Secondary News - June 7 2021

Block 7 Week 2

This week the PE Block Theme continued throughout assemblies and lessons with the 4-square tournament being held from Years 5 to 10. The students thoroughly enjoyed competing throughout this competition, fiercely battling it out. Well done to all the students involved and the PE staff for coordinating this.

The PE staff are currently also planning out the Enrichment Days activities, excited to be able to host students on the 12^th and 19^th of June. Please ensure you do not miss the opportunity to sign students up for these days, focused on team building and sports. On both days students can be dropped off from 8-9am and be picked up anywhere from 12-13pm.

This week on June 4^th was Student Appreciation Day. Students were honoured with lovely comments written from their teachers. Additionally, classes were able to have a photo opportunity with their classes, to be distributed next week and students enjoyed an ice cream each - perfect in this warm weather.

Please see the Update from the Principal for the latest changes to the health and safety guidance, which were implemented this week.

Whilst there are still 3 weeks to go and many more assessments, events and opportunities, I did want everyone to be aware that the final day of the term and year is a half day, with pick up from 12pm.

I wish all the community a fine weekend.

Stephanie Andronikos

Head of Secondary

In secondary PE, students continued with endzone games and learning invasion tactics for capture the flag. We also started our four-square tournament challenge with our students showing quick-thinking, creative play, and explosive movements during these preliminary rounds.

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 are now working our way through Canada.

Next week we will announce our winner of the Minecraft PE hall designs. There have been many outstanding submissions, and we thank all students who participated. The PE department also looks forward to our students' exceptional cooking creations in our week three PE block competition.

Additionally, we ask you to remember to mark your calendars and sign up for Saturday, June 12th, and Saturday, June 19th, both Physical Education theme Enrichment Days.

Ms Fairchild, PE department

Today was Student Appreciation day. Every student received a comment from among their teachers letting them know (anonymously) what they admired most about them. Here we can see some of Year 7B receiving their comments.

Year 7: Year 7 searched for specific information this week from a brochure about the staging of a famous musical “Joseph and his amazing technicolour dreamcoat”. Then we worked on a presentation to discuss different aspects of a musical piece of our own choice. Great job this week, Year 7.

Year 8: Year 8 examined an extract about a 300 year old piece of theatre based on the criminal underworld of South London. We continued our examination of dialect and slang in regional English and ended the week writing a piece based on the perspective of the main villain of a piece and the motivation behind the character.

Year 9: 9b: How would you feel if you saw the king's wife sleep walking holding a candle saying she can never get the blood off? Would you count this as a murder confession or just someone gone mad? 9b this week have read and acted out up to act 5, scene 2 of Macbeth, and have witnessed Lady Macbeth's insanity. Students wrote point, evidence, explain paragraphs focusing on using word zoom, and mentioning language devices that Shakespeare uses. This is excellent practise for IGCSE essays next year.

In addition students also completed their midterm assessments, with 100% students passing with an A-C grade, with some students writing at IGCSE standard already, a huge well done to all their efforts this block so far.

Year 10: Year 10 this week have started to explore unseen poetry for IGCSE English Literature paper 4. Firstly students explored the poem 'A search for my tongue', getting used to annotating new poems using the WILSON question strategy. Students then annotated and explored the poem Not my business, which has a powerful message about doing the right thing, and speaking out in times of crisis. Students wrote essays on this poem on Thursday which was a fantastic first attempt at writing an IGCSE answer on an unseen poem. Well done everyone.

Finally a huge well done to Jasmina and Aidan for achieving outstanding results in their midterm test, both close to getting 100% in IGCSE English Language Paper 1. We had 82% of students achieve A*-A in their midterm tests, a huge well done to them all, and we had 100% achieve between A* - C grades.

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

To celebrate students' successes at BISL, we often publish outstanding pieces of work on our website under the student voice section. Enjoy this outstanding piece of descriptive writing by Wiktoria from Year 11, you can imagine yourself in the playground.

Year 10 have been embracing speech writing in the last week, and have linked them in with British values. Last week students debated whether or not we should have unlimited free speech, or should it be restricted (i.e. hate speech). Read here two top speeches by students Lara and Felix arguing why freedom of speech is fundamental.

All students have prepared for and sat in their final mathematics tests of this year. They created their own Kahoot quizzes, engaged in various revision activities and focused on the topics they felt the least confident in. Well done everyone! Now that the final exam is finished, the students will conduct a student led project on the final topics.

The answers for the last Maths question of the week is: 19.

Thank you for all submitted answers and congratulations to Valentin from 7A and Aleksander from 9B who guessed correctly and received 5 house points. Well done!

Maths question of this week is:

In the rectangle ABCD the side AD is 10 cm long. M and N are the midpoints of the sides AB and CD respectively. How big is the grey area?

Students who solve the questions send the answer to my email by Wednesday 9th June. Good luck!

Ms Zupanc, Mathematics Teacher

Year 10 Business have finished their course and are revising for their end of year test.

Year 12 and 13 students are debating entering an Economics Essay Contest being run by the LSE Economics Society.

Mr Dalton, Business and Economics teacher

Year 8 students at Slovene Advanced lessons have been learning about perfect and imperfect verbs this week. They solved some interactive exercises to consolidate their knowledge in an interesting and fun way. Students are already quite confident at recognising and understanding the topic. They are progressing very quickly. Le tako naprej!

