Secondary News - May 1 2020

It was a much shorter week for the community this week, with only 3 days of lessons going ahead. Work did not stop however, with many teachers available during the public holidays for interviews with parents. Some teachers had over 50 appointments for the week, which were scheduled around their classes and extra appointments with students. It was wonderful to see so many families taking advantage of the provision put in place so that parents could get a clear understanding of the current progress of their child - even at a distance.

Many online courses have migrated to the Canvas online learning platform with all courses in Years 7 and 8 now solely on Canvas and select courses from Years 9 to 13 also. A Secondary Homepage has been developed so that is it easier than ever for students to bookmark and navigate to their courses from there. In Mr Walton’s latest Principal’s Update, he discusses Canvas and E-safety at BISL further.

Next week, Years 11 to 13 are once again off timetable to engage in the second round of assessments this block that will go toward the evidence needed to obtain their final results. I wish all of these students luck for the week ahead.

Have a wonderful long weekend, and as always, stay safe.

Ms Andronikos

Head of Secondary

Please see this week's update from the Principal here, continuing on the theme of technology with Canvas and the safe use of technology with E-Safety.

Previous updates:

Principal’s Update 24 April

Principal’s Update 17 April

Principal’s Update 10 April

Principal’s Update 30 March

Mr Walton

Principal

We would like to thank Petra Škofic-Damjan, Maja Paradiž and Nerma Baltić-Papež for their contributions to BISL education over a number of years. We wish them all good luck in the future.

This week students received a QUIZ CHALLENGE using only the official Olympic games website to help them with the answers. The quiz is really hard and will provide students about fun facts such as:

• How many medals did Muhammad Ali win?
• How heavy is the gold medal?
• Who is the oldest active Olympian?

The aim for this quiz is for children to learn how to use the Olympic games official web site and to find all the information/scores/facts about the Olympic Games.

Quiz link: CLICK HERE

Web site link: CLICK HERE

STAR OF THE WEEK

The PE Department will also share Weekly sportsman certificates, which will go to a student in recognition of their dedication to PE Live Streams, homework and House competition. This week the PE Department is proud to present this award to Elena in Y11 who showed amazing work and excellent attendance in our morning Live sessions.

HOUSE COMPETITION:

The points are being collected from students among all of the Houses. The House competition is one of the easiest ways to collect points for the House you are representing, so help your team, CLICK HERE and do any of the 7 different challenges.

PE LIVE SESSIONS

The numbers of participants at PE Live sessions are increasing so please join in as well, and join others with starting the day with a bit of workout.

For students who missed the Live session CLICK HERE and find all the videos.

SCHEDULE

Kind Regards,

Mr Damjan

Head of PE

Last week's answer for the Math question of the week was: 56 cm.

Thank you for all submitted answers and congratulations to Shivam (Y7), Petr (Y8A), Nikolas (Y8A), Aleksander Z. (Y8A), Lizzy (Y8B), Divyansh (Y8B), Georgi (Y8B), Jernej (Y9), Asia (Y9), Domen (Y9), Jan (Y10A), Oriol (Y10A), Anže (Y10A) who guessed correctly and received 5 House points each! Well done!

Maths question of this week is:

Alja took some photographs of her 8 pet parrots. Each parrot is either in 2 or 3 photographs. There are 5 parrots in each photograph. How many photographs did Alja take?

Students who solve the question send their answer to my email by Wednesday next week (6th May).

Good luck!

Ms Zupanc

Maths Department

Year 7 completed a unit of work on the true moving story of the Christmas Truce, where German and British soldiers put down their guns at Christmas and had a friendly football game against each other instead.

Year 8A have been working on their creative writing. We have been looking at the difference between narrative voices in class and how they can affect our writing.

Year 8B students worked on a thrilling story about a terrifying meeting between a young bear and a massive grizzly bear in a story called The Sacrificer

Year 9 are continuing to work their way through Macbeth, this week exploring the changes that certain characters have undergone since the beginning of the play.

