BIC Sant Agustí Weekly News (03/12/21)

Dear parents

A year ago, as we were about to go into lockdown for the first time, who would have thought we would experience such a year? Most people thought maybe a couple of weeks of closure before everything opened and life continued as normal. Yet a year later and we are still living with restrictions and waiting for the latest news. However, whatever we think and feel about what has happened, and we need to acknowledge the hardships that many are going through, I want to say a huge thank you to the BIC Sant Agustí community for everything that has been achieved in the last few months.

The school has been open as normal (as possible) due to the dedication, perseverance and dedication of the staff, the support, helpfulness and positive feedback of parents and the enthusiasm, eagerness and happiness of the children. To be honest it has not always been easy, but it is a testament to the Sant Agustí community spirit that we have continued to provide the children with fun learning experiences, covering not only the curriculum but also recognising special days such as Baleares Day and Friendship Week. A huge thank you to everyone!

Speaking of special days, Monday is International Maths Day and we are focussing on maths in the real world. As a mathematician myself, I am passionate about children learning and enjoying maths and also seeing its relevance. We all need maths in our lives! I hear so many comments such as “I can’t do maths” or “I was useless at maths at school” but we all use maths every day. This weekend please take the opportunity to do some real live maths with your child. The list is endless ……..shopping, measuring, cooking, looking for patterns, working out sales discounts (Year 6!), playing games such as Snakes and Ladders, finding 2D and 3D shapes around the home or outside and so on.

Please also take the time to watch the children reading their class stories written on World Book Day - they are fantastic, a real team effort. Well done!

Have a lovely weekend

Warm regards,

Mrs Short

Principal

After starting off the week with a real, wet and rainy day, all Starfish children were very excited that the sun returned on Tuesday and so were we! On these sunny days in March, the Spring and Summer feelings are lurking just around the corner and we absolutely love being outside in our little special place, the EYFS playground.

As soon as we go outside, every single Starfish has their own little niche in which they start building train tracks and towers or sit down to do some colouring or threading. We enjoy doing sport games, we meditate and have our snack out here when the weather allows it. Whatever it is the Starfish children are doing, the outside area is special to all of us and we were reminded of that when we couldn’t go outside due to the rain on Monday, so this week's newsletter is a little homage to our outdoor area, an area filled with happiness and smiles.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Another busy week in the Seahorse classroom! What a great surprise we had at the beginning of this week when we realised that the beans and lentils, that we planted last week, have started to grow! We are still not sure why some are growing faster than others; lentils seem to be taking the lead.

Through a variety of activities the children are learning lots of things about our topic ‘Spring’ and they seem to enjoy every bit of it. We started the week by looking at how we use wheat grains to make bread. In Literacy we’ve been writing about the different steps to grow a plant and what we like to do in the seasons across the year. We have read the story of ‘The Little Red Hen’ and discussed the importance of working together as a team. We are also learning how to sequence a story and how to do a story map. For our Art projects we’ve been using different resources and materials to recreate the parts of a plant and to make incredible tulip gardens by using forks in the process! In Maths, we are also looking at patterns; we can’t believe how many patterns are in our environment. We’ll keep exploring this area the following weeks.

Have a lovely and safe weekend!

This week we learned about money during maths, even paying a trip to Oozella´s swamp shack to buy some items, including slug slime! It was so much fun! We are also beginning to use our Maths Eyes and we studied some real life pictures of everyday scenes! It is amazing how you can make mathematical connections with hair rollers and pavements! Ask the seals about this- they will tell you! We performed some investigations using our 5 senses in science- we had to find Ella´s missing teddy bear by smelling, measuring and making sounds. We painted, we sang and we practised our sounds! And that was all by Wednesday. But the real highlight of the week was our extra playtime for winning the World Book Day competition with our winning story Squawk and Rodrigo! Video below.

These turtles are growing and changing daily on a daily basis. We had so much fun looking back at photos of ourselves when we were babies and recording the changes that have happened since way back then. We are getting more independent, smarter and kinder by the day- that´s the SEALs’ way! Have a lovely weekend everyone. Spring is around the corner. It is most welcome.

What a wet start to our week! We decided that the rain wouldn't stop us and we could make rainbows out of the rain and the sunshine we create! In the classroom it has been a very quiet week as Mrs K-B lost her voice!

In English we have been starting to plan our quest story ready for our ´Best Write´. We have used a story map to plan our stories, thinking about the journey that the hero will go on. We have been revisiting amazing adjectives and astoundingly awesome adverbs by playing a barrier game. We have been applying our phonic knowledge in guided reading sessions. We have had fun using the Interactive White Board to read and highlight the /ai/ phoneme family.

In maths we have been continuing to represent numbers and master numbers to 10, 20, 50 or 100. We have been working more in talking partners, working in partnership and small groups as we continue to learn about collaboration and teamwork.

In science we have started looking at how we can stay healthy. This week we played the ´food chain´ game to consolidate our previous learning. In dance we were able to consolidate our learning by being producers and consumers and showing, through dance, how a food chain works.

In PSHE we are learning about keeping safe, this week we had great discussions using ´What Would you Do?´ challenge cards about how we can keep ourselves safe.

Have a lovely and restful weekend.

This week Dolphins class had two very exciting lessons in particular.

In Science, we planted some sunflower seeds to use for an investigation. Once they have started sprouting, we will use them to find out what a plant needs to survive. We worked in partners to choose from one of three questions:

• Will a plant grow in the dark?
• Will a plant grow in the cold?
• Will a plant grow without water?

We predicted what would happen to our plants and made a plan of what we could do to carry out the experiment. We are looking forward to seeing our sunflowers grow and take part in the investigation!

