Secondary News - Feb 1 2021

This penultimate week of the Block began with an assembly asking students to reflect upon their current consumption regarding general waste, plastics, and other old items. Students were asked to consider their recycling methods and other alternatives to simply just throwing items away. Living in Slovenia, we are extremely fortunate that this country values waste management and has some particularly good systems in place. Every little bit that we can do counts and is a step forward to the sustainability of the world around us.

This week Year 11 students attended an A Levels Subject Information webinar, explaining more about what topics individual subjects cover and how to proceed with choosing subjects for next year. These choices are to be returned to me via email. I encourage these students to please contact their teachers should they require any further information or have any questions.

It was lovely to see additional Year levels in Primary back in the building this week, and we eagerly wait for the time that Secondary may be able to return also. Before we begin the final week of the Block, I wish all families a lovely weekend, and all students some all-important time away from the computer.

Kind regards,

Stephanie Andronikos

Head of Secondary

Here are a few snaps of students enjoying a variety of activities on Zoom this week.

In celebration of our languages block, our language department challenged students and teachers to film themselves or take photos making traditional recipes from their own countries, and send in the videos/photos and recipes for us to try. Bonus points if you can put these languages in your ‘native’ language, which many people did.

I certainly feel hungry after seeing all these delicious foods. Which recipe will you try first?

République française - Crêpe recette

Quels sont les aliments les plus populaires en France?

Les crêpes sont l'un des desserts les plus appréciés de France. Vous pouvez avoir de nombreuses garnitures différentes dessus.

Click here to watch the full video in French.

日本-寿司 (Japan - Sushi)

寿司が好きではない人は誰ですか？この素晴らしいビデオを見て、マスターから寿司を作る方法を学びましょう。(Who doesn't love Sushi? Watch this fabulous video to learn how to make sushi from the master.)

Click here to watch the full video in Japanese and English. Click here for the bilingual recipe!

Slovenija - Ratatouille iz pečice

V Sloveniji je naša prehrana bogata z zelenjavo. Uživajte v tem tradicionalnem mariborskem receptu. Katera je vaša najljubša slovenska hrana? Zakaj nam ne bi poslali recepta in fotografije vaše jedi?

Click here for the full recipe (in Slovene).

Ellan Vannin - Bonnag (Isle of Man)

C’red by vie lhiat gee? By vie ihiam Bonnag, ta mee geearree ram my sailt.

Australia - Lamingtons

Happy Australia day to all our friends and colleagues from downunder. At BISL we celebrated it with eating delicious Lamingtons as it was a bit too cold for a barby (and not covid friendly).

Click here for the full recipe!

As part of our language block, our foriegn language recipe feature will also be in next week's newsletter - please send videos/photos of you cooking your dishes (or the finished dish) and the recipe in your native language to Ms Kosec (or Ms O’Regan)!

We look forward to seeing your dishes and recipes! Remember to include an English translation if the language isn’t French, German or Slovene.

At BISL we are proud to have celebrated Burns night across the school from year 5 to year 13 reading a variety of poetry by Burns. Click here to see and hear the recordings of our fabulous students!

We are especially proud of year 5 and 6 embracing To a Mouse which is a tricky poem, and of course as well done to students in KS3 and KS4 mastering tricky poems and dialect words.

As Block 4 began, we asked students in Year 10 to reflect on their own personal enjoyment of reading 1984, a required text at IGCSE, and to choose a task to reflect on their journey. Some students chose to write a book review based on their own experience of the book, below is an excellent example of the works our students submitted.

Click here to read the full review.

Our Year 10 students have been embracing a range of poetry by Carol Ann Duffy this block as part of their IGCSE preparations. As a response to the poem Valentine our students had a choice between writing an essay, creative writing from the perspective of the speaker in the poem or create an illustration of the poem. Check out some of the fantastic illustrations in the link below, and read a wonderful and creative diary entry by Jasmina.

Click here to view.

This week our secondary prefects met with our head boy and girl and discussed plans to get students involved with activities throughout the school both on zoom and when we are back in zoom.

Thank you to our prefects Luka K, Anna, Taja, Begum, Eren, Iza for coming to the meeting.

We had some fabulous ideas for when we are back in school such as dressing up as someone from history day, student led display boards around school, and organising a second hand book fair to name a few. If we continue zoom learning, ideas included poetry reading for Prešeren day which they are actioning next week.

