BIC Sa Porrassa Primary Weekly News (3/12/21)

Dear families,

We are delighted to invite you to our next upcoming BIC Connect webinar for parents about Internet Safety on Thursday 25th March at 5.30pm. It is known that internet safety around young people has become a concern in recent years. At BIC we are committed to protecting our students and providing them with knowledge and understanding of the online environment, to keep them safe and to make them aware of the positive as well as negative effects of its usage.

As part of this programme, the school has organised an afternoon for all our students in school, which includes important activities that will give them different perspectives and will teach them how to use technology correctly.

Our parents' collaboration in this is vital, and we trust that you will work together with us to keep our children safe. The aim of this webinar is to talk about how best you can support your sons and daughters in understanding the impact of technology and to give you useful advise on different tools and systems which will enable your children to be protected whilst surfing.

At the end of the webinar, we will be holding an interactive Q&A session where you will be able to ask any questions you may have as well as share ideas that you think may help.

In order to register for the webinar please click here: A Parent Webinar - Internet Safety

We look forward to welcoming you all.

Kind regards

Dear Year 6 parents,

The transition from primary to secondary school is a very exciting time and an important milestone in the lives of children and their families. At Baleares International College we aim to make the transition fun, and as smooth as possible for all our Year 6 students.

We have an excellent working relationship across the primary and secondary teams which lends itself to an exciting and smooth transition programme.

Following our webinars directed to parents, our students will begin their transition process this month with an opportunity to experience a morning in the secondary school. On Tuesday 16th March we would like to welcome all Year 6 students for our first Transition Morning. During this time, they will have an opportunity to meet Ms Tomlinson (Head to Secondary), and get to meet some of the secondary teachers as they enjoy exciting lessons in a variety of subjects.

Please can we ask you to kindly ensure that your child arrives at school by 8.30am, as they will follow the secondary timetable and begin their lessons promptly at 8:45am.

We look forward to welcoming all our Year 6 students on their next important step into secondary education.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle has provided a range of learning opportunities.

In maths we looked at comparing the size of caterpillars, we painted caterpillars using repeating patterns and ordered the days of the week.

In PSED we made lists of healthy and not so healthy foods and during our Humanities class we talked about the lifecycle of the butterfly and made our own version using different pasta and paper plates.

This week in Mrs Bakes’ maths groups we have been looking at 3D shapes - learning their names and describing their properties. We have learnt some new words, including ‘vertices’ and ‘prisms’, and the children have learnt how to sort them onto Venn diagrams and Carroll diagrams.

Our Year 2 student have had a very artistic week! We painted our clay pinch pots that we made last week, before glazing them with glue. We are very proud of them.

This week Mrs I’Anson’s group has been focusing on counting in 5’s and learning their 5 times tables. We especially enjoyed using bags of 5 sweets to help us understand the concept of ‘lots of’ as we got to eat them afterwards.

We also investigated which material would make the best umbrella for ‘Catboy’. We talked about how we could make it a fair test, before predicting which we thought would be most suitable.

Year 2 have started work on the book, ‘Toys in Space’. We all imagined what the toys would have felt like seeing the stars for the first time, and we brainstormed ‘wow words’ to describe them.

This week the children in Year 3 have been learning about Roman mosaics and then used this information to design and make their own models.

In science, we have made beautiful zigzag books to show the stages of fertilisation from flower to seed.

Last week Year 3 thoroughly enjoyed a story session with Clive Pig, the famous story teller. In English this week we are learning about letter writing, formal and informal language and we have worked hard to write a thank you letter to Clive Pig ensuring we used the correct letter features. We have sent our letter to him via email and we look forward to receiving a reply in due course.

Year 4 continue to enjoy reading in class in between lessons.

In science, we have been learning about the three states of matter and how these change when heat is applied or matter is cooled. We know these as the processes of evaporation and condensation, which is perfectly illustrated with the water cycle. The children enjoyed drawing their own water cycle and then setting up a mini water cycle which they hope will enable their cress seeds to grow.

We learned another new skill this week! The children have been practising threading needles and some basic stitches in preparation for the sewing part of our wallets/purses project in Design Technology.

We had a wet start to the week but it didn't dampen the Year 5 pupils’ enthusiasm for learning. On Monday we loved the opportunity to exercise indoors.

In science, this week we have been learning about air resistance and drag. The children thoroughly enjoyed making spinners and parachutes to understand these concepts. They carefully planned their investigation by changing one variable and keeping the rest the same so that their test would be fair. It was great fun testing the theories as to which took the longest time to reach the ground.

In humanities, we are continuing our exploration of Antarctica through the amazing but unsuccessful expedition of Sir Ernest Shackleton in 1914. The children used watercolours to create cold and icy landscapes to illustrate the scenery he and his team might have come across.

Year 6 having been learning about the Hindu festival of Diwali (the festival of light). They designed their own beautiful rangolis after learning that they bring good luck and are an important part of some Hindu religious, deity and marriage celebrations.

6R made the most of the sunshine this week by sketching observational drawings outside.

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I always knew I wanted to help people to become better versions of themselves and all my previous experiences were shaped around that. From football coaching, working as a support worker in a mental health, to being a personal trainer and even a swimming instructor.

Whilst living on the island from 2013-2015, I experienced working with children during summer camps. Although it was only a 6-week sports filled spell in the sun, I knew it was something that I wanted more of and so I moved back to England with my family to start my teaching assistant qualification. After 2 years of working within some outstanding schools in the UK, we decided it was time to return to Mallorca and bring my newfound skills and experiences with me, couple them with my enthusiasm and hunger to learn and start a new chapter on the island.

I´m now in my third year of being a teacher/assistant on the island and have continued to collect more experience from working in several fantastic international schools here in Mallorca. I´m now in a role and setting where I feel I can help the children thrive and I really feel that BIC is in keeping with the high standards and expectations I also share.

Outside of school, I am very busy with my own children and helping them to become the best people they can be but when I have a few spare minutes to myself, I enjoy watching football, paddle boarding and attempting to play the guitar.