Secondary News - June 21 2021

Block 7 Week 4

During this week we have celebratedOutstanding PTM and PTE results. We are very proud of our amazing teachers who have worked extremely hard this year. Throughout the year they have supported and encouraged the students to achieve the best results possible and we can see that BISL attains significantly above UK and other international schools. We are very proud of this achievement.

The staff monitor, track and intervene with the students throughout the year and we have excellent systems in place to ensure that all students progress extremely well. These systems, routines and being very organised mean that all staff are aware of the strengths and areas to improve for individual students. Furthermore, they all have clear examples and strategies to help every student with their progress in Maths and English. As a team, the staff work together on a daily basis with intervention meetings, planning, sharing ideas and attend training sessions to further professionally develop.

We are very excited about the year ahead, the incoming staff have also been announced this week and together maintaining outstanding academic results as well as offering wonderful learning experiences.

Each year I have the honour of leading the Year 6 transition, introducing and welcoming the Year 6 students into the Secondary school. It is wonderful to meet the incoming Year 7 students who are all bright eyed and full of nervous excitement. It can be quite daunting entering the Secondary school, with changes to the uniform, the timetable, and many teachers to keep track of. In the induction session this morning, the students were attentive and asked very mature questions, eager to find out more about

Secondary school life. They experienced a Science lesson in the laboratory as well as a Secondary Art lesson in the Art room. The staff are very excited to welcome Year 6 to the Secondary school next year.

PE celebrated their block theme in lessons this week with all classes participating in a cross country competition. Getting out into the nature of the lovely areas around the school, students battled it out to represent their house. Well done to all students who participated and good luck to all houses! There is just one more week to go before the winners are revealed.

Please take a moment to read this week’s Update from the Principal, which includes a lovely gallery of photographs from our Parent Appreciation event this morning, as well as other updates.

I wish everyone a lovely and warm weekend!

Stephanie Andronikos

Head of Secondary

In secondary PE, students continued with barrier games and learned a modified game of dodgeball which included freeing teammates from a captured area by connecting a pass. In addition, our students explored various strategies, including how to utilize their resources, team play, and understanding timing and spatial awareness.

The PE department introduced our house team cross country race. The races covered 800 meters, with each team's time recorded based on the final member of that house crossing the finish line. The students worked well as a team, aiding each other with pacing strategies and motivation throughout the race.

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 Patagonia and have completed 14,943 km.

The PE department would like to congratulate Martin in year eight for winning the PE block cooking competition. Here we can see his rather delicious looking entry.

Additionally, we ask you to remember to mark your calendars for our second Physical Education Enrichment Day this Saturday, June 19th.

Ms Fairchild, PE department

Year 7: Year 7 wrapped up their examination of the Robert Swindells novel “Stone Cold”. After enjoying the BBC 2 adaptation of the story and comparing and contrasting the differences between the TV version and book we completed a review summarising what took place in the story and our overall thoughts on it.

Year 8: Year 8 got to see the film version of the book “A Monster Calls” and analyse some of the finer points and important details to reveal just who “the monster” in the title actually was. We also worked on some final analysis of the project paying particularly close attention to the meaning of the ending scenes.

Year 9: 9b: “Tell me it's not true, say it’s just a story”.... Can you recognize this line? You might want to check one of our newsletters from October. Ms. O'Regan gave 9b a choice to read any play new, or previously studied in the last 2 weeks, and spend the final 2 weeks on working on acting skills, reading stage directions and other verbal English skills. The class voted on “Blood Brothers”, the working class tale of two brothers one kept and one given away. The students have most certainly been embracing their dramatic side this week. See some photos below of what fun we've been having in class.

Year 10: Have had a step away from unseen poetry this week and revisited 1984, firstly students made their own memes about the book.

Students also watched clips from the film, and discussed how important studying 1984 in modern society, and being aware of politics.

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

The students finished their lesson plans and created fun and engaging activities such as group competitions, Kahoot quizzes, escape rooms, haunted houses and murder mysteries. The first groups have already hosted the lessons and they really enjoyed it!

