Primary Newsletter - 9th December 2022

Dear Parents and Students,

Thank you so much to everyone who has helped with the BISL Make a Wish project. It is heartwarming to see the huge effort and generosity of the BISL community to ensure that 160 families get to enjoy Christmas this year. All the presents have now been collected and are on their way to the families.

We will be issuing the Primary and Early Years Term 1 reports next week via the Parent Portal. Please ensure that you have logged into the portal (as per the instructions sent out) or contact the IT department at it@britishschool.si for further support. Parent Interviews for Primary will take place at the start of the next term (4th-13th January 2023) via the School Cloud. Further instructions on booking your appointments will be emailed to parents next week.

Our Primary students enjoyed an excellent Peter Pan performance on Thursday. Congratulations to the cast and all involved for a wonderful first production. The final performance for parents will be taking place on Monday 12th December at 16:30 (limited spaces, so tickets only!).

BISL Xmas Fayre is just around the corner. All parents are welcome to come and enjoy this event with their children from 2-4 pm on Thursday 15th December. Students will be supervised by their Class Teachers until collected by parents. For pick-up on this day, please park in the local car park and use the main entrance to enter/exit the school. Primary students will only be able to exit if accompanied by their parents. There will be no after-school activities or supervision on this day, therefore all students should be collected by 2.50 pm at the latest. We look forward to all parents joining and supporting this community event. Remember to wear your Christmas colours on the day!

Friday 16th December is our last day of school, a dress-down (Xmas style) and finishes at 12:00. Students will be taking home all of their personal belongings, including indoor shoes, water bottles and any clothing. Please check through the lost&found items. We will only be able to return items that are labelled; items not claimed/without labels will have to be discarded. Pick-up is at 12:00 for all students.

I wish you a good weekend and a fantastic last week of school before the festive break!

Kind regards,

Katarina Železinger Head of Primary

Early Years What a busy and fun week! The Reception students practised their cutting skills and created wonderful snowflakes, which can now be seen on the Early Years windows. We didn’t forget classic Christmas crafts, as we made colourful paper chains. The Pre-Nursery explored how colours can be mixed and used their fingers to colour the ornaments template. The Nursery students were making fingerprint ornaments on the Christmas tree paper template.

In Maths, the Reception children have used Numicon shapes to create colourful Christmas presents. PreNursery and Nursery students were making the best of sunny days and had an outdoor Maths lesson. They created a large-scale gingerbread man while practising drawing shapes.

Ms Kukovica

Year 1

This week we started a new unit on instruction writing in the English lessons. Not only did we write instructions on how to wash our hands, but we also wrote the bedtime routine for our silly animal friends Gigi the giraffe and Henny the hen, who struggle to get ready for bed.

In Maths, we practised ordering days of the week and months. We also started looking at euro coins and recognizing how much each coin is worth.

In Topic, we had another visitor, Ms Torrington from Year 2, come and speak to us about the Chinese New Year. As we're slowly coming to the end of the block we are ending our virtual trip around the world and are focusing on Christmas celebrations. We had parents come into the classroom to speak about Christmas traditions in their home countries, which we found very interesting!

Ms Miklavec

Year 2

In Maths, the children have begun solving word problems to do with fractions and are utilising a variety of strategies used in multiplication and division to help them. Considering what a tricky area of learning this is, we are markedly impressed with the group’s initiative with wanting to introduce the concept of squares and square roots to the cohort.

Ms te Velde and I were particularly impressed with how many children grasped the concept of this area of learning related to multiplication and division with such ease. Check out the books some of our children have been bringing in from home!

Thank you to all the parents who encouraged and supported their children’s venture into this area of learning. We were not quite ready for it ourselves, but we’re rolling with it!

Ms Torrington

Year 4

This week in Year 4 we have been learning about Pompeii and exploring the eruption of Vesuvius. We created pictures of what we think Pompeii during Roman times looked like before the major eruption. Next week we will be writing newspaper reports about the eruption.

Ms Harris

Year 5

This week the children have been focusing on diary writing in English and wrote a diary from the perspective of Goji the cat from our class story- ´Bling´. They were absolutely outstanding and very funny to read. Who knew a cat could have such an interesting day?

In Math, the children have been learning how to tell the analogue and digital time and understanding how to convert am and pm. In topic, the children created a fact file about their favourite artist and they will present this to the class next week.

Year 5 are planning and preparing for their stall at the BISL Fayre next week. They cannot wait for this Chrismassy event.

Mrs Thomas-Hayes

Year 6

The Year 6 students researched how life in Ancient Baghdad differed from life in London around 900 AD. Their assignment was to pretend they lived in Bagdad and write a letter to a friend who lives in London explaining why they should come and visit them in Bagdad.

Through their research, they were able to uncover some fascinating insights.

Mr Kokalj

PE

We continued to develop our respective sporting themes throughout PE this week, with Year 1 and Year 2 continuing to develop their gymnastics skills by looking at sequencing. Year 3 and Year 4 looked at the use of effective techniques when playing volleyball, focusing on using dig and set in team situations. Year 5 and Year 6 developed with the theme of possession, focusing on being progressive when in control of the ball and looking to create attacking opportunities.

PE Department

Slovene

Year 1 and 2 students at Slovene Foundation have been learning about rooms in the house or apartment. They played memory game and tried to find pairs of "kuhinja, jedilnica, dnevna soba, spalnica, otroška soba in kopalnica". They were also very creative with drawing the houses and rooms.

We made our first book of students' art pieces at the end of the week! Please look at the photo.

Ms Drofenik

EAL

Year 2 students practised the words for shapes and colours this week while colouring some Christmasthemed shape-based pictures.

Years 3 and 4 did a barrier game activity during the week. Barrier games are a great way to encourage speaking between the students. One student has one piece of information and their partner the other one. The key is, to talk to each other, to find the pieces of information you're looking for.

Friday was our fantastic fun day this week, where we used the opportunity of reading carousel lessons and played games. One group played a board game, where they translated sentences into the past tense, while the other one focused on opposite adjectives and played bingo.

Mr Siter

PTA

Dear parents,

We are only one week from a fantastic family event at our school - the Christmas Fayre!

BISL staff and PTA volunteers are organising a raffle at the event and want to thank everyone that have donated goods for the occasion. We really couldn’t have done it without you!!!

If you would still like to donate goods for the prizes, please do so by Monday (you can bring them to school anytime and ask the security guard to take them to the Admissions office). On the 15th of December, during the Christmas fair itself, PTA volunteers will be selling the raffle tickets for 1 euro per ticket. All the money collected will go to the PTA funds for future events.

If you’d like to help at the Christmas fayre, don’t forget to contact us at pta@britishschool.si. Thank you in advance for your involvement.

Your PTA