Secondary News - May 31 2021

A warm welcome to everyone back from the break, it is wonderful to see the sun shining and all students back. This week saw the launch of the final Block theme for the Year, the PE Block. Mr Damjan and the team have been working tirelessly to celebrate the PE Theme, launching wonderful school-wide initiatives. It will be great to see what is in store for this block.

The PTA have run two days of second-hand uniform sales, to see past uniforms recycled to new homes. Thank you to the PTA for their efforts with this initiative, it is very much appreciated.

The teachers have been working to finalise Year 11, 12 and 13 grades this week. Mr Batson has particularly been collating grades and preparing the relevant evidence ready for submission to Cambridge. A big thank you to the staff and to Mr Batson for all the hard work. It has once again been a very different process this year, however, the rigour and standards have remained very high. We look forward to seeing the ultimate outcomes in August.

I wish everyone all the best for the weekend.

Ms Andonikos

Head of Secondary

Mr. Yates has left the British International School of Ljubljana to take up another opportunity. We would like to thank him for his contribution to the Secondary school and wish him the best for the future.

We are pleased to announce that Mr Bascombe will be joining the Science team as Head of Science and Biology specialist and is travelling to Slovenia this week. We warmly welcome him to the BISL community.

Mr. Damjan will leave the British International School of Ljubljana at the end of this academic year. We would like to thank him for his years of service at BISL. His work with students across the whole school is appreciated, teaching students vital PE skills. We wish him all the best for the future.

We are pleased to announce that Ms Fairchild will take on the role of Head of PE from August 2021. We look forward to her continued work taking on this new role.

This week opens up the block theme of Physical Education, so please be on the lookout for the exciting activities and opportunities the PE team has planned for you. In secondary PE, students learned the rules and skills for the sport of ultimate frisbee. This dynamic sport focuses on solid teamwork, invasion game tactics and overall cardiovascular fitness. Our students enjoyed playing in the sand, allowing an extra element of challenge to this fast-paced game.

The PE department would like to continue to invite students and their family members to participate in our walk around the world challenge. All you need to do is count your daily steps, add them up and enter them into our walk around the world google form. We additionally ask you to remember to mark your calendars for Saturday, June 12th and Saturday, June 19th, both Physical Education theme enrichment days.

Ms Fairchild, PE department

Year 7: Year 7 explored the topic of vegetarianism and looked at things such as health and moral reasons. We enjoyed reading a play about a 14 year old boy who decides to become a vegetarian and how his family react to his new choice. We also discovered what drastic changes there would be if everyone on Earth stopped eating meat.

Year 8: This week we learned about Cockney Rhyming Slang and tried to invent some of our own terms. We also read an extract from a play about Al Capone and his takeover of all the criminal activity in Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s. We had to “translate” some of the dialogue in the play from dialect into standard English.

Year 9: FREEDOM! SCOTLAND! You may think Braveheart, or the younger audience of this newsletter might think of the Scottish elevator clip from Youtube when you read these words, but in 9B we are thinking Macbeth. 9B this week have finished act 4 completely and have been discussing the different characteristics between Malcom and Macbeth. Students have been exploring the text independently to find quotations to support points. This is a vital part of developing “Point, Evidence, Explain paragraphs”. In addition to this, the students also wrote newspaper articles on the murders in the play so far. Enjoy Gabriel's below.

Year 10: This week year 10 have perfected their interview writing skills for IGCSE Language Paper 1, with 80% of students getting A*/A in their pre-assessment practise. This Friday students completed their midterm assessment, which was sitting a full 2h IGCSE Language Paper. A huge well done to students, sitting such a long paper for the first time. In addition to the assessments, students also had fun writing speeches, which is a key part of Language Paper 1 and 2, and could come up on either (or both). Students explored the topic “freedom of speech and its value in society.” The speeches were a pleasure to read, especially by the students who took a controversial stance. Remember it is important to be able to argue both sides of any debate. Next week students move on to exploring unseen poetry.

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

This week our budding scientists in Year 7 received feedback on their final assessment this year. They all did really well, so to celebrate, they were presented with a challenge - who can beat Miss Tušar's test tube rainbow? The key to this was for students to use their understanding of neutralisation.

Miss Tušar, Science Teacher

The focus in Science this week has been practical work for physics across secondary (except Y10, who were preparing for their first whole-year IGCSE style exam). Y7A have already carried out the experiments that they have planned for, and below you can find a picture of Y9A carrying out an investigation to find out the densities of different materials.

Mr Juna Malo de molina Herrera, Science Teacher

In the past week, KS3 and year 10 students have been preparing for their whole year mathematics assessment. They worked in groups and chose their topics to revise and recap. They engaged in various activities such as Escape room, Pictionary and creating Kahoot quizzes.

Maths question of this week is:

Frances thinks of a number. It is a prime number, a factor of 3990 and the sum of its digits is 10. What is the number?

Students who solve the questions send the answer to my email by Wednesday 2nd June. Good luck!

Ms Zupanc, Mathematics Teacher

Y10 Business students are currently learning about marketing strategy.

They also researched a few excellent examples of marketing in practise, and became familiar with doing short presentations in person again.

This week also saw the opportunity to once again go “old school” and we went one whole lesson without using any technology at all in order to learn how to do a SWOT analysis.

Mr Dalton, Business and Economics teacher

Year 7 students at Slovene Advanced lessons have discussed idioms this week. Although it may have seemed a bit difficult at first, we realised through examples that the idioms are actually quite logical. Let's check your knowledge. Do you know what "srce mi je padlo v hlače”, “izgubil sem srce”, “kamen se mi je odvalil od srca” means? Srečno!

