Primary News - December 2 2020

It is starting to look very festive here at BISL, thanks to the parents that have come into school to put up a number of wonderful, sparkly decorations. We hope that soon the whole community can come to enjoy these, together with the youngest students in Early Years and Year 1 attending the classes at school.

The online learning continues for Y2-Y6 classes in Primary. Student and parent feedback has been extremely important for us to adjust online learning to the needs of the students and ensure that they continue to be motivated and have social interactions with their peers. If you are worried about your child for any reason, please contact the class teacher and let them know.

Primary Autumn Term reports will be issued this Block and posted on the 4th December. In week 4 and 5, parent-teacher interviews take place and we hope that all parents take this opportunity to discuss their child’s progress during this term. Instructions on booking virtual interviews have been communicated via email on 20th November.

There are lots of fun competitions and events coming up to look forward to. Please continue to follow the events calendar on our website (also see the important dates section below), and the updates, including the latest Update from the Principal.

Thank you to all parents for their continued support and positive feedback. All of us are especially proud of the students, who have shown incredible resilience and empathy in overcoming various challenges and supporting one another during such extraordinary circumstances.

Have a lovely and restful weekend,

Katarina Železinger

Head of Primary

Early Years

In Early Years we have been exploring the frosty outdoors and autumnal colours. We made leaf crowns and painted our leaf kebabs!

We have begun practising for our Christmas play and started making props.

Ms Rosa

Year 1

It has been another busy week in Year 1 and as it gets closer to Christmas the children's excitement grows, we had a lot of fun this week talking about celebrations around the world and making our own Christmas decorations!

This block we have been looking at poetry, Y1 have written a whole class Kenning poem for your enjoyment:

In maths and topic we continued to explore measurement and maps, learning how to use rulers and naming the 7 continents and identifying landmarks.

Reports are finished and I look forward to our parent-teacher meetings in the upcoming weeks.

Have a great weekend!

Mr Hughes

Year 2

Year 2 has had a fantastic week online! This week, we have been exploring different celebrations from different cultures. We discussed the similarities and differences between our celebrations. We have also looked at the holiday of thanksgiving and discussed all of the things we are thankful for.

In English, we have been learning all about poetry. We have been writing kennings to describe animals. In maths, we have been learning about adding and subtracting with multiples of 10. We hope the Year 2s have a well earnt relaxing weekend!

Ms Harris & Ms Miller

Year 3

This week in Topic, the students continued their study of habitats by classifying animals that live in the forest as well as examining examples of food chains of the same habitat. The students will move onto the ocean habitat next week and examine the phenomenon of adaptation in the animal kingdom.

In English, the students read the story "A Tale of Two Robots" as part of their study of science fiction/fantasy stories and came up with and posed questions to the main character of the story before acting out the role in pairs.

In Maths, the students are continuing with their studies of multiplication and division, covering equal grouping and sharing, and consolidating their work by taking part in online interactive quizzes.

Also well done to our star of the week Tamira, who has read aloud so eloquently when asked to do so in class, and has met so many of her objectives in Maths also. Well done Tamira!

Mr Mulcahy

Year 4

This week, Year 4 students have been studying maps, with the aid of Google Earth. Firstly, they tested their global citizen knowledge by chasing Karmen Santiago around the globe, with the aid of Google Earth, and helped her catch a notorious jewel thief who had snatched the Crown Jewels. In the process, they had a 3D visual tour of some famous landmarks, including Mount Fuji in Tokyo, the Sydney opera house, Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro and the Tower Bridge in London. Next, they explored the terrain around our school and mapped the geographical features, creating a key to describe them. In English, we started our new text analysis, with a story called Lost or Stolen. The story revolves around the Hindi festival celebrating the bond between brothers and sisters, Raksha Bandhan, and it also explores the concept of moral dilemmas.

We all look forward to seeing what exciting things are on offer next week.

I am delighted to say that this year we will be continuing to support the Trije Zimski Botri charity organisation with the driving force behind it all of Maja Nesterović and the wonderful PTA. We are excited to be receiving our class letters on Monday. Please either email me or get in contact with our class parent directly to receive your letter.

Mr Bishop

Year 5A

This week in Y5 we explored the differences between the ancient city-states of Greece (Sparta and Athens). All children researched a specific city-state and input their information into a class information table.

We continued to have a fierce debate on the fairest and the most effective city-states, there were many controversial rules which the students passionately and respectfully discussed.

Mr Walker

Year 5B

MATHEMATICS TERM TEST ON CANVAS

With great enthusiasm, the Year 5 Maths Term test was created as a quiz on Canvas. Canvas has many benefits, one of which being that at this time of distance learning we can assess students online, online grade book, with an automatic instant marking system, which provides instant feedback to students and their parents after submission. There are many different ways to create a question on a quiz - multiple-choice, numeric answer, essay, or even upload of a photo (showing the working out for a question). Of course, it's technology, so there were a few hiccups on the way, students getting kicked out of zoom and the quiz, user error as well, but all in all the students coped really well under the pressure of technology and performed well on the test.

Mrs Charlesworth

Year 6

Year 6 students continue to explore the wonderful world of science by conducting different experiments. At the moment they are studying the chemistry behind baking bread and after learning all about gluten and glucose, yeast and carbon dioxide they experimented with baking their own loaf of bread.

I hope you enjoy looking at the photographs as much as the students enjoyed eating their “experiment”.

