Primary News - Block 5

BISL will remember Block 5 of 2020 for a very long time and for a very good reason. We started the block in our classrooms for the first three weeks. What followed was a huge change for students, teachers and parents. Practically overnight, the BISL community has needed to adapt to a whole new learning environment.

During the two weeks of Distance Learning it has been truly amazing to see students engaged in learning, working hard, and enjoying some fun activities. Parent and student support has been incredible and I would like to thank the BISL families for sharing their journey with us, through numerous photos, videos and encouraging messages.

Please continue to send your positive comments and feedback to teachers and the leadership team, so that we can celebrate achievements and further develop the learning opportunities for our students.

The sections below show that, despite the challenging times, the BISL Community continues to strive for excellence and inspiration for learning. We are immensely proud of what our students have been able to achieve during this transition, together with their teachers and staff.

I wish you all a good break, to remain safe and well, within the comforts of your home.

Kind regards,

Mrs Železinger

Head of Primary

As the Block draws to a close, it's time to reflect upon the last few weeks. Block 5 began like all the others - enthusiastic children were coming to school ready to learn and have fun! We were all so excited about our new Topic, Shopping. We had two new role play areas - a Supermarket and an outdoor Ice Cream Parlour - that provided endless joy and exploration for the children for the first three weeks of the Block. The last couple weeks of the Block, however, have been a big adjustment for everyone - students, parents and teachers alike. We have had to adjust to our new distance learning routines. As Early Years teachers, we have been blown away by the level of interaction and engagement shown by the children during these difficult times.

It really brightens our days to receive daily photos and videos of happy children participating in their home learning tasks.

The highlight of this week's distance learning was the Prepositions of Place Photo Challenge. The Early Years children were challenged to create photos to show 8 prepositions of place: in, on, under, over/above, beside/next to, in between, in front of and behind. Here are some of them. Can you guess what they are showing?

Mrs Paradiž and Ms O'Hara

This week Y1 have participated in live phonics lessons and online quizzes.

Mr Hughes has now also set a YouTube channel to lessons.

Keep up the good work year 1!

Mr Hughes

Year 2 have worked incredibly hard during this block, although the end of this block has been unprecedented, I cannot praise Year 2 for their continued hard work, Our Topic has been 'The Circus' and Year 2 have been creating some fantastic projects at home with their parents. Aa we entered Block 5, Year 2 displayed excellent Mathematical skills and I very much look forward to seeing this continue into Block 6.

Our new Topic will be 'Food Glorious Food' where we will explore how food is grown and the importance of healthy eating.

Ms Harris

This week was another productive week for the students of Year 3, who continued to show an excellent level of engagement with online classes and with work set over Canvas. Despite being far removed from their usual comfortable classroom situation, the students have worked enthusiastically and have produced a lot of great work. Especially in maths and English, where they have been studying time and explanation texts, respectively. So, I guess one could say it's been business as usual in Year 3.

Have a great spring break everyone and see you soon.

Mr Mulcahy

Year 4 continued to actively participate in digital learning this week. In Topics, the focus has been on explorers and colonization. Students have been preparing presentations about the colonies of the British, Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch.

They researched which territories were claimed by the colonists, and the extent of Empires at their peak. They are also learning about how the original inhabitants of the countries being colonized had their lives severely impacted by the colonists.

Next block the focus will move to science, where students will engage in a variety of home experiments and learn the importance of hypothesising and conducting a fair test.

Mr Bishop

I am really proud of Year 5 this week who have been adapting to school on the computer. In English, children have completed their assessed writing piece and written a new episode in Mai-Ling's life and adventures; children have used inventive ideas and sent an abundance of amazing work. Using a video camera as well as their presenting and acting skills Y5 have been creating a news show from the day they were born. I greatly enjoyed going back in time and re-living the news headlines from 10 years ago.

I am excited to go into block 6 with my class as we continue with enthusiasm for learning at home. Thanks again to all the parental support as well as the children's engagement with all tasks.

Mr Walker

This has been a very busy week for the Year 6B class. As the students were working from home, the challenge for the students was to take responsibility for their own learning. This meant the students had to organise their own time to complete various assignments.

We are very proud to report that Year 6 is moving through the curriculum as they would if they were in school. In Maths, the students are in the final stage of their Algebra unit. As soon as the ‘Ratio and Proportion’ task is complete, we will tackle the final assignment which will cover the topic of percentages.

