Primary News - April 11 2020 | British International School of Ljubljana

Dear Parents and Students,

I hope you have all had a good break and that you are keeping well. With the distance learning continuing in term 3 with the online sessions schedule now in place, we hope this has helped students to get back into the ‘school routine’ and engage in learning with their teachers and peers. Some additional online sessions will be scheduled next week for Catch Up or Q & A sessions to further support students as they tackle the tasks and activities set. An updated virtual timetable will be shared with parents before next week.

Having attended various online sessions in the past few weeks, I have been really impressed by students on how they have adapted to learning from home in such a short space of time, their growing maturity in taking on various responsibilities at home to help their families and balancing schoolwork with fun activities. Keep sending your videos and photos to your teachers, along with your encouraging messages. Some of you have been keeping a diary (a scrapbook is good too) during this time, to share with your teachers how you have overcome the challenges, stayed healthy, positive and motivated to learn. Keep this up and continue to share your good ideas with the BISL community.

There is virtue in work and there is virtue in rest. Use both and overlook neither.

Alan Cohen

Wishing everyone a good weekend and enjoy the easter Monday celebrations,

Mrs Železinger

Head of Primary

The Early Years students began their live lessons this week and we must say that we were blown away by how well they all behaved and the enthusiasm they have demonstrated throughout the week. The children have been doing a Phonics or a Maths lesson each day.

Every time we turn the video conference on, they are all sitting with their pencils and paper, their "listening ears" and "looking eyes" ready and excited to start learning! The children have been able to listen to each other and take turns to speak all while participating in each activity and, of course, having fun. It is a pleasure to teach them. Even during these difficult times, they are still making us laugh and making us very proud teachers!

Mrs Paradiž and Ms O'Hara

What a week! A big thank you to all the parents that have become teachers, the work you are sending me is AMAZING!

This week Year 1 have been learning about money, make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel for more maths videos. Next week, virtually, we are going shopping, applying our column addition knowledge to real-life scenarios involving money.

In PSHE, Y1 have started a home gardening project. My plants are starting to shoot, I'm super excited to show you all! Make sure to send in updates about your plants too.

In topic, Y1 have been applying their investigation and research skills to find out about toys throughout history and imagining toys of the future. This task also attracted Liam of Y4 who sent me an awesome piece of work and his ideas.

Finally, in literacy Y1 have continued their live phonics lessons with myself and Miss Katarina (another big thank you). We are really proud of all the success you are achieving.

Good luck with your Friday Kahoot quiz!

Mr Hughes & Mrs Miklavec

Year 2 have made a fantastic start to Block 6. We have started our 'Food Glorious Food' topic by looking at Fairtrade, thinking about where products come from and what 'Fairtrade' means. Over the Block break, I received some fantastic pieces of work from Year 2 and some very impressive shape poems. We are looking forward to continuing our distance learning journey together.

Ms Harris

This week in year 3, the students began their study of shape in geometry, with properties of 2D shapes being the main focus. In English, the students are learning about biographies and autobiographies, by studying the biography of children's books author Jamila Gavin.

Also in Topic, the students are studying the Olympic games, focusing on the rich history of the games over the course this week. Thanks to everyone involved for another great week and well done to the class for showing such great engagement with lessons.

Mr Mulcahy

Year 4 have started giving their spoken presentations about famous adventures and explorers in history this week. We learnt about the lives of people such as Neil Armstrong, Nellie Bly, Marco Polo and Daniel Boon. We also enjoyed playing a Kahoot designed by one of the students to test our knowledge on important dates and events in history to do with the explorers we had been studying the last block.

This block, we are moving onto science, where students will conduct their own experiments online. Despite being behind closed doors, it has been great catching up with students on a daily basis, and it helps to maintain a level of normalcy for us all in these times which are anything but.

Mr Bishop

Throughout the week we have been adapting into our online lessons, using the "raise hand" button instead of physically raising their hand as well as answering questions on Kahoot. We have argued different points of view on a range of different subjects, learnt some complicated Geographical terms and used our place value knowledge to add, times and round decimals. I have enjoyed seeing Y5 again even if I have to settle for a computer screen. Thank you for all the hard work from all the Y5 children.

Mr Walker

As part of a recent English assignment, students were expected to create a quick draft of a newspaper article, depicting what they have been learning about in Michael Morpurgo's story - 'I believe in Unicorns'.

They have had to submit many small pieces, gathering lots of different ways to record the way the characters felt about War and what they went through while the soldiers invaded their towns; discussion threads, writing texts, note-taking, debates and peer reviews of writing. More to share in the upcoming weeks will include - posters, poems and of course, their final assessment pieces of writing.

Mrs Charlesworth

The Year 6 B students have been studying how to change fractions to percentages and how to calculate percentages of amounts.

Students have been organising additional learning sessions with the teacher for some extra practice. The students feel more prepared to tackle the end of unit assessment now.

Mr Kokalj

This week has been all about learning new vocabulary to introduce new topics in Slovene. Here is an example of how we are learning words for Body Parts in Year 2.

Slovene Department Team

This week in French, the Year 3 students started a new topic: Family. After having a lot of fun singing and playing with vocabulary during our video conference the students created a representation of their family and labelled it. Bravo à tous!

