Primary News - December 3 2021

Dear Parents and Students,

December festivities continue and this week, Santa came to visit BISL and surprised students with cheers and presents. Along with the beautiful decorations around the school, the ‘little and big helpers’ (students, teachers and parents) have been busy with classroom decor and other fun activities. The corridors echo with carols and songs in preparation for the Christmas shows and plays. On Wednesday, students and staff dressed up in the spirit of Christmas, in green, red and sparkly attire.

The Year 5 and Year 6 students had a fantastic trip to the National Gallery on Thursday. Linked to the Creative Arts block theme, students learned about various artwork displays in the museum. This was a real privilege, as the gallery was opened especially for the visit of BISL students with a guided tour and a workshop to try out their artistic skills. Curriculum trips are an important part of the learning journey for students and we aim for these to continue next Term.

On Friday, the Book and Barter event took place organised by our Sixth Formers. Students were encouraged to bring books from home to exchange with their peers or donate to the library collection.

Be sure to check the BISL Stories with Early Years YoutTube channel, with recordings of stories read by the wonderful BISL staff. Students of all ages can enjoy listening to their favourite stories.

Parent-Teacher Interviews start next week. Bookings close on Sunday, December 5th at 4:00 pm. This is a good opportunity to talk about your child’s progress with their class teacher.

With the first snowfall this week, remember to bring waterproof footwear and clothes into school for students to fully enjoy their outdoor playtime.

Please continue to check the News section on our school website and read the latest Update from the Principal.

Have a lovely weekend,

Katarina Železinger

Head of Primary

Early Years

The first snow of this winter has finally arrived and announced that it's time to put on our Christmas Jumpers and begin with our favourite month of the year. The Children talk with excitement about the school decoration and have already been visited by Santa! Too bad he didn’t have time to stay with us a little bit longer, to have a taste of bread buns, baked by our students. This week it was all about bread, as the children were learning about the process of making flour and which ingredients we need to bake bread.

To consolidate learning from previous weeks, the children had the real experience of shopping, as hungry visitors could buy homemade bread from our Early Years Bakery.

Ms Kukovica

Year 1

The festive season has begun in Year 1! We made decorations for the classroom and for our very own Christmas tree.

We practised descriptive writing based on the story ‘We all went on Safari’ and practised doubling numbers in Maths lessons. We even played a jumbo board game where we had to use our Maths skills. In Topic lessons, we flew all the way to China and celebrated Chinese New Year.

Ms Miklavec

Year 2

This week in Year 2 we have been enjoying the festivities! It's been a week full of excitement. On Wednesday we enjoyed our dress down day, where we got to wear some festive, red or green clothing.

In Topic this week we have been thinking about creating our own celebrations. We thought about how we would celebrate and why we would celebrate it. There were some fantastic ideas and in the coming weeks, we will begin thinking about details for our own celebrations.

Ms Harris & Mrs Bradley

Year 3

This week, Year 3 Students learned about historic art techniques used to repeat artwork more quickly. Artists couldn't simply photocopy or scan their paintings, so they counter transferred, made pouching copies and used the grid experts.

Watch out, Year 3's might one day be able to copy the Mona Lisa!

Ms Blundell & Mr Kokalj

Year 4

ACTIVE PLANET

The students created this Tectonic Plate map of our active planet. They will be adding major natural disasters as they occur using a live tracker, so far we have volcanoes, earthquakes, cyclones, droughts and floods.

The students have added the most notorious volcanoes from the Ring of Fire using the Geography skill of being able to use maps, atlases, globes and digital/computer mapping to locate countries and describe features studied, as well as researching skills to find out more information about those volcanoes.

Year 4 realise that our map is not perfect and we will be making adjustments to it, to include major islands that we have missed as well as a continent. In the meantime, if primary students spot any mistakes, and are able to explain these to the Year 4 students, they will be awarded a house point.

Mrs Charlesworth

Year 5

VIP Trip

The children have had a really exciting and busy week. They had a visit from Santa, a Christmas party and enjoyed our creative arts trip.

The class became VIPs at the National Gallery, as the children were the only ones there. We feel very lucky to have been able to visit the Gallery alone. The class then enjoyed a pizza lunch and spent the afternoon in the City Museum. The class also very much enjoyed the book swapping event in the Library. Everyone spent time reading the blurbs to decide which book they would like.

