Primary News - March 4 2021

Dear Students and Parents,

It has been a fantastic week in primary, with lovely sunshine all week and ample opportunities for students to be outside in the fresh air. With all primary classes back onsite in the second week, the classrooms have been buzzing with students discussing and debating various topics.

During the PSHE and Assembly this week, students focused on self-awareness. Students explored useful strategies to help them get to know more about themselves, what motivates them, their strengths and how to improve on things they may find more challenging. They talked about relationships and the importance of seeking help. This topic is particularly useful, as students return to school and start to rebuild relationships with their peers and teachers, as well as, adjust to the school routine after a long period of distance learning.

The C4C reminded students of the ‘buddy bench’ they have created outside for students new to the school and those feeling lonely, as part of the initiative for peers to support, be mindful and kind to each other.

Primary Specialist Reports

On 12th March, we will be issuing the end of Term 2 specialist subject reports (foundation Slovene only as advanced students interviewed the last block) for all students in Early Years and Years 1-6. Specialist subjects included in the report are P.E., Performing Arts, and the modern foreign languages French and Slovene (Foundation group). Specialist teachers will be reporting on student progress in the subject in Term 1 and Term 2, with the aim of highlighting areas and skills that students should continue to improve.

Parent-Teacher Interviews

Primary Parents Teacher Virtual interviews have been scheduled this term for specialist teachers only during Weeks 5 and 6 of this block. The format for booking will be the same as Term 1 and bookings open on Monday 1st March at 8 AM. Instructions for the system and logging in will be resent Monday morning via email for all parents. Bookings close on Sunday 14th March. These interviews are an opportunity for parents to discuss their child’s progress with the specialist teacher. Should parents have any additional concerns or questions relating to a specific subject, they can contact the specialist teacher at any time via email to arrange an appointment.

Please continue to read the weekly Principal’s update for any updates, news and changes.

Have a lovely weekend and we look forward to you returning on Monday when we celebrate St. David’s Day.

Kind regards,

Katarina Železinger

Head of Primary

Early Years

In Early Years the children have been making clay food items for our role play supermarket. You might spot a pizza, some cinnamon rolls, bananas and more!

We will be painting them next week!

Ms Rosa

Year 1

This Week in Maths Year 1 have been continuing to find half and quarter fractions, as well as creating their own word problems and presenting them to the class to solve!

Year 1 do not just love to play with toys, they love to make them too! This week in Topic they have been making their own toys with paper, plastic, and ceramics.

Ms Blundell

Year 2

This week in Year 2 we have started our new literacy unit on 'Play Scripts', the students have had a lot of fun acting out class stories. In Maths, we have continued our study of graphs.

We have asked the other students a range of questions that we are interested in and displayed the data in pictograms and bar graphs. We have been enjoying the sunshine in the afternoon and have spent some time reading outside.

Ms Harris & Ms Miller

Year 3

This week was an eventful week in Year 3, with the class finally completing their puppet shows, after a number of weeks of scriptwriting, puppet and stage design and then rehearsals. The students really outdid themselves in their performance and we are all extremely proud of them for how the play turned out.

In English, the students concentrated this week on shape poetry and calligrams, by examining numerous poems of this kind before putting their own language and ICT skills to the test by creating versions of their own.

While in Maths, the students have been busy gathering and collecting data and representing them using bar charts, tally charts and/or pictograms.

Well done once again to the students for the great effort this week.

Mr Mulcahy

Year 4

This week, Year 4 have been studying natural disasters. They listened to various sounds of natural disasters and guessed which one it was. In connection with our English focus on poetry, students wrote Haikus about natural disasters. These are formed by following a strict 5 syllable, 7 syllable, 5 syllable pattern. A selection is written below.

Students are now studying various natural disasters and will present a poster outlining how they occur and then host a Kahoot game and prepare a worksheet for the other students to complete on the topic. A few students also related their own Disasters playground game which we had a great time playing in the playground, clutching on to playground equipment to avoid being swept away in a hurricane and sliding down in landslides and putting out bush fires (pictured) and avoiding the raging tornado spinning across the playground amongst other actions.

In maths, we are continuing our study of shapes and we have moved to studying abstract art in connection to this.

AVALANCHE - by Elena

Caused by heavy snow

A white wave that kills you!

WARNING! Stay at home!

TSUNAMI - by Alena

A big disaster

A tsunami could appear

Now the wave is here!

You should run and climb

It is from an earthquake

The big wave has come!

FLOOD - by Ela

The flood sinks the street

People shocked and very scared

Water dashing by.

HURRICANE- by Hayato

Violent, mean and strong

Destroys everything in sight

It forms in warn seas.

TSUNAMI - by Alisa

Oh no! Oh no, no!

Tsunami coming right here!

Rushing water wall.

How do you survive?

Find a strong building; get in

Get up high, up high!

You're up high now, safe.

But the building starts to shake!

The building is weak!

HURRICANE - by Evelyn

Bad weather forecast

Heavy rainfalls day by day

Makes heavy troubles.

Houses blown away

Hundreds dead and missing too

People cry and pray.

Mr Bishop

Year 5A

Y5A have had an amazing week. We enjoyed our new script “Father’s Day” which is a drama exploring a complicated family. The class freeze-framed their favourite scenes in the script while reading, using “My turn, your turn”.

