Primary News - 15. april 2022

Dear Parents and Students,

With the weather warming up this week and the sunny days, students have been able to enjoy the outdoor activities, projects and playtime in the school woodland and playground area. These are excellent opportunities for learning beyond the classroom as well as promoting well-being, along with the curriculum trips that have been organised this term. See the class section below for more news on what the students have been learning this week.

On Wednesday, our Performing Arts Team organised the third and final Spring Concert, with two wonderful plays performed by the Y4 and Y5 students, hosted by a secondary student. Thank you to all parents who came to support and applaud our talented students. You can see photos of these and other events on our school website Gallery. We look forward to the future events coming up, including the Music on a Summer’s Eve event on 23rd June.

With restrictions lifted, we have been able to get lots of visitors coming to the school, as well as host events for parents in this block. The preparations for the Summer School are already underway. For more information and to sign up, please see this link.

As always, please ensure that you keep up with the latest News and Events, including the Update from the Principal for important weekly updates. We will see you back in school on Tuesday 19th April.

Happy holidays to you all!

Katarina Železinger, Head of Primary

Early Years

This week in the Early Years we are continuing our exploration of the topic “Plants and Flowers”. Through the story Jasper’s Beanstalk by Nick Butterworth. The children were learning how to plant a bean, which gardening tools to use for planting and how to look after a beanstalk.

If you stopped by in the Early Years, you might have seen small bags with cotton wool and beans sunbathing in our window. The children had so much fun planting the beans and can’t wait to see, how they will grow. Besides our indoor planting activity, the children were planting outside, where they raked and dug holes to plant colourful flowers in the planters.

In the Reception group, this week’s focus in Maths was all about exploring numbers up to 100, while Nursery was learning about simple addition through different plant-related games.

Ms Kukovica

Year 1

In Year 1 we have fully immersed ourselves in Fantasy Stories within our English lessons. We used the story "Farmer Duck" to recognise elements of a fantasy story. We have also been practising the use of capital letters when writing names, cities, countries as well as days and months.

In Maths lessons, we have been adding and subtracting 10's from 2 digit numbers and figuring out missing numbers in a number sentence.

Our Topic lessons have been all about plants and bees. We talked about different plant parts and spent some time learning about bees and their importance to the environment.

As part of the Science theme Block, we visited the Science Lab for the very first time to watch some very interesting experiments!

Ms Miklavec

Year 2

We have had an exciting week in Year 2! We made pizza to finish off our Topic of Food glorious food, which was very scrummy! We have been doing some Easter activities this week and practising our Easter song which we can’t wait to share with you.

In English, we have been delving more into fantasy fiction and looking at some different fantasy stories. In Maths we have started looking at mass and in Topic we are continuing to explore the water around the world.

Ms Harris and Mrs Fordham

Year 3

As part of our Topic theme 'Saving Planet Earth' students enjoyed a trip to the secondary science labs this week, to take a closer look at plant cells under the microscope. It was like looking at abstract art!

The fascinating forms were recorded with some observational drawings.

Ms Blundell and Mr Kokalj

Year 4

Trip to Technopark through the eyes of two Year 4 students:

Y4 and Y6 went on a trip to Techno park and it was amazing. There was a VR and a ball that could charge devices. Both were also sold in the Techno park shop. Techno park itself is a place where you can see future things. Not all things were from the future but all of them were fun. There were optical illusions too. There is a space movie that is very realistic. There was a room where you could make robots out of lego that could move and we were choosing what legs he would have and later had a race. The two things I enjoyed the most were the VR, the talking robots and the thing we called bubble prison. The bubble prison was a circle you could stand in and the other person could make a bubble in the circle. After we were in Techno park we went to have pizza. The pizza was delicious but we stayed there for quite a long while. After we ate pizza we went back to school.

By Tamira

We were so excited to enter the park with Year 6!

We got split into three groups. I was with Mrs Charlesworth. We were the first group with the guide. My two favourite things were:

1. We got to build a house with big blocks.
2. We got to make a human bubble.

But my extra three most favourite things were:

1. there was a mirror and on the floor - there was a big picture of a fire station and if you looked in the mirror you could see yourself as if you are falling from the station
2. we could make 20 euros with our face on them
3. we got to eat giant pieces of pizza.

By Anastasija

Year 5

As part of Science block, our students from Year 5 tested water resistance by making their own boats and adding weight to them!

Mrs Thomas

Year 6

Year 6 students have completed and printed their chapter books, and will now go into primary classes to read their masterpieces to the other students in the school to share their creations and hopefully inspire other students to create their own wonderful stories.

Students have also concentrated on coding these past couple of weeks in order to prepare for the COBIS coding competition, where students create and code their own apps featuring a dangerous journey. The final big project of the year is a short film, which students are now beginning to plan for the big premiere at the end of the year.

