Secondary News - Mar 29 2021

Following on from the news regarding Slovenia's new lockdown, please refer to the BISL Update - Online Learning email sent on Monday March 29 for details.

Students began this week with an assembly encompassing ‘responsibility’, and what this entails. It is very timely as the term comes to an end, and our oldest cohorts are facing the last month of study prior to sitting their exams. It is wonderful to see all students were back this week to work face to face with their teachers, busily preparing for the term ahead.

To facilitate students being back, and to accommodate any printing needs or simply a quiet place to study, Mr Batson has organised times next week for Year 11-13 students to come in over the break. It is a wonderful opportunity to get ahead and organised. Additionally, after the break, booster sessions have been organised after school with teachers so that students can ask any further questions and receive further support. Now that students can be back in the building, we are aiming to provide as many opportunities as possible for them to see their teachers before examinations.

Next term, with the weather warming up, students can transition to the summer uniform. Please ensure that this has been ordered, otherwise students may continue wearing the formal uniform.

Additionally, a reminder to please drive slowly and safely in the school car park, the speed limit is 20 kph. When leaving the main road (speed limit 30 kph) and then this changes to a 20 kph in the school car park. All parents need to follow this to ensure the safety of others. We have regular police presence at the entrance of the school campus and to support, observe and protect our community. Please work together to keep everyone safe.

Thank you to everyone for your support and flexibility in this term, especially with the everchanging guidance. It Is wonderful to see all students back and we certainly hope that this continues into Term 3. I wish all families a warm and relaxing Easter.

Head of Secondary - Stephanie Andronikos

Click here to read the student magazine in full

The students of BISL bring to you this block’s edition of the student magazine, we are very proud of how many students have contributed to the magazine this block, and the breadth and depth of the articles.

Message from our Student Magazine Editor

Once again, I would like to proudly introduce a new edition of the BISL magazine! This edition is a bit special because among the interesting articles about science, nature, the holiday of Easter, recipes, and more, there lay hidden pieces of a code. This code will enable the lucky student who uses it first to get a game called The Eternal Cylinder, for free, even though it hasn’t yet been released. A big thank you to Jernej M. for making this possible.

Use the link below to flip through the pages and find an article of your interest, or perhaps take the challenge of cracking the code.

Thank you to all who have contributed to this edition, and those who are getting ready to contribute in the next edition.

Julia K - Student Magazine Editor

As part of English block, our Secondary students were challenged to write an award-winning poem, to be judged by the English Language students in Year 12.

Congratulations to Ema in Year 9b, for her fantastic poem, Kalopsia.

Click here to read the wonderful poem.

Last week was Shakespeare week at BISL, and we were not shy about celebrating this across the secondary school.

Click here to read more about Shakespeare Week.

Following the success of our first seven planned virtual career talks last week. This week our 6th form have had the chance to speak to 3 more professionals about their career. Having the chance to listen and speak to a wide variety of professionals will enable students to learn about careers they may not know exist, and to get insight into ones they may be curious about. Two of our speakers answered the question, what else can I do with a degree in psychology, if I don’t want to be a psychologist.

On Tuesday they had a virtual meeting with Ms. Kerry Blore who is a Housing manager in Edinburgh, Scotland. Blore specialises in rehoming vulnerable people and violent offenders. This is a career not many people would have heard of before, but it allows her to use the knowledge she acquired studying psychology on a daily basis.

On Wednesday our 6th formers had a meeting with an experienced PMO from HSBC Kasia Szczesny, who studied English and Economics at university. She spoke about her job and duties, but also other important aspects of business such as continuing your training, approaching companies when you are a student for experience, and travelling with work.

She also informed the students about the chance to acquire skills from different offices in a company's global network. She highly recommended students find a job which suits them and makes them happy, and not be afraid to try different corporations, and keep applying even if they are not successful on the first occasion.

Finally this week, our Sixth Formers spoke to police investigator Matt from Liverpool, who spoke about the misconceptions of what the police do, and compared to what they actually do, and the importance of people skills in this role. He also studied psychology at university, and says his studies were invaluable when dealing with a range of vulnerable and violent offenders.

As year 10 have transitioned back into the building, we want to congratulate Julia for winning KS4 round and getting into the finals. A huge well done to her.

This has been a fantastic English block, with lots of competitions and events throughout from spelling bees, poetry competitions and story competitions. We’ve had treasure Shakespeare themed treasure hunts, and match the book to the teacher, and lots of focus on the importance of reading and enjoying literature.

A huge thank you from the English department to all the students and staff who got involved!

Year 7 had a further look at Shakespeare this week where we looked at some of the bizarre ways characters died in his plays (a lot of stabbing and poisoning it seems) and we learnt a little about the plot of Hamlet, one of his most loved plays.

We also did an experiment to find out just how well we really read the instructions before we attempted to answer questions in English tests and Assessments and finally we read a little more of our class literature "Stone Cold"

Year 8 really enjoyed the task that they were given this week of taking a scene from Shakespeare's famous tragedy "Romeo and Juliet" and "translating" the events into "modern" English in the form of a Snapchat, WhatsApp type conversation.