This week in P.E., students are continuing to learn about sports education relating to floorball. Secondary students were given time to continue to develop their skills for their P.E. portfolios and prepare for the practical knowledge assessment next week. Students were introduced to their physical education portfolios and are to upload their first set of skills before their last lesson in block four. Students have continued to learn about sports education through researched and designed student-led lessons.

This week featured the blue team as our second guest professors. Students have been preparing and running a class involving knowledge of fitness, defensive tactics in floorball, and fitness components related to reaction time and speed in floorball.

Additionally, the Physical education department would like to celebrate the green team in year ten, consisting of Julia, Uma, Stavr, and Dominik. They delivered an exceptional presentation of diet and energy sources, attacking tactics in floorball, and fitness components related to muscular endurance in floorball.

See the Green Teams presentation here.

Keep up with the Student

Click here to view the challenge!

PE Weekly Challenge

Click here to view this week's challenge.

Healthy Recipe of the Week

Check out the full recipe here.

Don’t forget to send us the videos of you completing the challenges to be featured in our next video compilation, also if you make the recipe of the week send us a snap of it!

PE Department

Slovene as a Second Language

One of the groups in Year 9 (Turquoise group) was ordering food in Slovene. The students have been working in breakout rooms with their partners. They created interesting and funny dialogues about food options such as pizza. While presentations they make everyone in the class. Including me! Can someone knock on the door and bring pica?

To sum up, they are ready to order pizza in Slovene now. Well done Year 9.

Read those two examples below. Perhaps, they will make you call a restaurant and order pizza. Who knows?

Miss Košec, MFL Department

Slovene Advanced

Year 9 at Slovene Advanced lessons are discussing the history of the Slovenian language. The main objective of these lessons is to acquaint students with the history from the 6th to the 20th century. This includes knowledge of various literary works and their authors over a period of time. Students will conclude their reflection with an essay. I believe they will do a great job!

The topic of the past week in Key stage 3 introduced the students to various formulae for area and volume of shapes and solids. Year 7 created their own questions about compound shapes for their classmates to solve.

Year 8 created strategy posters that will help them memorise all properties and formulae of various 2D shapes.

Year 9 demonstrated familiarity with deriving formulae and applying them to area and volume problems.

Year 10 plotted quadratic and reciprocal graphs and investigated parabola's properties with the help of an online simulation, and year 11 learnt about trigonometry in real-life 3D problems.

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

Thank you for all submitted answers and congratulations to Mei from 7A, Ryan from 7B, Isabella from 8, Aleksander and Lovro from 9B, and Karlina from 10, who guessed correctly and received 5 house points. Well done!

Maths question of this week is:

Valentina draws a zig-zag line inside a rectangle as shown in the diagram. For that she uses the angles 10°, 14°, x, 33° and 26°. How big is the angle x?

Students who solve the question send their answer to my email by Wednesday 3rd February.

We would like to welcome back Mr. Brad Eve who is returning on Monday. He has made a brilliant recovery, and is very keen to get back to work. He is thrilled to hear how much progress students have been making, and can’t wait to see everyone.

Year 7 this week have been writing persuasive speeches and letters. Classes finished their ‘I have a dream speech’, where they pretended to be politicians and wrote about their goals using a variety of persuasive devices.

In addition to this, they also learnt how to write formal letters the old fashioned way, such as how to structure addresses and dates on the letter. Which surprised them, as we do not do this on emails. They wrote formal letters to Mr. Walton suggesting ideas for the school.

Year 8 are continuing reading Private Peaceful with Mr Kirwan, and doing creative writing with Mr. Siter this week.

Year 9b are continuing with Animal Farm this week, students have written PEE paragraphs analysing the pigs behaviour in the farm. We have also read up to the end of chapter 6, with students stunned with the cheek of Napoleon.

Students also had a chance to let their creative writing side free, by writing diary extracts from the perspective of the different animals. This allows students to explore the characters thoroughly, as well as having fun with exaggerating their personality traits. You can read more about that below, can you guess the animal the diary is from?

“As I'm writing this, I am getting hunted down and being searched for by some violent dogs with growling teeth. I don't know what happened. Maybe the dogs are against what I say or something? And I don't see anyone coming near and try looking for me and avoiding the dogs, which is strange…

Wait a second…

I do remember Napoleon saying to us that he is saving some puppies from the inside of Mr. Jones's shelter. Some time has passed now, and I guess the pups are all grown up now or still infants. Maybe these dogs were sent by Napoleon so that he can kick me out and become the new leader of the Animal Farm?

