A word from Mrs Železinger

Dear Parents and Students,

As part of the PE Block, the 'Design a Sports Kit' competition has been launched this week across the whole of the Primary school. This is a great opportunity for any of the students who aren't necessarily 'sporty', to make a big contribution to their House's performance at the BISL Olympics (see more information in sections below). Good luck to all participants!

Booking for the Parent-Teacher online interviews closes this Sunday 12th June at 4 pm. Interviews will run in the last two weeks of school (Monday 14th June - Friday 24th June). Primary Summer Reports will be issued on the last day of school. For any questions regarding the interviews or reports, please contact your child’s Class or Subject Teacher.

This Friday, our Year 2 classes visited the City Museum in Ljubljana as part of their topic `Let's Go´ to learn about the local history and geographical features of Ljubljana, while also exploring some important monuments in the city.

Following the visit from OŠ Šmarje pri Jelšah last week, the Year 5 and 6 Slovene Foundation group returned the visit this Friday to find out about the Slovene schooling system and join activities with their peers. Both events have been extremely successful and we look forward to further collaborations with the school next year.

There are lots of events and trips coming up in the last two weeks. Please see the sections below for more exciting news from classes and departments. As always, you can keep up with the latest News and Events on the school website.

Have a lovely weekend.

Kind regards,

Katarina Železinger, Head of Primary

Class Teacher Reports

Early Years

At the beginning of this week, the children discovered a letter and a pair of underpants. Through the fun-filled story “Pirates love underpants” the students have helped pirates find their treasure. And who would have guessed that the pirates were not looking for a treasure of gold, but underpants instead!?

In Topic lessons, we focused on boats as well as space and rockets. We worked in groups to make boats and held a competition to see which boats float. We also thought about things that are important to us and we would take with us if we travelled to space.

Ms Miklavec

Year 2

We have had another fun and interesting week in Year 2. They enjoyed joining in with some running races in the BISL Olympics. It sounds like the children had lots of fun. In Topic, we have travelled around the world. We started off by heading to Australia where we met some lovely animals and saw some incredible sights.

Next, we went to Japan and had a go at doing some fantastic origami frogs. They were a little tricky but everyone worked so hard to master it, well done! Finally this week we travelled to South America and enjoyed some interesting facts.

Ms Harris and Mrs Fordham

Year 4

GALLERY OF SIGNIFICANT PEOPLE

Year 4 is in full swing preparing our Gallery of Significant People for our Year 4 parents and siblings on Tuesday the 21st of June from 2 till 3:30pm.

Mrs Charlesworth

Year 5

The children have had a busy week. They completed both their PTM and PTE tests and the last assessments for the year. Year 5 are in full swing of practising for their class assembly next week.

They have written their own scripts, prepared their own props and created their own dances. They are very excited about performing this for you.

Mrs Thomas

Year 6

Year 6 were space engineers this week. We watched a few clips of the Mars Rover expeditions and then students designed their own mars rovers, detailing the features the robots would need to carry out a successful mission and to try and avoid falling into the pitfalls which can await them on the planet, such as dust storms, boulders and the like.

Finally, students went to the LEGO Robotics lab and created Mars Rovers which they took through obstacle courses to test their practicality.

Mr Bishop

Departmental News

Slovene

Our Years 5 and 6 had a wonderful time last Friday. They had special visitors from OŠ Šmarje pri Jelšah and spent some quality time together. Even the Slovene Advanced group joined us in a wide range of activities, such as the my favourite destination project, Queen's jubilee, things we have in common, Pictionary game and more.

It was nice to see how much effort and enthusiasm students put into their collaboration with students from public schools. They bonded pretty easily, made new friends and improved their language skills in both languages through our one-year project. Now it is our time to visit our new friends and to see their school. We can't wait to be there, to learn something new and spend some productive and fun time together.

Both groups would for sure like to keep in touch and work on plenty of interesting projects with OŠ Šmarje pri Jelšah in the future.

Have a look at our photos of the brilliant day we spent together.

Ms Kotnik and Ms Košec

PE

We continued to complete a range of BISL Olympics events, across primary school PE lessons this week.

It has been another brilliant week of sporting action, with some incredible individual and team performances.

