Secondary News - 17. dec 2021

Block 3 Week 5

It was such a festive last week of the block and term with students enjoying the lead up to the holidays. Mr Hulse released yet another hit Christmas cover this year- please be sure to watch it. A big well done to everyone involved and a thank you to Mr Hulse for all his hard work completing it. It is so wonderful to work together and unite via this project before the break.

Other activities this week saw students once again dressing down in Christmas colours to finish the block and the Student Council driving a bake sale for the Secondary students on the final day. They planned this sale out from start to finish, ensuring that ingredients were brought in, items were baked on site and then ultimately sold during morning break. A thank you to the students involved for supplying these goodies and to Mr Malden for facilitating students throughout this endeavour.

Parent Interviews concluded this week with 70% of our parents taking advantage of this time to touch base with teachers. Thank you to all families for taking part and spending the time discussing the progress of your children. We firmly believe that by working together, students can achieve so much more. Year 11 to 13 students are particularly building up to Mock exams after the break in Week 2 of next block, so are primed for a restful, but also productive, break.

Finally, thank you to all the staff and students who have worked so very hard together this term. So much progress has been made and students should be congratulated for their efforts. Next term, students are encouraged to reflect and make adaptations to their routines to continue to make progress in their studies.

I wish everybody a very Merry Christmas and a restful break filled with laughter, family time and perhaps a little study. Have a Happy New Year and I look forward to seeing everyone returning in Term 2.

Stephanie Andronikos

Head of Secondary

Baking up a storm for the Bake Sale

Friday’s Bake Sale proved a popular and huge success.

Creative Arts Block

For the final week of Creative Arts Block, we were visited by some well known artist from history. Although some of them may have looked remarkably similar tomembers of BISL staff, students were able to ask them each questions about their lives in order to guess who they might be.

Maths News:

Key stage 3 students collaborated with art and incorporated constructions of shapes and patterns into artistic pieces, inspired by street art and Yayoi Kusama's work.

The students were dedicated to the project and did an amazing job, letting their holiday spirits shine through.

Year 10 students derived equations from geometrical problems and solved linear and simultaneous equations through the strategy game Monopoly.

Year 11 students learnt about first and second order derivatives and their applications to geometrical problems. They learnt the correct sequence of steps to calculate stationary points, determine their nature and calculate the equation of a tangent to a curve.

Year 12 students were introduced to the concepts of series, which is a terminal or infinite sum of terms of an arithmetic or geometric progression.

Maths mistake of the week:

The students will be challenged to find new mistakes on a weekly basis and solve other intriguing challenges in Block 4. A big thank you goes to the students, who delivered the answers weekly and were motivated to find all mistakes, including Valentin from 8B, Dalen, Haruki and Milena from 7B and other Key stage 3 students.

Ms Zupanc

Mathematics Teacher

Science News:

In the Physics Club, students created erupting volcanoes and launched rockets into space with the help of a little baking soda and vinegar. In the Young Scientist Club, students created volcanoes, which they will use after holidays to create an eruption as well. While in the Science club Valentin was comparing the conductivity of different metals.

In their Chemistry class, Year 9 Students compared the reactivity of different metals through displacement reactions.

Year 12 developed their practical skills in Chemistry by working on their titration fluency while Year 13s investigated the rate of reaction in the iodine clock reaction.

Ms Tušar & Mr MacNeill, Science Department

English News:

Year 7: Year 7A wrote and performed “Compliment Rap Battles” as the culmination of their study of modern poetry, while 7B reached the climactic ending of “Stone Cold.”

Year 8: Year 8 finished their reading of “Private Peaceful” and reflected on the struggles of life for those fighting in the trenches of World War I.

Year 9: Year 9 completed their reading of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and watched the 1954 Animated version of the story.

Year 10: Year 10 finished their reading of “Crumbs from the table of joy, “ creating summaries of the key characters in addition to making their own Kahoot Quizzes on the play.

Year 11: Year 11 created their ideal dinner party where they invited a combination of real life characters and characters from the literature they had covered over the past 2 years.

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

MFL News

Slovene Foundation

Year 9 have been very creative during the last week of this year. They presented their own ideas of healthy and unhealthy lifestyles on huge posters. They also included several drawings next to the text. It was lovely to see their enthusiasm and optimism about the healthy lifestyle they are trying to follow day by day. Afterwards, they were ready to create their own Kahoots which are almost finished so they can be played next year.

Zelo dobro 9. Razred!

Slovene Advanced

Our secondary students in Slovene Advanced lessons have had a creative last week of Term 1 as they made some amazing artworks for display. Some of them focused on synonyms, while others created ads for different products. Let's check some of their artwork.

Ms Drofenik, Ms Kosec , Ms Tatil

MFL Department

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). Future goals were also developed, and plans put in 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!

BISL Does Merry Christmas Everybody

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.