I cannot believe it. A comrade just kicked me out of the farm so that he can become the supreme leader. I have to admit that currently, the farm is suffering all because of that stupid little pig that deserves to die in the slowest and most painful death ever.

Me and Napoleon were good friends when Mr. Jones abused us and when Old Major was still alive. We played together the entire time. When we grew up, we were invited to help Old Major and help him with the problem of Mr. Jones and how do we get rid of him.”

- Gabriel

“A few days ago we rebelled against Mr Jones. He wasn’t a very nice man but I kind of miss him. Right after the rebellion, Mr Napoleon told me to take off my ribbons, he says they represent humans. I don’t understand. I like my ribbons. Humans put them in my mane but I wear them because I like them. They make me feel pretty.

The pigs make us do so much work. Mr Napoleon says without the work we will starve. But why do I have to do more work than I did when Mr Jones was still here? It’s not fair! Boxer can do the work for me, he likes working, I don’t, so I shouldn’t work.

Mr Snowball is trying to teach us the letters and numbers. He says that the letters are put into a group but I can’t remember what the name of the group is. Why do we have to learn after we work.? It’s hard. The only nice thing about learning to write is that I can now spell my name, it looks so pretty when I add little flowers around the letters.

Sundays are my favourite. We get to wake up an hour later. No work! I get to look into the well as much as I like. Sometimes, when no one is looking I like to go behind the house and look at my ribbons. I hid them there, I hope no one finds them...or my hidden sugar stash, It’s behind the big flower bush in a pretty brown bag. I’m so excited whenever I go there. “

- Maria N

Year 10 this week have continued to explore a variety of poetry by Carol Ann Duffy. Firstly students explored the poem Recognition and wrote a full GCSE level essay on it, many students got grade A on this poem which was graded at IsGCSE level.

Secondly students analysed the poem Mrs Tischler’s class and created some wonderful art work per stanza as a method of remembering the deeper meanings.

Students had a choice of activities and could volunteer ideas for their own. In English we value creativity as a method to consolidate items learnt earlier in poetry and literature.

Year 11: Both YYear 11 classes have been looking at how to structure reports this week. Class 11b started the week with revision from 1984 and successfully completed a practise essay question on it, with almost all students improving their marks from the mock exam. Showing that students have taken on board our comments and reflected, with some students going up 2 grades.

Year 11b next week will continue with report writing, whilst ear 11a will start general revision.

Year 13: In English Literature we have been keeping up with King Lear, and translating it into modern English. Our commentary has us in stitches in the classroom, we love translating it into modern teenage speak. “Your so basic, you won’t even tell me how much you love me”, “Nah, won’t marry you, now you’re poor”, “He was born out of wedlock, but I love him more than you”.

English Riddle Challenge:

Well done last week to the 3 students who emailed in with the correct answer - house points have been added accordingly.

Four golfers named Mr. Black, Mr. White, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Blue were competing in a tournament. The caddy didn’t know their names, so he asked them. One of them, Mr. Brown, told a lie.

The 1st golfer said, “The 2nd Golfer is Mr. Black.”

The 2nd golfer said, “I am not Mr. Blue!”

The 3rd golfer said,”Mr. White? That’s the 4th golfer.”

And the 4th golfer remained silent.

Which one of the golfers is Mr. Blue?

Please email your answers to Ms O’Regan by Thursday midday :) All correct answers will be awarded 2 house points.

Miss O’Regan, Mr Kirwan, Mr Siter and Mr Eve, English Department

Despite distance learning, Year 7A students were very eager to continue with their experimental work, and with the help of the parents, we made it work.

Students prepared a cabbage indicator at home and tested different substances to see whether they are acids, alkalis, or neutral.

Valentin from Y7A made the whole rainbow using a cabbage indicator in the afternoon. Check out the colours below - we are proud of his efforts. Can you make the whole rainbow?

Chemistry News

The Y13 Chemists have battled today in a memory/speed competition where they had the chance to memorise a polymer which was shown for 8 seconds (displayed on the image at the top right, though they couldn't see it) which they would then have to draw on a shared virtual whiteboard. Micky won in the end because Jakub struggled with the tools and had to redraw most of it! This served as an introduction for a theory question analysing that polymer.