Mrs Poulet

Dear Parents and Students,

We have prepared a lot of different challenges this block as Block 6 is a Sports block:

Whole School House competition

7 different challenges
Uploaded proof brings double the amount of House points

Live stream PE sessions (every morning from 7:30 - 8:00)

SCHEDULE:

PE Department has also decided to move the whole school distance learning to a new platform CANVAS, which is already in use with most of the other subjects.

We would also like to thank you all for sharing videos and photos for us to see the students progress and would encourage you to please continue with your help also in the upcoming weeks.

Kind Regards,

Mr Damjan

Head of PE

How do you express an obligation? How do you share your experiences with people and what tense should you use? What is a modal verb? Our EAL students have been busy at work in their lessons, brushing up on their knowledge of grammar and vocabulary, all to make their writing all the more amazing.

They were also working hard during the holidays reading books the teacher assigned them on GetEpic! and books they chose out of their own interest. In the past two weeks, they have read a whopping 48 books! Well done everyone!

Mrs Majzelj Kralj

In the time of Distance Learning, students, teachers and staff spend extended periods sitting in front of our screens. In the SEN department, we address the organizational skills, time management skills and other areas that have presented a bigger challenge in these last weeks. The health of our eyes is very important as well as staying physically active.

In the last SEN lesson, our teacher explained the importance of healthy eyes, hand-eye coordination, physical activity and linked eye coordination exercises to P.E. It is a fun way to practice and a good introduction activity to every day reading sessions that our students are expected to do.

Why don't you try and have a go as well?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gekmBkd4-_Y

SEN Department

Nursery

Ema ... in recognition of her continuous engagement and for being so enthusiastic about completing her learning tasks.

Titus ... in recognition of his bravery and willingness to extend his learning by also joining the Reception group.

Reception

Andrii ... for participating in our live Phonics and Maths lessons with courage and for making great efforts to use his English skills.

Sophia Julija ... in recognition of her fantastic effort and enthusiasm and continued engagement in all of our activities.

Year 1

Sunny ... who has really impressed Mr Hughes with her fantastic topic work over the last two weeks and not to forget her amazing and artistic home project!

Year 2

Maxim ... in recognition of his outstanding work in Mathematics this week.

Year 3

Mark ... for including paragraphs and times adverbs in your recount and drawing shapes accurately to show your understanding of 2D shape properties. Well done and keep up the good work.

Year 4

Kristina ... for her outstanding (and very challenging) Kahoot about famous explorers.

Year 5

Eva... in recognition of her attitude to learning in a different class setting, always coming to a class with a smile on her face and her organisational skills

Year 6a

Emma ... for her outstanding commitment to her work. Emma, you are organized, conscientious and you are not afraid of hard work. I am proud to be your teacher.

Year 6b

Tian ... for his dedication to your schoolwork, school and his role as Head Boy.

It has been a hair raising counting session this time, with great swings in the winners due to points gained during P.E. challenges and Digital Downtime Activity participants dramatically bumping up the points in a whole different direction!

But the results are in... CoNgRaTuLaTiOnS to....

Second place was Sapphire with 65 points.
Third place was Zircon with 51 points.
Fourth place was Hessonite with 25 points.

Thank you to all that tried their best in their studies during these strange new times. Next week the house captains will be back, presenting to both entertain and inform you of the week winner in their own fun ways! So, keep up the great work everybody!

Dear Parents,

I hope you have had a restful block break and we welcome you back into block 6 of this year at the British International School of Ljubljana. I hope everyone is as safe and well as possible during this difficult time.

Following on from my block break updateon Monday 30th March, I shared that we would discuss at school "the strengths that the staff and students have excelled in, equally identify and work on the areas we need to improve. Like all schools, we can now standardise and focus on creating clear guidelines for online learning for the near future".

We appreciated all of the feedback that you have sent via email, it is very much valued and as a school, we want to make sure that we do the best job that we possibly can do. A 'best fit' for all of our students to help them continue to learn at home. I would like to share some of the areas we have been working on as a school during this first week:

1. A timetable of lessons. This has been shared out at the start of the block and staff have announced further lessons that will be added to this to make sure that the students have more video conference lessons. An updated timetable will be shared with the increase of video conference lessons. It includes expectations, routines and guidelines to follow referencing our online learning policy.

2. More online content extension tasks, forums and wider resources on Canvas. Staff have used the block break and the INSET day to develop further courses and learning materials for students to access and then to receive feedback on.

3. Recorded videos. These have been requested as students can watch the content on-demand. We all need to revisit material at some time and this is very useful for the students to learn key concepts and consolidate learning. Many of these are shared on Facebook and uploaded to YouTube.

4. PE and Exercise videos. These have been created by the PE team and posted on Facebook to show students what activities they can do on a daily or weekly basis. New activities are shared out weekly and cover a wide range of ways to enjoy exercising and staying fit and healthy at home.

5. Assessed work. Time is needed for students to complete work, submit them and receive feedback to improve upon what they have done. We have also shared exam guidance for the relevant year groups amidst the changes from CAIE and the exams process this summer.

A challenge we face is to balance the 5 areas above during the day so that we have a provision to cover them all as a school. We evaluate this at the end of each week and aim to fine tune this over the coming block. Your feedback has helped us move forward with these areas and I would like to thank you for the way in which you have communicated and offered ideas through this period of time.

Other areas in which we are monitoring daily and planning ahead are: