BIC Sa Porrassa Primary News 14 (10/28/22)

Ms Alison Colwell, Principal

Dear families,

The first term seems to have whizzed by, but we have packed so many wonderful things into it. One of our many initiatives we have in school to promote writing, reading and general literacy is the word of the week - hopefully you know about this and your children have impressed you already this term by using new vocabulary. This week's Word of the Week is zenith - and in the spirit of the initiative, I must confess to finding it very hard to describe my zenith of this first half term, there have been so many high points.To list but a few: all the wonderful photos of the start of year House bonding trips, which were so successful in enabling our young people to mix and meet new students in their House; seeing the older primary students acting as Reading Buddies to younger children, a fantastic way of helping their own reading, as well as that of others, and displaying kindness; the huge pile of harvest offerings donated by so many to help the homeless, a visual symbol of compassion, one of our important school values; the incredible Halloween decorations across the school, the work of so many parents (thank you) and which have caused excitement and joy all week; seeing the Sixth Form students helping in classes, supporting younger children, or acting as Spanish assistants speaking one-to-one with older students; being in the new science labs and seeing the outstanding teaching that now has the facilities to match; and of course, being in many, many lessons and seeing first hand the excellent teaching that goes on across our school every day.

My job as principal is such a privilege, and I would like to thank the senior colleagues who work so tirelessly alongside me to educate and care for your children, as well as all the extraordinary teachers and support staff we have in our school. This term we also welcomed a new Regional Head of School, Jonathan Dey, who introduces himself in this newsletter, but who you can get to meet in person, should you wish, when he visits the school for the first time in our first week back. Until then, I wish you all a safe half term break, filled with rest, enjoyment and hopefully more sunshine, and we look forward to welcoming your children back on Monday 7th November.

Kind regards,

Principal

Baleares International College, Sa Porrassa

Mr Jonathan Dey, Regional Head of Schools

A quick introduction:

• Held Principal posts in the UK, UAE and Qatar – and this year marks my 30th year in education. Worked with bilingual curriculum schools for the last 7 years. Was a Country Director for another high-profile private education company in Qatar.

• Last position as CEO/Principal over a family of 4 schools (FS to Y13) with nearly 500 staff and 4300 students. 70% Arabic first language speakers – world class Cambridge results at iGCSE, AS and A2. Also worked for the regulator as a Hub Leader for 7 UAE Schools.

• Tribal Education International Inspector.

• Home base in Derbyshire UK, having returned with my wife, who is also an educator, in July after 10 years in the Middle East. Professional Passions:

  • Teacher and leadership development – NPQ Facilitator, University College Associate Lecturer, PD facilitator for many years

  • Cognitive Science and impact on effective learning and teaching

  • Professional dynamics and effective teambuilding

Mr Dey, will be visiting our school on Thursday 10th and Friday 11th November, and he welcomes the opportunity to meet parents. Any parent who would like to take him up on his offer, should email Ms Colwell at alison.colwell@balearesint.net who will arrange this for you.

Ms. Elizabeth Compton, Head of Primary

Dear families,

At the end of any half term it is important to take a moment and reflect on what we have achieved and our flight path moving forward. It has been such an enjoyable start to the school year, getting to know new and returning students a little more. In addition to the fantastic teaching and learning day in day out, students have been given an array of additional activities to enhance their school experience.

The school trips so far have been a highlight. From taking the whole primary school to the Katmandu park, an Apollo exhibition, a beach clean up, Palma Aquarium, or a visit to Son Ferrer Post office, all really allow students’ learning to come alive. I must thank our Deputy Head, Ms Laura Hodgson, who is also our new Trips Coordinator this year, for all her enthusiasm and efforts to further develop these opportunities.

My weekly assemblies and video messages ensure that the primary students are kept up to date on important themes, our school values and events. These moments (and of course Year 5 science lessons) are the highlights of my week; listening to their ideas, reflections and coming together is such an important way to develop our community and culture. This term we have focussed on our school values of compassion and respect, sharing acts of kindness and learning about significant black people and their achievements during Black History Month.

I hope you have taken the opportunity to meet with your child's teacher(s) and been able to find out more about their achievements, progress and targets for the year ahead. Never hesitate to ask for an appointment if you require further updates in any area. After half term I will be meeting with all staff to review the achievement and progress of every student in the primary department.

Today was such a wonderful culmination to the half term, celebrating in Halloween style. Well done to our costume winners!

I wish you a restful and relaxing break,

Ms Elizabeth Compton

Head of Primary

Wear it Pink Day!

A HUGE thank you to everyone who contributed and celebrated Pink Day with us today! The school was filled with pink vibes all around and throughout the day! It was a wonderful whole school effort and together we raised a significant amount in support of AECC Asociación Española Contra el Cáncer Illes Balears and Breast Cancer Awareness. We couldn't be more thankful for this fantastic effort of raising awareness among our community, and we would also like to express our special thank you to Mrs Von Waberer, Wellbeing Lead at BIC Sa Porrassa, who has led this project with extreme passion! THANK YOU!

Whole School House System news

House Points Totals Update - Term 1

A message from your Heads of House

Who I am? - COBIS Poetry Competition Winners!

We had many amazing entries all written around the theme ‘Who am I?’ Thank you to everyone who entered the competition. It was lovely to see the great talent we have in the school. Well done to our poetry competition winners in school:

• Year 6 - Anna Clara 6D
• Year 5 - Cassian 5H
• Year 4 - Kai 4W
• Year 3 - Galatea 3X
• Year 2 - Liam
• Year 1 - Vili

COBIS will let us know if any of our BIC entries are successful in their international competition.