The answers for the last Math question of the week is: 112.

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

X is an odd number. When a letter is taken away from X it becomes even. Which number is X?

Students who solve the questions send the answer to my email by Wednesday 23rd June. Good luck!

Ms Zupanc, Mathematics Teacher

Year 7 have finished their last project of this school year. Firstly, students read an excerpt from a famous book “The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole” by Sue Townsend in Slovene. Later students drew different pieces of art based on the stories and wrote their own part of a diary. Look at their creations!

Ms Drofenik, Slovene Teacher

Year 8 have been very creative and supportive in their partnership project this week. They have created their future imaginary houses which look dreamy indeed. Of course, they have named all the basic rooms in the house and have even added unordinary rooms such as kino (cinema), telovadnica (gym), knjižnica (library), vrt v hiši (garden in the house) … Hopefully, they will build their dreamy houses one day. Držim pesti!

Ms Košec, Slovene Teacher

As part of Transition Day, Year 6 enjoyed their first Secondary Art lesson with Miss Clayton where they learnt about colour theory, paint consistency and techniques. After teacher demonstrations the students practised their painting and colour mixing skills. producing some excellent work. Well done Year 6 for a fun, colourful and energetic first Art lesson!

Miss Clayton, Art Teacher

As we are approaching the end of the year, the students incorporated all their French knowledge in discovering French culture.

The week focused on French music (chansons francaises, Eurovision French song,...), French movies (Asterix & Obelix, Arsen Lupin, ...), documentaries about France, and French life.

We also checked the knowledge with different quizzes. They were all very successful. Félicitations!

Mrs Struna Berden, French Teacher

Adventurous Journey Expedition

As our intrepid MEPI Bronze Award team met in Šendvit early on Sunday morning, full of anticipation at the challenging hike ahead of them, no one could predict the glorious day that lay ahead. The group set off just a little later than planned and the first leg was slightly slower than the route card might indicate, but the initial stage was a fairly steep ascent, and the team were still finding their bearings. The sky was slightly overcast which kept our participants cool as they made their way uphill. A beautiful wooded path, in dappled shade, stretched onwards and upwards towards Toško Čelo. By this time a new pace had been set, and the time taken for the second leg was exactly as the route card had predicted. Our team continued west, pausing occasionally to take a sip of water, adjust a rucksack strap, or nibble a biscuit or two. Turning North, the fairly level woodland path began to ascend once more towards Sveta Katarina in the village of Topol. Leafy lane gave way to open hilltop road, as they emerged into brilliant sunshine just below the old chapel. Coniferous forest with an occasional patch of grassland lay undulating below and around. Our participants took a well-earned break, and time to absorb their surroundings from the grassy hillside, before making the final little push up to the church itself. Lunch taken on benches just outside of the small churchyard, led to the final leg of the journey. Descending once more along greenwood paths into the valley, they headed towards the small settlement of Hrastenice. The denouement of their 17.5km Adventurous Journey lay between the road from Ljubljana to Polhov Gradec, and the Gradaščica River.

"I came and told my dad, 'Dad, I am exhausted but I am happy and proud to be part of MEPI!”

"We walked 17.5 km in total and the weather was amazing. What went well is that we were good at reading the map and checking the direction. We should have checked the map a little more, to make sure we were heading in the right direction, but we had good teamwork during the hike: One person held the map, another person held the route card and another person held the compass to see the directions. At first we didn't start the hike on time and to reach the first point we were a bit too slow and lost some time. But we started to catch up, and we made it!"

Award Presentation

This past week has certainly been an eventful one for our MEPI participants at the school. After this year's 'Bronze Award' cohort completing a challenging day's hiking on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday saw the presentation of certificates and pins to participants who had already completed their Bronze Award in its entirety.

