Primary News - February 10 2021

Heading into the block break, I urge all the students, staff and their families to reflect back on the last block. There is an incredible amount of things to be proud of, especially as we navigate through various changes on a weekly, and sometimes daily, basis.

We have continued to focus on wellbeing in our primary PSHE topic this week, alongside the health and safety, and I hope that you can use the break as a time to do something for yourselves and your loved ones, for your school peers or other friends, be it with a positive message or gesture, to make them feel appreciated and bring out a smile.

As part of the Languages block, students have recorded many beautiful poems, short stories and songs in various languages. Make sure to catch these on the school Facebook page.

This week, students also took part in the House Competition and tested their knowledge on the theme of the Winter Olympics. Well done to all the Houses and congratulations to the winning House - Hessonite. It was fantastic to see the students wearing their House colours on the last day of the block.

Last but not least, congratulations to our new Primary Head Girl, Nastya (Y6), and Early Years Prefect, Eva (Y6), who take on these very important roles to support our BISL student body.

A school, where corridors echo with laughter and voices of students and staff, is the picture we wish to paint, and we hope that more classes can join us soon. We will continue to follow the updates from the Ministry for any such positive news.

I wish everyone a lovely break and a happy Prešeren Day on 8th February, commemorating one of the greatest Slovene poets.

Kind regards,

Katarina Železinger

Head of Primary

Early Years

In Early Years this week, we have been tasting porridge to explore the stories of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

The children made a puppet theatre to retell the stories they have learnt in this block!

Ms Rosa

Year 1

This week Year One finally got the chance to watch the video they had made for Topic. The eagerly awaited premiere was shown to Year One actors, dancers and artists at school, now it is available for you to watch. We know you'll enjoy it!

Follow the link: Year 1 Dragon Tale

As part of Mapmaking, Year One were also shown how aerial photographs look by looking at images made live through the video link to a drone above the school and playground flown by Mr Irving.

In Maths, Year One continued their exploration of all things 2D and 3D in the world around them.

Ms Blundell

Year 2

This week in English, Year 2 have written their own versions of Traditional Tales based on our class text 'Beauty and the Beast'. It has been wonderful reading and sharing such fantastic stories. In Maths this week, we have come to the end of our unit Multiplication and Division and we are looking forward to starting our new unit in Block 5.

Our Topic this block has been 'Living Things', where we have been learning about the characteristics of living things and this week we have been exploring the life cycle of a sunflower. We have had a great week to end Block 4 and we can't wait for the learning that waits ahead in Block 5.

Ms Harris & Ms Miller

Year 3

It was Year 3's first full week back in school and they produced some excellent work to mark the occasion.

In English, the class wrote their very own fable in a playscript form, taking inspiration from Aesop's 'The Tortoise and the Hare'.

In keeping with the theme of plays and drama the students have also been working on presenting their very own puppet show, based on the story of the 'Lion and the Mouse.' This entailed the class co-writing a script of their very own, as well as designing their own puppets and a stage.

The class prepared for the show by working on their drama skills, taking part in various role plays, such as the one pictured above, with the Lion King interviewing for positions in his court!

Well done to all the students for their fantastic work this week and we wish everyone an enjoyable block break ahead.

Mr Mulcahy

Year 4

This week, Year 4 class have been working hard to create designs, posters and travel brochures for their own eco-resorts.

Students learned about sustainability and many different ways in which a resort can protect and nurture the local environment and help to develop the communities they operate in. They looked at various eco-resorts around the world to see how they operate and built upon these. The students realise the importance of protecting the environment whilst still enjoying the luxuries which travel offers us.

We had some wonderful ideas, such as e-boats, e-planes and solar-powered transport, no smoking facilities, canoe excursions, walkways above the rainforest floor, vegetarian restaurants sourcing local food, recycled trash art exhibits, and furniture made from driftwood. Their resorts also offer employment opportunities for the local population and training schemes to boost the employment options for their staff.

One of the tourist brochures is included for your viewing pleasure (bookings will open soon!).