Ms Drofenik, Slovene Teacher

Year 9 have been working in three colourful groups on diverse tasks. Yellow group was describing their role models. They have prepared an interesting dialogue with the chosen role model. Turquoise group was discussing their daily chores and useful things which makes our life easier when we deal with chores. I was very glad to hear that our students are so active with different chores at home. Let’s not forget about the red group who is expanding Slovene vocabulary based on body and health. Surely, they are ready to have a short dialogue with their doctors in case of sickness. Working in a group is not just fun, it’s also connecting us as a team and broadening our horizons beyond.

Zelo dobro!

Ms Košec, Slovene Teacher

Year 7 have started African drumming this week. They will learn some different rhythms and how to perform polyrhythms which they will use to cover a song of their choice using the Djembe drum.

Year 8 students are currently learning about songwriting and how to compose catchy and memorable melodies.

Year 9 are also either learning about song writing or continuing with their band project. Current songs they are learning to perform are 'Clocks' by Coldplay, 'A million dreams' from The Greatest Showman.

Ms Kenealy, Music Teacher

This week our MEPI participants have been planning their longest hike yet, in preparation for the final practice before the qualifying Adventurous Journey (AJ). This time they need to prove that they can achieve their goal completely independently. This also includes the planning. For this practice, the participants were given a map with coordinates for the start point and finish point, and a couple of checkpoints in between. Their first job was to plot a route between these points, taking care to stay off-road as much as possible. All of the information from the map then needed to be transferred to a route card. The route is certainly long enough to replicate half of that required for the 2-day Bronze AJ, and with a height gain, and a descent of 500 metres, our students will be challenged! The plan will be put to the test in a couple of weekend’s time. Staff will be in the vicinity, but our students will have to navigate for themselves, employing all of the skills acquired through their MEPI training.

After 5 days of the eco challenge created by Ma Petite Planete, joined by C4C, there is a full-on competition between the two teams, with Team Greta Thunberg winning at the time of writing by 34 points. So far some challenges completed by the competitors include:

• The right time for the laundry (at night with a full load on 30 degrees or less)
• Reusable hygiene products OR solid soap
• Buy seasonal and local fruits and vegetables
• Vegeta week - Level 3 (Be vegetarian for 3 weeks and INCLUDE one week of being vegan)

Working towards:

• Carpool
• Save me Please (eat an ugly/imperfect fruit or vegetable)

Take a look at some of the photos to see how much fun we have had saving our planet.

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 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.

It is your final chance to register for our Enrichment Days, taking place on consecutive Saturdays, 12th and 19th June! 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.

For the first Teacher Feature of our final Block this year, we bring you a splendid interview with Ms Karla, our wonderful Assistant Teacher in Early Years.

Read Ms Karla’s Teacher Feature here.

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.

Dear Parents,

This has been another busy week finishing with our wonderful Student Appreciation Day. This will be an event today to celebrate the fantastic students we have in our community, to show our gratitude for how they interact, behave and learn each day. It is a moment to pause, reflect and value all of our incredible learners at BISL and appreciate how they make this a very special place to work for all of us. Thank you to the PTA and parents for your support with this event, it is wonderful to see the amount of heartfelt comments from staff shared with students and this is a very important event for us. Happy Student Appreciation Day!

Following on from the changes in guidance from the government regarding Covid, we have been monitoring our community and have made further announcements, which are detailed in my Update. These are another staggered step back to normality and we hope it keeps heading this direction. We look forward to a number of events over the next 3 weeks and have already started to plan activities and had our first external trips of the year. Teachers can now plan and organise local trips with year groups and we hope this opportunity continues throughout this block and into the next academic year. We have had successful trips completed, risk assessments and safety guidance followed and are now ready to take the next step. We place safety as a priority, continue to respect the guidelines and our thoughts are always with the families who are affected by Covid in our community.

At the end of next week, the class teachers of the year groups for the next academic year will write to all parents to introduce themselves, share key dates and information with the classes that are confirmed for next year. Immediately after this, we will send out the staff profiles of the new teachers joining BISL for the upcoming academic year 2021/2022. These profiles give an insight into the new teachers, a photo, bio and basic information to introduce you to them before they arrive in Ljubljana, these have been sent out for the last 2 years and we will continue to follow this format. A very exciting time!

Also at the end of next week (Friday 11th June) is our Teacher Appreciation Breakfast. A fantastic opportunity for us all to say a huge thank you to all teachers at school. Our Parent Appreciation Day is the following Friday (18th June) and this completes our celebration days for the community and gives us an opportunity to recognise as many individuals as possible.

I also want to thank parents for encouraging your children to sign up for our BISL Enrichment Days and the Summer School, these have both surpassed the numbers from previous years and we look forward to these excellent opportunities for students to have fun, learn and interact with one another.

At school, we have made further improvements to the Early Years side entrance, adding five new flower planters, trellis and areas to plant flowers. This will create a wonderful 'green' entrance into the school for our Early Years families and should be finished in the next week.

Finally, a reminder that our last day of term is Thursday 24th June and as always this will be a 12.00pm pick up for all students. Further information will be provided in the newsletters and emails from the Heads of School. As an international school, this is a time to say thank you, celebrate and share fond memories of students learning together and wishing the families departing to pastures new all the very best, and to remind everyone that they are always a part of our community, to stay in touch and welcome back to our school in the future at any time. The friendships our students have made and will keep via social media etc. give them a huge supportive, caring and exciting network of friends across the world.

Please read my Update from the Principal for more details.

Have a great weekend!

Kind regards,

Paul Walton

Principal