They say that the Award is more like a marathon than a sprint, and it does seem like this was the case for our participants from Year 11 and Year 12 (Maybe even more so than the Award organisation might have intended?!) So it was with great pleasure and pride that these awards were handed over. Both girls have been with the school for quite some time, and so we have literally seen them grow into the people they are today. It has been a privilege to spend time with our Year 11 student, and see her bend her strong will to the task in hand, and succeed when times were challenging both on the Practice Expedition on the coast, and the Qualifying Adventurous Journey (AJ) which finished near Polhov Gradec. Our Year 12 student completed her Qualifying AJ with a different cohort in Slovenia's coastal region. Quiet and conscientious, our Year 12 student has now enhanced these qualities with a confidence and determination which has given her so much success in MEPI, and all that she does.

The event unfolded under the shade of the trees in the Woodland Area. This year's cohort were invited to the presentation, and we're sure that they would have found some inspiration there. It was an opportunity for our Award holders to pass on their experience to the others, and it was really interesting to hear the knowledge they'd accrued. Numerous questions were asked, and some great advice was dispensed. (Pack enough food. Don't rely on sugary snacks. Too many energy drinks just make you feel sick etc.) It was a very positive and enjoyable experience, not least for the delicious pizza that the school procured from a local eatery!

Mr Irving, MEPI Coordinator

Ma Petite Planete Challenge

We've only got a few days to go until our 3 week challenge competition ends. There have been some extremely active competitors (Green Leaf and Ecological Lion), who have scored 144 and 90 points respectively. This is no easy feat and they deserve special recognition for their hard efforts to support our planet. Every one of our team mates has supported the competition and every point counts towards the win, which will be announced next week. For the moment, Team Greta Thunberg is winning by over 100 points. One more challenge was completed in school:

Let's protect our flying friends!

Do any action in favour of birds or insects. We made a butterfly and bee drinking station.

Veggie Day

In celebration of our planet Earth and its animals, most students and staff at BISL tried to eat only vegetarian food on Wednesday the 16th of June. Everyone loved the catered option of margarita pizza and vegan bolognese and didn't even realise it was a vegetarian meal. Vegetarian lunches were also brought in which included some yummy looking dumplings, mini pizzas and pasta dishes, to name a few. Thank you to all those who participated at home and to those that went the extra mile and ate only vegetarian food for the WHOLE day. Everything we do makes a difference, and if we can do that together, even better.

Thank you from the C4C Team

We are delighted to announce our outstanding results from the recent PTE and PTM assessments at school. These standardised international tests provide a rigorous and high-quality assessment for all students around the world. Our students at BISL achieve significantly above expectations over time and this has continued to improve. They have once again produced outstanding academic outcomes, raising the standards and setting the bar higher for the next cohort. This is particularly impressive when you take into account the fact that many of our students are not native English speakers.

Find out more about our PTM and PTE results here.

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

• 02.06.2021 - Ms Karla Kukovica
• 29.04.2021 - Ms 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.

The PTA will then host 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,

We have now completed our third Appreciation Day of the academic year, Happy Parent Appreciation Day! This was a wonderful opportunity to recognise and value the support, kindness and encouragement that we get from our parents in the community. Photos are available in my full Update here. Thank you for everything you do!

Over the past week, we have sent out the welcome letters from the lead teachers of all our classes for next year, as well as the staff profiles of the new incoming teachers to BISL. Our Orientation Day on Friday 20th August will be a chance for you to meet our new teachers, new families and find out more information about the school for the academic year ahead.

Last weekend, I had a very enjoyable Enrichment Day on Saturday with the students as they played dodgeball, capture the flag and other fun team building games, then I met our adventurous MEPI students at the end of their Sunday hike. Huge congratulations to everyone involved, as it was a fantastic achievement of 17.5km in total during a sunny day and some steep climbs. I look forward to our Enrichment Day tomorrow for more fun, sports and games with the students!

Our final day of term is Thursday 24th June and this will, as always, be a 12.00pm pick up for all students. It will also be a House colour dress down day for students and staff as it is the last day of the year.

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

Have a lovely weekend.

Kind regards,

Paul Walton

Principal