Primary News - September 27 2021

Dear Parents and Students,

The Student Leadership elections were completed this week. All students and staff had the opportunity to cast their votes for candidates in the following roles: Head Boy/Girl, Head of Primary Student Council, Prefects, Student Council Class Representatives and House Captains. Well done to all that applied and congratulations to the chosen candidates (see sections below). What do these positions mean for our students?

For the Y6 students with positions of leadership in their final year of primary schooling, this is an opportunity to develop the confidence of aspiring young leaders and develop skills such as public speaking, symbolic leadership and problem-solving. They work hard throughout the year to lead school assemblies, manage and run school events and provide student voice through consulting with staff around whole school issues. Successful applicants are very well respected and represent our BISL Primary community to the highest degree. The House Captains organise various sport events and competitions for all students to participate in.

The Primary Student Council is comprised of students from EY-Y6. A class representative is chosen in each class to represent the ideas and concerns of their peers, while the Head of Primary SC liaises with the secondary SC to plan for exciting and fun days where all our students can get involved. The SC hold various meetings, where discussions are held and decisions are made on fundraising events for our school and support of our local community.

A big thank you also to all the parents that have volunteered to support the classes and to help with organising the upcoming events. See the PTA section below for more information on how you can get involved.

For any important updates, please continue to check the News section and the latest Update from the Principal.

Have a lovely weekend.

Kind regards,

Katarina Železinger

Head of Primary

The Year 6 student Prefect positions have been finalised. We would like to congratulate each student for applying for the positions and they all wrote very convincing application letters, making the selection process very difficult. The BISL team is proud to announce the Head Girl and Head Boy, as well as all the other positions below, and we are confident that each student will fulfil their duties and help to further enhance our school.

Head Boy / Head Girl

Artem Y6 is Head Boy

Nika Y6 is Head Girl

Prefects

• Library prefects: Ida & Maksim - Y6
• Early Years prefect: Darya - Y6

House Captains

• Sapphire: Ivan - Y6
• Hessonite: Ela - Y6
• Zircon: Alina - Y6
• Emerald: Nadja - Y6

Student Council Class Representatives

Head of Primary Student Council: Kristina - Y6

• EY: Reception class
• Y1: Tit
• Y2A: Eliza
• Y2B: Andrii
• Y3A: Tommy
• Y3B: Nina
• Y4: Dariya
• Y5: Alisa
• Y6: Lev

Early Years

In Early Years, we are finishing our journey of the first block's topic “All about me” with feelings and emotions. The children have learned how to identify different emotions through picture cards and began to explain how they feel when they felt a particular emotion.

We feel different feelings on different days and we can express them in different ways. Children were getting creative expressing their emotions through facial exploration, using mirrors, vocalizing their feelings and through body movements. They had fun painting with colours that match their emotions.

The children also explored the world of 2D shapes by recognizing them in everyday objects, because shapes are everywhere around us. Children also recognised shapes in housing features while creating junk model houses and went on a shape hunt around the school.

Miss Kukovica

Year 1

It has been such an exciting week in Year 1! We explored our woodland area through a scavenger hunt, we had a shared topic lesson with Year 5 students about different habitats (check the school Facebook profile for pictures) and we made paintbrushes out of natural materials!

Making the paintbrushes was very exciting, but we realised that using them was a bit more challenging!

Ms Miklavec

Year 2

This week in Maths it was all about addition and subtraction. We explored different ways of calculating using miniature animals, cubes and number lines.

Our main focus in English was using CAPITALS. We concluded our Topic unit on pirates with a fun pirate dance and pirate-themed games of Pictionary and Bingo.

Mrs Bradley

Year 3

Year 3 students have been observing the changing weather this week with their own weather monitoring devices. They made rain gauges, weather vanes, and anemometers.

Students also enjoyed interviewing 3 teachers that have worked in schools in other parts of the world to compare what it is like for children in other cultures and climates.

Ms Blundell

Year 4

LIVING THINGS PRESENTATIONS

Year 4 loved listening to each others' presentations about different living things from the Animal Kingdom. Many students were fascinated by jellyfish and starfish. During their presentation, students were assessed on their presentation skills, the look of the presentation as well as whether they had answered all the different headings and sub-headings filled with information.

After each presentation, students asked questions to their peers and gave them stars and wishes for their presentations.

Did you know?

• A group of jellyfish is called a swarm or bloom or smack.
• Lobsters can live up to 100 years if they don't get eaten beforehand!
• Some jellyfish can lay as many as 45,000 eggs in a single night.

Mrs Charlesworth

Year 5

Year 5 have had a very exciting week! They kicked off by attending a trip at the house of illusions. It was so nice seeing the children enjoy themselves and learn new things outside of school. The students loved walking through the tunnel of vortex and learning how it works. In class, the children designed their own animal that has adapted to an extreme habitat.

It was really lovely hearing all of their ideas. They also wrote their own stories which were absolutely fantastic.

