BIC Sant Agustí Weekly News (03/05/21)

Dear parents

This week has seen us complete almost the last of the competitions we have entered - for now! The theme of the Cobis Art competition was “Connections” and we had some lovely entries from the children across the school. All the children had put so much work into their work, and should be congratulated on their efforts. The school winner for Early Years was Vega and for KS2 it was Celeste; well done girls, you should be very proud!

Some of the classes have entered the Cobis Coding competition and have been working very hard at home and at school to create an app. They have all done really well and their ICT skills have definitely improved over the last few weeks too! Well done to everyone for all your efforts.

Next week is World Book Day, so please remember that your child needs to come to school in a costume of a character. We are also doing a Book Swap, organised by the School Council, so in order to be able to quarantine the books, can we please ask that if you have any books you wish to bring to school which can be exchanged for others, can you please bring them in by Tuesday March 2nd.

Today we have been celebrating Baleares Day, a very special day in Mallorca. Our school is so international and it is always wonderful to hear and see all the different languages and cultures around the school on a daily basis.

Living among other cultures is just such a wonderful way to learn about how other people live. Learning about other cultures increases our sensitivity, broadens our horizons and helps us to become more open-minded. Culture influences our views, values, humour, hopes and loyalties as well as our fears and worries. It can also help us to minimise stereotypes and prevent and overcome discrimination. The mind is stimulated and our interest is promoted, while becoming used to our ever-changing world.

We live in Mallorca, so it is important to understand the culture of where we live. By celebrating Baleares Day, we immerse ourselves in the stories of the islands and begin to understand where we came from. We learn about our identity while building a sense of pride in where we are living.

Today we have celebrated our culture and identity with maps,knowledge of places, colours, food, flags and dancing, which I am sure will not be forgotten.

Happy Baleares Day -and remember school is closed on Monday as it is a holiday! Have a lovely long weekend!

Welcome back little Starfish, We have missed you a lot! This week we have continued our learning journey with our topic ¨From below the sea into outer space - transport around the globe¨.

All the children have familiarised themselves with the term “Transport” and we have explored all kinds of ways to travel the globe and beyond. We got involved with many cutting activities this week, sorting out different ways of transport over land, sea and in the sky and we´ve made sure that 10 cars parked in their parking spaces, using our excellent counting and number recognition skills.

Furthermore Starfish class have made golden travelling tickets this week which gave them access to many different ways of travel. We've travelled by bus, by plane and we´ve even discovered what it feels like to be in a race jeep on an obstacle race track, not to forget counting down from 10 - 0 for our rocket launch and making our super shape rockets too.
As I am writing this week's news, I myself am amazed with all the things our smallest school members do on a weekly basis. Next week we will continue with our trip around the world by discovering all the different animals that inhabit the globe.

Keep up the good work Starfish team, have a great weekend!

Welcome back Seahorses and welcome also to our lovely BIC big family! I am so happy to be back and to see all those little faces giggling again! With a new half term starting we have been looking into a new topic: “Spring and changes in our environment”.

To start off we’ve been looking closely at the different seasons, the weather and how little by little, things start to change. Alongside this in our Art session, we have made a 3D tree that explains visually all about these seasons’ changes. The children really enjoyed it! For the next few weeks we’ll continue exploring all about Spring and its magic.

Although it seems so far away in time, we just wanted to share with you the great time we all had celebrating Chinese New Year through different activities such as: shadow puppet show, making lanterns, dragon masks and even decorating paper fans. But our favourite part was dressing up and eating and cooking (pretending) with chopsticks in our role-play area. It was such a laugh!

Last but not least, we would like to congratulate one of our Seahorses for winning the art competition in her category. She put so much love and care in her painting! Well done Vega, we are so proud of you!

Have a lovely, safe and long weekend and a happy “Dia de las Illes Balears” to everyone!