Mr Bishop

Year 5

In Topic, the students presented their political parties’ campaigns extremely enthusiastically to both Year 5 classes. Each representative discussed the issue, goal, policy and rewards involved. We saw everything from free public transport, to improved education and better-qualified teachers, limiting deforestation, improved healthcare with a focus on mental health, equal pay, pension funds, 4 days of school and aid to the elderly.

In our democratic society, everyone got the chance to vote using Poll everywhere after the campaigns had closed. The political party that will be in power upon Year 5’s return are the NEL Party.

Mrs Charlesworth & Mr Walker

Year 5A

In Y5A’s last week before the block break, we finished creating different governments. The groups of students gathered evidence on different issues in our Y5A country and created ways to fix these issues to help our country’s inhabitants. students presented their ideas and voted for the best political party. Well done to all the students for their hard work and dedication.

Mr Walker

Year 5B

END OF BLOCK BOOK REPORT

As always, each block Year 5 students are given a book report to do.

This aims to be a fun way to encourage life-long readers by working on a project after they have read a book. They are asked to think about their book in a number of ways, encouraged to read a wide variety of books and to share this knowledge with their classmates. This block's project asked students to create their book report on a t-shirt and wear the t-shirt while giving a book talk to the class. It's always wonderful to see the enthusiasm of students retelling their favourite moments of a book.

Mrs Charlesworth

Year 6

Year 6 students have completed their Journalistic topic this week. Their end-of-unit assignment was to use a transcript of a live radio commentary to help them write and record a TV News report about the events at Maid Marian’s wedding.

The students worked hard and presented us with some convincing performances.

During this activity, the students learnt to use a natural tone when speaking - avoiding showing bias. They learnt to answer the 5 Ws (Who, What, When, Where, Why) and discussed how to engage the audience when presenting, by using varied intonation and facial expressions.

Mr Kokalj

PE News

In PE this week, students competed in a house competition, which followed the theme of the Winter Olympics. Students were learning about different sports, which take place at the Winter Olympics, but more importantly, students were recreating these sports. They were challenged with different exercises, including pushups, lunges, wall sits, skating on a rug, burpees, jumping jacks and planks just to name a few. All students had an amazing time, exercised a lot while learning about this magnificent event held every 4 years.

BISL students have also learned that all these exercises are very challenging, recognising that the sports contenders are working and training very hard to achieve a great result on the biggest stage there is: The Olympic Games.

The PE Department would also like to share other challenges we are currently doing:

• Keep up with the student
• PE Weekly challenge

The PE Department's healthy recipe for this week…

Healthy recipe

PE Department

Year 1 have been focusing on pitch this block and training their ears to hear the difference between high and low and happy and sad.

They have then transferred this skill to the xylophones, recognising when they go up and down the xylophone and the change in pitch. They have started to learn how to play Twinkle Twinkle in time with each other.

Ms Kenealy

French News

We are glad to have French lessons with Years 3 and 4 back in school again. This week we have been singing a lot.

Years 5 and 6 did a very good job with French virelangues - tongue twisters. It was not an easy job, but they all put a lot of effort into it and they did it very well! Félicitations!

You can try this one: Tic et Tac ont chacun leur tactique. Tic pique Tac quand Tac attaque Tic, et Tac attaque Tic quand Tic pique Tac.

Mrs Berden

EAL News

One of our EAL groups learned to describe characters, by learning about features, body parts and pieces of clothing. The students enjoyed practising the vocabulary by running up and down the classroom, checking their spelling on our working wall. They also trained their descriptions with a game of guess who.

Another EAL group, learned about the history of the English language - ranging from the earliest forms of the Anglo-Saxon language found in Beowulf, Middle English from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, through Shakespeare and up to the modern English language. Now they understand, how come English has some unusual grammar exceptions, as well as extraordinary spelling patterns.

What about you? Can you guess how come we could spell the English word fish with letters ghoti?

