Primary News - October 25 2021

Dear Parents and Students,

With Halloween just around the corner, the classrooms have come alive with many wonderful decorations. Thank you to all parents involved in organising different activities for students to enjoy and be involved in. The Primary Student Council will also be organising some fun games for students on the 29th of October, along with the dress-for-Halloween day. We look forward to that!

As areas of the new building continue to develop, students will be able to benefit from all sorts of new learning experiences: weekly scheduled reading sessions in the Library, developing problem-solving skills with LEGO Robots in the Technology Suite and performing arts classes taking place in the Performance Theatre. These facilities are also open to the wider community through various events, such as Story-Time at BISL, that enable new families to visit the school and collaborate with the BISL community. Students are also enjoying the served lunches in our new canteen now and the salad bar offering a variety of fresh vegetables.

We have had very changeable weather in the past few weeks, with cold mornings and warmer afternoons. Please ensure that your children wear appropriate clothing to school, as we encourage students to play outdoors in all weathers, as much as possible, during their breaks and after school supervision or activities. Remember also to label your uniform items and personal belongings so that these can be returned to you in the event of getting lost.

Friday 5th November will be a time to mark Remembrance Day at BISL, poppies are available at reception, we will have students and staff reading poetry, short stories and other activities to mark this important event. If you wish to donate, a link online can be found here.

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

Enjoy the weekend,

Katarina Železinger

Head of Primary

Early Years

This week the EY have been exploring which transportation methods help us travel alongside rivers, over and under the sea. As our transportation journey is moving onto the water, the story of ‘Mr. Gumpy’s boat’ has been a stimulus for all our water-related learning, ranging from coloured water paint to the exploration of coloured water. Alongside mark-making activities, children were learning about mathematical concepts of big/small and heavy/light, which helped them understand why some things sink, while others float.

Using the story of the week, Reception children were practising blending learned sounds s, a, t, i, p, and n by writing a story card for the main character of the book, Mr Gumpy. With the help of sequencing cards, Nursery children had fun talking to their peers while practising their storytelling skills in the small world story role-playing area.

Ms Kukovica

Year 1

It has been such an interesting week! We met a new dinosaur friend named Digit who loves maths! He helped us to review our shapes through some fun activities. In our Topic lessons we have made more puppets and even put on some puppet shows initiated by the students.

Within the Humanities theme of this block, we took some time to talk about countries we come from and drew our country flags. We have also started reading our first poems and learning about rhyming words.

Ms Miklavec

Year 2

This week in Year 2, we have been enjoying our Learning to Learn topic, where we have been looking at the importance of exercise.

During our Topic lessons, we were able to learn a number of stretches.

We used these stretches alongside a story as a way of acting it out. We had so much fun and can't wait for our coming Topic lessons where we will learn about our emotions and needs.

Ms Harris & Mrs Bradley

Year 3a

Year 3A are Mathematical Magicians!

We can partition addition and subtraction sentences in a flash!

Mrs Blundell

Year 3b

Year 3 created chocolate for themselves and a family member to sample at a later date. Their table, hands, and equipment needed to be very clean. They each needed to decide how many spoons full of each ingredient to add to make their own chocolate recipe.

Every chocolatier needed to:

1. Mix the ingredients to the desired consistency
2. Pack this into the chocolate box mold
3. Add any toppings if desired
4. Put the chocolate into the fridge to set.
5. Write down the number of each spoonful of ingredients they used for their experiment.

Mr Kokalj

Year 4

It was wonderful to be out on a school trip this week with the Year 4 class. The trip connects to the Year 4 English curriculum, in which the students are focusing on a story set in Victorian times (a historical setting). Children will explore the setting and use it to immerse themselves in the story. The setting and period then provide inspiration for their own writing. The Slovenian School Museum gave our students the chance to immerse themselves in the historical setting of an old classroom set during Austro-Hungarian times.

The students and teachers loved dressing up in traditional school clothes - aprons for the girls and vests for the boys and special sleeves to protect our clothes from ink stains. The mistress of the class was extremely strict, using punishments quite frequently during the lesson. We are all glad that we are not in the 1930s classroom today, although using the calligraphy pens with ink pots produced absolutely stunning cursive handwriting.

Mrs Charlesworth

Year 5

This week has been great. The children did a fantastic job presenting their home countries,which has been a wonderful way of celebrating humanities block. All of the children took part in a flag naming competition, and everyone did very well. Congratulations to Ela who competed for our class in the final.

The children have also written some fantastic poems, which they are very excited about sharing with you at the poetry reading event at the end of the block.

Ms Thomas

Year 6

This week in Year 6 was all about the upcoming Halloween. We decorated the classroom – thank you very much to the parents for helping the students. The classroom looks amazing – it truly is the spookiest of all.