Mr Eve and Mr Kirwan

Y7 were working on Pripovedovalno besedilo, starting with a text titled My heart fell into my pants.

Y8 are preparing an interview with a person by their own choice, presented as an article.

Y9 continued exploring the text Gosenica.

Y10 started preparing a text for their speech they are going to record soon.

In basic groups some students were focused on recording dialogues, others on vocabulary and verbs.

Ms Kotnik

MFL Coordinator

Year 7 made a virtual trip to an amusement park this week where they learned about directions. After playing a French "simon says" they explored different ways to communicate a message.

Year 8 students are full of talents which is great as it was their topic this week. Their final project is to record an audition video for a talent show. Stay tuned!

Year 9s have been discussing what is allowed and what is not. A challenging topic for them to develop their French skills.

Ms Poulet, French teacher

MFL Department

Year 9 have discussed how to stay safe online in Citizenship this week. Especially as they are e-learning and using the internet more than before, Year 9 felt it was valuable to share some ideas about how to detect fake news and phishing, as well as how to avoid unwanted interactions on social media. Following a class competition on raising awareness, I congratulate Ana and Enja on their posters and Mark, Jakob and Niko on their engaging presentations. I hope they will be insightful to you too!

Ms Dascalescu

Humanities

Year 7 have been researching and producing a project on a castle of their choice. They were looking at the main features of the castle, when and why it was built, the castle's defensive and attacking features as well as any battles or historical events it has been involved in. Some students produced posters, others presentations, others filmed their presentation of the castle. There was some fantastic work produced

Mr Rogers

Year 7 History teacher

We would like to recognise those who rose to the 'BURGER CHALLENGE' this week. Mr. Irving has now released a burger tutorial, and the video is available in the Google Drive folder named 'Digital Downloads for all!',

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1M3ioxZmTbDDXoxXbn-RxKIGJvFoMFIjz/view?usp=sharing

so now the challenge is open to EVERYONE! Mark from Year 9 deserves a special mention for building some truly delicious-looking burgers to feed his whole family, with superb photo and video evidence to support his splendid achievement. Jasmina of Year 9 also sent in fantastic photo evidence of her culinary perfection, created from scratch! Even Neda Kajfež Ambrožič (Our MEPI Nacionalna koordinatorka) created some wonderful vegan burgers, which she shared with her neighbours. We look forward to seeing who will take-up the Tivoli Park Orienteering Challenge (See last week's PRIMARY newsletter, or the 'Digital Downloads for all!' folder), and as it's a long weekend, we'd love to receive evidence of YOUR homemade burgers on the barbecue. (Send a photo or two, with a few words to tell your story, to simon.irving@britishschool.si.)

Mr Irving

MEPI Co-ordinator

Dear Parents,

Following the guidance from the Ministry of Education and after consultation with the School Board, we have decided to plan the reopening of the school premises from Monday 18^thMay. We expect this date to be confirmed next week and will then notify parents.

This news comes after Prime Minister Janez Janša announced a gradual easing of measures starting with the lifting of a ban on inter-municipal travel on Thursday 30^thApril. This will enable our families who live further away from school the opportunity to travel and to attend lessons.

To assist with the smooth reopening of the school, we propose to move the scheduled block break from the week beginning Monday 18^th May to a week earlier, starting Monday 11^th May.

This will in turn allow:

1. The necessary time for our admin, support and auxiliary staff to prepare for the full reopening of the school.

2. The staff time to prepare on site/classrooms for the return of students.

3. The full implementation of safety and hygiene measures as sent out by the ministry.

4. The calendar will therefore be amended, and the block will start earlier but finish at the same time at the end of the academic year.

With health and safety at the forefront of our planning, we will maintain our own internal restrictions to minimize all risk including health guidance to families, removing scheduled trips/visits to public areas and to avoid assemblies and gatherings in school. We will update you on these developments at regular intervals.

May I take this opportunity to sincerely thank all parents for their support during this challenging time. I am sure that all families will welcome the opportunity to come back to school as soon as possible.

Kind regards,

Paul Walton

Principal