BIC Sant Agustí News (03/11/22)

A message from Janice Short, Principal

Dear parents

As you know we are affiliated to NABSS and COBIS, two independent organisations of which we are proud to belong to and I would like to give a little more background information so you are aware of the important role these associations play. Both these organisations ensure our standards are high, but also offer support and guidance where and when necessary.

NABSS is the National Association of British Schools in Spain, which was founded in 1978 and has 80 member schools which educate over 45000 children. All NABSS member schools are fully authorised and recognised by the education authorities in Spain as foreign schools teaching the British education system. The British Council in Spain certifies these schools which need to have successfully passed inspections which ensure the schools meet British educational standards.

One of the main purposes of NABSS is to represent the interests of the schools, such as the challenges of Brexit as well as encouraging collaboration between the schools. Professional development is also undertaken by staff to ensure we are kept up to date with recent developments in the UK.

I have recently spent some of the half term holiday at the NABSS conference in Madrid, which is a wonderful opportunity to meet with other Principals, Heads and teachers from all over Spain, including Mallorca, to discuss professional development of many interests including safeguarding, legal developments and how we can help children understand their world as well as opportunities to share ideas with other school leaders.

COBIS is the Council of British International Schools which is an organisation which helps its member schools to promote a British style of education in the country the school is in. COBIS ensures its schools offer a high standard of teaching and learning and a safe, secure environment through its strong culture of safeguarding. As COBIS schools can be found all over the world, BIC Sant Agusti is also part of a global school community. Some of our children have entered the COBIS competitions in Art and Poetry for example, competing against children in many different countries. Teaching staff are offered professional development through COBIS to ensure our teachers have recent and appropriate training. This link gives further information for parents if you would like to find out more.

https://www.cobis.org.uk/about-us/what-is-cobis/advice-for-parents

I would also like to say a huge thank you for your contributions to our collection for Ukraine; it is really appreciated. Our thoughts are with everyone who is being affected during these difficult times.

I hope you have a lovely weekend, stay safe

Warm regards

Mrs Short

Principal

Baleares International College, Sant Agustí

Dates to remember!

Nursery Starfish Class

And just like that another couple of weeks have flown by!

In Starfish class we have spent the past two weeks learning about Super animals and we have now finished our topic SUPERHEROES! We took a neighbourhood walk to go on a pet hunt. Believe it or not, we really had to look around every single corner of each street to find the pets of San Agustin, they were nowhere to be found! Then, on our way back, we finally bumped into one and it was possibly the most excitable dog in the whole area, her name was Chelsey! During this small excursion, the Starfish class children were amazing at following directions and they did a fabulous job listening to safety instructions given to them by their teachers, well done! Our next neighbourhood walk is already planned and we are looking forward to this!

Inside the classroom we are busy with our many varied activities. The children are getting more skilled working with different stations, choosing which activity to do first and gaining independence. Some favourites are the cutting and sticking station, the construction area, flour letter and number tracing, free painting and playing table games such as memory. It is always our favourite part of the day when we set up the classroom with different stations as our classroom then truly becomes a beehive of activity. Each child is equally busy, happy and engaged.

On Friday our Spanish team organised Baleares day, a public holiday that celebrates the independence of the Balearic islands. It is a lot of fun to focus on a public holiday that specifically celebrates the place we all live and the children have thoroughly enjoyed listening to the Conta Contes, which means Storytelling in Mallorquin. Thank you for organising this wonderful day for us!

We have now started on our new topic: Transport and we are excited to share Starfish news again with you again in two weeks time!

Reception Seahorses Class

Welcome to the second part of our Spring term! It seems like a long time ago when we went on holiday but here we are again ready for more fun and exciting activities. The children were really happy to be back to school and to meet again with their friends and teachers.

In Seahorse class we have continued with our ‘Superheroes’ topic. The children are fully enjoying it and they are understanding some important ideas from it. Proof of this is the group discussion we had about ‘What makes you a superhero?’and ‘What is your superpower?’. They had lots of good ideas and most of the answers were related to helping others and being kind.

Just before we had our holiday the children also participated in a couple of events that we would like to share with you. On Tuesday, 22nd February, we celebrated “Twos’ Day-Tuesday”. It was quite a unique day as it was 22/2/22 so we decided to have lots of fun doing all sorts of activities related to number two. In Maths, we learned how to count in 2’s for the first time, we played games, we made our own hat and we even celebrated a party for number 2, including dancing and singing ‘Happy birthday, number 2’. What a crazy and fun day we had!

On the last day before our break the school held a big event to celebrate ‘Baleares Day’. All the children were wearing the Mallorca flag colours and we participated in different activities that helped us understand a little bit more about our island culture and traditions. We decorated stones inspired by “siurells” and we had a fantastic “contacontes” show (storytelling). It was a great ending for a super first part of spring term.

