Your guide to all news at school
A message from Janice Short, Principal
Dear families,
During the last few days I have been spending quite a lot of time in all the classrooms to see how the children have settled in after a half term of being in school. I was delighted to see the children making such good progress in all areas of the curriculum and especially in English and Spanish, as some of the children who joined us in September had quite limited understanding of these languages. For those children who are already more advanced, their knowledge and understanding of these languages continues to grow and improve. This is testament to the very good standards of teaching by the staff and the depth of learning by the children who are obviously enjoying their lessons in and out of the classroom. Well done everyone!
We have had a busy week this last week with lots of parental involvement, not only from our newly formed PTA (Parent Teacher Association) but also with parents helping with charity events and attending parent workshops and parents’ evenings. We have held two parent workshops for phonics and reading for Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 to explain how we teach reading in the early stages so we are looking forward to hearing the Jolly Phonics songs being sung at the school gate!
The PTA have been organising different things including holiday activities as well as forming a committee. All parents can be involved - you do not have to be on the committee but we would love to have a group of helpers who can help out when necessary, including baking cakes and painting playground walls!
We held one of our special charity day events -Pink Day -to raise awareness for Breast Cancer. This event is special for us as a school as people in our school community have been touched by this illness in different ways. The children had lots of fun playing the games at the stalls with the older children working hard to make sure everyone was spending their money! The cake stall was very well received and a group of Year 6 children made items to sell in their own time and made 100 Euros, just on their stall. A super effort! In total we raised just over 1000 Euros, a super amount of money, well done everyone!
Later this week we will be dressing up for Halloween - going from pink on Monday to orange and black on Friday! We will be holding Halloween activities in school including a Halloween house competition before finishing school for the half term holiday.
Wishing you a lovely holiday, a spooky Halloween and enjoy All Saints Day!
Warm regards
Mrs Short
Principal
Baleares International College, Sant Agustí
Nursery Starfish Class
It feels like a while since we last updated you on all the things we do in Starfish class. Maybe, the fact that we are always busy and do so many things has something to do with it!
The first thing I want to mention this week is that we´ve come such a long way since the beginning of this school year. As always, in the Nursery classroom we have the absolute privilege to get to know children from a very young age onwards and this shapes close relationships.
We´ve gone through many highs and lows together and this makes our job really special.
Without exception, all children in Starfish class have grown over the past weeks. There has been a lot of individual development as well as group development. Friendships have been made and we are now a Starfish unit in which each individual child has the opportunity to shine.
This school year is definitely defined by a lot of chatter going on in class! This has led to some wonderful conversations but also still requires some practise in waiting our turn or listening to others, something we will definitely keep practising throughout the school year.
We have thoroughly enjoyed our time together so far and we look forward to many more memories made throughout the year. Now without further ado, we wish you all a great half term!
Reception Seahorses Class
Reception Seahorses have been looking at the book 'Don’t hog the hedge,' having lots of fun designing and creating homes for the different characters, as well as acting out the story together. All of the children have been trying to make their own stories too, from a hedgehog being chased by a monster to a toad with indoor plumbing and a bath!
Seahorse class have been very artistic with the natural autumn box, making weird and wonderful creations using the different materials, and making their own scarecrows using the different shapes we have been learning about.
Jumping into phonics, the children have quite literally been jumping around, progressing onto finding different words by differentiating the initial sounds.
Year 1 Seals Class
Over the last 2 weeks we have been looking at a new book during English lessons with repeating phrases, the book has turned out to be yet another winner in the class! The book is called Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Bill Martin Jr, it has amazing pictures drawn by Eric Carle. Some children knew that this person also created the book The Hungry Caterpillar. Please take a look at our canvas page for the well loved song linked to the story. The children have completed many different fun activities related to the story, some have even begun making their own song to go with the book, some have made their own binoculars so they too can see all the different animals. This was very sweet to see! Great use of imaginations!
We have also been working REALLY hard on the formation of our letters and making our writing smaller and neater for reading. See the photo below for some childrens amazing learning!
Maths - we haven't stopped completing amazing games to support our class learning. The children have been working individually as well as in teams, which has been very interesting for Ms Karen and I to watch. The children had to make the given teen number using the resources provided but had to work together, listening to each other and following advice from each other. Seals Class has many leaders in the making…!
We have also been looking very closely at ´teen´numbers, trying to remember that when we write a teen number the 1 comes first… Keep practising at home Seals! Check the canvas page for the song we´ve been using during lessons.
Humanities - We have rounded up the terms of learning by making a very large 2D floor map of the surrounding area to our school. The children thoroughly enjoyed this activity and found even more exciting the fact that we made the school out of boxes and tubes, which made it stand out in 3D.
Please keep bringing recyclable boxes, tubes or tubs into school. We can always make good use of them all!
The children liked sharing their creations with the whole class before adding it to the large floor map and playing with it all.
These children filled in a cube net, each square was something from the surrounding area of the classroom or school and then they made it into a cube. Maths skills required!
PHSE - we like to do circle games during this time, building upon confidence, listening skills and interaction with others. The children enjoy a variety of games but here they can be seen enjoying the song; Isn't It Funny How a Bear Likes Honey….
