Primary News - January 28th 2022

Dear Parents and Students,

As an international school with students from over 40 different countries, we value and celebrate the varied interests and experiences, backgrounds and perspectives that our students bring to the community. The vibrancy that can be felt in the classrooms is reflected in wonderful displays of student work in the corridors and classroom walls. Students learn about different cultures through historical studies (Y5 work on Ancient Greece and Olympics), creative arts (Y6 pointillism, graffiti artwork) and literature (poems written by Y4 students on chosen topics), to name just a few. More examples of how cultural diversity and internationalism are celebrated can be found in the sections below.

It has been reassuring to have all primary classes return onsite this week to continue their learning at school. Increasing positive cases have, unfortunately, affected a number of families. We would like to thank parents for being supportive and patient, as we navigate through various changes and challenges during this time. All of our staff have worked extremely hard to support each other, be it in school or communicating from home, in order to ensure that students continue to enjoy learning together with their peers, and to keep parents updated and informed on a regular basis.

Please continue to read the latest Update from the Principal as any changes to the Covid guidance and measures are updated on a weekly basis in the FAQ section. From Monday 24th January, the new 7-day isolation period measures have come into effect (see Q 33. How long is the isolation period for positive students?). For information regarding siblings refer to Q 32. (Can siblings of positive students return to school?). Thank you for following the guidance and helping us to keep everyone as safe as possible.

We send best wishes to all families currently recovering at home.

Kind regards,

Katarina Železinger

Head of Primary

Early Years

In the Early Years this week, we continued exploring traditional tales. Our focus was on the story of the brave ‘Three Billy Goats Gruff', who tricked the greedy troll in order to let them cross his bridge. In Maths, we have been learning about positional and directional language. To support their learning and understanding of the prepositional language, the children created a bridge to cross the river, using foam blocks of different shapes. We had so much fun walking over the bridge while showing off our excellent balancing skills! Would you dare to cross the bridge, if you knew that the troll was waiting for you UNDER the bridge?

To practice their cutting skills, the children designed paper trolls in all kinds of shapes and sizes too.

Ms Kukovica

Year 1

We have had a fun week in Year 1. We have been doing lots of writing about the Little Red Riding Hood and have even tried to help the big bad wolf with his apology so he can live in the forest again! In Maths, we have been continuing to learn about fractions and played an exciting fractions game to really help it sink in.

Our Topic lessons have also been very busy and enjoyable. We continue to learn about how and where clothes are made and have even had a go at our own weaving!

Mrs Fordham and Ms Miklavec

Year 2A

This Week Year 2A have doubled their fun, with fractions!

They have enjoyed using blocks and shapes to help them work out halves, quarters and thirds.

Ms Harris and Ms Blundell

Year 2B

Year 2B have had a great and productive week. We've continued learning about fractions in Maths, stories in English and we even got to know something called a food chain in Topic.

All traditional tales need good characters and settings, and that is why we thought it would be a great idea if we let fate decide ours. We used dice to get characters and settings, created stories in our groups and shared them with the rest of the class.

However, the highlight of the week was definitely the Maths lesson we spent doing mangahigh activities on our school Chromebooks.

Ms Bradley and Mr Siter

Year 3

This week the Year 3 students explored a set of 3D shapes, including a cube, cuboid, cylinder, cone, varios pyramids, and various prisms.

They paid particular attention to the shape of the flat faces, making sure that they knew which were circles, triangles, squares, rectangles, and pentagons. They used the shapes from the construction set to make a cube, tetrahedron (triangular-based pyramid), a square-based pyramid, a pentagonal prism, and any other shapes that they liked! Everyone built their own model and took a photograph of it to be later stuck into their books.

Ms Blundell and Mr Kokalj

Year 4

LET’S SEE THE WORLD!

Year 4 have loved travelling around the world these past 2 weeks. We've explored Ireland, USA, San Marino, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Turkey and Switzerland, and we look forward to seeing many more countries in this block.

Year 4 had the opportunity to listen to a rendition of Molly Mallone by Jonatan who played it beautifully on his recorder, explore fancy hotels in San Marino, find out all about the Hoover Dam and how it changed the economy of a town in the USA, examine one of the tunnels that people used during the Yugoslavian war, pronounce some words in Turkish and discover the Swiss alphorn. We can't wait to go to our next destination.

