Secondary News - September 23rd 2022

I write to you this week from Hostel pod Voglom, watching the sunset over Lake Bohinj, reflecting on a day of true adventure alongside our intrepid Year 11, 12 and 13 students. A fantastic day of rafting, cycling and canoeing under a brilliant blue sky has left us all in awe of the wondrous nature around us. I have witnessed numerous acts of kindness amongst the students - they have genuinely supported each other throughout, helping each other to take measured risks and push the boundaries of what they thought they were capable of. This is what the Adventure Days are all about. This is the BISL difference. Day two promises another sunny day of hiking in the foothills of Triglav National Park. A truly spectacular place!

In other news, our new Head Students have successfully interviewed and selected their Prefect Team for the year ahead. We had twelve fantastic candidates who will assume their roles as Academic, Cultural and Communication leaders across the
school.

Our Head Students also held a successful meeting with key members of the PTA, establishing new relationships and planning events for the year ahead.

All the teachers are very much looking forward to Teacher Appreciation Day on 7th October! Halloween also promises to be a cracker.

Week 5 has also seen a visit from our Regional Head of School, Mr Karl Wilkinson, who noted some excellent teaching and learning across the Secondary School.

Particular praise was given to the Science Department for their inspiring experiments.

The week was completed with a House Colours/Dress Down Day, which never fails to put a smile on students and teachers faces!

Just a reminder for parents - starting on Monday 3rd October, the Secondary School will switch to the Standard Uniform which includes a white shirt and tie. Sixth Formers will also be required to wear formal business dress. Please ensure that your child is ready for this change. It has been an action packed Block 1 here at BISL and my first as Head of Secondary. Thank you everyone for your warm welcomes and for showing me what BISL is all about! I’m looking forward to Block 2 already!

Psychology news

The year 12 Mathematicians were treated to the A grade knowledge of our year 13 student, Charlotte. Charlotte explained the use of the discriminant for solving quadratic equations which was no easy feat as she originally learned the technique this time last year and hasn't seen it since her examination in June this past year. Thank you for sharing your wisdom Charlotte.

Year 12 psychology students completed their first psychological circuit training session. The students spent 7 minutes at one of the 6 stations completing various tasks such as matching the definitions, flashcards, answering low and high mark questions and being questioned by their teacher and one of our year 13 students. In the double period, the students were able to complete two full circuits. Excellent work students.

We were very happy to see one of our former students return to our school for a visit. Marco came back to see some of his teachers, the new building and of course his picture on our alumni wall. Marco graduated in 2020 and is currently pursuing his dream to move into diplomatic work in Brussels. As well as his tour around the school, he also met our new principal, Mr Cox.

Once again Ewa is our champion in the Pi recital competition. She managed to reach 117 digits of Pi. For her efforts she will be rewarded with a blueberry pie. It was wonderful, almost poetic to hear the flow of numbers which hold such an importance in the world of Mathematics. Congratulations to Ewa for the third year running!

As part of the Maths theme block, year 7 students were taken to the House of Illusions by their teachers, as well as the year 13 Mathematicians. It was wonderful to see the youngest and the oldest members of our secondary group learning and enjoying the various illusions and tricks of the mind they discovered on the trip. It was not only an educational trip but also a very enjoyable trip, for both students and staff.

English News:

Year 7 looked further in depth at the character of Shelter from the novel “Stone Cold.”

Year 8 continued their reading of “A Monster Calls” and worked on writing summaries.

Year 9 participated in an online debate platform called kialo.com and took on the subject of democracy vs tyranny as they continued their study of “Animal Farm”

Year 10 began writing their first essay on “Crumbs from the table of joy” on the portrayal of the character of Lily.

PE news:

Week 5

Throughout PE this week, students continued to develop their understanding of net and barrier games - across a range of different sports and conditioned playing scenarios. Being able to serve and return effectively and consistently underpinned the teaching, with students also focusing on the importance of effective communication when playing in teams.

Moving into block 2, students will be working on their acquisition of sports knowledge and the theoretical aspects of PE.

Mr Hayes, PE Department

Humanities news:

Enterprise news:

All projects will be ready to go in block 2 week 1. Keep your eyes peeled on the advertising board on floor 2, as well as in the playground for some tasty snacks every Friday!

Mr Astbury, Humanities Department

MFL News:

Slovene Foundation

Happy European Day of Languages!

This week was all about celebrating the European Day of Languages in the MFL department. It is the responsibility of all of us to promote awareness among the public of the importance of language learning and protecting the linguistic heritage. Students across the secondary were very engaged in participating and learning about the languages around the world. In Slovene Foundation, Intermediate and Advanced lessons we completed different activities. The students were enthusiastic about creating paper T shirts about their home country, their native language, traditional foods and culture. They discussed why it is important to learn foreign language, they wrote different quotes about languages, read texts and listened to various languages and tried to guess which language was spoken on the recording.

There also took place in French lessons. Students are now ready to extend their sentences, and to discover more about French-speaking countries' cultures. For this occasion, students learnt a lot about French speaking countries, places where French is an official language and where it is spoken, and they made a lot of discoveries. Did you know that French is the official language of 29 countries in the world?

DNA Data storage

In the modern world data has one of the most

important resources and there are heaps of it.

Companies like Google and Microsoft must store and

archive inconceivable amounts of information as well as researchers and companies from all sectors. It is estimated that humanity will generate an estimated 33 zettabytes (1 billion terabytes) by 2025. This data must be stored somewhere and currently archived data is stored on hard drives, which use magnetic discs to store information. Scientists and researchers are constantly working on storage solutions which are cheaper and more efficient and one potential solution that has been identified is using DNA.

When thinking of DNA, one does not normally think about computers but rather about biological beings, like plants and animals, yet DNA (This is, in an extremely simplified explanation) is simply a store of instructions, which the body reads in order to synthesise proteins using ribosomes. A computer processor also reads instructions from a hard disk in a computer to execute actions, like opening google or displaying a YouTube video. DNA is made up of four different nucleotides, which each have their own base: Adenine (A), Thymine (T), Guanine (G) and cytosine (C), The order of these bases in a DNA molecule then determines the instructions for the synthesis of a protein, but with new technology the sequence of these bases can be used to give binary values, which a computer can read.

DNA as a storage medium has currently only been proposed for cold storage (storage for data that does not need to be accessed often, but should still be saved), since read and write speeds using DNA are very slow, making it inconvenient for data that needs to be accessed often. At the moment it is too slow for any practical use as it would take years or decades to archive a file and the error rate with writing data into DNA is also much higher. Yet the storage medium is promising and new technology is constantly being developed, as it has been shown to work, and that previously mentioned 33 zettabytes of data could be stored in a single ping-pong sized storage device revolutionising how we store data.

Please note that by law we are required to collect GDPR forms for every BISL student and family.

The regulations concerning have been updated and it now no longer sufficient to not reply to this request. if families wish to be covered legally you are required to return the relevant form and tick either yes or no. If you do not respond you are not covered - our understanding of the law is that families must actively respond in order to protect the GDPR rights.

Therefore, if you have not already done so, so please send back your form to your child's class or form teacher as a matter of urgency.

In addition, we would like to inform you that by ticking 'No' in any section (except school displays) is likely to mean we will not use your child's name or image in any related external school publications. We simply do not have the administrative capacity to manage student images otherwise.

Many thanks to all those parents and families who have already returned the GDPR form.