I wish you all a safe and happy half term break next week. Look out for the Halloween photos in the next newsletter and enjoy some spooky fun at home!!!
Year 2 Turtles Class
Well it's nearly time for the holidays and the hard work has continued in Year 2 with some great progress being made in all areas of the curriculum. We have been looking at some strange numbers…… numbers you can´t add together or subtract…..what are they? Ordinal numbers of course - 1st, 2nd , 3rd and so on. We learnt all about ordering numbers and played some number games out on the playground to consolidate our learning.
We have now moved on to adding and subtracting 11, 12, 21, 22 with other 2 digit numbers. The children have made great progress and are becoming much faster with their mental calculations.
We have finished off the week with a range of Halloween stories in Literacy - we have even made our own version of Room on the Broom! All of the children wrote a verse for the book that fits in with the story and then drew a picture of themselves on the broom for the story ending when the witch has her fancy turbo broomstick!
In Art we have also been making witches cauldrons and writing a recipe for our special brew to make lots of money, a unicorn, superpowers and cloaks of invisibility!
We have just finished our humanities topic on Toys in the Past and have enjoyed learning about how toys have changed over the years, not only what children play with but also the materials they were made of. A lot of the children couldn't imagine a life without electrical toys and gadgets to play with!
Our science is continuing on our desert island and this week we have been looking at food and exercise. We have learnt about all of the different food groups and what we need to eat for a balanced diet. They all said they eat lots of fruit and vegetables every day and very few treats…I am sure this is true!
We have been very busy practising for our Assembly on Friday. As it is the last day of term and everyone will be dressed up for Halloween, there is only one thing we could talk about - Halloween of course and how it is celebrated in different countries. Happy Halloween and Happy Holidays!
Year 3 Dolphins Class
The children have been working hard in maths and have enjoyed trying to solve challenging problems individually or in small groups.
We made a Venn diagram using hoola hoops and metre sticks. The children then sorted 3D shapes according to their properties. For some children it was a great opportunity to learn some new mathematical vocabulary.
On Monday, the whole school celebrated PINK DAY. The children enjoyed creating signs for our bottle stall and designing their own t-shirts.
Thank you so much for all of your support and contributions which made it a great success.
No this is not a Halloween craft! We have been learning about how we would find it impossible to move around if we did not have bones, muscles and joints. We have also been examining how some of our bones are arranged so that you can bend or rotate parts of your body. We have been able to name some of the bones that make up the human skeleton.
It has been our final week studying the traditional African tale-The Papaya That Spoke. We will end the half term by writing our own independent recount of the story using all the techniques and strategies that we have been taught over previous weeks.
We have been focusing on Africa, the second largest continent, and have been making our own African style necklaces by recreating bold patterns. We will continue to decorate them during our lesson this week.
Year 4 Jellyfish Class
We are still walking like Egyptians in Year 4, and this last week we were writing like Egyptians too as we turned our collective attention to the intricate art of hieroglyphics and cartouches! The children had great fun writing messages to each other in this pictorial form and also learning about the famous Rosetta Stone. We have moved on to learning about all the gods and goddesses now and after half term we will continue with this in preparation for not Britian´s Got Talent but Ancient Egypt´s Got Talent. The children have begun researching which god they will put before the judges. Will it be Ra - the God of sun, Horus- the God of the sky or maybe Anubis will pip them all to the winning post with his powers of embalming? With over 2000 gods to choose from this could be a very varied talent show indeed! Watch this space!
Tell me how? ? In English the children have been busy learning about instructional and explanation texts, the how, the why and the what on how to do something. How to make crayons-it´s a piece of cake! We have looked at examples of both and have done many activities to help us remember the features of each. The children painted a watercolour painting called Reflections on Water solely by reading the instructions given to them on a page. They also watched the very talented Tony Ross, illustrator of Horrid Henry at work as he sketched the famous children's character. They are busy working on their own explanations. The aim will be that Year 4 will write their own by the end of the week incorporating all the important features such as clear titles, background, subheading, correct order, glossaries etc.
In Maths the children have completed their half term assessments by now. They have been busy doubling and halving three digit numbers, revising fractions using obligatory pizza slices- yummy! and reducing fractions to their simplest form. We have been assigned lots of cool games on Active Learn to help us practise these new skills. We have also gained 480 energy points on the Khan Academy quiz to revise place value! Well done young mathematicians - you are learning all the time!
Pink Day was a very busy event filled with goodwill, fun and games. The children in Year 4 along with Ms. Jacqui prepared the Pink Pong Stall and Ms. Jacqui´s side shuffle of face painting was a real hit too. I think she is still out there with her pots of glitter and a long long queue of punters waiting to be adorned with flowers and stars! It is a wonderful cause and a great way for children to learn about the act of giving.
In Science children have been carrying out some EGG- cellent or should I say excellent experiments. Learning how to perform a fair test is an important part of science enquiry and as the topic of human nutrition continues in both classes we are seeing lots of hands-on and practical skills being applied each week. Last week was tooth decay time and the students have been busily observing the eggshells in the cups which are submerged in different liquids to see which is creating the most decay.
