Dear Parents and Students,

What a fantastic finish to the first term at BISL it has been!

Festivities continued, with students enjoying class activities organised by teachers and parents throughout this week. It was wonderful to see all of the students and staff in their Christmas outfits and accessories, celebrating the last day of school on Friday.

We have now concluded the Creative Arts Block, which provided lots of creative buzz around the school with events and activities for students to join in, including performance videos of Christmas plays and songs, the COBIS art competition and House competitions (music quiz and window display). Students also learned about various artists in areas of creative and performing arts in assemblies and met some of the ‘mystery’ artists in school as well. You can read more about these in the sections below.

A huge thank you to the BISL community for their amazing support and heartfelt generosity in the BISL Make a Wish Holiday Project in partnership with ZPM Moste-Polje. As we come to the end of the year 2021, I would like to thank all of the students and teachers for their hard work and achievements, and parents for their great support in working together to overcome many challenges in the current climate.

I wish all BISL families a very Merry Christmas and all the best for the New Year 2022!

Please continue to check the News section on our school website and read the latest Update from the Principal.

We look forward to opening the doors for Term 2 starting on Tuesday, 4th January.

With best wishes,

Katarina Železinger

Head of Primary

Early Years

The Early Year Christmas tree is getting fuller with decorations and ornaments each day. Visitors can admire the colourful paper chains and popsicle stick snowflakes ornaments, which our students made last week. This week, our lovely parents helped us make salt-dough ornaments. Additionally, our Early Year students were mixing and measuring, not some, but a whole pile of dough, so believe me, when I tell you: They can make salt-dough with their eyes closed!

Once the dough was finished, the children turned it into cookies in various Christmas shapes of their choice with the Christmas cookie cutters. Even further, these children truly gave life to their ornaments by using bright and vibrant colours and a copious amount of glitter.

Ms Kukovica

Year 1

It has been such a festive week in the Year 1 Winter Wonderland! We practised counting money in our Christmas Cafe, listened to many Christmas stories in Santa’s Grotto, finished our very special Christmas cards and ornaments in Santa’s Workshop and also baked gingerbread cookies!

Not only did we write instructions for making cookies, but we also thought about what we would be like if we were Santa’s elves and wrote about Santa’s workshop.

Ms Miklavec

Year 2

It has been a fantastic block for Year 2. We have really enjoyed our topics this block, we have learnt about poetry, shape and celebrations. We have now created our own poems and they are on display for everyone to see. We had a range of animals chosen to write about and Year 2 were able to use many different adjectives and verbs to describe their chosen animal. It has been a great term and we are looking forward to the next. Well done Year 2.

Ms Harris & Mrs Bradley

Year 3

This week BISL primary received a visit from a number of familiar-looking artists. The students were allowed to ask them questions about their lives to help them work out who they were. The Year 3 hosted Mr Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí and Charlie Chaplin. Mr Dalí was kind enough to answer all of the students' questions and some were even able to get their portraits painted by him. Mr Chaplin posed for photographs and danced for the children. What a treat!

This even supported the completion of our Topic entitled: Pictures, Paintings & Photographs

Ms Blundell & Mr Kokalj

Year 4

Year 4 students honed their architectural skills while planning and then developing a prototype of an earthquake-proof building. They did extensive research first into what will make their buildings the safest and most resistant to earthquakes. Mr Bishop's earthquake simulator was put to the test and many buildings survived.

We found that it was the ones that used base isolations, a tuned mass damper (a pendulum) and controlled rocking, that worked the best.

Mrs Charlesworth

Year 5

This week the children wrote scripts about a `Christmas Dilemma`. The children acted them out in front of each other and did a fantastic job. There are definitely a few actresses and actors among us. We also made our own Gallery to display all of the outstanding pieces of art made in this block. Everyone chose their favourite piece and talked about the techniques they used. We also had a mini Christmas party and exchanged our secret Santa gifts.

I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and look forward to seeing everyone in the new year.

Ms Thomas

Year 6

Christmas time is here! This week, Year 6 students manage to survive the week of termly tests and make it to the end of week Christmas party, with Secret Santa making lots of children's faces light up. I wish everyone a wonderful Christmas holiday and look forward to seeing everyone in the New Year.

Year 6 Prefects received their badges this week which they are very proud of.

