Primary News - April 24 2020

Dear Parents and Students,

We hope that you and your families are keeping well and that the sunshine is helping you to keep active and motivated to learn. Since the libraries are currently still closed, you can take advantage of a variety of free online reading resources and e-books on various websites listed here, which are suitable for primary students. Your teachers will also guide you to specific links to support your literacy, maths, topic and language skills during the distance learning.

A quick reminder that bookings for the Parent-Teacher interviews next week close today, Friday 24th April. Next week there are two public holidays, so there will only be three days of online sessions for students to attend.

Monday 27th April is the National Resistance Day, a time to remember and celebrate the courage of the people during the Second World War in resisting the occupation. It helps to reflect on the fundamental values of freedom, culture, ingenuity, and courage, during this difficult period. Friday 1st May, known also as May Day, is celebrated in Slovenia and over 80 countries worldwide. Traditionally, the celebrations would include bonfires, music and other public festivities, but this year this will be confined to the family celebrations at home. Nevertheless, we can celebrate the season of Spring with singing and dancing with our loved ones.

As always we love to know what you have been doing alongside joining the online sessions and working hard, so keep sending your ideas, photos and positive messages to your teachers. Don’t forget to get involved in the C4C project: ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’!

I wish you all a lovely weekend and a safe and healthy week ahead,

Mrs Železinger

Head of Primary

It has been a busy week in Early Years! Distance learning is in full swing. The children have been getting used to learning Phonics and Maths on Zoom as well as participating in Story Time, Creative Activities and Show and Tell.

In addition to the Zoom conferences, the children have been taking on some home tasks, such as outdoor maths trails, shape hunts, sound hunts and number bond challenges.

We also celebrated Earth Day - making some commitments to take care of our Earth. Here is some of the students' great work.

Ms O'Hara

I can't believe how fast another week has passed. Well done Y1 for all your amazing work and resilience.

In Topic, we have continued to learn about toys. This week our focus was science, everyday materials and their properties. Next week our focus subject will be art & design and making our own toys.

Well done everyone who took part in the English & Mindfulness lesson.

We used our senses to engage with our surroundings to help our descriptive writing. The 2nd part of this lesson will be released next week and we will also start to look at writing letters.

Keep up your super mathematics! I'm really impressed with your DIY number lines and counting/addition skills.

Remember to subscribe to my YouTube Channel for more fun videos!

Thank you to all parents for your continued support.

Good luck with your Kahoot Quiz Y1!

Have a relaxing long weekend!

Mr Hughes

Year 2 has had another great week with distance learning - together we are creating some fantastic work. This week in Phonics we have been using a range of activities when learning and practising our sounds, it has been an enjoyable session and each group has done a fantastic job. In Maths we have been learning about Money and we have been challenging ourselves solving word problems.

As we move into next week we will continue with our topic 'Food Glorious Food', where we will share with each other food from our home countries.

Well done Year 2 for your hard work this week - you are Superstars!

Ms Harris

In Maths this week, we continued our study of shape and its properties, with a particular focus on right angles, parallel and perpendicular lines. In English, we studied the story of an immigrant from Ivory Coast in audio and text form and practised note-taking for the purpose of writing a biography later on in the unit. In Topic, we continued our study of the Olympic games, by examining the effects of exercise on the body and also the effects that the food has on our exercise. Student engagement was very high with the online conferences and work set on Canvas, so well done to all involved.

Mr Mulcahy

Year 4 students have embraced the opportunity to become young scientists this block. They have been very busy doing a wide range of experiments, including the ones pictured.

Amongst others, they have tested what happens to gummy bears when they are placed in different liquids, they have made their own yummy rock candy, they have used eggs to test the effects of different liquids on our teeth and made their own lava lamps. They also tested the rules of physics and density to create multi-layered liquid concoctions.

We have also started our online science sessions, where students present their own selection of experiments to the class. Thanks to Lev, who started us off with 2 experiments, one with home made bath bombs and another with a frothy lava-like explosion with egg whites.

We are really looking forward to seeing more exciting experiments by the students in the coming weeks. .

Mr Bishop

This week our distance learning strategies have enabled Year 5 to optimise their study time in preparation for assessments! Maths lessons have covered decimals, fractions, percentages, and even addressed Roman Numerals.

