BIC Sa Porrassa Primary News January

Ms Alison Colwell, Principal

Dear families,

As you know, the quality of teaching and learning, and the happiness and wellbeing of our students, are my top priorities. However, ensuring an excellent learning environment is also very important, and you will have seen that over the last couple of years we have put significant investment into the school and seen some excellent developments. The wonderful swimming pool was totally renovated, we now have outstanding science laboratories, the sports hall has been transformed as has the canteen, and next month we will be putting down a brand new specialist floor in the sports hall.

As we look to sunnier and warmer days in the hopefully not too distant future, our thoughts are turning to developing some of our outside space. The PTA, which has been so supportive and involved with many of our projects, is going to be transforming our blossoming vegetable patch into a whole garden, and we are also going to be creating an outside wellbeing and learning area behind the swimming pool. Lots of work to be done but both these projects will have a hugely positive impact on our students, always our aim. Please look out for communication from Paula and Matt and thank you in advance for any muscle power or specialist help you can give.

This is sad newsletter in one respect, as it is the final one put together by our wonderful Janine. As you know, Janine is our Marketing and Admissions Manager and she is moving on to a promotion in a different organisation. She will be missed greatly. She has been a fantastic member of the team over the last 4 years. She has brought incredible energy, enthusiasm and positivity, as well as of course her professional expertise and knowledge. In addition, her humour and sense of fun have brightened many a day, and we wish her great success and much happiness in her next exciting chapter.

Wishing you a great weekend,

Kind regards,

Alison Colwell

Principal

Baleares International College, Sa Porrassa

Ms. Elizabeth Compton, Head of Primary

Dear families,

Welcome back to our first newsletter of 2023, I hope you all had a restful and wonderful time over the holidays. We have started the year as we mean to go on with a clear focus on our ´potential´ and how our school values will guide us to reach the stars! Children have been working on their targets and aspirations for the upcoming term and reflecting on what good learning looks like in and outside of the classroom.

lessons that people of all ages can learn from them.

Ask your children which characters they relate to and why?

Piglet is optimistic and delights in the simple joys of life. Although he is small in size, he is full of gratitude. How can we foster a greater sense of being grateful today, for our food, friends, family, teachers and home? Despite his small size, he knows that, to fully experience life, he needs to get out there and live it. He is proactive - willing to take risks and have a go.

Reading continues to be a central focus area this term, so support this by please encouraging your children to read everyday, complete reading challenges and if you need further advice please contact your child's class teacher.

Next week our first parent workshop of the year ´Phonics for Reception, Year 1 and 2´ will run at 3pm. Please see the letter and notice board to attend. Further parent workshops will follow throughout the year on requested topics.

Wishing you a peaceful and proactive weekend,

Ms Elizabeth Compton

Head of Primary

Whole School House System news

House Points Totals Update - Term 2

House Points Totals Update 2022-23

A message from your Heads of House

Early Years news with Mrs Wardle

We have had a great start to the new term with lots of circle time to remind ourselves about what friendly and unfriendly behaviour looks like. Our class has a very good understanding of how they need to treat one another. Dear Zoo is our class story and in art we have been learning how to draw and paint elephants and tigers by listening and following some simple instructions. We are very impressed with the masterpieces in Reception class.

Year 1 news with Ms Bakes

After welcoming everyone back after what sounded like a lovely Christmas holiday, we got straight back into our fun, new topics. The children are excited about our Space science topic. They have been learning the names and order of the planets in the solar system and how they all orbit the sun. They all contributed to our classroom display, painting and collaging each planet.

In English the children have learnt what a newspaper is and what you might find in a newspaper. The children have been working hard to write their own newspaper report about the whale from our class book ‘The Snail and the Whale’. The whale has been spotted on a beach in Mallorca, and the children have been reporters by writing their own newspaper story all about it.

As you can see, we have been very busy so far in Year 1, as the children have really enjoyed diving back into their learning.

Year 2 News with Mrs West

Year 2 have enjoyed using drama lessons to explore friendships and they created role play scenarios to show the class how to play nicely together.

