BIC Sant Agustí News (11/12/21)

A message from Janice Short, Principal

Dear parents and families

It has been lovely to see so many parents attending our parents´evenings this week, thank you. It is so useful to have these meetings at this stage of the first term so parents and teachers can discuss the progress of the children in all areas of their schooling, and discuss any issues which have arisen, as well as celebrating the progress the children have already made.

This week has seen the children being very engaged in science, as we held Science Day during the week. There were all kinds of experiments taking place throughout the day amidst a lot of laughter and frustration when things went wrong. As I explained, that is the beauty of science…..it is better when experiments go wrong as that is not only when we learn but also it usually involves something going very wrong, involving a lot of mess! There were certainly some thought provoking moments during the day, proving that science is fun and entertaining.

Remembrance Day was also recognised on Thursday November 11th to commemorate those people who gave their lives so we can live the life we are living today, regardless of nationality.

To celebrate our children’s achievements outside of school, we are creating a display of photographs. Please help us to add to this by sending in photographs of any achievements your child has done or a club they belong to, so we can share their achievements. We know we have sports champions, musicians, art competition winners and dancers in our midst, so please send their photographs into school so we can enjoy the children’s successes.

Next week we are celebrating “Friendship Week '', in which we will be looking at being a good friend but also at anti-bullying, including online bullying with the older children and peer on peer abuse. We have various activities planned so the children can really explore these key ideas and concepts. Watch this space for more information! Monday is Odd Socks Day so we will be looking to see who is wearing odd socks when you come to collect your children!

Please come along to our parent workshop “English as an Additional Language” in which we will be looking at ways in which English is taught at school and ways in which you may be able to help your child at home. We are hoping to see you on Monday November 22nd at 3pm.

If you would like to give an Advent Calendar for the Fundación Allen Graham Charity 4 Kidz, please hand them in to the box in the main entrance or to your class teacher - let’s see how many we can collect!

Have a lovely weekend and I hope the weather improves!

Warm regards

Mrs Short

Principal

Baleares International College, Sant Agustí

Dates to remember!

Nursery Starfish Class

We are so happy to be back together again and it feels like we have never been apart! We have shared lots of stories about the fun things we did in the holidays; we are learning to take turns speaking and listening by using our special candle that we hold when it is our turn to talk.

We have had a couple of busy weeks, with plenty of learning and lots of play.

We ended our last term on a real high, celebrating Halloween with some of the cutest scariest little pumpkins and witches you have ever seen. We decorated cupcakes and pumpkins, took part in a school parade and sang spooky songs all day long.

In Starfish class this term we are learning about our local area and have started by looking at our homes and our school.

Reception Seahorses Class

Welcome back! I can’t believe we are already in the second half of the Autumn term! In Seahorse class we are all ready and full of energy for all the upcoming activities and events of this term.

Although Autumn time started a while ago, it wasn't until a few days ago we started to notice how the weather has dramatically turned around and the days are getting shorter. Therefore, we thought it was a great opportunity for us to learn more about this season. We started off by looking for different items that can be found everywhere around us. In the classroom we are gathering our own Autumn collection with all the things that the children have collected and brought to school. We like to spend time talking and investigating about all of them; the children are learning to classify them and even compare them according to their size. Some of those items look really interesting!

In Phonics, we have moved on to Phase 2 and the children have already started to learn their first letters. They are all doing a great job, singing the letter songs and finding out words that start with those sounds. In Maths we have been working on 2D-shapes and counting. The children had great fun making their own ‘shapes’ pizza, demonstrating to us not just their very creative side but their counting skills, by adding up the different shapes and registering those numbers on paper. We’ve also started learning about Bee-bots and how to make them move.

We had the opportunity to celebrate 'World Science Day’ in school. At the beginning of the day, none of the children could understand what science means. A few hours, videos and experiments later, they couldn’t stop talking about how exciting and fun it was to do Science and they kept asking how the things that surround us were also related to Science. Using different materials in the classroom we made ‘milk marbled paint’ and rainbow volcanoes. It was such a great and special day!

