Secondary News - May 13th

Block 6 Week 6

A brilliant end to an eventful block this week, with the sun shining and students enjoying some wonderful international celebrations! The Slovene staff held workshops with the students to celebrate the Slovene culture and many students were flag bearers in the opening ceremony to the International Days this week. It was a lovely way to highlight all the differing nationalities present at BISL. With over 40 at the school, it was certainly wonderful to see all these flags on show and a special thank you must go to Maria and Ema in Year 10 for hosting this event. Following this, the students across the school were treated to some brilliant dance performances from different countries across the world. On Friday the PTA and parent helpers set up stalls representing many countries, which enabled students to engage with further information about that country as well as some traditional food shared. There were student performances and music on show and many parents and guests attending the event. It was great to see this event in full swing and wonderful to share in the many cultures at BISL. Thank you to all involved for making this a great event.

Mr Astbury launched the ski trip this week for Secondary students next year. He held a presentation in the new assembly hall and has emailed out to parents to confirm if their child can attend. It is a great opportunity to get involved in for the entire block break week in February. Please check his email for the details and place your child’s name down should they wish to attend. Ms Fairchild has also been busy and launched the Year 7/8 and Year 9/10 summer Adventure Trips to be held next block. These will each be 3 days of activities held at Lake Bohinj. Please see her email for more information regarding these trips.

Examinations continue in the new building this week and we are nearly halfway through! They continue throughout the block break with Mr Batson overseeing all examinations. We continue to wish Year 11 to 13 students well. Year 7 to 10 students continue to prepare for their final examinations over the block break with many assessments as per the assessment calendar after the break.

The Science team completed their block of celebrations with a bang this week with a rocket competition across Primary and Secondary. Well done to the students for participating and enjoying all the activities the Science department organised. Thank you also to the staff for facilitating these events. Next block, we look forward to getting active with the PE block theme.

I wish everyone a wonderful and productive block break. With the weather warming up and summer on our doorstep, I do hope that everyone can enjoy the outdoors as much as possible.

Stephanie Andronikos, Head of Secondary

Thank you to all parents and students for coming along to our Ski Trip 2023 Launch earlier this week. If you are interested in registering for the trip, please contact Mr Astbury directly.

Starting from Block 7, this new Literature Club will be open for Year 7 - 13 students, for an opportunity to come and have fun with English Literature. A club for you to have freedom to explore whichever literary interests take your fancy, from reading poetry to writing short stories to analysing theatre, the choice is yours. Be guided to follow your passion whatever it may be. The club will take place every Monday day in room 311.

Mr Wilkins, English Teacher

Science Block

With the end of week 6, sadly - so ends the Science Block. This week Y4, 5, and 6 students got a chance to see the fun part of science with experiments such as elephant toothpaste, invisible extinguisher and others.

During the last week we got many bags of second hand clothes for donation to Društvo Verjamem vate, who were very appreciative of the generous donations that were donated to the school and we're sure they'll put to good use.

The whole science team was very impressed with both the primary and secondary Rocket Competition where we could see some very cool designs and very interesting engine concepts.

We also had some great submissions to the Earth day essay competition, and we're pleased to announce Leon in primary and Naomi in secondary were the winners of the competition.

We would also like to report that some of our students from year 10 and 11 competed in an international Biology challenge.

Science Department

English News:

Year 7: Year 7A were introduced to Sonnets and began examining Sonnet 18 by Shakespeare.Year 7B finished their reading of “Holes.”

Year 8: Year 8 wrapped up the first act of 'Blood Brothers' before the start of a well earned block break. They explored issues surrounding the British class system by acting out key scenes from the book. Considering the different attitude of the police when speaking with the working class Johnstone family and the middle class Lyons family allowed students to reflect on the challenges presented by social inequality.

Year 9: Year 9 reached a key moment in their study of 'Of Mice and Men'. Curley finally managed to start a fight with Lennie and the result was brief, violent and destructive. The block break will give students the chance to relax and, for any students who were absent, to catch up with any reading they have missed from the first three chapters. Next block we will find out if the American dream can become a reality in Steinbeck's classic novella.

Year 10: Year 10 have now completed the first of two blocks devoted to poetry. We are almost halfway through the anthology and students are strongly advised to use the time over block break wisely to carry out a bit of independent study and annotation (particularly for any of the poems they missed). Next block we will continue to prepare students for their IGCSE Poetry exam by working through the anthology and developing our analytical and comparative skills.

Mr Fordham, Mr. Wilkins, Mr. Staines, Mr Siter and Mr. Eve - English Department

MFL News

As a part of the International days we celebrated Slovene language this week with different workshops throughout the school. In Primary students were able to choose between making carnations, revising the Slovene alphabet in different activities, making Slovene flags, memory games with different topics, writing with Č, Ž and Š or read books to each other.

In Secondary students watched the film Gremo mi po svoje 2, wrote haiku(s) or made carnations.