Year 1 Seals Class

What an exciting start to the second part of the Spring Term. All the children came back to school excited and with so much to say about their week off. They took it in turns to speak about their trips away, visits to extended families, and days out with families here in Mallorca.

English - This week the children have been recapping the learning about adjectives and how to use them correctly in a sentence and within context. Working in pairs, the children got to use words that best describe their friend. They placed the adjectives around a photo of the friend before standing on a chair to read and share the words to them. It was lovely to hear so many wonderful words being used to describe each other!

Maths - We have created a HUGE buzz in the classroom for Maths this week. Miss Charlotte has been working extra hard at organising fun, mind boggling maths activities ready for this Friday's Maths Day and we have been her happy guinea pigs! After last term's super hard mental maths of addition and subtraction, Seals have now moved on to the world of multiplication…..WOWZERS!

Just after 3 days back, we have discovered that this ties in nicely with our main focus of ODD and EVEN numbers, fractions and counting in 2´s, 5´s and 10´s. The children have been very creative with numbers and made a display for the classroom to help support their learning of these areas.

Humanities and Art - Again these subjects go nicely together this term. The focus topic being for humanities is Our Gardens. So we will be looking closely at growth, plants, environmental issues etc here in Mallorca and linking it with the focus of Nature and Our Natural World during Art sessions. The children have already designed and created their own plant pots from newspaper and glue paste. They will use these pots to plant seeds, care for them and nurture them to grow!

Science - We are going to extend our knowledge about Materials and begin to complete many experiments this term to support what we've learnt so far.

The children started the session by making their own magnifying glasses and going on a journey around the school and grounds to see what materials they could find. This activity encouraged language and vocab related to materials, ROUGH, SMOOTH, WATERPROOF, STRETCHY, SHINY, HARD…

We will keep you posted on the updates and further exciting activities that will be carried out over the next few weeks. FUN TIMES AHEAD!

Year 2 Turtles Class

We had a very busy end to last term with Baleares Day and also our 100th Day in school. The class enjoyed celebrating being 100 days smarter by completing lots of activities linked to 100. We counted to 100 hundred whilst completing different exercises……we couldn't quite manage 100 push ups but managed star jumps and running steps!!

We are settled back into our routines again this term and working hard in all areas. In maths we have started work on fractions - finding halves, quarters and thirds of a number. The children enjoy sharing their number work with each other and making sure all quarters are equal - watch out at home when you are cutting that pizza or cake up as they will be making sure all parts are equal!

In Literacy at the moment we are working on diary entries. Our focus at the moment is on ´Diary of a Wombat ´´ by Jackie French, which is a very funny story about one particular wombat and his actions during a week. We have learnt some interesting facts along the way about wombats - did you know they have extra thick skin on their rear ends so that if they are under threat they block their entrance to their burrow to keep their young safe? Ask your child what other interesting facts they have learnt.

We are always working on our phonics in class and this week we enjoyed all of the phonics activities that were prepared for the Phonics workshop, lots of fun ways to embed our learning.

The children worked hard on their presentations in Humanities on Famous Spanish People - we learnt lots of interesting facts about a range of personalities - artists, actors, singers and sports personalities. The children spoke confidently and answered questions from the audience. We will be continuing with our Spain topic and start looking at the history and culture of the mainland.

In Science, we are continuing to look at seeds, seed dispersal and growth. Our seeds are growing well in class and we are keeping a seed diary of their development. Our next topic to investigate will be life cycles and food chains.

Year 3 Dolphins Class

What a wonderful start we have made to a new term! The children have settled back into school routines and have been working hard in class.

Maths

We have been reviewing telling the time in the written, analogue and digital formats. We have also been marking numbers on number lines and rounding any given number to the nearest 10 or 100.

English

This week , we have been identifying prefixes, root words and suffixes and exploring how by adding a prefix or suffix we can change the meaning of the original word. The children thoroughly enjoyed the matching game below. For example, we can change the root word visit by adding the prefix re- and the suffix- ed to make the word revisited.

Humanities

We were thrilled with the quality and creativity that the children demonstrated when making their Stone Age houses. We have been studying the different types of housing throughout the different stages of this period. I am sure that you will agree the children did an amazing job and were able to discuss the type of house they had chosen and why they chose certain materials to build their models.

We also have been learning about Stone Age jewellery and what was used by the hunter-gathers. We used salt dough to make our own necklaces.

Year 4 Jellyfish Class

We hope you all had a wonderful half-term break. Year 4 came back to school rested, relaxed, and eager to move forward with their learning. On the last day before the half term, the Spanish team organised a whole school celebration day for ‘Baleares Day’. All children were invited to wear Mallorca flag colours or traditional Mallorcan outfits and we all happily participated in different activities that helped us understand a little bit more about our amazing island’s culture and traditions. We decorated stones inspired by ‘siurells’ and made windmills inspired by the local ‘molins de vent’. There was a one man storytelling performance, a ‘contacontes’ show, which was enjoyed by all children, big and small!