In English, the students have been completing tasks to continue our learning journey on our ‘I believe in Unicorns’ text written by our favourite author - Michael Mourpourgo. The students had to complete a series of tasks such as writing a diary entry, finding links between multiple stories, perform dialogues and writing a newspaper article. As we are approaching the end of this unit and its final ‘End of unit write up’, the students are still to complete a poster which will help develop their ideas, finish a grammar task of linking ideas across paragraphs and writing a paragraph describing detailed settings.

The students are also working on their PSHE assignment of writing a diary. It is a very unusual time that we are experiencing at the moment. The teachers felt it is a good opportunity for students to keep a diary and record their thoughts, feelings and experiences on a daily basis, perhaps to look back at, in twenty years time or to show their grandchildren one day.

Here is an example of a diary entry of one of the students in Year 6.

‘20th March 2020

Currently, I am at home and I have and will be for a while now due to the events. Most of my days I just sit around and do homework, sit on the balcony and watch TV; it’s fun not being in school because I can do all the lessons at my own time. If I don’t want to do English now, I don’t have to. I can do it later. And if I feel like doing French now I can, so that’s the good thing. The bad thing is that it’s harder to do work now because the teacher isn’t here to explain it and even if I can email all the teachers it’s still not the same - but I do have my friends. I find myself FaceTiming my friends and doing the homework with them.’

Besides Maths and English, the Year 6 students have been working on the ‘International task’ for their ‘Exploring English’ topic, creating illuminated letters for their art assignment, listening and studying Mozart music and completing various language tasks for their weekly Reading groups.

Mr Kokalj

It has been wonderful to see so many of the Year 6 students working diligently on their distance education. Using Canvas as an online learning tool has proved a wonderful asset. Students have been submitting their work online and having written feedback on their work, which they can instantly see. Of course, there is no replacement for talking face to face and we have enjoyed our conferences using Microsoft Teams to discuss work, but also just to see each other and say 'Hello'.

Year 6 students have a Grammar focus each week. Last week's focus was on Pronouns. The students made flashcards and then tested their families on the different types of Pronouns (e.g. possessive, relative), thus reinforcing their own knowledge. They then completed an online quiz to check their knowledge.

STUDENT-LED TUTORIAL

Thank you to Alex in Year 6A for creating a tutorial video for how to upload a 'live' assignment to Canvas. He did an excellent job, explaining in detail, using his screen to show where to click. The students are being very creative with designing their 'live' assignment, a diary in different formats; videos, text, photographs, slides. We look forward to sharing the diaries Year 6 are creating under the theme - 'When school comes to me!' as soon as we can.

Mrs Charlesworth

Y1 and Y2 were working on a variety of activities including singing songs in Slovene, playing interactive games and some writing. At the beginning of term 3, Y1 will start a new topic, learning the Fruit and Vegetable vocabulary, while Y2 will learn about Body Parts.

Y3/4 reviewed the House vocabulary and upgraded their knowledge with making presentations, recording them and sending them back. It was great to see how they are growing in confidence when speaking Slovene. In the next week, we will focus on a new topic - Food.

Y5/6 students started the day with interactive games, following some reading comprehension, writing rules as well as listening to a recording and writing down challenging words. We will start the term with a description of a city/village.

Miss Kotnik

In the last two weeks, in our French lessons, we recorded videos, prepared presentations, completed worksheets and played games to assist with learning new vocabulary and structures in French.

Year 3 and 4 - Students have been writing presentations about them and then recorded themselves presenting their work. By completing those tasks, the students have been revising learned questions as well as expanding their speaking skills.

Year 5 and 6 - Students continued their "Eating out" topic. They created real-life dialogues from a French café and recorded themselves. This way, they worked on their reading, writing and speaking skills.

Next block: In Year 3 we look forward to learning about family and creating family trees.

In Year 4 we are impatient to start learning about time and talk about TV programs.

In Year 5 and Year 6 we eagerly await our "Eating out" topic as Year 5 will create their dream menu and Year 6 will turn their classroom into a French restaurant.

Stay tuned next block for some fun games and videos to help us learn!