Mr Kokalj

PE News

This week distance learning in PE lessons brought new challenges for students in regards to football. Students already learned some basic rules in football last week, so this week they started to look for different components of successful football training. Students followed a 7-minute warm-up video from Christiano Ronaldo and were challenged on a high level.

They all put in an amazing effort and most importantly, were all smiling while doing it.

Deskercise

The PE department would like to share this week's DESKERCISE routine with you.

An efficient and quick way to exercise while on distance learning, which will help you stay focused and keep fit!

"Fun with the PE teacher (part 2)" challenge is: Hold a broom or a broom-like object, and try to balance it on your open palm for as long as you can while doing various activities (squat, balance on one leg...).

For an extra challenge, you can pass the broom between your left and right palm.

CLICK HERE

We would also like to send you a quick reminder of our other challenges you can get involved with:

• "Keep up with the teacher"

• "Pillow passing compilation"

Please send your entries through to the PE Department!

PE Department

MFL News

Years 3 and 4 have been learning about natural sights across Slovenia. They wrote down Slovene names for natural sights and added some beautiful drawings next to them.

They expressed their creativity indeed! Odlično učenci!

Miss Košec

EAL News

In one of our EAL groups, we put our storytelling skills to the test by taking a look at one of the most notable stories from the old times and adding a bit of a modern twist to it. Can you see what we changed in the pictures?

Students enjoyed bringing out their acting skills and doing some voice over for the characters.

Mr Siter

Parent-Teacher Interviews

We kindly invite all parents to book their Parent-Teacher interviews. Bookings will be open from 24 November to 6 December, 16:00.

Teacher Feature

This week's Teacher Feature takes us to our EAL Department, introducing the fantastic Mr Siter, who takes on the daily challenge of ensuring that our English as an Additional Language students are equipped with the necessary language tools to enable them to make the most of their time here at BISL.

Read Mr Siter’s Teacher Feature here.

MEPI News

Our regular Monday MEPI meeting was hosted by one of our Silver Award participants this week. Entitled 'Setting goals and finding activities', this presentation was invaluable to the most recent of our participants. Delivered with great patience and care, we found it to be a very thought-provoking session, which asked some extremely pertinent questions and provided some highly useful information. Setting a goal for each 'individual' section of the Award (Physical, Service/Volunteering, and Skill) can be a challenge in itself! It needs to be a SMART goal: Specific Measurable Achievable Realistic and Timely. And there were plenty of tips on what types of activity could be undertaken. Stepping out of your comfort zone and trying something new (perhaps with a friend) is something which is greatly encouraged in MEPI, and all of this was expertly related on Zoom, and summarised in this very useful document which I'm sure we will continue to use in the future.

COBIS Art Competition

The COBIS art competition has arrived, it is a chance for students of all ages, from Early Years to Year 6, to enter into a worldwide competition, which last year received almost 600 entries from 110 schools across the globe! Entries can be in any medium. Staff and students will judge which artwork they like best, to be submitted for the second stage, the world competition. Entries will be judged as images, so make sure it can be photographed.

The theme of this years COBIS Art Competition is:

C4C & PTA Christmas Action Update

A huge THANK YOU to the BISL Community. In only a week, we have managed to give out 150 letters to our BISL community, with many people asking for even more. We won't be receiving anymore letters, but if anyone didn't get the chance to take a letter and would still like to do something:

We have heard back from the charity: https://www.zpmmoste.net/en-de-it/english/ and they have said that if any of the parents or teachers are willing, they would appreciate any kind of materials...pencils, colouring pencils, paper, felt pens….basically whatever children might use for playing/learning... and they specifically mentioned BOARD GAMES (new or used-but complete).

If you wish you might prepare a small package clearly marked for Multigenerational Center (VGC) “Skupna točka” - Proletarska Cesta 1, 1000 Ljubljana. (See the BISL website for opening times and parking spots.)

Special thanks to Maja, for always instigating this wonderful project, and giving away letters before we even had any! Petra (PTA Communications) and Barbara for coordinating everyone and the letters into a spreadsheet and sending them out to the right people, a massive feat in itself. And to all the Primary Class Representatives and the Secondary Form Tutors for being in charge of their year group's letters and encouraging them to be taken. And of course to each family who took a letter or more, who have brought Joy to a child in need this Christmas.

PTA Uniform Sale (reminder)

Our PTA are collecting gently used uniform items, so if you have uniform items that your child is not wearing anymore, this is your chance to donate them to the PTA! They will then arrange a second-hand uniform sale and use the funds for various PTA initiatives to benefit our students. Just pack your donations in a bag and leave them in the designated box outside the Early Years entrance under the bike stall. The collection ends December 1.

They have already received a number of fantastic second hand and never worn items - details of these can be found here. Head over to the link so you don't miss out!

Dear Parents,

We are very proud of how our students have embraced their online learning timetables and enjoyed the structured days with many extra videos, activities, and challenges to complete. Well done to all students for an amazing and commendable approach, application, and participation in the lessons so far.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank our Parent Volunteers who gave up their time on Wednesday afternoon to give our school some festive cheer by putting up wonderful decorations on the ground floor for our students and staff to enjoy - thank you.

Also, together with our Caring for the Community Team, our PTA, and our fantastic school community, once again this year we were able to participate in the Trije Zimski Botri project, giving out 150 letters in just one week - that's 150 Christmas wishes from underprivileged children fulfilled - what a brilliant showcase of our community spirit ahead of the holiday season.

Please click here to continue reading my full update this week.

Kind regards,

Paul Walton

Principal

Please note that Class Photo day will be rescheduled for a time when all of our students are back in the building.