Secondary News - 6. marec 2022

Block 7 Week 2

It was wonderful to see the Summer Adventure Trips back in full this year with the Year 7 and 8 students the first cohorts to go for 3 days to Lake Bohinj. Students had a wonderful time with all of the activities planned. Thank you to the staff who attended to look after these students, Ms Zupanc, Ms Tusar, Mr Chuter, Mr Stanic and Ms Fairchild. A special thank you to Ms Fairchild for her superb organisation. These adventure trips are a crucial time to be able to connect with one another and build resilience for students, especially if trying new experiences for the first time. We look forward to the Year 9 and 10 students attending next week.

This week the Secondary school welcomed the Year 6 students as a part of their transition to Secondary. The Year 6 students participated in Science and Art activities whilst connecting with the current Year 9 cohort during break time. We look forward to welcoming the soon to be Year 7 students next year.

The book lists for IGCSE and A Level have been emailed out to the relevant year levels this week, for these cohorts to be able to appropriately prepare themselves for the year ahead. The sooner these resources are arranged the better to avoid delays in deliveries and books being out of stock.

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 three 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. Please see below for further details.

I wish everyone in the community a wonderful weekend.

Stephanie Andronikos, Head of Secondary

The PTE and PTM tests begin in Secondary next week. Please support us by ensuring that your child has a charged laptop and headphones. On Monday, it begins with Years 7A, 8B and 9 completing their PTE. We wish all students well.

For the Queen’s Jubilee, the Yr 9 students assisted the Early Years students in making their Royal crowns! It was a lovely opportunity for the Primary and Secondary students to work together.

On Wednesday we had the pleasure of welcoming the Year 6 students to Secondary for their transition day. They spent a double lesson in Art learning about portraiture with plenty of creative activities before heading over to the Science lab for some exciting experiments.

In their art session, in addition to learning about the proportions of the face, they were also introduced to a range of portraiture artists. Over the double lesson they produced a concertina book with timed drawing activities including continuous line, blind drawing, wrong handed, and double pencil portraits.

In the science lab, our students had a chance to work with microscopes, looking at cell structures. Fun was had by all!

We very much look forward to getting creative with you all next academic year.

Ms Hawkins, Art teacher & the Science Team

PE Block

At the beginning of week 2, all secondary PE students completed their final sports knowledge assessments of the academic year. We then continued to complete a range of BISL Olympics events, across secondary school PE lessons this week. It has been another brilliant week of sporting action, with some incredible individual and team performances.

Year 7 & 8 took part in a range of competitions and activities across their three adventure days, whilst Year 9 and 10 took part in a badminton tournament.

Here are the current BISL Olympics scores - across the whole school (01/06/22):

• Zircon: 149

• Emerald: 161

• Sapphire: 167

• Hessonite: 176

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

PE Team

English News:

Year 7: Year 7B worked on creating their own “portrait” of a character in the style of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,” and enjoyed the challenge of attempting to include middle English, rhyme and humour.

Year 8: Year 8 continued their exploration of “blood brothers”

Year 9: Year 9continued their reading of Steinbeck’s classic novella “Of mice and men,” as they reached the final stages of the story.

Year 10: Year 10a enjoyed a passionate debate on the values of reality vs a simulation of reality and how happiness can be affected by them, before moving on to the poem “The Telephone call” by Fleur Adcock.

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

MFL News:

This week students in Y9 Slovene Advanced Lessons were reading “Exercises in Style” by Raymond Queneau. It is a collection of 99 retellings of the same story, each in a different style. In each, the narrator gets on the "S" bus and witnesses an altercation between a man and another person.

Queneau`s work is a great opportunity to revise formal letters, sonnets etc. as the end of year is around the corner.

Year 9 non-natives have been working on their dream home task in groups. The students already have ideas about where they want to live when they grow up. Their mission was to combine ideas and describe how a dream home should be like. They found a way to include everyone's preferences in the description of their home. Well done Year 9.

Ms Kotnik, MFL Coordinator

MEPI News:

On Friday we stayed after school in the woodland area to camp and to make up for the night that we didn't camp on our last trip.

Like always bizarre weather was following us like storms and cold weather.

We continued to plan for our qualifying trip and had fun cooking, setting up tents and dealing with friends trying to scare us.

We stayed up late and slept for a long time and went home first thing in the morning.

Then on the following Monday we had another 3 hour meeting to plan for our qualifying journey, updating our maps and planning for the second day.

Abdulla, MEPI Participant

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 three 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.

Teacher Feature Series

For our final Teacher Feature of this academic year, we are delighted to bring you an insightful interview with the lovely Mrs Fordham, our Year 2 Class Teacher.

Read Mrs Fordham’s Teacher Feature here.

BISL Summer School 2022

Registration for BISL Summer School 2022 is closing next week! Don’t miss out - register your child(ren) for their summer adventure by clicking on the link below.

Register Here

Dear Parents,

Thank you to all parents for attending the Coffee with the Principal this morning, I have included the points that we discussed in my full Update here.

With new deliveries arriving each week, we have updated the Sixth Form area in the new building and also included a gallery of pictures below that were shared out on our social media Facebook and Instagram pages yesterday (Thursday 2nd June).

We have grown as a school considerably over this year and continue to do so as we head into the summer. For the start of the 2022/23 academic year, we will be even bigger! Thank you to all parents and families for supporting the growth and success of the school. We could not do this without you.

Thank you to all staff for supporting students with the Adventure Day trips this week in Years 7 and 8, the photos look great and we know you had a wonderful time. Also, Year 5 out to Postojna Cave and Predjama Castle. In school, we have had a Year 6 transition evening for Parents, a Year 6 Transition Day and an EAL presentation for parents. Our students in lessons have been preparing for the PTE and PTM assessments, most have now completed these and the IGCSE and A Level examination are running for a final week before coming to a close. Thank you to all staff involved.

Following on from our promotion of safe driving and road safety, we are looking into possibly having some help in the mornings for children to cross the road safely. This was an excellent idea raised in the Coffee Morning to introduce a form of a crossing guard/lollipop man/lady. If you are interested in helping out, please let me know. This is also something we can start with for the next academic year.

As mentioned in the Coffee with the Principal this morning, we are looking forward to 15 further events over the coming weeks to really finish with many exciting and busy opportunities for our students, from the Sports Days to the Wizard of Oz! It is going to be quite a finish to Block 7.

I have also included some useful dates for Block 1, Term 1 for you to note with the Orientation Day (Friday 19th August) and the first Coffee with the new Principal - Mr Matthew Cox (Friday 2nd September). These are included below for you to save the date.

We've also included information in the newsletters for many more activities and celebrations for you to be involved in, a new donation drive, Pride:Diplomats for Equality, Summer Camp and much more!

Next week, we finish all assessments and exams on site, our reporting window will commence and the progress of our students will be shared soon after this. Well done to all students rehearsing for the Wizard of Oz, taking part in MEPI and the fundraising events! A great balance between fun events for students, working together and academic successes.

Finally, we held our first Year 13 Graduation in the new building last week. It was an amazing event and I have included all of the links below for the gallery of our incredible students! Well done to each and every single one involved, we wish you all the very best in the future and you are welcome to come back to BISL as you are always a part of our community!

Please read my full Update from the Principal here for details, links and photos.

Have a lovely weekend.

Kind regards,

Paul Walton

Principal

All upcoming events and details are available on our website.