Mr Siter

SEN News

One of our Y12 students has been helping out in Early Years. She supported our EY teachers through lunchtime and after nap time, helping the teachers with lunch. During PE lessons, she assisted the PE teachers with warm-up activities such as the "Lava game", prepared the polygon and helped pass the tennis balls to the students during the different activities ("targeting"). During Music and Performing Arts lessons, she delivered instruments (such as xylophones), as well as supported teachers with particular movements while singing the action song such as The Grand Old Duke of York, Wind the Bobbin Up, Hop little bunnies etc.

She also read a book to our EY children after their nap time, much to their enjoyment.

Ms Godec

Pust Celebrations

The Primary Student Council is organising a costume competition on February 16th in celebration of Pust. You are encouraged to come into school or join your online lessons wearing fancy dress costumes - homemade or otherwise! The Student Council will also be running some fun activities, including puppet making.

MEPI News

As we work towards the Qualifying Adventurous Journey (AJ), our participants need to come together as a team (at each level) to ensure a successful expedition. So in order to find out a little bit more about each other, we endeavoured upon a 'Two Truths and a Lie' activity. Each participant on the Zoom call took a moment to create three statements about themselves - two true, and one false! Another participant would then try to derive the truths from the lie. Much informed, and entertained by the sheer imagination of all, we were able to move on to tackle such issues as the mode of transport that our team might choose to utilise, the general location, and the aim of the AJ.

Depending on whether the group choose to undertake an 'Exploration' or 'Expedition' will dictate the degree of purposeful effort directed towards travel, and that to the 'aim' of the AJ. Participants have been encouraged to collaborate on these aspects via school email and Zoom. We await the results of their deliberations!

Mr Irving, MEPI Coordinator

Languages Block

BISL has celebrated the Languages Block across the school. These few weeks of sharing diverse languages we speak in our daily lives have been very dynamic and creative. The students and teachers, who come from all over the world, were delighted to listen and share their language skills with their peers. We have used the knowledge of our mother tongues in different activities which took place this Block. It was quite challenging to understand particular languages indeed, but we enjoyed it immensely and are proud of our language diversity.

To tempt curiosity, you can click on the link below to see all that was going on during the Languages Block.

Language Block Roundup

MFL Department

Student Magazine!

Check out the second issue of the BISL Student Magazine - a massive 55 pages. A huge well done to all students involved in the creation of this masterpiece!

Teacher Feature

If you haven’t had a chance to read our recent Teacher Feature profiles, here’s what you may have missed:

• 27.01.2021 - Ms Mateja Košec
• 13.01.2021 - Mrs Tanya Charlesworth
• 16.12.2020 - Ms Sarah Fairchild
• 09.12.2020 -Ms Polly Tušar
• 25.11.2020 - Mr Tobija Siter
• 04.11.2020 - Mr Gary Bradley
• 28.10.2020 - Ms Laura Harris
• 21.10.2020 - Ms Katarina Miklavec
• 14.10.2020 - Mr Nino Kokalj
• 6.10.2020 - Mr Jason Batson

Dear Parents,

As we head to the block break, I look back on a very busy block where everyone in the community had to be flexible, patient and supportive due to ongoing updates and changes of guidance. I am so very proud of the way in which everyone has remained calm, positive and enabled the children to feel the least amount of disruption towards their learning as possible. Thank you.

During the block break, I will continue to check the guidance daily, meet with the leadership team and will send out an update to all families before we return back on Monday 15th February.

We hope the students can return safely back to the building soon and look forward to some good news asap. We continue to follow our hygiene, health and safety and COVID guidance.

Please check our BISL reopening procedures for any FAQs that you may have about the transition back into school. All teachers will be required to wear masks in the classroom.

At BISL, we are following the guidance to test all teachers (showing a negative test) before they teach on site and will continue to do so on a regular weekly basis or until guidance changes. Smaller classes have been arranged to make the lessons and learning as safe as possible.

Thank you to all parents who attended the virtual Coffee Morning today, I have included all of the areas and updates I discussed in my Update from the Principal for you, in case you weren't able to attend.

Finally, I really appreciate all of the positive comments, emails and feedback about our teachers, I continue to pass this on and thank them personally. It has been a tough few weeks and these simple messages make a huge difference. Thank you.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend and a safe and restful block break.

Kind regards,

Paul Walton

Principal

February

March