We have been learning about writing non-chronological reports, with our focus being on wolves. We shared the story ‘Wolves in the Walls’, which we thought might be slightly terrifying, but was actually quite humorous! We used the chromebooks to research information about wolves and Mrs K-B was astonished and flabbergasted how many interesting facts we all found. (Did you notice two of our WOW words!?) We also made notes, using a mind map, from information sheets about wolves, ready for creating our own non-chronological report all about wolves. As we were learning about wolves we noticed the plural pattern; if a singular word ends with the ‘f’ sound then when it becomes a plural we need to remember the rule to change the ‘f’ to ‘v’ and add ‘es’. We also took the opportunity to revise the other plural rules and looked at irregular plurals!

In maths we investigated shapes just before the half term break. We revised many different 2-D shapes and explored the different names for triangles by learning about their properties, including the angles. We used ‘right angle’ finders to search the classroom for right angles and learnt about acute and obtuse angles. This week we have been building up to Maths Day, Miss Charlotte has been a maths megastar and we have a whole morning devoted to maths madness.

We conducted a ‘lemon battery’ experiment, however our lemons were lemons (!) and we could not get our bulb to light. We did though learn valuable experience about conducting experiments and problem solving when our hypothesis is not proven. We have finished our electrical circuits science unit by building a ‘buzzing personality game’. To play the game you need to make sure you don’t complete the circuit as this sets off the buzzer! It is a lot harder than it looks!

In art we took a different perspective! We learnt about Michelangelo and had a go at drawing our own home while lying on the floor and drawing ‘on the ceiling’ (the underside of our desks!). The results were amazing, although we all agreed that we were only under our desks for minutes at a time while Michelangelo spent FOUR years painting the Sistine Chapel. We have also started to look at the technique ‘pointillism’ by exploring pixel colouring and then looking at the big picture and the small detail during the same session. We are getting excited about our Year 4 art trip to the Modern Art Museum in Palma, we will also be having an observational art lesson and a picnic lunch while we are out and about.

Year 5 Whales Class

It has been another busy few weeks for the Whales and the children are working super hard as always! As part of our Humanities topic, we are now learning about mountains and the children used atlases to locate mountain ranges in Europe.

We then used the internet to find out facts about some of the most well known mountains in the world and created mini factfiles in our books.

In ICT we have continued developing our word processing skills. Now they have learnt how to change the font and add and alter images, the children have looked at how to format their work including inserting tables and columns!

Our Science topic on changes and properties of materials is now in full swing and the class have really enjoyed the different investigations and experiments we have done. First we looked at which material would make the best thermal insulator by covering a plastic box (with ice cubes inside) with different materials. After 5 minute intervals, we checked the boxes and measured the water which had melted to see which material kept the ice cube coolest.

Next it was time to investigate electrical conductors so we devised a simple circuit which the children could add different materials into. When the light bulb lit up, we knew the material was a conductor!

Next it was time to investigate electrical conductors so we devised a simple circuit which the children could add different materials into. When the light bulb lit up, we knew the material was a conductor!

Before the half term break, we celebrated Baleares Day! The class looked fantastic in their yellow and red outfits and enjoyed learning about molins de vent and had a go at creating their own using different materials.

Year 6 Sharks Class

At the end of last term, Year Six had some inventive solutions on how to construct a model windmill using a cardboard tube and a plastic bottle.

In art, they also completed their landscape masterpieces!

We also finished the half term with some well-earned house point awards.

This half term, we have started to look at persuasive writing with the aim that Year Six can persuade Mr. Hodson to slightly extend one of their break times. Their ultimate success or failure will depend on how well they use the techniques we are discussing in class.

In Geography, we have started our project looking into all aspects of Malawi´s physical and human geography. Year Six are keen to start their independent research and produce their projects on time.

In maths Year 6 have spent time looking at 2D shapes and their properties, calculating angles in shapes and then drawing angles.

Spanish and Catalan with Miss Ainhoa and Miss Maria

La semana anterior antes de vacaciones la terminamos ¡de una manera muy divertida! Celebramos el Día de las Baleares (1 de marzo) y conocimos algunas de las tradiciones de estas islas, así como algunas historias, los “Siurells”, los molinos de viento y las “fonas”.

Como ya sabéis, hicimos día de manualidades y juegos durante todo el día y tanto los alumnos como los profesores lo disfrutamos mucho. Además… tuvimos el placer de asistir a una interpretación sobre historias gracias a un invitado muy especial, Tomeu. ¡Fue realmente gracioso!

Sports with Miss Izabela

This half term, we have started to learn how to play a game of cricket.

Year 2 class have thoroughly enjoyed their session developing their confidence in rolling skills and improving underarm throwing technique.

Congratulations to all primary students for showing their interest and positivity during every single P.E lesson. Keep it up!