Ms Thomas

Year 6

Year 6 accompanied Year 5 on a trip to the National Gallery and the City museum yesterday, where they learnt about some local legends, including how Šmarna Gora was created when a giant battled a local village boy and about Podvodni Mož in Lake Bohinj and the rivalry between 2 Kings which ended in tragedy for their children, in Slovenia's own Romeo and Juliet tale.

In the City Museum, we learned about the history of Ljubljana and its early settlers, including the people who lived in stilt houses above the Ljubljana marshlands, and saw the oldest surviving wooden wheel on the planet, over 5000 years old. We also saw a 40000-year-old wooden spear tip!

Mr Bishop

PE

Developing our tactical understanding of net and barrier games was the key focus across primary PE this week. Students in Year 3 & Year 5 focused on the importance of recovery and court position when playing tennis, as well as gaining a tactical advantage by moving their opponent(s) around the court. Year 4 & Year 6 also improved their tactical and spatial awareness when playing badminton, focusing on effective attack and defence, in both singles and doubles playing environments.

PE Department

Slovene Basic

Year 1 has been learning about animals across the globe. They have enjoyed discovering photos with diverse animals, guessing their names and playing pantomime. These activities were fun, but a favourite one was dancing and singing a song about animals (Od glave do peta).

Students were eager and willing to collaborate in all activities. They have even put lots of effort into presenting their favourite animal that they named and drew on a piece of paper. Of course, they have added an important sentence to start with: Moja najljubša žival je...

Odlično. Kar tako naprej 1. razred!

Ms Košec

Slovene Advanced

Year 3 and 4 students at Slovene Advanced lessons are continuing this block with grammar. They are focusing on upper and lower case letters. We have been talking about when do we use them and students realized that we need to always write names, surnames, nicknames and cities with upper case letters. Practice is the best way to learn it, and students are doing really well so far.

Le tako naprej!

Ms Košec

MEPI News

This Monday we attempted to make our own list of what we need when we go on our expedition. We worked in groups, discussing and sharing our ideas, and then collaborated with the teachers at the end.

We also had the opportunity to see and talk about the equipment, for example taking as few things as possible but yet still having enough. A good example is food - a small amount of it but with high calories. The same with clothes - take what you need and no more, but not too little either.

Zoja, MEPI Participant

BISL Make a Wish Holiday Project

In partnership with Zveza prijateljev mladine Ljubljana Moste-Polje, we are delighted to be continuing to support this special holiday initiative with the help of our generous community.

Through this holiday project, children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds write a letter with their holiday wish, and in order for every child to get exactly what they wanted, the gifting is done in such a way that, in cooperation with the ZPM Ljubljana Moste-Polje, we distribute these letters from the children across our community.

This year we have distributed 150 letters among our community and would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for your generosity and compassion towards this worthwhile cause.

The due date for present delivery to BISL is Monday 13th of December 2021.

For more information please click here.

If you are unable to fulfil your gift for any reason, please let your Class Parent Representative or Form Tutor as soon as possible, so that we can re-distribute the letter.

Dear Parents,

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

We've had a lovely week to start celebrating the lead up to Christmas with a Dress Down Day of staff and students in Christmas jumpers, colours and festive attire! Thank you to all parents for helping out with this event, the students looked great and we have a fantastic selection of photos of this in my full update for you to look at. In the final two weeks we aim to continue to build the 'Christmas atmosphere' as our students have had so much fun this week and it's been a real treat seeing how much they have enjoyed themselves!

A reminder as we plan forward, we have our next Dress Down Day on the final day of the term on Friday 17th December, this is also a half day for students, finishing at 12 noon.

We've also had a visit from Santa who gave out presents on Wednesday to all students and wished everyone a very Merry Christmas! He assured me that everyone has been 'good' this year, everything is fine on the North Pole and he is looking forward to the upcoming holidays!

During these final two weeks of term, we have many events, plays and musical projects coming up, with many of them to be emailed out and shared online. We look forward to making the most of this time and really creating an exciting holiday experience for everyone.

Finally, thank you to all parents and staff for your support with our students through this self-testing window, it is running very smoothly at school and I am very grateful for all of the hard work that everyone has put in to ensure our students are as safe as possible.

Please read my full Update from the Principal here.

Have a relaxing weekend!

Kind regards,

Paul Walton

Principal

All upcoming events and details are available on our website.