Primary News - March 15 2021

We have certainly had some lovely clear, sunny days this week, which have provided lots of opportunities to go outside, for students to chat with their peers and play outdoors.

On Monday we celebrated the International Women’s Day with various activities to highlight the importance and significance of the achievements of women, which have impacted the lives we live today.

Students take home today their Specialist Subject Reports today. These highlight their achievements and students should be very proud of their hard work over the last two terms. We also encourage parents and students to talk about their progress via parent-teacher interviews.

Thank you to all parents for using the new drop-off and pick-up procedures, which have enabled a faster and safer transition of students into/out of school.

We hope you also enjoy St Gregory’s Day today, which some know as the first day of Spring and others as the day the ‘birds marry’ (Slovene tradition similar to Valentine's Day).

Have a lovely weekend.

Best regards,

Katarina Železinger

Head of Primary

Early Years

Early Years have been making 'shoppers' by moulding newspaper into different shapes and then painting them. They added hair and facial features in the Junk Modelling area and the children worked over several days on their project.

In the Creative Area, we have been working with different media including marbling inks to create different patterns which the children will use as an extra resource for their shops next week!

Ms Rosa

Year 1

In Topic this week, students have been working in teams to find their own ways to group, and categorise toys, and trying to guess how the other team divided theirs.

Plastic, wood, bendy, tough. In what ways would you categorise them?

Ms Blundell

Year 2

This week in Year 2 we celebrated International Women's Day by thinking about women who have inspired us. The students not only thought about women in their families but also influential women throughout history. We had some great discussions and have been continuing these discussions throughout the week.

In Maths this week we have been exploring measurement and learning to measure in centimetres. In Literacy, we have been continuing our unit on playscripts and we have started a new text 'Oh Gnome'. We have had a great week and we cannot wait to see what the next has in store for us.

Ms Harris & Ms Miller

Year 3

This week the students continued their studies of the rainforests around the world by studying some artists' impressions, most notably Henri Rousseau's 'Tiger in a Tropical Rainstorm'. The students examined the painting and many of the techniques used, before eventually creating a rainforest scene of their own, some of which you can see here.

The students also learned about the layers of the rainforest this week, and next week will look more in-depth at the different animals that dwell in the jungles of the world.

Mr Mulcahy

Year 4

The Year 4 students have been working with their noses to the grindstone this week as they finish off a range of exciting projects in time for the inspection team to see their wonderful work next week.

In Art, they have been working on their amazing abstract pieces. I must say that there are some future Picassos in the making here at BISL! In English, they have created their own school day poems with an unusual interruption in the day, such as an escaped lion coming to visit the playground and the pandemonium which breaks out as a result.

In Topic, the students have completed their natural disaster posters and worksheets just in time to present them to the class next week.

Mr Bishop

Year 5A

Y5A have had an excellent week in Maths using their visual skills of shape to translate and reflect shapes. In Topic we have been preparing to produce our TV news report by gathering evidence and news stories from the past week and creating a radio report.

Mr Walker

Year 5B

Shape in the Year 5 Classroom:

This past week has seen the Year 5 students explore plotting coordinates on a graph. In particular, they have used coordinates to draw, reflect and translate 2D shapes. The students were delighted to see pictures of interesting faces appear when they were done working on the task and even a house!

Mrs Charlesworth

Year 6

This week we would like to report on an interesting cross-curricular connection created by a student of the Year 6 class. The class was about to complete an English starter activity - which was just a simple series of sentences dictated by the teacher.

One of the students applied his knowledge of calculating percentage (a recently learned skill) to quickly report on his success. The student knew he first needed a grand total, so he decided to count all capital letters and punctuation marks from the answer sheet. He then counted how many of those he had correctly placed in his book. His result was 20 out of 24. He then proceeded to multiply this fraction by a 100 in order to find his final mark.

A marvellous job!

Cross-curricular instruction — which is also called interdisciplinary learning — is a teaching strategy that allows teachers and students to unite concepts and skills from various disciplines. Students need to see the relationships within and between disciplines. Each subject is a slice of the whole. Connecting the slices leads to synergistic learning.