Early Years news with Mrs Wardle

Reception class had a great week consolidating their learning through the theme of Halloween. Using a topic of great interest with our youngest learners has really helped to see how much the children have progressed since starting in September. The week's topic has covered all areas of learning including physical development, maths, phonics, literacy and art. Our mini Halloween picnic, fancy dress parade and party were the perfect end to the week. Happy half term everyone.

Year 1 news with Ms Bakes

We had an extra special last two weeks of this first half term, in which we have managed to fit in two school outings! Our first one, to the Son Ferrer Post box, was an excellent way for the children to learn about letter writing and how the postal system works. Thank you to those parents who wrote a letter back to their child. The children also learnt a little more about what toys and games their parents had when they were little, which has helped with our history topic of comparing old and new toys.

This week’s Palma Aquarium trip was a great success. The children walked beautifully around the aquarium with our Oceans Expert guide, and they spotted lots of different fish - and even reptiles and birds - which we have been learning about in our science topic. Our half term ended with a fun and spooky Halloween picnic and dress up day. Mrs Bakes and Mrs Ratcliffe would like to wish you all a very pleasant half term break.

Year 2 News with Mrs West

In science, we have been learning about the butterfly life cycle. We then made the life cycle out of pasta as part of an art project. In English, we have been writing fact files about animals so we used the chromebooks to research the animals first. The children have also continued to enjoy dressing up as nurses and doctors as part of our history topic.

Year 3 News with Mr Fairless and Miss Xidakis

In Humanities we enjoyed learning about Africa particularly the Maasai tribe this week. We had a go at their famous ´´Adumu dance´´, also known as the ´jumping dance´. We thoroughly enjoyed the dancing.

In computing Year 3 have been learning about devices, input and output, and designed their very own device. Afterwards, they enjoyed the practical lesson on the chromebooks, learning how to log out and shut down correctly. Mr Fairless and Miss Xidakis would like to thank Year 3 for all of the resilience and hard work this half term.

In science we learnt about different types of joints and made a hinge joint helping us understand how this type of joint moves.

In Mr Fairless´s maths group we have been learning to add hundreds, tens and ones to each other using equipment to help us.

In English the children had great fun making a character description map, to help us orally retell the description and internalise the sentences to recreate our own later.

Year 4 News with Mrs Alonso McGregor and Mrs Walsh

Year 4 continued to have great fun making their guitars and looked carefully at the real instrument to paint theirs as realistically as possible. We think they did a fantastic job. Much fun was had using these when Mr Darlow filmed them for the whole school production. A few ´sneak peak´ photos below! We can't wait to see the finished video!

Both classes have been learning about time, a skill that is quite tricky, particularly on an analogue clock. Even in today's digital world it is important to learn this skill. Some children used their knowledge to solve problems collaboratively too. How could we tell the time if one of the hands was missing!

As our humanities lessons continue, our knowledge of all things ancient Egypt grows too. We all enjoyed a very messy afternoon making our own version of papyrus, the special paper created by the ancient Egyptians. The children are now drawing and painting their own Egyptian style designs onto their papyrus. Ask them what was strange about the way that the ancient Egyptians painted people!

Year 5 News with Ms Hodgson and Ms I'Anson

Year 5 enjoyed an informative morning at Port Adriano with Save the Med. The first part of the morning was spent doing a beach clean, then we analysed the amount and type of litter that we found. We were very shocked at the amount of waste that we found in such a short period of time. The next task was to work in groups using a quadrant, and to carefully sieve the sand to find the microplastics and count them in that area.

Filming began in earnest, for the BIC show called We will Rock You, take a peak at the preview.

We have had some fun building up to Halloween. In art we used oil pastels to create some fabulous spooky pictures, the children who take options made gruesome eyeball cakes, and pupils from the Upcycling Activities Group made Halloween bat puppets out of socks . Finally, we danced away the night at the spooky Halloween disco.

Year 6 News with Mr Darlow and Mrs Von Waberer

In science this term, Year 6 have been learning about the function of the heart and how different external factors can affect our pulse rate. This has included exercising, watching scary movie scenes and drinking fizzy drinks, though we concluded that maybe the excitement affected our pulse rates on that one! We have also been working on our presenting skills. It was wonderful to get both classes together this week to see the results of 6D’s independent research into ancient civilisations.

Sports department news

Every term our PE Department organises an inter-House competition to build morale and team spirit and to also encourage active participation in sport and physical activity.

Students from all the four Houses will have the opportunity to participate in the football tournament in their Year group.

Congratulations to all the students who took part and earnt a House point for their team.

The names of the House winners from each Year group are below:

• Year 6 - Parks
• Year 5 - Roosevelt
• Year 4 - Roosevelt
• Year 3 - Parks

On Sunday 15th October our BIC Sa Porrassa and San Agusti students had an exciting opportunity to take part in the Junior Aquathlon Challenge Peguera Mallorca and Junior Challenge Mallorca running competition.

A race for children was to promote sport in general, and values such as social integration, solidarity and team spirit. There was an extraordinary sporting atmosphere at the running event, and we had a great time. Massive thanks to the parents of our young athletes for their support and great cheering during the competition!

Thanks to all the young athletes, to all the parents and supporters who have been cheering so loud. It was an unforgettable evening for our BIC students!

Looking forward to next year with an even bigger number of our sporty pupils!

Languages department news

The Lengua Castellana group in Year 5 has been studying polysemic words. One of the activities we worked on is the representation of the famous Spanish quiz show “Pasapalabra”. We read the definition of the polysemic word. We had to guess the polysemic word and write it down on the paper. We think Year 5 is ready to participate in “Pasapalabra”. ¡Buen trabajo, chicos!