Problem: Arguing in the line about who goes first ?
Solution: Play rock, paper scissors. The winner goes first. Simple. No conflict, no drama!
In PSHE we learned about conflict resolution. What can we do after falling out with someone. Even as adults this is a skill we need to keep revisiting. Often it is the small actions between friends/colleagues that can have the most impact. Saying sorry is a wonderful act of kindness. Year 4 got into role to act out various scenarios and each group had to come up with a resolution. We finished the session with a wonderful thought: Imagine a world where people never fell out with each other. John Lennon - Imagine (Lyrics)🎶 Take a moment to talk with your children about this important topic. Friends are so important in their young lives and these are lifelong social skills that need to be taught and honed for the rest of their lives.
Have a wonderful half term and see you soon for more learning and doing at BIC San Agustin.
Year 5 Whales Class
It has been another busy few weeks in the Whales Class. In Maths we have been learning about measures including measuring objects in cm and millimetres. We learnt how to convert different units of length including metres to kilometres and centimetres to millimetres.
In our Computer Science lessons we have continued learning about systems and looked more closely at internet search engines. We learnt that search engines use huge indexes so we had a go at creating an index for items in the classroom and then the children used each other's indexes to see if they could locate each item!
We also looked at how to narrow our search engine to limit the number of results. We learnt how to specify the search term and use speech marks around the words to reduce how many results appear!
In our Science lessons we have continued learning about life cycles. We did an investigation into the gestation periods of different mammals and then we created a line graph to show our findings concluding that the larger the size of the mammal, the longer the gestation period is!
In our French lessons (for non Catalan learners) we have been learning the names for different parts of the body. We played a fun game of ‘Guess the body part’ and also enjoyed singing ‘Tetes, epaules, genoux, pies’ or ‘Head, shoulders, knees and toes’ as you may know it!
Have a wonderful half term break and I will see you all in November.
Year 6 Sharks Class
Year 6 has had a busy fortnight. Firstly, they completed two end of half-term assessments and worked hard to gain the maximum amount of marks possible. In their English assessment, it is good to see that every single pupil understands and can use paragraphs. Also, in maths, everyone did well and where they made errors, they are learning to correct them for their homework.
In humanities, we continued to look at the legendary Trojan Wars and the link between the events and culture of this myth/legend and the Mycaeneans. Having read a much shortened version of Homer's epic tale, the pupils continued to storyboard the main events with some spectacular examples being produced.
In science, we are still examining the human body and learning to draw clear diagrams that can be used to show how different parts of the body function. Last week we looked at how the biceps and triceps work together to help us lift our lower arm and then started our diagrams. First, the pupils learned to position their diagram so that it not only fits the page, but so that they can also add explanatory labels. Next, they broke the image down into shapes that are easier to draw and built on these to produce some exemplary diagrams.
Finally, some of the Year 6 pupils not only assisted the staff in raising money for Pink Day, but many of them ran their own stall selling their own homemade jewellery.
Sports department with Mrs Izabela
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 sports 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 loudly.
It’s been an unforgettable evening for our BIC students!
Looking forward to next year with an even bigger number of our sportive pupils!
Spanish and Catalan with Miss Maria
¡Hola a todos!
Esta semana con los alumnos/as de español beginners 3&4 hemos seguido trabajando sobre los ADJETIVOS. Para poner en práctica todo lo aprendido, hemos empezado a escribir unas fantásticas descripciones en las que cada uno describe a su compañero/a. Guiándonos por la foto y las características físicas de nuestros amiguitos/as contamos todo lo que sabemos sobre ellos/as, desde su color de ojos hasta su actividad favorita. ¡Qué proyecto tan divertido!
Spanish and Catalan with Miss Ainhoa
¡Otra semana más aprendiendo cosas nuevas! Esta vez hablaremos de nuestras clases de Catalán, pues la clase de Y5 ha estado trabajando en un proyecto sobre una de las zonas más extensas e importantes de las Islas Baleares: “El parc natural de s’Albufera de Mallorca”.
Los alumnos, por grupos, estuvieron buscando información sobre su formación geológica, la ocupación humana, la flora, la fauna e información extra. Cada grupo se organizó de tal manera que cada uno de los integrantes tenía una función dentro de éste. Así, pudieron trabajar en equipo y hacer un gran trabajo.
Por otro lado, añadiré algunas de las imágenes sobre la semana de preparación para “El día de las vírgenes” de nuestra clase de español con Y3&4.
Spanish and Catalan with Miss Marina
¡Hola a todos! Esta vez seguimos con la clase de Spanish Year 5&6. Hace dos semanas os contamos que estábamos trabajando el vocabulario de la ropa y las descripciones físicas de las personas. ¡Ya somos unos expertos! Ahora hemos empezado a conjugar los verbos (SER, TENER y LLEVAR) y hemos creado nuestras tarjetas de colores para poder trabajar las actividades. ¡Cómo nos esforzamos!
Día de las Vírgenes
Wear it Pink Day!
