Trần Đại Nghĩa High School

Tran Dai Nghia High school for the Gifted
Trường THPT Chuyên Trần Đại Nghĩa
Address
53, Nguyễn Du P. Bến Nghé, Q.1
 Vietnam
Coordinates 10°46′47″N 106°42′03″E / 10.779609°N 106.700868°E
Information
School type Public, high school, Secondary school
Opened 2000
Principal Lâm Triều Nghi
Staff 214 [1]
Teaching staff 168
Grades 6-12
Website http://trandainghia.edu.vn/Trang-Chu.aspx

Tran Dai Nghia High School For The Gifted is a public school in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. It is located at Downtown District 1, the center of Ho Chi Minh City. Opened in 2000, Tran Dai Nghia High School is the only partially state-funded selective semi-boarding school specializing in foreign languages in the city, provides classes to selective students from 11 to 18 years old (equal to grade 6-12 in Vietnam).

School establishment

Founded in 2000, the school was named after Professor Trần Đại Nghĩa, a scientist and weapons engineer who invented the Vietnamese bazooka and SKZ recoilless rifle during the Vietnam War.[2] The school was set up with the facilities from the Lasantaberd Institute which was established in 1877. It was the first school to have Intensive English program in Hồ Chí Minh City. 2003 marked the school's first graduating class.

School facilities

The school has many academic facilities, including a library, 3 well-maintained computer labs, an audiovisual room and a multimedia room. The school also contains two dining halls, a canteen and rooms for students to rest between classes. The school also has two basketball courts, three badminton courts as well as a volleyball court. In addition there are some basketball half-courts for students to practice inside the school ground. There are 5 blocks in the school: the main block in the center for the school managing board and four A, B, C, D blocks for classrooms around. As the number of students has been increasing every year, the number of classrooms and teachers has also risen.

Learning method and students' opportunities

Besides the normal academic methods, the school has some more practical approaches like doing experiments, watching documentary films and carrying out the real-life projects assigned by teachers. This gives more interest to the students so that they can remember lessons better. Teachers of this school try to use scientific and efficient methods to make knowledge easier to understand and memorize. This makes the qualification and the results be more and more promising. Most of the teachers are also friendly and academically well-trained, so the stress of schoolwork on students can be reduced. A large number of Tran Dai Nghia high school students can speak English fluently, as a result of the school's focus on foreign language. Aside from English, high school students majoring in D-block subjects are also taught French or German. In addition, classes of grade 10, 11 and 12 are ranged in to specializing classes such as English majoring class, Math majoring class, Literature majoring class, Chemistry majoring class and Physics majoring class. There are also triple-subjected classes: Math-Chemistry-Physics and Math-Literature-English classes. A growing number of scholarships are won by students, which provide opportunities of further study abroad.

Class schedule

The school is a semi-boarding one in which students stay from 7:00 am to 4:10 pm or 5:00 pm, depending the number of classes.

Classes are broken into 4 periods for grade-6,7,8 students and 5 periods for the rest in the morning. Lunch time is thus various: grade-6,7,8 students are supposed to have lunch at 10:20, whilst grade-9,10,11,12 ones at 11:15. In the afternoon, classes start at 1:15 and usually last until 4:10, sometimes 5:00. On Saturday, students in selection teams gather to take extra classes on the subject they major. After that, they can go home or attend some outdoor activities.

Extracurricular sports classes are available from 4:10 to 5:00 pm. As these classes are taught in the school yard, student are prohibited from entering the school yard for safety causes.

Extracurricular activities

Athletics

Basketball, badminton, volleyball, chess, soccer and martial arts classes are also carried out after school, which is widely popular to students who want to improve their physical and mental condition. Half-court basketball is also regularly played after school between students. Sports competitions are hold twice a year.

Competitions

There are a lot of contests and competitions so every student can show their abilities and be more energetic and flexible in life:

Publications

An active student-run publication, "Humans of TDN", is published online on tumbler and facebook. Mimicking the "Humans of New York", it publishes images and personal stories of students and school's staffs. The other publications are the "Kỷ yếu", similar to the yearbook but is not publish yearly, and the school magazine, the "Nội san Trần Đại Nghĩa", operated by the publications "club", acts mainly as a literature and arts contest for both teachers and students.

References

  1. ↑ http://trandainghia.edu.vn/Thong-Tin/Chi-Tiet/75/Cong-khai-thong-tin-doi-ngu-nam-hoc-2013-2014.aspx
  2. ↑ "September 13 in History". Viet Nam News. 2004-09-14. Retrieved 2007-06-10.