Mr Bishop

PE

Across primary PE this week we concluded our different sporting units with some competitive game playing scenarios. Year 3 and Year 5 took part in a mini tennis tournament, focusing on being able to compete when playing singles and doubles. Year 4 and Year 6 finished their badminton unit with a doubles competition, developing a complete understanding of the rules and scoring involved in the game.

House Captains

Congratulations to our House Captains who received their badges this week:

Ela - Hessonite

Ivan- Sapphire

Nadja- Emerald

Alina - Zircon

House Competition

Thank you and congratulations to all of the students who took part in the House Competition.

The results are as follows:

Overall Winners:

1st Place - Sven - Zircon - Year 5

2nd Place - Ela - Emerald - Year 5

3rd Place - Alicia - Sapphire - Year 5

House Winners

Emerald

1st - Ela - Year 5

2nd - Kim - Year 2

3rd - Tita - Year 2

Hessonite

1st - Jonatan - Year 4

2nd - Marlene - Year 5

3rd - Christina - Year 4

Sapphire

1st - Alicia - Year 5

2nd - Valeria - Year 2

3rd - Franja - Year 5

Zircon

1st - Sven - Year 5

2nd - Vita - Year 2

3rd - Yaren - Year 5

PE Department

Performing Arts

This year's Winter Show playlist is now available on our YouTube channel for you to enjoy! Our students have done a brilliant job and are very excited for you to see their performances!

Performing Arts Department

Slovene Foundation

Years 5 and 6 decided to create Christmas cards and send them out to students of one of the local Slovene schools: OŠ Šmarje pri Jelšah. Our students are collaborating with them on different projects where they are improving their Slovene and English language skills, the Christmas card projects being one of them.

We were extremely pleased to read all these positive messages about the upcoming holidays. A big thank you to all the students of OŠ Šmarje pri Jelšah!

Have a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year 2022!

Ms Košec

Slovene Advanced

Year 2 students in Slovene Advanced lessons have been listening to various stories this week as this is a good way to enhance their vocabulary as well. Our last story was of course in the spirit of Christmas, titled "Nekega zimskega dne". The students listened to it with great enthusiasm!

Ms Drofenik

MEPI News

This week was a time for team-building and consolidation for our MEPI collective. Our Monday meeting began with the classic '2 truths and a lie' game, where everyone writes down three statements about themselves, and the rest have to guess which one statement is untrue. From there, we reflected on our achievements so far, and then updated the Online Record Book (ORB). We have also developed our future goals and put plans into place for the coming term.

Mr Irving

MEPI Coordinator

BISL Make a Wish Holiday Project

With the generous support of our wonderful school community, this year we have successfully fulfilled the wishes of 150 children through this fantastic initiative in partnership with ZPM Moste Polje.

A huge thank you to everyone who participated this year, helping us spread Christmas cheer - what a brilliant way to end the Term!

The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear!

As this year's BISL Christmas Cover, in a brilliant whole-school collaboration, our Performing Arts Team proudly presents: BISL Does Merry Christmas Everybody!

Watch it here.

Dear Parents,

The final day of term has arrived and a time to look back on a wonderful 6 months for everyone at BISL! I very much appreciate the support we have had during this term.

During August, we were thinking about online lessons? Will clubs start again? Can we organise trips? Will Covid cases go up over the coming months? If I am honest, I said to many parents, as long as we have everyone in the building, with teachers and friends, safely at school, I'd take that now. To have had the opportunity to bring a lot of the activities, clubs and trips back for our students and staff has been amazing.

I am very grateful for the experiences and the term we have had. We have helped each other, everyone has worked extremely hard and we are all very fortunate to have had all lessons onsite together this term.

To finish with our BISL Make a Wish Holiday project, the school was beautifully decorated by our parents, Santa visited, snow falling for students to enjoy and a school Christmas Song has been the icing on the cake! 5 brilliant projects that have made such a difference to the school and the enjoyment for the students as we prepared for Christmas - our students leave full of excitement for their Holidays ahead.

Thank you to everyone for all of your contributions this calendar year, big or small, grand or quiet, I am very thankful for every interaction and all of your help and support.

On a safety note, we will continue to review the guidelines over Christmas and plan to continue self-testing. This will be reviewed and communicated out if there are any changes before the next test session of Wednesday 5th January.

Wherever you spend Christmas, with whom and how, I wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas from all of the staff at BISL. Have a wonderful holiday.

The first day of School is Tuesday 4th January, see you in 2022!

Please read my full Update from the Principal here.

Kind regards,

Paul Walton

Principal

All upcoming events and details are available on our website.