Primary News - January 21st 2022

Dear Parents and Students,

Happy Student Appreciation Day to all of our students! On this day, we celebrate the hard work and achievements of our amazing students. Each student received a personalised message from their teacher to let them know how valuable they are to the community. Thank you also to parents for making this day even sweeter for the students by giving out delicious cupcakes during the outdoor break in the beautiful sunshine. It has been a fantastic end to the week.

On 17th January, we also celebrated Martin Luther King Day. Students across the school engaged in various activities and discussions throughout the week in their PSHE lessons and assemblies on the topic of diversity and equality.

As part of health and safety, we consistently talk to students about road safety. As part of the Student Voice, Secondary students have published articles on this topic to raise further awareness. Please read their latest Road Safety article here and keep the speed limits to ensure our students can arrive at and depart from the school safely.

The BISL Covid guidelines and measures have been reviewed this week. All of these have been updated on the latest Update from the Principal in the BISL COVID Measure FAQs section. Please continue to follow the guidelines and help keep our community safe.

Y3A class has been working online this week and we look forward to students returning to school on Monday. We will keep parents informed of any classes that may be moving online, as per the NIJZ guidance. Please contact the Class Teacher if you have any specific questions or information relating to your child/class.

I wish everyone a safe and relaxing weekend.

Kind regards,

Katarina Železinger

Head of Primary

Early Years

This week the Early Years have been exploring different building materials that people around the world use to construct their houses. After reading this week's traditional tale “The three little pigs” the children created their own junk model house.

The goal was, to make a house so strong, that not even a big bad wolf could blow it away. The children created an orange-brown sponge painting pattern on cardboard. Can you tell out which materials our house is made of?

Ms Kukovica

Year 1

Year 1 have had such a busy week! We read different versions on the traditional tale The Three Billy Goats Gruff and learned to retell the whole story using actions. In Math lessons, we practised making and recognizing halves and quarters.

Our Topic lessons have also been extremely busy, as we have been upcycling old t-shirts to make tote bags. We will be using our new bags to bring our water bottles and shoes to our PE lessons!

Ms Miklavec

Year 2

This week, Year 2 have continued with their Topic 'Living Things'. It has been an exciting week exploring habitats around the world. We have been learning about why animals live in different places and what makes them suitable for their habitats. We are creating some projects about habitats that we are excited about sharing with you all at the end of the block.

We also created a display this week to celebrate the languages that we speak. We were very excited to share words with each other, it felt very special to create this together.

Ms Harris and Ms Bradley

Year 3

Although Y3A have all been very responsible, I know this week was a challenge and a learning curve for students, who were greatly missed by their friends in Year 3B while distance learning.

Our PSHE focus for the week was on "How to make friends and keep them", so we joined forces, and showed ingenious ways to keep friends connected, with an experimental surprise! A simultaneous onsite and offsite live discussion lesson. Nothing can stand Year 3's friends apart!

Ms Blundell

Year 4

FRACTION FUN

Over the past two weeks, Year 4 have been learning about Fractions - finding equivalent fractions, finding fractions of amounts and labelling fractions on a number line. This has been learnt through the use of chocolate bars and very recently GO FISH.

Learning through play and practical activities is a wonderful way to master skills.

Mrs Charlesworth

Year 5

This week, the children learnt all about the ancient Olympic games and how they compare to today. They loved discovering the range of sports and learnt all about chariot racing and all of the very strange rules that were put in place.

In Maths, the children learnt how to calculate the perimeter and area of compound shapes and designed their own garden. In English, the children wrote biographies about someone from their family. These were incredibly interesting to read.

Ms Thomas

Year 6

Year 6 students have survived another week avoiding quarantine in these crazy times, so we have made the most of the time in school and began our new art-focused unit. Students started off by creating their own graffiti word art, then we moved on to studying pointillism before students tried their hand at the artform using first markers, then paints to create their own works of art.

In English, students have been focusing on the features of different genres, and now they are starting to plan their own epic chapter story on a genre of their choice.

Mr Bishop

Departmental News

PE

Across PE this week, we continued to work on our understanding of gymnastics, focusing on linking routines and performance technique. Working in groups, students were tasked with incorporating jumps, rolls and balance poses into their gymnastics sequencing. We also looked at gymnastic performance and the importance of body language and expression when performing to an audience.

PE Department

French

Bonjour et well done for the fantastic job students have done this week! BISL language learners worked very well and learnt about clothes, colours, time and daily routines.

After knowing all of this, they enjoyed doing some word searches and computer games to check their answers and create teamworks.

Bravo les étudiants!

Ms Tatil

EAL

If you think monsters can't be fun and educational at the same time, guess again. One of our EAL groups started a unit on describing characters, with first learning the vocabulary for body parts and then using them in writing

One lesson, where the students worked in pairs describing the monsters to each other, was designed to practice speaking skills, while the other lesson was more of the hands-on kind. The students each drew their own monster and wrote a description about it, using the learnt vocabulary for body parts and descriptive words.