In English, we have been looking at 'fact' versus 'opinion' (combined with adverbs of possibility and persuasive writing techniques). Our students have also taken the first steps towards creating their own island (whilst studying topographical terms) during Topic time.

Mr Walker

Year 6 have been preparing for their final writing assessment on the topic 'I believe in Unicorns' by Michael Morpurgo. They have been gathering their thoughts and ideas for their new episode by creating a scrapbook of their different pieces. Students shared their plans today in the online conference.

Now, they just need to remember to apply all the wonderful work they have done on creating similes, metaphors, and setting the time and place.

Mrs Charlesworth

This week is marking the end of the assessment period. The Y6B students have successfully completed their end of term Maths test, they finished their termly reading comprehension test and this Friday they will be writing their end of unit write up. In the mids of all the preparations for their assessments, some students volunteered to create an extra assignment for their peers inside the wonderful world of Minecraft.

The objective was set quickly: To create a dream school campus using the Minecraft education edition app.

These students worked very hard to prepare the assignment, writing clear instructions and expectations but also allowing students to be as creative as they want to be.

'The directors’ as they have named themselves have created a full list of the buildings they felt a good campus should have and appointed students to each one. Finally, a blueprint of the campus was created for a better visual representation of the ‘world’.

It was decided that each designer needed to outline the building and put a board in front of it to specify its name, the designer in charge, the builders' names, which materials need to be used to build the structure and its size.

Enjoy!

Mr Kokalj

Year 2 students have been learning how to make their writing more interesting by using expanded noun phrases. They first tried to find all the expanded noun phrases in a short story and then produced some lovely descriptive sentences to show what they could see in the pictures. Well done, everyone!

Mrs Majzelj Kralj

Year 3 students have been doing brilliantly in learning about animals this week. They learned new vocabulary, created flashcards, interviewed their classmates and we even had the chance to meet some of their pets on Zoom. Keep posted for their big project next week!

Year 4s are currently talking about their daily routine. After learning about time they are now creating a timeline of a typical day for them, mixing images and written sentences. They also created a flashcards game to practise and quiz each other. Well done!

Year 5 students are currently covering a big topic "moi, ma famille, mes amis et mes animaux". After recording fantastic presentations of their family last week they now moved on to describing their habitat. If one day, you are looking for real estate in France you can ask them for help. They know everything about landscape, house sizes and different types of houses.

Year 6s have been creating a classroom game for each other and are now moving into expressing preferences regarding school subjects. They have been focusing hard on their listening and speaking skills lately and are doing very well.

Mrs Poulet

This week Y1 Slovene advance students were focusing on writing and syllables. The students are getting better and better!

With Y2 Slovene advance students, we started with reading the book Moj prijatelj Piki Jakob by Kajetan Kovič.

In Y3/4 Slovene advance were focusing on a description of a person and Y5/6 students were focusing on how to write a description of a procedure.

If you are hungry for reading Slovene books you can still borrow a book in your local library via platformbiblos. A good application for those who are struggling with reading is the application Kobi.

This week all Slovene Foundation groups across Primary have begun online lessons. During the lessons, we have been practising vocabulary through various games and learning about colours in Early Years, fruits and vegetables in Y1, body parts in Y2, ordering food and drinks in Y3 and Y4, and discovering famous destinations around Slovenia in Y5 and Y6.

Slovene Department

Besides Daily workout, Weekly challenge and trying to achieve as many points in House competition, students also started to learn about the history of the Olympic Games. The youngest students received a fun video about a story of how The Olympic games evolved, as the older students received a Quiz challengeto test their knowledge about this topic.

STAR OF THE WEEK

PE Department will also share the Weekly sportsman certificate, which will go to the students for his/her recognition of her dedication to PE Live Streams, homework and House competition.

HOUSE COMPETITION

We have received some amazing weekly scores from different challenges. Here are the weekly high scores:

• Balance challenge: 16 sec
• Wall ball toss: 17 passes
• Marathon: 4200 meters
• Push up: 60 push-ups
• Soccer juggling: 24 times
• The plank: 2 minutes and 20 seconds

Please keep on posting your scores and help your House win the competition. (CLICK HERE)

PE LIVE SESSION

Just to invite all of the students again to join us in the morning PE Live session and to share with you the schedule of the lessons.

