Primary Newsletter - February 12th

Dear Parents and Students,

The festive spirit is here this week, with Christmas decorations sparkling in the corridors and halls. Thank you to all the parents helping with putting up decorations in preparation for the BISL Xmas Fayre on Thursday 15th December. The Peter Pan rehearsals are underway for the upcoming production (see the important dates section below for more details). Students and staff will also be lending their voices to this year’s Christmas Song - watch this space!

The first snowflakes appeared and it looks like Winter is finally here. This is an exciting part of the year, which students can enjoy while playing outdoors, therefore make sure that you are wearing your winter boots, gloves, hat and scarf, with waterproof trousers to keep you dry.

Please note that our policy is that students should stay at home if they are at all unwell, to minimise the risk of infection and because their ability to concentrate on their learning is impaired. Generally, if a student is unable to go outside to play, they are too unwell to come to school. Students must stay at home if they have any signs of cough, cold and/or fever. More information on health and safety can be found in the Primary Student Handbook.

We wish to keep our community safe and we thank you for your support.

Please see the sections below for further exciting news on individual classes and subjects. For the latest Update from the Principal and other upcoming events, see the News section on our website. Enjoy the weekend.

Kind regards,

Katarina Železinger

Head of Primary

Early Years

The students finished the whole block project of junk model houses this week in Early Years. The children were consolidating their knowledge about 2D shapes when decorating their homes. They used 2D paper cutouts, bottle caps, feathers, glitters and painted to add features to their houses. Alongside experimenting with shapes, the reception students have continued to practise letter formation and written labels of house features.

The Nursery students were learning about animal homes and practising their understanding with the game where they connected the picture of the animal with the picture of a home.

Ms Kukovica

Year 1

In English lessons, we continue to explore stories with patterns. This week we looked at "Bringing the rain to Kapiti plain" and "We all went on safari". The stories were great to revise rhymes and practice writing animal names.

In Math, we explored the properties of 3D shapes even further and had a short assessment of all the 2D and 3D shapes learnt so far.

In Topic lessons, we had yet another surprise! This time, we had a guest speaker, Mr Travis from our Secondary school, come and speak to us about the Brazilian carnival. We later listened to some samba music and made our own very colourful masks which are now displayed in the classroom.

Ms Miklavec

Year 2

In Topic, the children have worked together with their talk partners to devise a brand new celebration for us to celebrate over the coming year.

The children have worked hard to imagine what the purpose of their celebration is for, who it is for, how it is celebrated, what we do during the celebration and of course when it is. We had a blast practising the celebrations together in class on Thursday.

Ms Torrington

Year 3

This week in year 3, children learnt all about river features. They conducted experiments to find out more about what makes a river. They observed how rocks move within a river, why the water has different colours and what happens to water when there is a dam in the way.

Later on, they put their knowledge into a colourful and informative collage.

Ms Spangl and Ms Blundell

Year 4

This week in Topic, Year 4 has been learning about the key features of a volcano. They were able to label different parts of the volcano and they learnt many new keywords. They also learnt about how volcanoes erupt. Year 4 has enjoyed this topic so far and has been engaged in learning. We created posters this week about different volcanoes and Year 4 was able to use atlases to locate their chosen volcano on a map. Next week, we are looking forward to learning some history about different volcanoes and how they affected the areas around them.

Ms Harris

Year 5

This week the children have been focusing on diary writing. They became ´Billy´ from our class story Bling and wrote a diary entry from his point of view. In Maths, the children tackled word problems and used a range of mathematical methods to solve the problems. They very much enjoyed creating their own cityscapes and took pride in sharing their end products.

Mrs Thomas-Hayes

Year 6

The Year 6 students have been working hard on writing free verse poems about sea creatures. They have learned how to build creative metaphors and similes, and how to use other poetic devices to evoke emotion in the reader. It was their aim to paint a picture in the reader's mind, and transport them to another place and time. The results have been amazing! The students have written some beautiful and moving poems about the creatures of the sea.

Mr Kokalj

PE

Developing our tactical understanding of the specific sporting unit was the key focus across primary PE this week. Years 1 and 2 continued to develop their gymnastic and movement skills, working on body positioning when performing routines. Students in Years 3 & 4 gained a stronger understanding of where to stand when playing volleyball and how to create an advantage as a team. Years 5 and Year 6 looked at the importance of possession when playing handball and how it can control a match.

PE Department

Slovene

Year 5 and 6 students at Slovene Foundation had poster presentations this week, where they represented one place in Slovenia in groups. In this way, they trained their speaking skills in Slovene.

They showed a lot of confidence and we saw some outstanding presentations about Ljubljana, Celje, Piran, Maribor and Bled.

Ms Drofenik

In Y3 Slovene Advanced Lessons students were focusing on reading and finding information from the text. The activity they enjoyed the most was ''gibalna zgodba'' (moving story). One student was reading the text and the other had to act out. We have some excellent readers and actors!

Ms Kotnik

EAL

The EAL students have had an amazingly productive week. The y3&4 beginner group worked on their animals' vocabulary and discussed what various animals can and can't do.

The year 5&6 group worked hard on a description of their dream house. After drawing the house, they used prepositions (in, on, under, above, next to and between) to describe the house in as much detail as possible.

Another one of the Year 3&4 groups worked on expanding their vocabulary with some powerful adjectives, to make their writing even better.

Mr Siter

Creative Arts block

Peter Pan update - dress rehearsals are well underway and students are looking fab in their costumes.

Next week will be the first of two performances, on Thursday afternoon to primary and on Friday afternoon to secondary, with the final performance for parents on Monday 12th December at 16:30.

This week the winning poster for Peter Pan went up around the school.

And the winning ticket design was also chosen.

Congratulations to Emma from year 9 for the design of the winning poster and to Daniil from Year 7 for the ticket design.

Next week many classes and budding singers will be busily recording their parts for the Christmas cover song ‘I wish it could be Christmas everyday’ by Wizard. Students are encouraged to practise at home, especially the chorus. Watch this space for the final product.

PTA News

Dear parents, Christmas preparations are now on full speed. This week PTA volunteers were decorating the school so that the kids would feel the Christmas atmosphere in the air. The planning for BISL Christmas Fayre is also underway. Don’t miss it on Thursday, 15th of December, from 14.00 until 16.00.

Kind reminder that PTA would like to ask each family to contribute baked goods or snacks for the fayre that can be either taken to the class teacher or dropped off in the morning on the 15th of December.

Please ensure that all the food is nut-free as some children at our school have allergies, including severe cases of peanuts allergy. For those parents, who would like to join to help during the event itself, you’re more than welcome to contact us on pta@britishschool.si. Your support will be highly appreciated indeed.

Your PTA