Secondary News - Mar 15 2021

This week we were delighted to welcome the remaining year levels back in Secondary on a rotation basis that meant that students were able to check in with their teachers as soon as possible. This was also to ensure that we were aligning with the Ministry’s guidance. Our students very much relished this opportunity, very happy to be back in the building face to face. We will keep a keen eye on the measures as well as maintain regular contact with the Ministry to be sure that all students can return as soon as possible.

Additionally, KS3 and 4 participated in the Spelling Bee as organised by Ms O’Regan this week. They are now eagerly awaiting the staff vs student competitions next week. It is wonderful to continue to celebrate the English block, despite the constant changes between online learning and the face-to-face provision.

Reports have been distributed in person (KS3, Yr 13) or by post (KS4, Yr 12) on Friday this week. I encourage all families to refer to this feedback as a basis for the Virtual interviews in the coming weeks. This is timely as students transition back to face-to-face learning in order to continue their progress. Please ensure that you have booked in to see your child’s teachers.

I wish all families a lovely and relaxing weekend.

Ms Andronikos

Head of Secondary

We celebrated International Women’s Day in secondary school with several activities. Our Principal, Mr. Walton, walked around the school giving teachers roses as a small token of appreciation.

As part of International Women’s Day, students in form class were encouraged to think about aspiration and equality. Students created their own phrases either about equality or general motivation. Here is a range of them below, and the display we put up celebrating equality.

Students were also encouraged to learn about famous women in history and society, with displays being put up around the school about powerful women.

On Wednesday afternoon our House Captains received their badges, along with our Year 10 and 11 Student Council representatives who weren't here last week yet. We look forward to seeing the many opportunities they'll have for student leadership in the coming blocks.

A huge well done to all the students who took part in this challenge, we want to congratulate the winner of round 1: Izzy from year 8 was the top speller across both key stage 3 and 4 in round 1.

Congratulations to the following students who made it into round 2 which will be held next Monday (KS3) and Tuesday (KS4) at lunch time!

KS3 Finalists:

• Valentine 7
• Ryan 7b
• Lila 8
• Izzy 8

KS4 Finalists:

• Julia 10
• Aidan 10

Well done to all our finalists, we look forward to round 2, where only 2 students will get through to the teacher vs student finals which will be held on Thursday - where they will be up against Ms. Dascalescu and Mr. Brad.

Thank you to all students who entered the story competition! The winner will be announced on Monday morning in assembly. A special well done to Aidan in year 10 , Connor in year 7and Emma also in year 7 - who submitted fantastic stories which our 6th form students just wanted to know more and what happens next!

Poetry Competition:

7B From: Gregorjevo or St. Gregory's day, celebrated on March 12th, which according to the old calendar was the first day of spring, is the Slovenian equivalent of St. Valentine's Day.

There’s a romantic saying that Gregorjevo is the day 'when birds get married'. Birds are a symbol of love. Old legend says that on St. Gregory’s day, the first bird that a girl will see in the sky will tell her who her future husband is.

There’s even a special tradition in the Tržič town—children and adults make Gregory’s lights and little boats which they, later on, put into the river for the flow to carry. This ritual comes from the times long ago when cobblers and tailors used to work house by house. With the beginning of the spring, they stopped using candles and were able to work by daylight. To celebrate it they used to clean their workshops and place all the shreds into the small baskets. Then they lit those baskets and put them into the stream Tržič Bistrica. 7B students created their own paper boats to celebrate Gregorjevo.

Our Sixth Form students worked together to create an examination guide, explaining how each subject is run, and how the examinations work. The booklet also includes words from out 6th form students about their chosen subjects, and information about graduate destinations. Check it out here.

Year 7: Year 7 looked at a poem by Ernest G Moll about a fox attacking helpless lambs. The students were asked to explore one of BISL's values - Empathy and try to put themselves in the shoes of the fox or the farmer trying to kill it as revenge for killing his lambs. We also learnt a number of new Poetry writing techniques.

Year 8: Examined the popularity of Superheroes, especially in the form of comic book Superheroes. We investigated whether there were any good Superheroines as well or whether they were just pale imitations of male Superheroes.

We worked on a piece of persuasive writing about whether Superhero films showed unrealistic messages such as good always triumphing over evil or if younger viewers had a realistic understanding of the violence that is commonly shown in them.

Year 9b: Have moved on from Animal Farm, and have started exploring descriptive writing, using show don’t tell be techniques and exploring language devices such as similes, metaphors, personification and hyperbole.

They produced a wonderful piece of describing writing zooming in on different people in a crowded street. Students also made wonderful posters explaining different language devices often used in descriptive writing.

Year 10: Have had a mixed week with half of it being online whilst having 2 days in the building. Whilst being in the middle we grabbed this chance to turn off the laptops, get away from typing and do some creative work on both poetry, and to jump back to remember 1984.

In our double lesson on Thursday students got creative, with raiding the art room to create their own life size Winston and Julia to be covered in quotations from the book to enable students to revise the quotations in a more stimulating creative way. THey created this life sized Winston and Julia on cardboard Ms. O’Regan had stored it for them since October.