Mrs Poulet

Our PE Department is continuing to challenge and motivate Students, Parents and Staff to workout daily by sharing fun exercise videos. We also created a shared folder where everyone can add and contribute videos and photos from their workout. As we are coming to the end of block five, Year 5 & Year 6 are creating a presentation on Gymnastics they will be assessed on.

PE Department

For the last two weeks of our DL, students from year 3 up to year 6 have been challenged to come up with their own choreography, using Jazz dance steps. Some of them made some amazing Choreographies, using their movements and dance steps.

Personally, I am very proud to see how much all of our students have improved their dancing abilities and how creative they can be when facing a challenge. Moreover, they have been assigned to do a Dance project in the form of a quiz. In order to answer the questions correctly, they had to do research and expand their knowledge on the topic.

Early years, Year 1 and Year 2 had fun dance videos to dance along to. Hopefully, they had as much fun dancing as moving around.

In the weeks to come, students will be given different challenges and choreographies, to practice at home. I look forward to seeing all the students’ posting their VIDEO choreographies on the agreed platform.

Mrs Skofic Damjan

In Year 3 EAL students have been learning to use prepositions of place in the context and use of various prefixes, such as Re-, Un-, Dis-, Mis- and Anti-. All students have been engaging in their distance e-learning through Canvas, posting their assignments regularly, sending photos of their ''Secret Mission'' project by mail, and daily participating in Zoom conferences with Mrs Nerma.

There is never a dull moment with Year 3. We have moved our ''Classroom'' into the comfort of our homes, however, we are still together, doing what we do best, learn and have fun doing so.

We are also looking forward to our future assignment which is going to be an online journal on Google doc, with a daily entry log, written in paragraphs, using fronted adverbials and ambitious vocabulary. Who knows, these Year 3 EAL students might become famous one day and you were the first ones to know about it through this Newsletter.

Primary EAL Secret Mission

Year 3 students continue to bring happiness to those around them. This time they had to make an origami paper flower, colour it and surprise their mothers with it on the Mother's Day. Sara decided to include her brother in the Secret mission, and without their mum noticing, they both spent an afternoon together behind closed doors of their room, making paper tulips for their mum. Alana surprised her mum with breakfast she made with her siblings, adding the extra touch with the paper flower. Nathan surprised his mum with a flower, waiting for her on her desk when she started her day. All students enjoyed the fruits of their labour, they made their mothers very happy and brought back a little bit of the spring we are all looking forward to.

Mrs Baltic Papez

It has been wonderful to see our students engaging and enjoying their learning. First steps have been challenging, particularly adjusting to a new system and organisation, and having to work independently. However, we now see the positive sides of Distance learning. Group lectures, lessons and chats are a happy event we look forward to. Some students have made smart decisions and decided to help each other in these times. They study together through video conferences and do their assignments in pairs or groups, helping one another and working together towards success.

Further support has been given through individual online sessions with SEN teachers, in order to help students establish good working practices and routines at home. The SEN teachers have also enjoyed being involved in class video conferences, to share experiences of distance learning with students, as this is new for all of us. It has been great to see students working in their home environments, surrounded by their family and, in some cases, even their house pets.

SEN Department

As long-distance learning progresses in our second week, some of the BIMS teachers started with online lessons with their students. If your teacher didn't contact you and you would like to have music lessons from home, please contact me (petra.skofic-damjan@britishschool.si), so we can arrange that your lessons continue. Here are some photos of our students, already having lessons through Skype.

Mrs Skofic Damjan

Dear students and parents!

We are very happy to announce that we have updated our Uniform shop with some new and exciting items that are now ready to order.

We have some changes in existing items:

1. Long/Short-sleeved shirts and blouses for Secondary students are now embroidered with the school logo.

2. Secondary Short Sleeve Polo Shirts are now also available in L and XL sizes.

Additional Spirit Wear items:

Please note that these additional items are not part of school uniform. These items may be worn to showcase school pride on trips, non-uniform days and outside of school.

1. Junior and Senior Hoodies

2. Umbrellas, baseball caps and water bottles

Order Today in 4 easy and convenient steps:

1. Visit our Uniform shopat theschooluniformspecialists.com with the school password: LJU976
2. Select one or more of our branded uniform items.
3. Make sure to check the size guides for further information.
4. Have your order delivered directly to the school.

Further details on our uniform requirements and how to order online can be found HERE.