Ms Drofenik, Slovene Teacher

Kakšna je tvoja šolska pot? This week Year 8 finished their imaginary maps with Slovene directions. The maps were based on the way from their homes to BISL. Firstly, each pair chose one of the directions which they had previously written in the notebooks. Secondly, they wrote the chosen direction on a poster and drew it as well. Finally, they presented their maps with their directions.

Ms Košec, Slovene Teacher

Our MEPI participants can now take advantage of physically meeting as a group, and it is a pleasure to see the team dynamic building. With platforms such as Zoom, and useful online tools and apps such as Kahoot and Youtube, you can 'virtually' do anything. But a different connection is made when people can be in the same space and share and handle the same resources to complete a task. This week our students completed an individual 'Expedition Quiz' on paper!

It was so useful to be able to share ideas about the expectations of the Adventurous Journey in a natural and totally spontaneous manner. The team were also presented with the scenario of an expedition member with a badly injured ankle in a remote and exposed location. They were given a selection of flashcards which each featured a possible course of action. The idea was to decide what action was relevant, and in which order to place the cards so that the situation was best resolved. 'Phoning home' was a 'red herring'!

Mr Irving, MEPI Coordinator

We are writing this message to inform you that there will be a Veggie Day at BISL on the 16th of June 2021.

Did you know that 72 billion land animals and over 1.2 trillion aquatic animals die for our food, around the world every year?

We want to encourage people to eat less meat to save our planet from harmful pollution from the farming of animals and the destruction of habitats.

So we are organising a Veggie Day at school for all of the BISL community and if you have a home meal please, please, don’t bring in meat! We are doing this to save animals and protect our planet! The school catering company will be providing a delicious pizza with cherry tomatoes and mozzarella cheese OR a vegan bolognese.

Many animals sacrifice their lives for us. We are only doing this for ONE DAY, WE CAN DO IT!

Kristina Year 5B & Nathan Year 4, C4C Team

As we continue to work with our uniform supplier to ensure a seamless and cost-effective delivery of your orders, we are delighted to share with you some updates on your delivery options at the checkout:

Courier £16.00

Your order will be delivered to the address of your choice – you will have to provide ID information to the courier/customs authorities to clear the goods, but no additional charges will need to be paid.

BISL Delivery £7.80 (for orders up to £100)

Your order of up to £100 will be dispatched to the school’s address and no further charges will need to be paid. We will contact you once your package has arrived, you can either pick it up from reception, or we can send it home with your child.

To place an order, click here.

We believe that learning goes beyond the classroom, further than academic successes, and we are excited to nurture and watch our students grow in a holistic learning environment.

Click here to read the full article about our spiritual, moral, social and cultural provision at BISL and how it benefits our students.

We will be celebrating our wonderful students on Friday June 4 and the PTA will be bringing ice cream for everyone to enjoy!

We will be celebrating our fantastic teachers on Friday June 11 with the help of our students, parents and the PTA.

We will be celebrating our amazing parents on Friday June 18 together with our students and teachers.

June 2nd is the deadline to register for our Enrichment Days, taking place on consecutive Saturdays, 12th and 19th June. If you haven’t already done so, please complete the sign-up form here.

These will include a range of supervised activities for our students to have further opportunities to enjoy learning and having fun together.

With the summer holidays just around the corner, find out how your child can join this two-week summer adventure with the British International School of Ljubljana - details here.

To make up for some of the lost face-to-face interactions with friends due to the period of remote learning, we are happy to be able to offer 5 Days of Free Summer School for BISL students in the first week of the summer, starting Monday 5th July.

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

• 29.04.2021 - Katherine Blundell
• 15.04.2021 - Mr Brad Eve
• 25.03.2021 - Mr Dominic Hulse
• 10.03.2021 - Ms Emina Begić
• 24.02.2021 - Mr Chris Bishop
• 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
• 06.10.2020 - Mr Jason Batson

As we approach the end of the school year, we welcome any donations of gently used school uniform.

We will then hold a Second Hand Uniform Sale during Orientation Day on August 20.

You are welcome to drop off your donations in the designated box by reception between now and the last day of school.

PTA Committee

Dear Parents,

As we start the final block of the year, we move into our Physical Education theme! With the sun starting to shine and the warmer weather, we hope to have as many opportunities outside to finish in a happy, active and healthy fashion. The PE staff have started to share ideas, activities and challenges for the students to participate in during this week's assemblies and announcements in class. We look forward to getting involved in as many of these sporting activities as possible during the next month.

Thank you to all parents involved in the uniform sale, your donations to the school and for your support lately, it has been incredible. I also want to thank the staff for their ongoing work with the students and constant efforts to ensure that they continue to get the best education possible. I am very lucky to have such caring professionals who go above and beyond on a regular basis for the benefit of our students and their learning. Following on from our recent inspection, we have also just received our accreditation from the Council of British International Schools (COBIS) and I'll share further details of this in my next update.

We have a lot of events over the coming weeks for the students as the guidance relaxes and we can consider and plan for what is best for our community. This includes extending our clubs, appreciation days, enrichment days, summer camps and possible day trips before the end of the term.

Finally, a warm welcome to our new families who have joined BISL over the past month and have started to receive updates ahead of your new start in August. We are currently at the biggest we have ever been in our history with new enrolments and continue to grow. This is fantastic news and brings further opportunities for our students, parents and staff to all work together.

We have an exciting month ahead, lots of plans to implement in the summer (building grand opening, new building tours, new facilities, teaching resources, additional staff, coaches, clubs etc) and are already looking forward to the possibilities in the new Academic Year 2021/22!

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

Kind regards,

Paul Walton

Principal