In Topic lessons, we further researched about Maya and found out even more interesting details about this mysterious civilization. We delved deeper into researching and discussing Maya cities, artefacts, codices and writing systems, numbers, and calendars.

In Maths, we were expanding our knowledge in algebra further. We also tackled the topic of linear sequences.

Our English lessons revolved around poetry. As the students are now well versed in poetic terms, they tried writing poems on their own as well. There is lots of creative talent in Year 6! Also, don’t be too surprised if the students start pointing out rhymes, metaphors and alliterations everywhere they go.

Ms Štrok

EAL

After practising the "We're going on a Bear Hunt" song, the EAL class decided it was time we went on a hunt of our own. But don't worry, it wasn't a bear we were after.

We went outside, to find as many nouns as possible and categorise them as people, places and things. One of the places we found on the way was a playground and we took a short but well-deserved break.

Mr Siter

Head of EAL

PE

Across primary PE lessons this week, we introduced some of the basic concepts of beach volleyball. Students were introduced to fundamental volleyball skills (dig, set & spike) and enjoyed being able to experience playing volleyball on the sand.

We discussed some of the basic rules required when playing volleyball, along with some tactical knowledge and the importance of effective teamwork when playing as a group.

PE Department

Slovene

This week Years 3 and 4 have been focusing on their school maps. Students’ mission was to become an architect for one lesson and express their creativity through designing a school map. Of course, they didn't forget to include all school premises in Slovene.

As a challenge, they investigated further and added a few extra school premises to their map .

I can't wait to see their finalised maps with all the details.

Le tako naprej!

Ms Košec

Slovene Advanced

What an exciting week for Year 1 and Year 2 students at Slovene Advanced lessons! Students are very enthusiastic about the Slovene reading badge and some of them have already started to read stories and poems at home.

They proudly presented the storytelling to classmates. We all really enjoyed it!

Ms Drofenik

Open Day at BISL

We have a brilliant opportunity coming up for families to visit BISL, to see lessons, pop into classrooms and see how our students learn. This will be on Wednesday 27th October as part of our school Open Day from 9-11am. If you are free, this is an ideal time to come in and see what our students experience each day!

Please register in advance here.

Problem Solving with LEGO Robots at BISL

Our students have thoroughly enjoyed using our LEGO Robots in the past few weeks to develop their problem-solving, critical thinking and collaboration skills.
In our new Technology Suite, we have a full class set of LEGO Spike Prime robots with the extra expansion sets for students to further stretch and challenge their thinking.

Using the LEGO Robots helps the students to further develop their computation skills and STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) learning. STEAM-based learning gives students tools and methods to explore new and creative ways of problem-solving, displaying data, innovating, and linking multiple fields, effectively teaching them how to think outside the box.

Read the full article here to find out more about how our students have been embracing this new opportunity here at BISL.

Dear Parents,

Halloween is approaching!

Thank you to parents who have volunteered to come in for various days during next week for Halloween, we have some fantastic and fun activities arranged such as pumpkin carving, Halloween story time, decoration making with art activities, etc. We look forward to continuing this great buzz of excitement as we build towards our Halloween Dress Down Day on Friday 29th October for all staff and students! I still haven't decided on my costume...

Coming up we have a brilliant opportunity for families to visit BISL, to see lessons, pop into classrooms and see how the students learn. This will be on Wednesday 27th October as part of our school Open Day from 9-11am. If you are free, this is an ideal time to come in and see what the students experience each day! Please register in advance here.

Thank you to parents and students for attending the University Guidance evening on Wednesday, we had over 25 people at the presentation to find out more about the process at BISL, scholarships, successes of our Alumni and next steps in applying to universities. Mr Malden and Mr Batson did a great job in taking us through the guidance we offer.

I have also been delighted to see our students develop their problem solving and programming skills in Computer Science. In our new technology suite, we have a full class set of LEGO Spike Prime robots with the extra expansion sets for students to further stretch and challenge their thinking - take a look at what our students have been doing here.

Friday 5th November will be a time to mark Remembrance Day at BISL, poppies are available at reception, we will have students and staff reading poetry, short stories and other activities to mark this important event. If you wish to donate, a link online can be found here.

Finally, as winter approaches I get excited about the weather and then the potential of snow. Each year this looks amazing in Slovenia and is great fun for the students. At school we encourage all students and staff to interact and be outside in the fresh air as much as possible, as this is part of an active healthy lifestyle. We are very fortunate to be in a beautiful country with clean air, fantastic nature and wonderful seasons so we will absolutely take every opportunity to take advantage of this. To support this, we have purchased a range of hats, scarves, coats, snoods and gloves for staff so everyone can be warm and enjoy being outside. Let's hope for lots of days without heavy rain so we can enjoy and have fun learning and being outdoors!

Please read my full Update from the Principal here with further details and upcoming events.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Kind regards,

Paul Walton, Principal

All upcoming events and details are available on our website.