Mr Bishop

PE

This week, we focused on developing our understanding and skill level across our new sporting units. Years 1 and 2 looked at the importance of being able to keep the ball in play, when playing nitroball/lobster ball, whilst Years 3 and 4 focused on the different positions on a football pitch and how working the ball from defence to attack can be effective.

Years 5 and 6 continued to develop their floor hockey skills, gaining an understanding of how to dribble the ball and work as a team to create scoring opportunities.

PE Department

Slovene

Years 5 and 6 have been travelling around the world this week. Students have learnt about all the continents and their habitats in Slovene. They enjoyed an activity where they wrote classmates' names in the right country on the map.

It was important to check with each student where they came from. Students were successful at this stage and got the answers pretty quickly. As a challenge, some wrote down common facts for each continent.

Which is their favourite continent? What do you think?

Ms Košec

Slovene Advanced

You are probably wondering how toilet paper, a book and spelling go together. In our Year 1 Slovene Advanced group, students read a story by Adi Smolar, Zgodbica o rolici papirja (A story about a toilet roll).

After reading, students completed different activities; one of them was practising spelling on toilet paper. We mostly focused on Č, Ž, Š so we won`t mix them up when writing.

Ms Kotnik

Student Council News

On Friday, 22nd April 2022 we celebrate World Earth Day. To encourage everybody to use less plastic, the Primary Student Council is organizing a "No Plastic Day" competition between classes. On this day, students will receive points if they don't use plastic wrappers, bags or containers for their snacks and lunches. The winning classes will be able to convert the points into Housepoints. With this competition, we would like to encourage everybody to become more conscious about the use of plastic and its effect on the environment.

Ms Miklavec

Teacher Feature Series

Following on from the success of our recent Spring Concert series, for this week's Teacher Feature, we take a sneak peek into our Performing Arts team for an interview with the brilliant Ms Predan, Performing Arts Teacher.

Spring Concert - Year 4 & 5

Two brilliant performances to conclude our Spring Concert series this afternoon by our amazing Year 4 and Year 5 students! Take a look at our Gallery of photos here.

Library Book Donations

In partnership with the PTA, we are accepting donations of books to our library throughout block 6 and encourage everyone to bring in their used books - in any language - and drop it off at Reception.
In the final block of the academic year we are also looking to organise a book fair - watch this space!

International Days - Mark Your Calendars

One of our biggest family events, organised in partnership with the PTA, this year’s International Days will take place between Thursday May 12 - Friday May 13.

There will be a variety of cultural and educational activities, stalls, traditional dress, flags, international cuisine, games and performances for our community to enjoy.

For details, please click here.

BISL Summer School 2022

With summer just around the corner, registration is now open for BISL Summer School 2022!

Click here for details.

Dear Parents,

Thank you to all parents who attended the Parents Appreciation Day, it was a wonderful event and it was very impressive to see so many thoughtful and beautiful cards created by our students. Well done to all students for being so imaginative with the cards, and thank you to our staff for supporting students with this. It was a great event and a very important morning that we look forward to every year!

This week, we have had further news across the country about the removal of masks indoors and the guidance has continued to be eased. This is perfect timing as we are in our summer term and enjoying school life, now this helps create a brilliant balance for the day to day outside of school.

A huge congratulations to all students involved in the Spring Concerts over the past 4 weeks, they have been incredible! We had over 100 attendees for each of the first 2 performances and again over 80 for the third and final show. What an amazing turnout from all families to see, enjoy and support our fantastic students. Such a variety, such confidence and a very impressive succession of productions for all of us to see! Thank you to everyone involved in the shows and a special mention to Ms Predan for planning and organising this series of Spring Concerts. We look forward to our summer musical with eager anticipation!

Our Performance Theatre is going through further improvements with additional seating arriving, beautiful frames of students performing displayed down the stairs by the entrance and also the installation of a behind the stage black velvet curtain. Exciting times ahead!

On a final note, to mention our car park, thank you to all parents for continuing to drive slowly and safely on site. It makes such a difference when everyone does this together. Being aware, careful and attentive creates a safer environment for our families. Thank you. Also, our drop off and pick up team do a fantastic job every day and I very much appreciate the efforts of all of the staff as they try to make the start and the end of the day as safe as possible. Thank you to all parents for showing your gratitude, smiles, feedback and positive comments to those who do a great job at the start and end of the day.

It will be week 3 as we arrive back after the long weekend and the summer is well and truly here.

I'll spend the weekend planting trees and gardening so I'm happy for a spot of rain! Whatever you do, I hope you have a great extended weekend.

For links and details, please see my full Update from the Principal here.

Kind regards,

Paul Walton, Principal

All upcoming events and details are available on our website.