Slovene workshops are a great opportunity to bring together both Slovene groups as well as support and learn from each other.

Well done Year 7.

This week Y7 Slovene Adv. students were learning about idioms. The students looked for differences in some of the Slovene and English idioms as well as trying to explain them to others and draw them on the board. Next week they will work on their own art pieces. As a part of International day we will put them on the wall in the MFL classroom.

Ms Kotnik, MFL Coordinator

Maths News:

Key stage 3 and Year 10 students started preparing for the upcoming end of year assessment. In order to recall all concepts from this year, the students were asked to summarise and present the topics in a student led project. The project has been to create The best summary powerpoint and a selection of examination-style questions, Kahoots and Quizizz. We are looking forward to see the students' presentations after the block break.

Maths mistake of the week

Thank you to Valentin, Naomi from 8B, Haruki, Lucia and Aleksej from 7B for recognising the mistakes. Well done!

Check out new mistakes after the block break, in front of room 316.

Ms Zupanc, Mathematics Teacher

PE News:

In the final week of the block, we concluded our sporting units, with Year 7 undertaking some competitive kickball, with Years 8 and 9 finishing their baseball/rounders with further competitive scenarios. Year 10 finalised their cricket playing unit, with a game of pairs cricket. We also continued with our sports knowledge units, focusing on the anatomical, physiological and nutritional aspects of sport.

Mr Hayes, PE Teacher

Teacher Feature Series

As our Science Block celebration draws to a close, we bring you a delightful interview with Mr Stanič, our enthusiastic Physics teacher. Enjoy!

International Days Galleries

We have some fantastic galleries for you to enjoy on our website!

The Flag Parade on Thursday morning was fantastic!

A group of international DanceSport champions put on a fantastic performance for our students on Thursday afternoon.

The International Fair was absolutely amazing, with a variety of cultural activities, traditional cuisines, music, fun and games for our community.

A huge thank you to our parents for your support in these events!

Library Book Donations

In partnership with the PTA, we are accepting donations of books to our library throughout block 6 and encourage everyone to bring in their used books - in any language - and drop it off at Reception.

BISL Summer School 2022

With summer just around the corner, registration is now open for BISL Summer School 2022!

Click here for details.

Dear Parents,

It has been a fantastic week and what a wonderful way to finish off the week by celebrating our International Days here at BISL!

The International Days are an annual event to really raise awareness, understanding and celebration of cultures from around the world. With over 40 nationalities in our community, this enriches us and brings many opportunities for parents, students and teachers to come together as one.

Thank you to everyone for your support for this event. We had a fantastic opening ceremony on Thursday, our students were fabulous and the flags looked great. We've also enjoyed a wonderful array of professional dancing of the highest quality and an opportunity for our students to be truly inspired. With activities, parents supporting, teachers running projects in classes, everyone dressed in colours of their country or traditional dress, the International Fair this afternoon has been a big, bright and vibrant end to the week. Of course, the International food fair is always popular and it didn't disappoint! - thank you to all parents involved in this.

We really appreciate your time, effort and care spent preparing and organising the stalls and everything else this week. A very enjoyable and successful community event.

This week we also had Year 1 performing 'The Goblin Next Door', thank you to Ms Miklavec, the Year 1 team and teachers who helped and supported this event. It was incredible! Please have a look at the pictures from our gallery below.

Exams are running well, our students from Year 11 - 13 have been so focused and committed that I want to thank everyone again for how smoothly this is going.

This week, we've had Early Years out on a nature walk, playing outside and we continue to encourage this across the year groups. With the sunshine weather, it is ideal to explore outside and learn in the fresh air. We've also planted flowers in the school grounds this week, with trees, bushes and it has added a range of colour for the students to enjoy.

We've seen some building improvements with the new flags installed outside of the new building, the rail for the stage curtain (coming very soon) and also a delivery of 30 extra chairs for the Performance Theatre!

A reminder that information regarding all new staff, Primary Class Teachers for 2022/23 and new Secondary Teachers will be sent out to all parents in the community as normal this term. We aim for Monday 16th May, to send out this information to you, to give you a chance to find out more about the teachers before we welcome them into the community for August 2022. Class allocations for Primary will be included in this.

And last but certainly not least, thank you to the Science team for a fantastic Science block! We've seen a rocket competition, amazing animals visiting BISL, practicals for Primary and Secondary students, Art competition displays, daily science riddles and puns, assembly, Year 5 vehicles, boats, rocks and minerals, trip to the Botanical gardens, STEAM project and more! (Also, extra Science exam revision classes for our Year 11 - 13s).

Next block, we move from celebrating Science to PE and very excited to finish the year with a healthy and active focus!

Please read my full Update from the Principal here for details, links and photos.

Have a great block break!

Kind regards,

Paul Walton

Principal

All upcoming events and details are available on our website.