This really showed the powers of their imagination while also making them much more familiar with the original material. We also moved deeper into our literature study of "A Monster Calls" and have reached a really tense section of the novel.

Year 9 in class 9a they have continued to explore MacBeth, the most famous Scottish King, maybe some of them will try to perfect their Scottish accents over the break? Whilst 9b have continued with descriptive writing, and finish their short module on it, a huge well done to them all.

To finish the week students in 9b acted out the famous Shakespeare play Twelfth Night, with Alek taking the lead 2 roles. It has been a pleasure this block watching 9b be embrace their dramatic side, embracing doing different voices, using props around the room. Well done to everyone.

Year 10 have finished exploring their penultimate poem by Carol Ann Duffy, with one left to go after the block break. Students collaborated together on some wonderful posters illustrating their understanding of the poem Foreign.

Year 10 also got to embrace their dramatic side on Wednesday and acted out Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night, as they were on zoom last week we felt they missed out. The performance was great, enjoy some of the photos below. A shout out to Jerry who was both Romeo and Juliet in this performance.

Year 11 are in the midst of revision poetry having finished the entire syllabus for both English Literature and language last block. Currently 11b are revising poetry, in a mixture of teacher led presentations and group work (and of course, essay writing practise).

Year 12 in English language were exploring narrative writing, discussing the language and features that make for effective storytelling.

Year 13 in Language students have been continuing revising for their exams, focusing on language change and child language acquisition. Whilst in English Literature have gone back to exploring Emily Dickinson poetry, with only 1 poem left to go for the next block, the students are on the cusp of finishing their syllabus.

Lessons are led in seminars like discussions, with a powerpoint to aid when necessary. The students are encouraged to come up with their own personal analysis, and explore the poem on multiple levels. With some of our students being highly creative, a popular way for students to consolidate their learning is to draw illustrations of the poems.

Congratulations to our students who won end of term English awards!

• Teodora and Laura in Year 7
• Abdulla in Year 8
• Maria and Anna in Year 9
• Stavr in Year 10
• Katya and Wiktoria in Year 11
• Emma in Year 12
• Ivan and Lana in Year 13

Mr. Brad, Mr. Kirwan and Ms. O’Regan - English Department

KS3 students learnt about straight-line graphs and demonstrated their knowledge in group tasks.

Year 10 students have been working independently, solving problems involving shapes and solids, while Year 11 finished the syllabus and have now been focused on revising.

Revision news: For the last lesson of this block, students in Year 11 began their revision practice with help from the Year 13 Mathematicians. It was a great session with the Year 11 group truly benefitting from one of the strongest Mathematics year groups I have ever taught.

Congratulations to the students below who have won this term’s Maths awards!

Year 7: Teodora and Masa, Emma and Domen
Year 8: Leeloo, Lila, Luka, Visja and Alexei
Year 9: Tin and Alek
Year 10: Aidan, Karlina and Uma
Year 11: Charlotte
Year 12: Chloe

Maths Question of the week

Well done to all those who emailed me last week with the correct answer - house points have been added.

Please email the correct answer to Ms. Zupanc by Wednesday 7th April.

• A flight to Japan costs £300 for an adult one way and for a child, it’s 50% of an adult fee. A return flight to Japan is 150% the cost of a one-way ticket. All flights have a compulsory additional 10% fee surcharge for taxes that is added to the end total. What is the cost for 2 adults and 1 child to fly return to Japan?

Mr Batson and Ms Zupanc - Maths Department

Slovene Advanced

The last Slovene Advanced lesson in this block was very productive for Year 8 students. Firstly they have written a short quiz about "lastna in občna imena". I believe they did a great job! After this test, we played some fun quizzes about Slovenia and literature. I’m already looking forward to our lessons in the next block!

Ms Drofnik - Slovene Teacher

Slovene as a Second Language

Year 8 has been focusing on creating their favourite recipes on big posters – from palačink, tortke, kolačkov to špagetov s paradižnikovo omako. After a few creative hours of hard work and investigating plenty of new words to create a recipe in Slovene language, the products are ready to be displayed. Now their mission is to try the recipe they have just created in Slovene. Uspešno!

Ms Drofenik - Slovene Teacher

Congratulations to the following student for winning the Slovene Language end of term awards

• Year 7: Mei and Luka
• Year 8: Monika
• Year 9: Anna
• Year 10: Stavr

Ms Kosec - Slovene Teacher

French

On Monday 22nd March it was a World Water Day.

One one out of 5 people do not have access to drinkable water. Students from Y8- Y10 will explain to you all the reasons in French.

They learned and talked about how to save water and they made a "drinking water charter".

Ms Struna-Berden, French Teacher

All business classes have started an interyear group market research activity, dealing with in school issues, with sixth formers acting as project managers. This is a fantastic cross year group project, with both year groups benefiting from this hands on experience.