Stage 1: Tracing around Julia and Aidan - minus their feet.

Stage 2: Cutting it out and painting it - which the some of the GCSE studying art girls took lead of in class, whilst the other pupils researched and planned the quotations to put on them - also where to put the quotations, the feelings of love in the heard, whilst the dreams in the brain.

Stage 3: Writing quotations from the book on each character. Students took turns in groups of 4-5 writing quotations in white pen, black marker and black paint on Winston and Julia - this was definitely a big team effort in Year 10.

Stage 4: Was down to Ms. O’Regan to mount it onto the wall in the hallway for everyone to engage in classic literature.

Whilst online students continued to explore a range of Carol Ann Duffy poetry, this week pupils explored the poem originally, where Carol Ann Duffy wrote about her personal experience moving countries as a child, and her feelings about language and dialect. Many of our students think she was being dramatic about her move as it was only from Glasgow to Stoke-On-Trent, whilst many of our students have moved across the world several times.

Year 11: Have been revising this week, whilst in school 11b revised poetry by annotating poems on A3 sheets of paper. We trust our students with choosing the correct revision for them. In 11b every week we vote on which subject they would like to revise next week and put it in action.

Year 13: As King Lear would say, ‘nothing comes from nothing’, and on that note we have finished King Lear, and are now looking at and evaluating a range of critical reviews of King Lear enabling students to quote experts in the field in their exam.

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

Year 9s were testing out theoretical vs experimental probability this week, commenting on the spread of results.

KS3 have been experimenting with probability by rolling dice, racing cars, and drawing cards. Year 7 have successfully completed the 'Escape room' challenge by solving probability and statistics related tasks.

Years 10 and 11 were warmly welcomed back into the building to perfect their skills of plotting graphs and using 2D position vectors, While Mechanics 1 students have been busy creating their revision projects.

The answers for the last Math question of the week is: 4.

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

Maths question of this week is:

105 numbers are written in a row: 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, . ..Where each number n is written exactly n-times. How many of those numbers are divisible by 3?

Ms. Zupanc and Ms Andronikos - Maths Department

As you are aware, we were celebrating “Svetovni dan knjige” last Thursday. Our enthusiastic students have been creating covers of their favourite books with Slovene titles and thoughts. It was nice to get to know their favourite books and discuss them.

We realized that we have lots in common. We love reading books which feed our imagination, help us to grow and become wiser human beings day by day.

Have a look at our wonderful display below.

Ms. Kosec, Ms Drofjenik - Slovene Language Teacher

Year 10, students modelled the human ventilation system with some at home science practicals.

Mr. Yates - Biology Teacher

Year 10 are currently learning about market segmentation, and exploring the basics of economics.

Year 12 business students are revising operation, whilst in economics have just completed a report on feminist economics at 2,500 words.

Year 13 business are currently doing strategic tools such as the boston matric and the five forces. Whilst in Economics are revising macro economics. They are also working on a feminist economic report.

This week in P.E., secondary students continued to develop their student lead projects accessing various aspects of their statement of exploration. Students additionally analysed how the F.I.T.T. and S.P.O.R.T. models should be integrated into their P.E.P. (personal exercise plan) through teacher-led lectures.

We were delighted to have our Year 10, 11, and 12 students back on-site and made use of our time together through team basketball activities. Secondary students additionally engaged in dynamic teacher-guided workouts. Our students performed various circuit and plyometric exercises from two of our six methods of training we are studying.

Congratulations

Huge congratulations to our Head of PE, Mr. Damjan, for becoming a father on Tuesday to baby Lovro.

Our first PTA Meeting has been scheduled for Friday 19th March, online on Zoom until guidance allows us to meet face to face at school.

Details of the meeting are available here - we look forward to seeing you virtually soon.

BISL PTA Committee

This week’s Teacher Feature brings us to our Special Education Needs (SEN) Department, featuring our very own Ms Emina, whose kindness and unwavering support for her students is felt by all here at BISL.

Read Ms Emina’s full Teacher Feature here.

One of our biggest family events, organised in partnership with the PTA, this year we're extending our International Day to a week of cultural celebrations, starting Tuesday 11 May.

There will be a variety of cultural and educational activities, stalls, traditional dress, flags, international cuisine, games and performances throughout the week for our community to enjoy.

Join the next PTA Meeting for more details.

Dear Parents,

This has been an excellent week to celebrate International Women's Day in our community and to pause for a moment to recognise the achievements of women around the world.

We are excited to announce the dates for our International Days, a fantastic opportunity to bring all families together, face to face and to celebrate internationalism in our community. We are working with our PTA to create a big event and have many projects, performances and fun activities planned for the students to get involved in.

Thank you to all of the parents who attended the Coffee Morning online last week, all of the action points are listed in my full Update for your reference.

We were delighted this week to be featured in the news again, please see my full Update for the link to the Total Slovenia News article about our staff laptop initiative.

The number of Covid cases remains high in the country and we must all keep working together to ensure that our community continues to be safe for our students. This is an ever changing situation and as a school, I intend to keep our community as safe as possible and to balance this with enabling all students to return.

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

Kind regards,

Paul Walton

Principal