Mrs Charlesworth

Year 5

This week, the children have investigated different angles and practised using a protractor to measure them. We created a riddle to remember which angle is which. In Topic, the children worked as a team to build an ancient building together.

I know they very much enjoyed doing this and they used recycled items to do so. We are always thinking about how to be more eco-friendly. In English, the children wrote a biography about their favourite person from history and began to write their very own autobiographies. It is very exciting to share life stories with each other.

Ms Thomas

Year 6

Year 6 students have really spread their creative wings this week. In Topic, we have focused on pointillism as a technique, and students created their own smaller and larger pieces of artwork, with impressive results.

At the end of the week, we turned to cubism and I look forward to sharing photos of these colourful masterpieces when they are completed in the next edition of the newsletter. Students have also completed their plans for their short story epics, so we are looking forward to getting these underway next week.

Mr Bishop

PE

Gymnastics was once again the theme across primary PE this week, with students tasked with developing their creative skills to create their own routine from scratch. Students were challenged to incorporate jumps, rolls and balance poses into their gymnastics sequencing and ensure that they were working effectively in small groups. Once the gymnastic sequences had been created, students performed them to the rest of the class.

PE Department

Slovene

As a part of Language Block our Years 5 and 6 have been working on an ice cream display.

We asked Slovene Foundation students which language was their favourite and why. They also added several words in their favourite languages. We asked Slovene Advanced students what you need to do to become a good language learner.

Students have been thinking about different languages and skills to become a good language learner. They then expressed all their ideas on several colourful scoops of ice cream.

Have a look at the sweetest display so far.

Slovene Department

MEPI News

This week in MEPI the participants worked on their teamwork and imagination skills - they had to cross a raging river (the secondary corridor) using only 1 liferaft (a4 paper) per teammate. After a few unsuccessful tries and after putting their heads together, they managed to find a solution! With two students sharing a liferaft they could pass the extra one along the line to enable the leading teammate to move further across the river.

We then practised a key skill for the adventurous journey - weather forecasting. Using the service at arso.si we looked at what the weather should be this week and why it is important for us to know this in relation to the expedition. The participants also practised their own forecasting skills by using the current weather conditions to think about what that means for the next few days.

In other news, we will unfortunately need to postpone the first aid course on the 29th due to illness. We will try to get a replacement date in the calendar ASAP and this will be advertised once it has been arranged.

Mr Irving

MEPI Coordinator

Student Voice: Driving Safely

Continuing our Road Safety Series, this week we

have a written speech from one of our brilliant EAL students, encouraging everyone to think about their driving habits and its consequences.

Read it here.

Uniform Update

We are excited to announce that our new uniform webshop with Trutex is expected to go live next week!

Once live, we will share our School Code, which you will need to browse the new uniform shop and place your orders going forward, as well as further ordering tips and instructions.

The webshop will also include useful sizing guides, and there will be sample sizes for you to try on at school soon as well.

Dear Parents,

As we end the week, we have beautiful sunshine and our students are playing outside! It is fantastic to see them enjoy themselves with one another and to be active on the playground and in the woodland area.

It has been a very challenging week for our families and I very much appreciate the flexibility, support and encouragement from everyone over the past few weeks. Again, my thoughts are with those affected by covid - I wish you a speedy recovery and hope to see you soon!

We had a great first Winter Adventure Day last week and some of the photos are included below to show you the amazing conditions that our students enjoyed. Today's trip is off to a great start and we look forward to the next ski trip next Friday 4th February, and then to the summer Adventure Trips for all Secondary students starting Wednesday 1st June.

Thank you to all parents who have filled in the Parent Survey already, we really appreciate all of your feedback and as always I will pass on your positive comments to staff. Your kind words of appreciation for our wonderful teachers make a huge difference and I am very lucky to have such an amazing group of staff.

Coming up on Friday 18th February, we have Parent Appreciation Day. This is a brilliant annual event for us to celebrate our parents in the community! We hope the covid guidance enables us to host our usual morning of cards of appreciation to parents and an opportunity to meet, mix and show our gratitude to all of the parents at BISL.

Please read the full Update from the Principal here.

Have a nice weekend.

Kind regards,

Paul Walton

Principal

All upcoming events and details are available on our website.