Next week we’ll continue our learning journey exploring and celebrating many other special events. Wishing you all a lovely ‘Autumny’ weekend! Keep warm and safe!

Year 1 Seals Class

We have only been back in class for a week and already our Maths brains are ready to explode…..we have been learning a few different ways of measuring objects using string, cubes and hands. We made snakes using plasticine, each snake was longer or shorter than the first. Excellent measuring Seals.

Year 2 Turtles Class

After a restful half term, the Year 2 Turtles certainly recharged their batteries and came bouncing back into class full of life and ready to learn! We love the energy of the children and have noticed their curious minds even more eager and keen to learn.

There has been so much learning over the past two weeks it’s difficult to know where to start!

In Maths we have been using our addition and subtraction skills to add and take away multiples of 10 and near multiples of 10. The children were concentrating so hard we could almost see steam coming out of their ears! Another area of maths is learning position words. This will progress the vocabulary of the children as they become more fluent in their English. In class we used the ‘Beebots’ to give instructions of where they needed to go. We created a Jurassic World where the Beebots were given directions so they didn’t run over the dinosaurs...we even had human tunnels to go through!

A great way to practice these words at home would be to play a game using position words and a table... who doesn’t love hiding ‘under’ a table!

As a cross-curricular activity this week, Art and Literacy took our imaginations around the world! The Turtles Class learnt the story about a little boy called John Patrick Normal McHennessy who was always late for school.

This led us to thinking about the craziest reasons why we might possibly be late for school! We’ve had children who were abducted by aliens, delayed on flights from Italy, kidnapped by elephants and taken to the jungle and being kidnapped and taken to the top of the mountain, then finding a magic key to escape! Pretending to be John Patrick Norman McHennessy, the children drew and wrote a postcard to their teacher explaining why they were late for school and how they managed to escape and get back into the classroom! It certainly made for fun reading and demonstrated another reason why we love reading so much, “Open a book and it will open your mind” .

There is no end to the limits and talents of the Year 2 Turtles Class as this week we even became Scientists for the day. On Wednesday we celebrated World Science Day. We started the day by finding out what science is and the importance and relevance of it in our daily lives.

We then spent the day taking part in different experiments, predicting what might happen and the outcome.

We made our very own mini greenhouses and planted beans in them, we scattered seeds in cotton wool to see how they will grow, but by far the favourite experiment was the Skittle rainbows! We put warm water on the Skittles to see what would happen to them. There was lots of excitement as we saw the colours leaking and merging to make beautiful rainbows.

What a fantastically inquisitive day with lots of questions!

Phew, after such an exciting week of learning, surely it must be time for the weekend! Let’s hope for a break in the rain so we can all get outside and for some much needed fresh air! Did you know that jumping in puddles is a great physical workout! It helps improve balance, health and perhaps best of all, helps promote good sleep. So, let’s get our wellies on and go find some puddles! Have a great weekend!

Year 3 Dolphins Class

On Wednesday, we all celebrated World Science Day and had a wonderful time completing team quizzes, learning new scientific vocabulary and carrying out fun Science investigations.

In Humanities, we have been learning interesting facts and extending our knowledge about Africa and we linked this to our Art lessons. We studied African patterns and created our own drawings on what we had been taught.

In Miss Roberts` Maths group, we have been learning to tell the time using both the analogue and digital format. The children made a clock and labelled the 5 minute intervals. We also created a Venn diagram with hula hoops so that we could sort 3D shapes according to their properties.

The children also enjoyed finishing their famous landmark models. Do you recognise any of them?

Year 4 Jellyfish Class

It’s great to be back and we have jumped right back into our learning...

In English we have started our fairy tales unit. We are using our Ancient Egypt topic to influence our fairy tale as our focus tale is the Egyptian Cinderella, called Rhodopis. Comparing the two versions has been really interesting, the stories are very similar, but also really different.

The story of Rhodopis is unusual because we can trace the story back to a real person. Rhodopis was a Greek slave in ancient Egypt. She was a friend of the storyteller Aesop - known for his many fables. Rhodopis married the Pharaoh Amasis and became Queen of Egypt. From a slave to a queen - now THAT's a real Cinderella story!