Here are the results from the respective events:

Long Throw - completed last Friday

  • Year 1: 3rd - Ivan, 2nd - Wilder, 1st - Christopher

Agility Speed Course

● Early Years: 3rd - Patrik, 2nd - Logan, 1st - Leon

  • Year 2: 3rd - Valeria, 2nd - Joshua, 1st - Paskal

Year 3 and Year 4 took part in football competitions, with the scores as follows:

● Year 3: Zircon - 7, Sapphire - 12, Hessonite - 15, Emerald - 17

  • Year 4: Sapphire - 9, Hessonite - 11, Zircon - 12, Emerald - 13

Year 6 took part in a handball competition, with the scores as follows (completed last Friday):

● Year 6: Emerald - 5, Hessonite - 12, Zircon - 13, Sapphire - 16

Here are the current BISL Olympics scores - across the whole school (08/06/22):

  • Zircon: 234
  • Emerald: 244
  • Hessonite: 260
  • Sapphire: 266

The BISL Olympics will continue throughout the whole school, across Block 7.

PE Department

Other News

Donations Drive for Refugees

Following on from the many fundraising projects by our community in these last few months, from bake sales, clothing and food drives, to sporting events and donations, you can now join our efforts to support Slovenska filantropija in the final two weeks of the academic year and beyond.

They are currently accepting donations for various essential items including hygiene products, canned and dried goods, cleaning products, and essential foods, which can be dropped off directly at Cesta Dolomitskega odreda 11 between 9am-6pm on weekdays.

For details, please visit their aid page here.

Orientation Day - Friday August 19

We look forward to seeing all of our returning and incoming families at Orientation Day on Friday August 19 ahead of the start of the academic year!

Principal’s Update

Dear Parents,

We've had a host of events in the past few weeks and these have continued with the Adventure Days for Years 7 and 8 last week, Years 9 and 10 this week. Over the weekend, we have our MEPI students out on a 2-day expedition and then next week have our Year 6 students out on their residential trips. Meanwhile, the examinations for IGCSE and A Levels finish today (Congratulations to everyone involved for such an amazing effort!), and our PTE and PTM assessments from Primary through to Year 9 conclude next Thursday 16th June. With all of this we have Wizard of Oz rehearsals, Story Time, BISL Olympics and lots of learning in the classroom!

Our staff and students have been fantastic and deserve a huge amount of praise.

I look forward to the Primary and Secondary Sports Days in the coming weeks, our Year 6 graduation and further events. It is a fun-packed and exciting time in our community.

Thank you to all parents for your support, a quick fact behind the scenes has shown that the attendance over the past 4 months has been wonderful at school. Students across the school (Year 11-13 on study leave) have had over 98% average attendance and this positively impacts learning, enjoyment and happiness at school. It is an incredible statistic. Thank you to parents and all families for encouraging students to come to school, getting them ready for school each day and keeping them enthused to learn and do their best. I hope this continues through to the last week of the term!

I also look forward to our BISL Yearbook being released soon as we head into the summer holidays - it will be a wonderful collection of memories for our students to look back on in years to come.

Finally, we have updated all events on our events page, so you can keep updated and plan ahead for the summer and the key dates coming back for the next academic year!

Please read my full Update from the Principal here for details.

Have a nice weekend,

Kind regards,

Paul Walton, Principal

Dates to Note

Mon-Wed

Jun 13th-15th

Y6 Residential Trip

Wed

Jun 15th

Y3 ‘mini Olympics’ Trip

Thu

Jun 16th

Secondary Sports Day

Thu

Jun 16th

Y5 Presentation for Parents

Fri

Jun 17th

Year 6 Graduation

Mon

Jun 20th

Primary Sports Day

Mon

Jun 20th

Early Years Transition Presentation for Parents

Mon

Jun 20th

Secondary Student Award Ceremony

Tue

Jun 21st

Early Years Transition Day

Tue

Jun 21st

Year 4 Gallery of Significant People

Wed

Jun 22nd

Staff vs Parents Volleyball & Tennis

Thu

Jun 23rd

The Wizard of Oz Production

Fri

Jun 24th

Primary Student Award Ceremony

Fri

Jun 24th

Last Day of Term - House Day school finishes at 12 noon

Fri

Aug 19th

Orientation Day

Mon

Aug 22nd

First Day of School

Fri

Sep 2nd

Coffee with the Principal

All upcoming events and details are available on our website.