Ms Thomas

Year 6

This week has been action-packed in Year 6. Firstly, alongside Year 5, we went to the House of Illusions and witnessed some amazing displays which blew our minds. The most popular of all was the vortex tunnel which made everyone completely dizzy, and the infinity room, where mirrors made it look like there were thousands of us merrily flaunting the government's COVID regulations.

The primary Prefects have been selected and badges will be arriving shortly for the Head Boy and Head Girl. Everyone is looking forward to the holiday and a well earned rest after a fantastic first block.

Mr Bishop

PE

This week students have continued to develop their awareness of net and barrier games, focusing on the importance of healthy competition and competing fairly. Being able to “Serve, Rally & Score'' across a range of games such as lobster ball and bound ball have underpinned the teaching through PE this week. Students also continued to develop their focus on effective teamwork and how collaborating and communicating efficiently, can help them achieve the best outcome for their team(s).

PE Department

MFL Department

The European Day of Languages is celebrated across Europe on the 26th of September every year. It aims to promote the rich linguistic diversity of Europe and raise awareness of the importance of lifelong language learning for everyone. Our Primary students were engaged and enthusiastic in diverse activities. They tried to teach their classmates their mother tongue, sang in different languages, participated in language quizzes and so on.

Let's celebrate the European Languages this Sunday!

Ms Košec, Ms Tatil and Ms Drofenik

EAL

The EAL students are off to a great start, the initial nervousness, fear of the unknown and butterflies in the stomach dissipating into thin air as if they never existed.

Some of our beginner students already know the vocabulary of the classroom and can describe the resources we can find or even ask for what they need, while the others have already had a go at describing their families. In one of the photos, you can see them playing with some phonics words.

The more advanced students are already tackling way more difficult projects, such as writing in paragraphs, using various grammar features.

Mr Siter, Head of EAL

PTA

The uniform sale run by parent volunteers last Friday was very successful, thank you to them for the organisation, and thank you to the parents who came along to purchase uniform items.

Thank you to all parents who have already volunteered to support their classes and help with upcoming events.

If you would like to volunteer to support your class or help with decorations for our upcoming Halloween and Christmas celebrations, please fill in this form. All parents are welcome.

The parent class representatives and parent volunteers provide an important role in supporting the school. They help support class events, whole school events and they also play a wonderful role in warmly welcoming new families into the class on where to go or who to ask for information when required.

Maths Block

In block one, we celebrated Maths. Years 4-6 had a live times tables rock stars competition to find the fastest boy and girl in the class. The winners were Leon and Hannah in Y4, Marlene and Hayato in Y5, and Ida and Lev in Y6. The winners then went on to compete for the fastest boy and girl in the upper primary, and this esteemed honour went to Lev in Y6 and Marlene in Y5. The overall times table champion was then awarded to Marlene in a close final battle - a big congratulations to all who took part! Times tables Rock Stars battles were also fought between Year 3 & 4 and Year 5 & 6. This is a wonderful app provided by the school to speed up student's automatic recall of the times tables multiplication and division facts. We look forward to having further competitions as the year progresses.

Mr Bishop

Dear Parents,

It is very important to me to say thank you to all students, staff and parents for such a great start to the academic year.

Approaching the first day of the term, we all hoped for lessons as normal and that students could see one another back in the building. As the cases increased, the main thing on our minds was to just have everyone in the building and no online learning to start the year. At the end of this week, I briefly sit down for a second and reflect upon having had lessons in the building, seeing the students interact together, after-school activities having a new programme to follow and a succession of trips for our students to enjoy.

The icing on the cake has been to finish the week with students enjoying a dress down day representing House colours, the sun shining outside and the prospect of a week off to recharge and relax before we proceed to Block 2.

I am very grateful for this start and that we have had an excellent 5 weeks of students learning together.

Yesterday, I visited the new building to watch the Story Time event and it was a huge success. Thank you to Miss Gillespie for leading this great story session and also to Ms Kukovica who helped out with all the students in the arts and crafts activity that followed. The feedback was great and I look forward to the next time families can join us for these events.

Thank you to all parents who have signed up to volunteer to help decorate the school during this upcoming block for Halloween, the plan is to start from the week beginning Monday 4th October. We've had about 10 volunteers and this is very much appreciated. After Halloween and the next block break in November, we will start decorating the school for Christmas, again thank you to parents who have already signed up to offer time to help with this. Having a school decorated for these holidays creates a fantastic atmosphere in the building and adds excitement, wonder and magic to these annual celebrations.

We have more building projects to complete over the block break and I will take the parents who attend the Coffee with the Principal (Friday 8th October) around the building to show the updates and developments we have made.

We also look forward to Teacher Appreciation Day on Friday 8th October, a chance to celebrate the efforts, time and dedication by our amazing staff.

I have included the usual updates but please have a look at the student articles in the links in my full Update from the Principal, they are of the highest quality and I am extremely proud to showcase the work by our students.

Have a lovely weekend and a relaxing block break,

Kind regards,

Paul Walton

Principal

All upcoming events and details are available on our website.