Welcome Welcome back from the excitement of the Fiestas de Quito weekend. Whilst the traditional festivities are over and many of us will start to look forward to Christmas celebrations now, here at BSQ we are going to be combining the two at our Christmas Bazaar on Saturday this week. The primary students have been busy in the classrooms making their usual products to sell and this year the focus is on sustainability and everything will be constructed from recycled materials – it is amazing what can be achieved with some creativity and hard work! All of the ideas from the primary classes can work at home too! For example: In the secondary school there will be a range of activities from traditional Fiestas de Quito games to stalls to raise money for our KS3 community projects. At this event we invite one parent from each family to join us and celebrate. More details below in the specific school sections. Why should you move here?! Following on from our last newsletter, in partnership with COBIS schools in Mexico City and the Bahamas, we wanted to share our stories of living and learning with children from very different places and with very different experiences. Here is another example of one of our students explaining ‘Why should you move here!?’ (to Ecuador) and another video from one student in Mexico - look out for more in the coming weeks.
BSL This week four of our Y6 students will be demonstrating two new signs: celebrate and Ecuador, using BSL. Please watch this brilliant video: Ms. Hayley Dean, KS2 Lead Dates for your Diary As always please check this section carefully and ensure that you have all the details in your calendars.
Emma Newman Principal Being BSQ – Primary UpdateAs we start this short week of learning, we are all looking forward to welcoming the students and one of their family members to the BSQ Campus for our Christmas Bazaar on Saturday 11th December. This is an opportunity for the students to demonstrate their creative and artistic skills by making a variety of Christmas objects using recycled and reused materials. The Christmas Bazaar will be between 10am and 1pm and all students are invited to come with one of their family members – this allows us to comply with the Ministry guidelines for capacity on the campus but also gives us an opportunity to connect as a community again. Please do come in your favourite Christmas clothes, bring a small snack and refillable water bottles to enjoy during the musical entertainment and lots of small change so you can buy lots of interesting things to take home. This event will support the following three charities: Operation Smile, Beyond Lagartococha and Fundación Ammen. Students are also being encouraged to bring in unwanted toys and clothes to donate to these charities. Please also be aware of the Student Support Workshop on Tuesday 7th December at 9:30am on the Parent Portal with the title “Preventing Parental Burnout”. Marcus Madden Head of Primary Year 3B Year 3B have had a busy week in school and online. We have been preparing some wonderful crafts to demonstrate our knowledge of the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah. The class got crafty with some origami dreidels which are played with as a way to study the Torah and learn the Hebrew alphabet. We made some playdough doughnuts and latkes, traditional potato cakes which are eaten during the Festival of Hanukkah. One group made a Menorah which is central to the celebration as it represents the last oil found after the war between the Greeks and the Maccabees. Our crafty class learnt a lot about the history and meaning behind the main symbols of Hanukkah and most important of all, we worked as a team. We were lucky enough to have a visit from a seismologist expert, Liz. We all got dressed up for the part and made our way up to the library to have a conference with her about earthquakes. Liz told us all about why earthquakes happen, tectonic plates and the types of waves that earthquakes produce. We even got to carry out an earthquake demonstration using oreo cookies. Food happens to be the best way to demonstrate what the mantle and crust of the earth do! Yum Yum. Mrs. Dávila, Year 3B Teacher Being BSQ – Secondary Update Assessment and feedback, and a budding international star The end of term is fast approaching and it is pleasing to note that we look forward to another excellent event with the Christmas Bazaar. I am particularly excited by this as we are going to be welcoming some parents on site. Whilst each child can have one parent it does finally allow me to meet some of you. I really do look forward to this and ask that as you are wandering around please do introduce yourself and say hello. This week we have had a few incidents where students have not had things that they need at school. On occasions they do need us to help them be organised. Can I ask, especially with our younger students that you help them ensure that they have what they need for the next day. This is of course the obvious things such as books, PE kit and stationary, but also personal things like hats, water and personal hygiene items. Well done to year 13 who have started their Mock examinations. This is a tough time for them as I have mentioned before but this is especially the case with this cohort as they did not have the formal experience of year 11 exams. This is usually a good learning opportunity and prepares well for the rigor to come. I was there at the first exam and once settled it was clear that everyone was relaxed and had prepared well. I have been asking them all to gauge their motivation on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the most determined) over the last couple of weeks. They are all reporting increasing determination levels as time goes on. Once we have the results each teacher will put these onto a Mock report that is specially designed and targeted to give the student, teacher and parents clear needs going forward. There is another PTC event towards the end of January and the outcomes of this will be shared just before the event so that you have a clear agenda to follow. What I desire is that all parties go away with very clear objectives and areas of focus going forward. This week staff in Secondary have been considering how we feedback to students on their work and how they are assessing attainment and progress in subjects. In the recent round of learning observations data suggested that this area was something that was good, but it also allowed us an opportunity to refocus in this area now that we are back face-to-face. We have three consistencies in Secondary. Each child in each subject should have personal feedback on an assessed piece of work each fortnight. The feedback should be descriptive and linked to the learning objective avoiding simplistic evaluative ticks or scores and simple comments. The students should be given feedback and a task that allows them to improve their work through a low stakes activity to address missed learning. I am working with the team to develop systems to support this through line management and collegial approaches where staff share their work. I think that this will be an important development as students will gain more consistency in what they receive from each different teacher. Finally, this week I would like to share some news about our young Tennis star in year 8, Iganacio De Armas. He has been selected to travel to Miami in Florida to take part in 2 international tournaments. The first is the Little Mo Internationals from the 3rd-8th December, and the second is the Junior Orange Bowl, taking place from the 15th – 21st December, one of the most important junior tournaments in the world. We all wish him the very best of luck! He has also recently been in a photo shoot connected to his sponsorship with Marathon Sports. What an exciting time for this talented young man. EAL | SAL As part of the EAL/SAL department contribution in secondary, I am supporting English-speaking students in the Ecuadorian Social Sciences program. It is extremely satisfying to see the enthusiasm with which the students learn about our beautiful country and continent, our history and incredible geography, while developing investigative and reasoning skills. In both the EAL and SAL classes, this week we have been thinking about next holidays, celebrating Quito and preparing for Christmas that is just around the corner. Although we have seen vocabulary related to both festivities, we have also carried out more playful activities such as drawing and painting to decorate our "Quiteño Balcony". Mrs Ale Miranda Scharping. Have a wonderful week everyone.
Lee Moors Head of Secondary
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