Welcome back Seals! What a great week we´ve had this week. We started the week with a new class layout and it's working really well. Year 1 now have a dedicated area for Writing! This is a real hit and it is full of nice ideas to encourage imaginative free writing. We are continuing our theme of Friendship and School Community. We sorted some pictures and have had lovely discussions and read some stories on what it means to belong to a group. We then wrote the steps to take to be a good friend for instructional writing. In Maths we have been studying odd and even numbers and stations, have as usual, been all go go go! We can´t wait to use our Chromebooks every Thursday to play fun maths games based on our classwork.

We also introduced some new reading strategies this week. We are learning to predict, question and connect with the text! We even have actions to help us remember these techniques!

We have started a no waste week, where we will monitor every single thing we throw out. The idea is to reuse everything - even the pencil shavings to make a big Summer Collage during the last term. The atmosphere in the Seals room continues to grow and flourish and everyone is doing their best work. How wonderful!

It is wonderful to have all the Y2 super beings back in class. It was only a week but Mrs Carter and I are sure that they grew as much as their hydroponic beans! The beans have grown and will soon be ready to come home for potting up and planting on. This week we have potted a bulb, more seeds (we think you will love our cress heads!) and with the help of Andy, taken cuttings. It was surprising to many of the children that you can grow new plants from old plants!

In English we have been exploring quest stories with a special focus on the story “Lost and Found” by Oliver Jeffers. We have used story maps to help us sequence the adventurous events that our hero needs to overcome. The story has also helped us learn more about verb tense and in particular the rules for adding the suffixes -ed and -ing to mark past tense.

In handwriting we are strengthening our hands and exercising our fingers using many different games and activities. The shaving foam tray was definitely a favourite, closely followed by the peg challenge, threading and the matchstick challenge!

In maths (with a little help from the chrome books) we have been busy securing our number facts knowledge. We have been using whole, part, part diagrams, bar models, times tables facts and 100 squares to represent number facts.

We are very excited about next week too as our pupil council representatives, Vivien and Sofia, told us all about the plans for Thursday 4th March - World Book Day. I wonder who we will become for the day…?

Have a fantastic long weekend celebrating Día de les Illes Balears (Day of the Balearic Islands) and we will see all our super beings on Tuesday!

Welcome back Dolphins class! It has been a very busy but exciting week. We started the week off by completing our entries for the Coding Competition. The children put a lot of time and effort into their creative entries so they should all be very proud of their work and computer skills!

In Maths, we have been focusing on money, the children enjoyed making amounts as well as adding and subtracting using physical coins.

In English, we enjoyed a scavenger hunt in the sunshine. The aim of the hunt was to find as many synonyms for a verb as possible. We learnt lots of new words and we can’t wait to use them in our writing!

On Friday, we celebrated Dia de Baleares! It was full of fun, music, crafts and dances! What a fantastic way to end the first week back!

Dolphins class wish you a relaxing, long weekend. See you on Tuesday!

Before the half term holidays the Jellyfish had a great learning experience while helping Mr Andy rebuild the bug hotel. It was all hands on deck as they created the perfect habitat for our friendly critters. They also did a great job cleaning up at the end of the build!

After a relaxing half term break, it was great to see Mr Hodson and the Jellyfish back in the classroom. As always, the children were ready with their great attitude and brains ready to learn.

This week has seen the Jellyfish practising and rehearsing poems. One which they particularly enjoyed was the Dinosaur Rap! They worked incredibly hard in their groups, perfecting their lines and performing like the true poets they are. In Maths they’ve been revisiting decimals and in ICT they’ve completely challenged themselves by completing the Coding Competition. Their goal was to create a user friendly app, from start to finish. It’s amazing to see how the childrens’ brains work so methodically!

On Friday we are looking forward to celebrating Dia de las Islas Baleares. We will be finding out about the customs, traditions and history of the Balearic Islands. Our Spanish team has worked incredibly hard to provide us with everything we need to make the day so special.

We hope you enjoy celebrating this fiesta, in your own way, on Monday 1st March and look forward to seeing you back in school on Tuesday 2nd March. Have a great weekend and enjoy the sunshine!