SCHEDULE

PE Department

We've got teddy bears from Krajnska Gora to Vrhnika and we'd love to see more. A big thank you to all of the students and parents who have already contributed to this project with wonderful messages for our community. Please continue to put out your teddy bears where people walking past can see them and share them either:

In our Facebook “We’re going on a bear hunt post” (in comments) - and please feel free to share the initiative by sharing our original Facebook post.

By email to tanya.charlesworth@britishschool.si

And enjoy your bear hunt when out walking.

Mrs Charlesworth & the C4C Team

& all the excited teddy bears.

Need to get outside, and try something different? Well, you don't have to be a MEPI (DofE) participant to read a map, so why not try this simple 'orienteering-style' challenge? This is simple and fun for the individual, or even the family (An hour or less.) The link for the map is here, and there is also a link to some 'cryptic' questionsfor you to answer as you go along the paths of Tivoli Park (Print them off or just view on your mobile device).

If you know that the top of the map is North (0°), and counting clockwise, there are 360° in a full circle, you won't even need a compass for this. The questions aren't in a logical order, so you will need to use the coordinates to mark each point onto the map, and then choose the route you want to follow.

A couple of things you should know:

Often the landscape will change a little over time, and the map can no longer be totally trusted - The information you require to answer question 9 has moved about 50 metres, so you will need to look around a bit. Also, the information for question 6 changes from time to time!

If you dare to take up the challenge, please email the answers (and the date that you completed the task) to simon.irving@britishschool.si and we will check them. Perhaps there might be a prize for the most successful competitor?!

Best of luck!

Mr Irving

Reception

Sofia and Valeria... for their positive attitudes, their enthusiasm for learning and their noted improvements in Phonics. Well done girls.

Nursery

Gabriel... for his participation in lessons and for always trying his best. Super job !

Year 1

Zara... for her wonderful attitude to learning. Mr Hughes said she is zooming through her phonics, tricky words and reading. Keep up the amazing work Zara!

Year 2

Christina... for her outstanding contributions in her online lessons. Her enthusiasm and engagement has been fantastic. Well done Christina.

Year 3

Eva B… for giving her best with all her homework and regularly attempting the maths challenges.

Year 4

Darsh...for consistently keeping up to date with all of his online work.

Year 5

Robert...For his dedication and attention to all tasks in his distance learning, in addition to his warm personality that shines through even on zoom.

Year 6a

Valentin… For his absolute dedication to his school work. Mrs Charlesworth said "everything you have submitted has been done to your best ability, submitted on time or even before, and you have also done extra work outside of the set curriculum. Including completing all 23 pages of Mastery questions."

Year 6b

Laura... for her continuous efforts to complete all work in time and making sure it is of consistently high quality. Mr Kokal was also very impressed with how well she did in her recent Math assessment and the Reading Comprehension test. He was so impressed. Well done Laura!

PE

A special Star of the week award from the P.E.department has been awarded to Maxim...for his commitment by participating in PE Live streams every morning and demonstrating perseverance.

House Points

The winner this week was Zircon with 93 points!

CoNgRaTuLaTioNs

In second place was Emerald with 91 points

In third place was Sapphire with 73points

In fourth place was Hessonite with 63 points

Well done everyone, keep up the great work!

Wednesday 22nd April 2020 EARTH DAY!

Earth day was created for children, founded by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson in 1970, when wrote letters to all of the colleges and put a special article in Scholastic Magazine to tell them about the special day he had planned. BISL is part of an international community and Earth Day is also an international event, with over 175 countries throughout the world celebrating Earth Day! It is the largest, most celebrated environmental event worldwide.

This year marks the 50th Anniversary of its creation, so it is as good a time as any to learn a little about it and enjoy some fun activities. To celebrate Earth day, some related activities were added to Digital Downtime for All! On Canvas and Google Drive folder.

Dear Parents,

During this time of working online, we have celebrated many successes and also worked through many challenges as a community. We are all aware that this is a new learning experience for schools and businesses across the world during these unprecedented and trying times. I would like to talk this week about our journey so far.

Please read the whole Update HERE.

Mr Walton

Principal