Secondary News - 25 september 2020

Block 1 Week 4

It was an exciting start to the week with students voting for this year’s dedicated House Captains. In this time of extra safety measures and precautions, we utilised technology to assist candidates with spreading their message to the students safely. Results will be announced soon, so we excitedly await these results. Similarly, the student council is being finalised across Secondary as well as the coveted Head Boy and Head Girl positions. Good luck to all students involved in this process.

Additionally, this week in assembly time, students took a deeper look at one of our BISL values: Empathy. It is the ability to understand and share in the feelings of another person. When interacting with others, we encourage all students to consider situations from other people’s point of view and empathise with those around them.

This week we warmly welcomed back the Year 7 and 8 students from their Adventure Trip last week where they were overcoming physical and mental challenges. They were very excited and by all accounts they had a wonderful trip. We look forward to hearing further next week from the Year 9 and 10 students who arrived back yesterday. The Year 11, 12 and 13 students are the last group to attend their Adventure Trip this week, having quite a physically challenging hike ahead. I wish all Year 11, 12 and 13 students well on their trip.

With many developments with the current Health and Safety guidance from the ministry, please ensure that you read the latest Principal’s Update with all the details and any further information for our school.

I wish everyone a wonderful weekend.

Stephanie Andronikos

Head of Secondary

As we move closer to the end of the first block, I thought it would be a good moment to look back and reflect on the achievements of our students and staff for the academic year of 2019 - 2020. Indeed, it was a year full of challenges and those challenges were felt quite acutely by the students of external examination year groups as well as their teachers.

Firstly the students. I would like to pay tribute to the hard work of the students of our current year 12 and 13 and of course the students who have graduated. It was a challenging time to stay focused on studies and to participate in and perform on the assessments that were set by your subject teachers. In these difficult circumstances, the students showed their knowledge and ability which allowed their teachers to justify the grades that were submitted to the examination boards.

In particular, I would like to congratulate Iva, Adrian and Micky who all obtained A grades in all their subjects, the highest achievable grade at the AS level. Also special congratulations must go to Chloe and Taja who both achieved 100% A*/A grades in their subjects at IGCSE, a truly fantastic achievement.

Secondly the teaching staff. The achievements are our students are a product of the hard work done throughout the period of time that the students have attended BISL. The teachers, teaching assistants and administration staff all have had a role to play in the success that our students enjoy and I would like to recognise the entire BISL staff who have contributed to our students journey.

Finally BISL itself. We as a school have progressed so much in the past few years and the end result of our perseverance and diligence is now clear. Not only with the upward trend of the attainment across the school but also with the results of IGCSE and A Level. We can all celebrate the fact that we not only achieved much higher than the UK average in terms of IGCSE and A Level grade attainment but also that we are the highest performing school within the Orbital Education group in terms of A*/A grade attainment at both IGCSE and A Level. We are proud members of the Orbital Education group which has schools all over the world and therefore, I feel, this achievement is extremely worthy of recognition.

So congratulations to our students, our staff and our school as a whole and let's look forward to continuing the successful trend.

Mr Batson

Head of Sixth Form

Adventure Days for Years 11 - 13

Dear Parents and Students,

I am pleased to announce our Autumn adventure Trip for Year 11 to Year 13 will take place from Thursday 24 - Friday 25 September 2020.

The adventure trip will last 2 days, so students will need to arrive at school by 07:45 on Thursday morning and will return around 17:00 on Friday.

Please make arrangements for their collection from the school around that time.

Adventure trips build self-confidence, team spirit, cooperation among peers and independence as well as serving to provide the physical exercise in the great outdoors that students do not often get in the city. As a school we strive for academic excellence, however, nurturing the emotional, spiritual, and physical growth of all our students is equally important.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Kind regards,

Anže Damjan

Trip Leader

Here are some photos that have just arrived from our recent Year 9 and Year 10 trip:

On Thursday morning of Week 3, students in Year 12 supported learning in English and Mathematics across Key Stage 1 and 2. Their involvement was greatly appreciated by the students in primary. The experience was also very rewarding and enjoyable for the older students, some of whom will be returning in Block 2 to continue lending a hand!

Ms Dascalescu

From Alex, Year 12:

Last Thursday was great! I experienced real generosity from the Year 1s, their eager attitude astonished me into thinking, "I should visit more!". Not only that, but their kindness was something that really made my day!

