Mrs Ault spoke of the differing teaching methods used around the world focussing on the ‘suzuki’ method which is a feature of the unique music tuition given at Preucil. Mrs Ault showed some DVDs of some concerts that featured children as young as 3 performing on violin and cello at concerts.

All the students were truly amazed and inspired as to what could be done with a little bit of hard work and they expressed their thanks to Mrs Ault for giving so freely of her time and giving them another insight into the variety of educational techinquies used around the world.

On Wednesday 5th January the Year 12 IB Chemists were treated to a talk on Organic Chemistry by Professor Addison Ault. Professor Ault is Professor of Chemistry at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, USA. He was visiting Shanghai with his wife and was keen to give a session for our IB Chemistry students.

His talk introduced them to stereochemistry in Organic molecules, which they have yet to cover in their IB course. He used a kinaesthetic approach, with students building models of molecules using cocktail sticks and jelly sweets. He relied on the structures which they produced showing sufficient randomness to illustrate his point about the variation shown in nature. His session was very well received…especially when the students were allowed to eat the sweets at the end!