Year 3 News with Mr Fairless and Miss Xidakis

Year 3 have got off to an excellent start this term making New Year’s resolutions and thinking about our own unique potential. The children made some fabulous ‘Reaching for the stars’ artwork thinking of their goals.

During English the children have been getting very creative, immersing themselves in the world of secret agents and the video short, ‘Spy Fox’, as they begin our work about writing a sequel.

In science the children had great fun miming pushing and pulling actions for others to guess whilst we began learning about forces.

Starting our new humanities topic, ‘The Romans’, we all enjoyed sharing what we already know and what we would like to find out about the Romans.

In computing we thoroughly enjoyed working on the new laptops; we can now login correctly and are ready for the next lesson on databases.

Year 4 News with Mrs Alonso McGregor and Mrs Walsh

Year 4 returned refreshed and ready for a new term and were excited to celebrate two birthdays on the first day back. Delicious sweet treats were shared and we were all impressed with Alexandra´s basketball cake!

Both classes have spent time since returning to school looking at our school values and understanding what behaviours we need to show to reflect these. The children enjoyed role playing scenarios and created posters to show what each value ´looks like´in our school.

There was much excitement when the time finally came for the children to dig their tomatoes out of their salty beds to see if the mummification process that started last term had worked. Looking considerably different, the children were amazed to see that both the appearance and weight of the tomatoes had changed. We imagined what our skin would look like after 40 days in salt!

We have also started a new art unit of work based on pattern and the children kick started this by creating sensory pattern pictures. The children enjoyed ´feeling´ their pictures and likened them to Braille.

Year 4 children are enjoying a solid ten minutes of reading their own “free choice” books everyday at afternoon registration time. It has proved to be a really enjoyable and constructive way to start our afternoons.

Year 5 News with Ms Hodgson and Mrs Dixon

Year 5 have had a great start to the new term and the new year. The children have been exceptionally kind and have given a warm welcome to two new pupils, Heath and Isla. With a new year and new term, the children have been setting themselves new goals, whether they want to improve their language skills, their times tables knowledge or finally achieve a perfect dismount in gymnastics. They used their creative skills to decorate an outline of their arms to show that they are all reaching for the stars!

Year 5 are delighted by their new humanities topic called Around the World and have been keen to share their previous knowledge and travel experience. This week they have been looking in more detail at the features of the world including the major lines of latitude and longitude.

In addition, we have started our new science topic, Materials and their properties, and what better way to start it than with an experiment! Year 5 were looking into the importance of knowing the properties of materials so that they would know which materials to use for different purposes. You wouldn't want an umbrella made of paper I'm sure! This week the children have carefully conducted an experiment to investigate which materials would make the best insulators. They were surprised at their findings!

Year 6 News with Mr Darlow and Mrs Von Waberer

Year 6 have made a wonderful start to the new year. We’ve spent some valuable time talking about student behaviour and expectations as well going over the importance of our school values. We’ve designed awesome hands to show our goals for this term and for the new year ahead.

In maths, we’ve been recapping all of our learning from last term in a fun treasure hunt around the school. It got quite competitive! We now look forward to moving onto everybody’s favourite unit: fractions.

Performing Arts department news - BIC Rocks You Musical

We are very excited about our upcoming production ´BIC Rocks You´, which is coming up very soon. Peguera auditorium has been booked for our performance, and all students taking part cannot wait to share with you all what they have been working so hard on. You can book your tickets now, by filling in our booking form which you can find here. Tickets are €12, and you can pay for them by transferring into the school account.

We have started this term´s performing arts classes with a mix of dance, drama games, music and devising short plays. Here are some stills from Year 2´s excellent short films around the theme of kindness and solving conflict in school. A special mention to Charlotte Koenig, 4W, for creating an excellent script also around the theme of consideration for others.

Languages department news

Year 4 students have worked on creating a time capsule in Spanish.

They wrote remarkable letters to their future selves and recorded important things about themselves (pets, hobbies, favourite singers, etc).

Then, students decorated the time capsules and filled them with precious items such as lovely pictures and objects that were special to them like their favourite sweets or toys.

After sharing with the class their stories, we will now hold on to these letters until we can look back on them in Year 13!