From Taja, Year 12:

Having spent a lesson with the Year 3s for Maths, I really enjoyed spending time with the younger years, and have found it to be a very positive experience.

I enjoyed everything from the in-class learning activities that we did to the genuine learning curiosity that the children had, which just made everything even more entertaining.

From Emma, Year 12:

I really enjoyed spending time with the Year 2B class. I feel that going downstairs and helping these little children learn to write basic sentences and spell words such as ‘slices’ and ‘bread’ is something that really takes your mind off of the stressful timetable which is the sixth form life. The questions they ask are also just funny and sweet. I had a great time.

From Rosemarijn, Year 12:

Helping out in Year 2A’s reading session was very rewarding. It was fun to talk to them as their imaginations are fun to explore. Their levels of reading and responsibility were really high and made helping out easy and fun.

Slovene News

After working with Year 9 , our international posters are ready for display! It was an interesting activity to work in five groups and to enrich our Slovene vocabulary. Well done students!

Miss Košec, MFL Department

Congratulations Year 7, they have nearly completed their first block in secondary Science.

In chemistry they are finishing their first unit “An introduction to chemistry where they have learnt the philosophical questions that launched chemistry and science. They are learning about atoms, elements and compounds through chemical reactions.

In Physics they have learned about the Big Bang and the original core concepts of physics. They have been presenting their work and findings on the origin of the universe, stars, solar system and our planet.

For Biology Year 7 have looked at the origin of Biology in their first unit. They have examined and researched the remarkable contribution of Aristotle in his 3 years at the Island of Lesvos. This has led them to an understanding of variation and classification and the origin of biology, evolution and genetics almost 2,500 years ago (Historia Animalium)

Mr Cox, Head of Science Department

We would like to share a piece of research by Jerry of Year 10:

States of matter

We all know the three: gas, liquid and solid. Some of you might have even heard of Plasma. But did you know there are not five, not six, but seven states of matter? At the coldest temperature, just a knick away from absolute zero you have Bose-Einstein condensate, then you get fermionic condensate which is a superfluid closely related to the Bose-Einstein condensate. After a substantial increase in temperature, you finally reach the well-known solids. After some heating, the solid turns into a liquid, which then turns into a gas. The gas at high temperatures becomes ionized plasma, and at superhigh temperature, at around 5trillion degrees centigrade your plasma will turn into a Quark-gluon plasma.

Source

Jerry - Year 10

Miss Tušar, Science Department

Year 11 have been using the PhET simulator to carry out electricity practicals that otherwise would take ages to set up (and generally with wrong readings, results, etc). The students enjoyed it a lot, being able to test their knowledge and other potential hypothesis and predictions they had on electrical circuits, as well as having an interactive environment where they could test the results from exercises so that they can even create extension questions for themselves by making circuits up, calculating the currents, p.d.s, etc, and testing them on the virtual lab.

Mr de Molina Herrera, Science Department

This week Year 7 worked on identifying different types of verbe, including auxiliary verbs, main verbs and infinitives.

Year 8 worked on some creative writing based upon a 118 year old Science Fiction film. They produced some fascinating and imaginative compositions.

Year 9B have been creating a class blog about the city of Ljubljana.

Year 10 have been working on creating a travel blog.

Year 11 have been focusing on analysing unseen prose practice for literature paper 4 of their IGCSE.

Miss O’Regan, Mr Eve & Mr Kirwan, English Department

Dear Parents,

As we head into our last week before the block break, we see the number of coronavirus cases increase in the country, reaching a record high this week. As a community, we need to continue working together to ensure that our students, staff and parents are as safe as possible.

Thank you to all parents who have supported the school with our safety and health guidance. As we can see through announcements in the media, government, and other sources, this has been the appropriate course of action due to the increase in cases.

Whilst there may be many opinions and views on the severity of the situation, and I respect everyone may have a different view on the risks involved, the predicted increases and measures taken, as a school, we are responsible for all individuals in our building and therefore take decisive action to place safety at the forefront of everything.

As such, safety decisions have been made and will be followed at school.

I have put together a list of basic guidance for all members of the community at this time and it is important to repeat and underline how important these are for the safety of you, your children and everyone else in the school. Please read them here.

Kind regards,

Paul Walton

Principal