Going well so far, average response rate is 60, and the groups are working well.

The results that we've got so far are particularly clear in some aspects but some idiot in Y8 has decided they don't like business already, and the most popular after school activities in Y13 are swiping tinder and something involving "da baby".

Economics are looking at past students' answers and wondering how examiners can read such bad handwriting.

Term Award winners were all based on progress during the term instead of who was outright best overall.

Business: Uma (Y10), Rosemarijn (Y12), Eva (Y13). Economics: Emma (Y12), Daniel (Y13)

A huge congratulations to the winners, and well done everyone for their hard work this term.

Mr. Dalton - Business and Economics Teacher

In Block 5, Year 7 have been learning about the causes and consequences of floods around the world. Individually and in pairs they researched some of the biggest and most destructive floods in the 20th century as well as more contemporary flooding events such as last year in Australia.

After the research stages were complete, the students successfully presented their finds to the class which was a great opportunity to challenge themselves and develop their public speaking skills.

I really enjoyed what the students discovered and was impressed with how well they presented their ideas. Well done and I look forward to learning about the geography of Africa with you next Term!

In Block 5, Year 9 have been writing a report on the Tourism industry of a specific country. They have used various resources, including reports published by the UN and WTO, to understand the growth of tourism and the specific attractions of their country of study.

Year 9 also linked tourism with the social and economic development of their country and considered the impact of Covid on the tourism industry and the country as a whole. Overall I have been extremely impressed with their independent study and research skills as well as their ability to reflect upon and respond to feedback from myself and their peers. I look forward to reading them over the block break!

A brief MEPI report for the end of term: I would like to congratulate participants that have managed to discover activities for the individual sections of the Award, and those that have found ways to maintain a regular commitment to these activities over a time of social distancing.

I take great pleasure in congratulating a year nine student (Whom I first became acquainted with at Summer School.) for completing her Skills section. Developing your singing abilities with a coach online, is not an easy task, but I really enjoyed reading about, and hearing the results!

I look forward to further success from our other participants. I would also like to thank them for their continued commitment to our weekly Zoom meetings. (I don't need to look at the MEPI Attendance Register to know how well they've done on that score.)

The training for the Adventurous journey is largely complete, and I anticipate that it will all come together well after our hike in Škofja Loka on 17th April. Due to the Easter holidays, we will miss two Monday meetings, and so I would like to remind everyone (MEPI or not.) that we will be seeing each other for the Red Cross first aid course at 08:00am on Saturday 10th April.

HAPPY EASTER!

Mr Irving, MEPI Coordinator

For our final Teacher Feature this block, we take a sneak peek into our Performing Arts team for an interview with the brilliant Mr Hulse, Music and Performing Arts Teacher across both Primary and Secondary school.

Read Mr Hulse’s Teacher Feature here.

A huge thank you to everyone for your generous donations to our Easter donation drive, organised in partnership with Zveza Prijateljev Mladine Ljubljana Moste-Polje, it has been a huge success and will go a long way to helping families in need during the Easter period.

PTA Committee

Don’t forget to take advantage of the 10% discount this month on school uniform:

1. Until March 31st, 2021, place your uniform orders online through the ISU webshop using the discount code below, entitling you to 10% off your purchases.
2. Ensure that your order total does not exceed 150 euros, so that custom duties will not have to be paid upon arrival.
3. Deliveries will be made directly to your preferred address as usual.

BISL%252010%2525

PLACE AN ORDER

For more information about our uniform requirements, please click here.

If you would like to arrange a uniform trial, to ensure the correct sizes are ordered when making your online purchase, feel free to contact Reception for an appointment.

As the post-Brexit situation of all UK companies dealing with EU partners evolves, we will continue to work closely with our uniform supplier to offer a concrete solution and ensure an optimal and uninterrupted service to our families for all your uniform needs, and will keep you informed of all developments.

Dear Parents,

We have had a wonderful block 5 and I must thank everyone for making this a very enjoyable term with all of our students now back in the building. We have seen a fantastic Easter Donation Drive, organised by the PTA, with the first lot of packages delivered to Zveza Prijateljev Mladine earlier this week and more being delivered later this afternoon, thank you to the PTA and all parents who have supported this. There have been a considerable amount of donations and this will make a huge difference to families in need. We have also had a donation of some lovely Spring flowers from parents for our entrance to the school, which our Primary students have enjoyed planting and creating a welcoming area as you approach our building, thank you. I have seen many positive emails, appreciation for our teaching staff and their efforts this term, again this is very much appreciated.

I have been very proud of our community recently, as the support you have shown our school has been overwhelming during a very difficult time.

It has been a pleasure to welcome the students into school each morning and to see the excitement and anticipation on their faces at the start of the day. This really sets such a positive tone for learning and enjoyment throughout their lessons.

Continue reading my full Update from the Principal here for details of the above.

Wishing you a wonderful block break and Easter. I look forward to seeing everyone again on Wednesday 7th April for our first day back.

Kind regards,

Paul Walton

Principal