House points were given out for guessing which scene the freeze-frame related to.

Mr Walker

Year 5B

MAKING THE NEWS

The Year 5 students created posters with a partner or by themselves on the topic of the history of communication. Each was able to choose which mode of communication to research. Options: the telephone, telegraph, the Internet, computer networking and the TV.

The questions they had to answer were:

• What is it?
• How does it work?
• Find countries that used it first and inventors
• Include pictures
• Years it was invented and produced worldwide
• The usefulness of this invention
• Was it / Is it popular?

They loved presenting these posters to the class and sharing their newfound information. We were even fortunate enough to have a visit from Mr Alexander Graham Bell and were able to ask him questions about his famous and popular invention. If you had the chance, what would you ask him?

Mrs Charlesworth

Year 6

In light of our English themed block, the Year 6 students started tackling their History task, which involves them doing research about the interesting history of the English language. It really started with the arrival of three Germanic tribes who invaded Britain during the 5th century AD. These tribes, the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, crossed the North Sea from what today is Denmark and northern Germany. The class identified 5 specific time periods they wanted to research in greater depth.

• BEFORE ENGLISH (800 BC - 410 AD)
• OLD ENGLISH (401 - 1066)
• MIDDLE ENGLISH (1066 - 1485)
• EARLY MODERN ENGLISH (1485 - the 1700s)
• MODERN ENGLISH (the 1700s - Present)

The students will show their learning by creating a poster timeline showcasing how the language changed through time. They will describe and identify reasons for historical events, situations, and changes in the periods they have studied.

Mr Kokalj

PE News

In the PE primary, students were teacher-led through a dynamic obstacle course involving different challenges locomotive movements. The movements included balance, throwing, and catching and were accompanied by a general fitness challenge. All students performed very well in all tasks they have faced. Additionally, students performed various exercises and body movements, utilising the coordination ladder.

Overall, primary students had a very active and successful week in the PE lessons.

PE Department

Slovene News

Our Years 1 and 2 have been enjoying the Memory game. Through the game, they were refreshing and repeating body parts in Slovene. Of course, they pointed at them as well. Afterwards, they have expressed their creativity by drawing various body shapes on the papers and naming a few body parts. Take a look at some of the products of our enthusiastic students.

Well done students!

Ms Košec

It has been an exciting week for Year 2 students at Slovene Advanced Lessons! The students listened attentively to Slovenian folk tales told by a teacher.

Their job was to repeat the story. They were great!

Ms Drofenik

EAL News

This was an eventful week for the whole Primary EAL department. A big part of the work were assessments in various domains of the English language - from reading fluency and comprehension to speaking and writing.

As a counterweight for all the heavy (assessment) lifting, we tried to balance it out with some peaceful reading outside and playing vocabulary games online as well as in person.

In a nutshell, it was a highly successful and pleasant week for the whole EAL department.

Mr Siter

MEPI News

After a quieter week last week, our two MEPI groups came together for a joint Zoom meeting this week. Hosted by Ms Tušar (and co-hosted by Mr Irving), it was a first for our participants this year, and a real pleasure to be in each other's company. As well as the usual admin and ORB duties, the meeting was focussed on a brand new MEPI initiative. After a rather random and rather entertaining 'warmer' (What would you do if... questions), Ms Tušar introduced the concept of 'Triglaving' and 'Everesting', using a website called 'Padlet'. A challenge was needed that would either help get our participants ready for their next expedition or at least stay active during the COVID times.

It is both a group and an individual challenge.

The idea is that a participant should challenge themselves to complete a series of hikes (of their own choosing), and record (on the website) the height gained on each hike until they have reached a total height gain equal to the elevation of Triglav or (as an extended challenge) that of Everest!

There are alternative 'distance' challenges for cycling and running also. We look forward to seeing who will rise to the challenge as we watch what is logged on Padlet. We also include a link to a video (in Slovene for now) that promotes this initiative.

Mr Irving, MEPI Coordinator

Staff announcement

We welcome back Mr Oliver Hughes, who returns to BISL next week. Mr Hughes will assist and support Primary classes for the remainder of Term 2, until the end of the school year. He is looking forward to rejoining the school community.

After-School Provision

After-school supervision until 15:40 for EY and Y1 continues.

We continue to review the health and safety measures on a weekly basis and will inform parents of any changes to the after school provision and activities.

Teacher Feature

Welcome back to our Teacher Feature series in Block 5, starting with another long-standing member of the BISL team, Mr Bishop, Year 4 Class Teacher and Primary Mathematics Coordinator, who has been with us since 2011.

Read Mr Bishop’s full Teacher Feature here.

Dear Parents,

We finish the week with the sun shining and the wonderful sound of our students around the building enjoying their lessons. This week, I walked around with the leadership team and popped in to see many lessons, and spoke with students to see what they are learning. The atmosphere has been very positive, productive and friendly. Now in the second week back at school, the students have settled in very well to lessons back in the building and the teachers have continued to work extremely hard during a very important time at school. We hope that guidance will soon allow for our Years 10-12 to join their peers in the building again too.

Please read my full Update from the Principal here.

Kind regards,

Paul Walton

Principal