In science we are exploring sound. We have been on not one, but two sound walks! One was inside the school and one was in the forest area. We sat in silence and listened to the world around us and tried to hear the sounds of life continuing while we were still. We were really surprised that no space was completely silent. We heard loud noises, quiet noises, noises that we knew what made them and noises we had no idea what was making the noise.

To celebrate World Science Day we thought about what science is, famous scientists we know about and learnt about some we didn’t know about. We also learnt about the different branches of science and as a class we made a mind map tree of the different types of science. Did you know that we know a geologist, a microbiologist and a chemist… We discussed what we thought made a good scientist and discovered that in Year 4 we are all becoming great scientists as we are curious, creative, persistent and impassioned researchers. (Can you spot the spelling from this week's list!?) We have been busy as we also made chicken in a cup! With just a cup, string, and wet paper towel, it sounded like we were in a chicken coop!

We also had our assembly, which was all about Diwali; the festival of lights. We told the story of Rama and Sita and sang a Diwali song. We also made divas (small clay lights that guided Rama and Sita back to their kingdom) and cards and had sweets to celebrate.

Year 5 Whales Class

We are fully back into the swing of things in Whales class and have been super busy preparing for our class assembly. We hope you enjoyed it!

Our new unit for PE this term is football which several members of our class were super excited about! In our last lesson we were thinking about teamwork so we started by playing a collaborative game called discs and domes, then we started thinking about how to manipulate the ball in different ways.

Our Humanities lessons have now taken a historical turn as we have started learning about the Aztecs. First we thought about the history of chocolate and used timeline cards to order important events which happened as well as trying to work out in which year each event took place.

We learnt that the Aztecs used cacao beans for money and in the 1800s chocolate houses were open for rich people to drink hot chocolate. Next we looked in more depth at the Aztec era from when they first settled in Mexico to when they were defeated by the Spanish!

We had a lot of fun on World Science Day when we learnt about different types of scientists, did a fun quiz and then thought about which job we would most like to do. Then it was experiment time! We drew little ghosts on tissue paper and then blew up a balloon. After rubbing the balloon on our heads for ten seconds, we tried to make our ghosts move and dance! Can the Whales remember the science behind it?!

Year 6 Sharks Class

In History, Year Six has been studying the Peloponnesian Wars between Athens and Sparta. They channelled their inner Spartan and donned their battle helmets to strike fear into any passing Athenians. Unfortunately, there weren't any Athenians, so they just scared Mr. Hodson instead!

For Science Day we have been dissecting flowers to examine the different parts they play a vital role in pollination.

Year Six also designed hoop gliders and compared them to ordinary paper planes to see which was the better design. They also tried modifying their designs to see if they could produce a longer glide with varying degrees of success.

The winner of the glider that flew the furthest received a magnificent prize!

In maths lessonsYear 6 have continued with the topic of measurement and have been revising how to use the 24 hour clock, and digital and analogue clocks. Most prefer the digital clocks as they are easier!

In ICT, filming of the school documentaries has begun with the pupils interviewing various members of staff about aspects of school life and how to improve them.

Spanish and Catalan with Miss Maria

Esta semana los niños y niñas de Year 3 y 4 han estado describiendo a sus compañeros/as de clase.

Se trataba de elegir al alzar una foto de otro alumno/a y describir tanto sus rasgos físicos como de carácter. También debían conocer sus gustos y aficiones para que la descripción de esa persona fuera lo más completa posible. Han aprendido mucho y les ha encantado conocerse un poco más.

Spanish and Catalan with Ainhoa

Los alumnos de Year 1&2 han estado trabajando la conciencia silábica a partir del juego, pues como cada viernes, trabajamos aspectos relacionados con la lengua castellana a partir de diversos juegos en equipo.

Además, los alumnos de Year 3&4 han comenzado la práctica de la conjugación del presente y hemos estado trabajando con algunos verbos. Para ello, hemos comenzado a crear nuestro “Cuadernillo de conjugación” en el que iremos añadiendo los diferentes aspectos de gramática que vayamos aprendiendo. Estas semanas hemos comenzado con “El jardín del presente”.