Mr Siter

Slovene

Language Block has brought some fun activities in our primary classes this week! A vocabulary competition was quite a challenge to overcome.

Students have met with translating a wide range of sentences from Slovene to English and vice versa. They have shown enthusiasm and their hard work through this vocabulary competition indeed!

Well done everybody!

We can't wait to attend another vocabulary competition!

Slovene Department

Manga High Maths Competition

Next week primary students in Years 1-6 at BISL will take part in the annual COBIS international maths competition. They will use the Manga High platform to collect points for themselves and the school. The competition takes place from the 24th to 31st January. Students can use their login details which they will receive on Monday to play maths games and challenges at school and at home.

A reminder that students should complete each activity at least twice (with no mistakes) in order to be awarded a gold medal.

I wish all students luck. The top students will receive certificates for their performance.

Mr Bishop

MEPI News

Last week, our MEPI participants showed their community spirit by utilizing the time normally spent on our regular meetings to volunteer their services in the school library. This week, however, was ‘back to business’ as far as Expedition Training goes. A 7.5 km walk in Škofja Loka is on the MEPI (and School) Calendar for Saturday 12th March this year.

Instead of producing a route card for the journey, the process was ‘reverse engineered’ this time. Our participants were given a very detailed route plan, and had to plot the route onto the map. They will use these resources on the day!

Mr Irving

MEPI Coordinator

Teacher Feature

We are continuing our Teacher Feature series this week with Ms Rachel Burtrand, our Computer Science Teacher.

Read Ms Burtrand’s Teacher Feature here.

Computational Thinking, Problem Solving and Fun! - Computer Science at BISL

Our students have the opportunity to learn vital skills with the new Computer Science curriculum that promotes problem-solving, critical thinking and collaboration. It is exciting, challenging and more importantly, Fun!

Keep reading the newsletter for more news about our road safety campaign in the upcoming weeks, and read the latest Student Voice article on Road Safety here. We thank you for your support.

Ms Miklavec

Newspaper Club

In the Newspaper club this week we have been talking about the importance of road safety. Driving safely is important, especially when near a school. We want to keep our students safe and the students from our club will explain why.

Ms Haris

Dear Parents,

Happy Student Appreciation Day!

We finish the week on a positive note with a celebration of our wonderful students at the British International School of Ljubljana. Thank you to parents for your support with this event and also to the PTA parent volunteers who have helped out with giving our students fantastic cupcakes today!

The purpose of the day is to appreciate and value every single student in the school and we do this by writing a personal note, presenting this to everyone, celebrating their successes and highlighting what makes everyone uniquely special. We have amazing students here at BISL!

Today, we also wish our Secondary Students a fantastic trip to Vogel as they will enjoy a great day of skiing, snowboarding, ice skating and snowshoeing, fingers crossed the weather is excellent and conditions are fabulous for everyone involved. Thank you to Miss Fairchild and the team for organising this event and to the staff on the trip. I can't wait to see the fantastic pictures on Facebook of our students enjoying the slopes!

We've had some excellent opportunities for students to develop their programming and problem-solving skills and I have included an article below showing what our students have been involved in and the new Computer Science curriculum they are following. The new skills they have experienced are vital and we look forward to more exciting LEGO projects!

This week we've had a lot of changes to the Covid guidance from the ministry and we are doing our very best to keep up with everything. I would like to personally apologise to the community for the amount of changes and confirmations we have had to communicate via email, it is something that can be improved. It is incredibly difficult for all schools at the moment and I can reassure you that we are trying our very best as a team to provide the safest environment possible. The whole staff have been amazing with their flexibility, patience and care for students during this time and often go above and beyond. This week I am very grateful for the help of parents who have personally contacted me to help with changes as they have been announced, communicated and implemented in real time, it is very much appreciated. The timing of the changes have been tough for everyone to prepare for and we have to wait until guidance is confirmed before we adopt this in our school.

We follow the ministry guidance and try to prepare as many links and explanations for everyone to see the reasons and rationale behind this in our FAQ section in my full Update here. We all want the same thing - for the children to be safely in school, enjoying lessons and learning with one another. Thank you to everyone for helping us through a very difficult and challenging week.

I hope the number of daily positive cases will decrease soon and we can return to many events being held on site. My thoughts are with the families affected during this time and we send our best wishes to them for a swift and complete recovery.

Your support to our staff is very important and I thank you again for this. It makes a huge difference and I am very thankful for the great team we have here at BISL.

Please read the full Update from the Principal here.

Have a great weekend!

Kind regards,

Paul Walton

Principal

All upcoming events and details are available on our website.