In History and Geography, we have been continuing with our Romans topic. This week we were exploring what the Ancient Romans used to do in their spare time. Dolphins class were shocked to find out that the Romans enjoyed watching gruesome gladiator fights, although it wasn’t long until all the children wanted to take part in a gladiator training camp! We chose our gladiator names and worked on our strength and fitness before practising with a weapon. We finished the lesson watching various gladiators in the ‘amphitheatre’. When a gladiator was near the end, we decided the fate of each gladiator using our thumbs. Luckily there are some kind souls in Dolphins class so we all managed to survive!

Dolphins homework this week involved writing the ending to our class story. There were some impressive entries but I want to give a big shout out to Elia for her amazing story. Elia had worked very hard and used lots of great features to make the story interesting and fun. It even involved a vegetarian tiger!

After a wet start to the week, we certainly enjoyed the return of the sunshine. Having the opportunity to get outside and get our bodies moving improves our mindset and attitude to learning. It also helps that we have a wonderful sea view from our classroom!

The Jellyfish were extremely excited when they learnt they had won the inter-class story writing competition from World Book Day. A great team effort Jellyfish, and they are very much looking forward to their prize, an extra playtime on Friday!!

As we headed into another busy week of learning, we hope you enjoy the highlights of our week.

Geography has continued with capital cities and the children have enjoyed researching facts about capital cities and, in fact, why is a capital city called a capital city. Time for ‘Can you beat a year 4 student?’...do you know the reason why?

Our budding artists have been showcasing their artistic talents, following a tutorial by one of the European artists we are currently studying, Paul Cezanne. I’m sure you’ll agree from the photos, their work in progress is excellent and we look forward to seeing the finished result next week. Do you recognise the famous painting, ‘The Fruit Bowl’?

PSHE saw us discussing Human Rights. The children really enjoy this lesson as it gives them the opportunity for discussion, and to have their own say by voicing their own opinions, which as we know is very important.

In Topic the Jellyfish have been perfecting what they are already good at...making lots of noise!!! They’ve been learning how sound travels and, using the ukulele, how to make different pitch sounds.

Enjoy the sunshine this weekend, Spring is definitely here!

We cannot believe how quickly another week has flown by! After a busy day on World Book Day, the children will hopefully have enjoyed sharing the class story we wrote together with you. Their imaginations certainly ran wild, I thought we were going to have to start writing chapters into it!! We may not have won but it was great to see the class collaborating and working together on this.

In PSHE this week we were continuing our learning on retailers and consumers . We looked at how retailers will try to draw you in with their special offers and deals and how sometimes they are not always as good a deal as they sound when you read the fine print. We came away from the lesson with the quote “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is!” I am sure they will all be very helpful going shopping with you now and checking out the deals!

Our new science topic is Earth and Space. This week we have been looking at flat earth vs spherical earth...it certainly raised some probing questions. This then led on to looking at the first moon landing and whether we thought it was a hoax or real. It led to a very interesting debate and raised even more questions. We are certainly developing the enquiring minds we were hoping for!

In art this week we got a little bit messy making pictures in the style of Jackson Pollack…….our balcony needs a bit of a clean but the children all had great fun with this form of abstract art.

Last Thursday the Sharks enjoyed dressing up and taking part in World Book Day. We started the day by writing short monologues which we performed to the class, to introduce our characters.

After the exciting costume parade, we received our secret scroll and voted on key elements to include in our class story. As a class we worked together to write our story ‘Harry Potter the robot’, a bizarre adventure story in which the young wizard travels by time machine to meet an enchanted king/parrot and manages to defeat the evil Baelfire with the help of Alex Rider!

In our ICT lessons, the children have continued to develop their skills using spreadsheets and this week they were learning how to find the average from a set of data as well as learning how to sort and order the information.

In French we are learning how to write the date, so now we know our numbers to 31 and days of the week, this week we learnt the months. We played games to order and sort the months and then talked about our favourite.

Esta semana, en Year 3 y Year 4, hemos comenzado un nuevo proyecto sobre los Seres Mitológicos de la antigua Grecia. Los alumnos han escogido uno de los seres y han trabajado por parejas durante toda la semana buscando información con los Chromebooks sobre sus historias y procedencias. A partir de esta información, han llevado a cabo la redacción de una historia fantástica con su ser mitológico como protagonista llevando su imaginación a lo más alto.

Por otro lado, en Year 5 y Year 6 hemos estado trabajando con el Pretérito Indefinido (pasado simple) de los verbos regulares y hemos aprendido a localizar los marcadores temporales de una frase para detectar los tiempos pasados. Con esto hemos ampliado nuestros booklets.

Esta semana ha sido de lo más entretenida en catalán con los mayores del colegio. Por un lado han aprendido muchas palabras nuevas con dígrafos propios del catalán. Una de las actividades que nuestros alumnos han disfrutado ha sido el dictado corriendo. Y es que preparar una clase fuera del aula es un elemento muy motivante.

Y como la semana va sobre aprender nuevos sonidos, este último jueves, con ayuda de un chupa chups y una quelita, nuestros alumnos han aprendido el sonido de la ‘LL’, que aunque se escriba igual que en español, el fonema es muy diferente.

Así hemos tenido una semana completa en catalán, muy motivante y llena de aprendizaje.

Year 4 students in their PE class with Miss Izabela have started to practise volleyball- a sport that is easy to learn and can be played in a gym, at the beach or on grass. Playing volleyball will help improve their cardio, flexibility, balance and coordination. Well done to all of the students for working hard with big smiles on their faces!