and workshops, treat students and staff to wonderful food, run the Dragon's Cafe for hungry athletes, and distribute funds via their mini-grant program (10 proposals funded this year!). In addition, they provide additional support for our Co-Curricular Sports Programme – this year distributing €2500 to building out CC livestreaming and other initiatives.

All of this as volunteers.

Our BIS Dragons community cannot thank the PV enough for their creativity, sense of fun, commitment, and outreach. We see what you do, and appreciate how fortunate we are to have you shaping and infusing school life. Thank you!

The recent Grade 10 Career Days culminated in two tailored off-campus field trips.

One group joined Dr. Nadja Klag and our PHE teachers to tour premier fitness facilities and consult with leading sports industry professionals.

Another group opted to go to Cologne for an immersive university experience. They attended a lecture highlighting Cologne’s role as a global logistics hub, connected with two BIS alumni currently studying at Cologne Business School, and participated in a dynamic business simulation where they designed and marketed a product under real-world pressures.

The Career Days also featured interview preparation, CV updates, and personal reflection exercises. For the Career Fair, the Agora Lounge transformed into a professional hub as students networked with 25 diverse experts spanning medicine, international relations, finance, and engineering, before delivering their own work experience presentations.

The days provided invaluable real-world insights as our students look ahead to their upcoming DP pathways. A big thank you to our field trip destinations, to our University and Careers Advisor Ellen Johnston, and to everybody who worked to provide our Grade 10 students with these unique opportunities!