Mr Kokalj

PE News

This week in primary PE students revisited the coordination ladder and circuit training style of training. Students also revised a warm-up routine and the exercises from previous weeks (squats, pushups, burpees, high knees, plank, wall sit, squat pulses).

This week students were challenged with a new TEAM activity called "Rob the Nest". The aim of this task is to move fast in a different locomotor movement (front support, back support, hopping, jumping) and reach the middle of the room from their station where is a bucket of balls. Students take one ball and take it as fast as possible to the home nest, and then another student can do the same until the middle bucket off balls is empty. Students were split into four groups, so they had to work as a TEAM.

Overall, all primary students did an amazing job of memorising the exercises from previous PE lessons and they put a great effort into the team activity Rob the nest.

PE Department

Slovene News

Our students in Years 5 and 6 have been learning different professions in the Slovene language. They enjoyed completing puzzles and guessing professions presented by students as a drawing. Can you guess which profession our Anna is drawing on the whiteboard?

Well done students!

Ms Košec

Year 2 at Slovene Advanced lessons have already made great progress in writing!

Their writing skills are better from lesson to lesson and pupils can hardly wait to be able to write longer stories, such as they listen to in fairy tales!

Ms Drofenik

EAL News

This week in one of our EAL classes, we discovered how great it is to develop our writing by using compound and complex sentences and how useful relative clauses are when describing people, places, things and even time.

In other groups, we met some new vocabulary about occupations and discovered the difference between the air and ear sound. Our challenge was, to write a sentence using as many ear sounds as possible. Do you think you could beat our score?

Mr Siter

French

Year 3 students made an autoportrait of what they were wearing.

They've learned how to describe their clothes in French and how to say "I wear" (= Je porte).

Mrs Berden

Red Cross First Aid Course

Well, things don't always go to plan, like when you're trying to organise a first aid course, it seems! Unfortunately for safety's sake during this time, with one of the external organisers awaiting Covid results, the event will be postponed.

Fortunately, through a little perseverance and dedication, we have already ´engineered´ an alternative date of Saturday, April 10th. We do hope that all who have signed up for the session are able to reschedule and that perhaps the new date will suit some that couldn't make it originally?! This is great news for our MEPI participants (who require first aid training as part of their award), and the Monday MEPI meeting will see us moving on with further aspects of preparation for the Adventurous Journey!

Mr Irving, MEPI Coordinator

PTA News

Our first PTA Meeting has been scheduled for Friday 19th March, online on Zoom until guidance allows us to meet face to face at school.

Details of the meeting are available here - we look forward to seeing you virtually soon.

BISL PTA Committee

SPELLING BEE

Keep on practising your spellings. Remember: LOOK, COVER, WRITE, CHECK!

Can you spell this word, without looking?

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

Spell it out to your teacher for a house point next week!

Teacher Feature Series

This week’s Teacher Feature brings us to our Special Education Needs (SEN) Department, featuring our very own Ms Emina, whose kindness and unwavering support for her students is felt by all here at BISL.

Read Ms Emina’s full Teacher Feature here.

International Days

One of our biggest family events, organised in partnership with the PTA, this year we're extending our International Day to a week of cultural celebrations, starting Tuesday 11 May.

There will be a variety of cultural and educational activities, stalls, traditional dress, flags, international cuisine, games and performances throughout the week for our community to enjoy.

Join the next PTA Meeting for more details.

Dear Parents,

This has been an excellent week to celebrate International Women's Day in our community and to pause for a moment to recognise the achievements of women around the world.

We are excited to announce the dates for our International Days, a fantastic opportunity to bring all families together, face to face and to celebrate internationalism in our community. We are working with our PTA to create a big event and have many projects, performances and fun activities planned for the students to get involved in.

Thank you to all of the parents who attended the Coffee Morning online last week, all of the action points are listed in my full Update for your reference.

We were delighted this week to be featured in the news again, please see my full Update for the link to the Total Slovenia News article about our staff laptop initiative.

The number of Covid cases remains high in the country and we must all keep working together to ensure that our community continues to be safe for our students. This is an ever changing situation and as a school, I intend to keep our community as safe as possible and to balance this with enabling all students to return.

Please read my full Update from the Principal for more details.

Kind regards,

Paul Walton

Principal

March

April-May