Welcome back Year 5, we have had a busy week in all areas of the curriculum this week. We finished the entries to the Coding Competition and submitted our apps we created. I was amazed at the creativity and imagination that the pupils had shown as well as the computing skills. There were times table checkers, phonic sounds, mazes, counting and even an app to collect your ingredients for baking a cake -well done to everyone, you have worked really hard and as far as we are concerned you are all winners!!

In TTrockstars this week, Hugo is still wearing the Champion crown, but Sofia, Leo and Eugenia are creeping up fast behind him!

A huge congratulations also to Celeste, her Connections art was chosen to be sent forward as the KS2 entry to represent the school.

On the last day before the break we celebrated Chinese New Year and we made Chinese dragons for a shadow experiment in Science. The children had great fun making the dragons and then seeing how they moved as a puppet in front of the light. They investigated using a range of different materials to see which created the best effect in the light. We are nearly at the end of this fun topic but are looking forward to our next one - Earth and Space.

In maths we are working with numbers with up to 2 decimal places. We will be adding and subtracting and multiplying them both mentally and using written strategies.

The Sharks have had a busy week back in school and been working hard in their ICT lessons to create an app. They have made their designs using a coding programme and I was super impressed by the creativity and originality the children used in their ideas.

In our last week of journalistic writing, the children have been learning about the eruption of Mount Etna in Sicily last week. Having decided on an angle on which to focus, the Sharks planned and wrote their reports including choosing photos and writing captions as well as creating headlines to draw the reader in.

Before the holidays the school had great fun celebrating Chinese New Year and the Sharks relished the chance to get arty. Here they are creating their own patterns to make Chinese dragons. Enjoy the long weekend.

Este viernes, en B.I.C. hemos celebrado el día de las Islas Baleares. Como ya saben, el día 1 de marzo conmemoramos la fecha en la que se publicó en el BOE el Estatuto de Autonomía en el 1983.

Para este día el departamento de español ha preparado un día diferente a lo que nuestros alumnos están acostumbrados. Ha sido un día muy especial en el que nuestros alumnos han podido asistir a una actuación de baile protagonizada por tres parejas de baile profesional de Ball de Bot, baile tradicional de las Islas Baleares. En este fantástico show hemos aprendido también algunos pasos básicos para poder bailar algunas canciones entre todos.

Hemos creado también nuestros propios siurells, que es una figurilla de barro de tradición mallorquina que se usaba como instrumento ya que normalmente lleva adherido un silbato. Los alumnos han estado formando diferentes figuras de dimonis, animales, o personas.

Durante este día, los alumnos han ido completando un pequeño cuadernillo para trabajar y relacionar conceptos sobre la cultura de las Islas Baleares (monumentos, gastronomía, lugares) a partir de una presentación donde han conocido todos estos aspectos junto a sus profesores y profesoras.

Ha sido un día muy completo en el que tanto maestras, maestros y alumnos han disfrutado de bailar, crear y conocer más en profundidad los aspectos más relevantes de nuestras preciosas islas.

Last Wednesday during PE class, Year 2 students got involved in a range of balancing activities and were having so much fun during their warm up game of Volcanoes & Ice-cream.

Congratulations to all students for showing their interest and positivity during every single PE lesson. Fantastic effort everyone!

Karen moved to Mallorca from Northern Ireland 8 years ago with her French husband and two daughters. Becoming a teaching assistant was a new career for her having spent most of her life in catering. Now that her children are teenagers and leaving home, she missed the innocent, happy little faces of younger children, so decided to increase her qualifications and was lucky to get a job at BIC. Karen started 3 years ago and is now with the Early Years team.

She loves BIC because it has such a family feel and a happy buzz.The children are cared for as if they are the staff’s own. The teachers are welcoming and supportive, not only with the children but also with each other. She loves to come in every day and watch the children progress in so many ways and the little things really do matter, like a child speaking English for the first time or making a new best friend. She is always available for a child’s cuddle as she feels especially at this age education should involve a lot of kindness, happiness and security.

In her spare time Karen loves gardening and growing her own vegetables and has recently started pottery making.