Afterwards, they have been using a virtual lab to familiarise themselves with the methods, steps, and equipment that needs to be used in different experiments to try to compensate for the lack of direct contact with practical lessons.

The Year 11s had to complete an experiment modelling the radioactive decay process using coins at home. Basically, the idea that it's a random process governed by a certain probability of decay (in this case, heads or tails) was applied to several consecutive coin tosses, starting with 20 and eliminating the ones that had "decayed". The results would end up resembling those of the activity vs. time curve quite a lot! Here is an example from Irmak's work, with the ideal decay process below.

Mr Herrera - Physics and Chemistry teacher

Firstly Happy Birthday to our Business and Economics teacher who has turned 30 again.

Year 10 have finished off looking at recruitment and legality in the workplace, such as health and safety, and why this is essential. They also learnt about fines from this, if workplaces are not compliant they end up with big fines and potentially even shut down.

Year 12 have started to look at finance in business, whilst in economics the class have finished the AS course content and are now investigating specific issues in economics. They are looking forward to their economics project.

Year 13 in business we are looking at finance and have just looked at costing methods. Year 13 also created their own business idea this week and planned how to advertise it on social media including instagram. They learnt about algorithms on people viewing them, they have created an aerial drone photography business, for all your photography needs. More about this in next week's newsletter…

In economics we have been looking at unemployment and we will be looking specifically at the quality theory of money and money supply.

Mr Dalton - Business and Economics teacher

The Nutrition Room was witness to a rarely seen cooking session this week. MEPI Participants 'Zoomed-in' for a 'what's hot and what's not, do and don'ts' camping stove demonstration. We looked at solid-fuel stoves, methylated spirits burners, and a range of gas-powered offerings.

The recommendation to participants was to utilise the Trangia stove with gas burner option, as pots and pans are included in a very neat, quality package, that is lightweight and easy to pack in a rucksack. An additional compact gas burner, ensures that a decent hot dinner can be prepared in one session. (The dish that was demonstrated was fish in a vegetable and tomato sauce with pasta, accompanied by a proper mug of English tea.)

Certain safety considerations were also addressed, such as NEVER to cook inside your tent, whatever the weather. (Anyone who has ever seen a small tent catch fire will know just how frighteningly quickly it is consumed!) The general operation of each stove was covered.

It's important not only to know how to assemble the stove, but how to safely light, use, and pack it away without receiving any burns. Once again, it was a pleasure to 'tick-off' another aspect of the expedition training in the ORB.

Mr Irving, MEPI Coordinator

With the changes due to Brexit in the UK, please see below how this affects your purchases through the uniform shop. Prices will be amended on the website accordingly to endeavour to offset further charges.

We would like your support in completing our 2020/21 Parent Survey, which will provide us with important feedback for us to continue to improve your child’s experience at our school. You will have already received the survey link via email.

The survey will be closing soon, thank you to those who have already taken the time to complete this survey, it is very much appreciated.

In celebration of our Languages block, this week’s Teacher Feature introduces Ms Košec, our Head of Modern Foreign Languages and Slovene Teacher.

Read Ms Košec’s Teacher Feature here.

Dear Parents,

Thank you to all parents who have filled in the annual Parent Survey. I really appreciate your feedback and as the survey will close soon, I look forward to us analysing the results and sharing them out to parents. You will have received the link to the survey in your inboxes already. This survey enables me to pass on your gratitude to the staff mentioned in your comments, your praise for teachers and also helps to give us areas we can continue to work on and develop as a school. All comments are warmly received and valued, thank you.

Please check our BISL reopening procedures for any FAQs that you may have about the transition back into school.

Further information of the plan for our returning classes will be emailed to parents individually and we will continue to review this provision daily. This will involve our usual high standards of hygiene, health and safety guidance, and the use of small class sizes.

All teachers will be required to wear masks in the classroom.

At BISL, we are following the guidance to test all teachers (showing a negative test) before they teach on site and will continue to do so on a regular weekly basis or until guidance changes.

On site learning will continue on Monday for those year groups that have safely transitioned back to the building this week. As a private school, our teachers working with children on site will be tested on Monday afternoon, after the school day is concluded, in line with guidance from the government. Many of our staff are at home, teaching their year groups through remote learning, and will continue to do so until those year groups can safely transition back on site.

Please read my full Update from the Principal here.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend.

Kind regards,

Paul Walton

Principal