WelcomeLiving As we share the final newsletter of January it is hard to believe how quickly the year is moving forward already. In only 3 more weeks we will be enjoying the Carnival break which will be another festival where tradition will need to be amended and adapted to suit our current circumstances. Our counselling article last week was about dealing with disappointment – a really important lesson for us all to learn and I am not sure it gets any easier with age although we may have more strategies to apply. Learning To be honest, despite working from home for such an extended period, there is very little to disappoint as a member of staff at BSQ. Since March 2019 we have seen extraordinary efforts from staff, students and parents alike to adapt and succeed in what may have seemed like impossible circumstances. Mr. Moors wrote in his newsletter last week about the ‘soft skills’ necessary to flourish at school, at university and in the world of work and we have certainly seen a development of resilience, creativity, technology awareness and use, determination, flexibility and support for others – amongst so much else. As learners and educators, we are always looking for the positives and our school approach to ‘positive framing’ has helped us to create an environment where we can continue to guide and support our students to keep learning. 4 of the Positive Framing mantras that work just as well at home:
Inside Out On February 3rd - the UK national mental health day - students will be having an Inside Out day, focusing on mental health. Students will be asked to wear a piece of clothing inside out to represent that feelings on the inside don't always match up with the outside and vice versa. Parent Survey 2020-2021 This is a kind reminder for families who have not filled out our Parent Survey 2020-2021, please find below link to complete it, it will available until this Friday January 29th: https://orbitaled.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8cx7DiurgTh2ULj?SchoolID=BQ Your feedback is valuable to us so please do get involved. e-Learning at BSQ From the Staff and the Students Continuing with our teachers and their stories about e-learning this new period. This week we have Ms. Fernanda Espinosa, Y10 students, Mrs. Patricia Tufiño and Ms. Natalie Sawyers from Secondary and Ms. Hayley Dean and Mr. Edwards, Mr. Oliver Kyle and Ms. Antonella Coronel from Primary. The Capacity to Rebuild and Grow from Adversity The current situation has made us think about the meaning of resilience and how we apply it in our life. Price-Mitchell (2015) says that resilience is not a genetic trait, but it is derived from the ways that we learn to think and act when faced with different types of obstacles. In our community we have seen great examples of resilience in our students, teachers and parents. Being resilient gives us the ability to overcome issues, bounce back from any setbacks and have the best chance of succeeding. It allows us to learn and grow in all situations. Resilience will also help us to approach new situations, people and experiences with confidence and a positive mindset. The road to resilience starts with children's supportive relationships with parents, teachers, and other members of the family. We as teachers, facilitate resilience by helping children think about and consider various paths through adversity and considering different options to an easy way to success. That’s why we want to share Price-Mitchell’s “Five Ways to Cultivate Resilience”. 1. Promote self-reflection through literary essays or small-group discussions. 2. Encourage reflection through personal essays. 3. Help children (and their parents) learn from student failures. 4. Bring discussions about human resilience into the classroom. 5. Build supportive relationships with students. Price-Mitchell, M. (May 20, 2015). Does Your Classroom Cultivate Student Resilience? Edutopia. https://www.edutopia.org/blog/8-pathways-cultivate-student-resilience-marilyn-price-mitchell#:~:text=Children%20who%20develop%20resilience%20are%20better%20able%20to%20face%20disappointment,challenges%20of%20school%20and%20life. Ms. Fernanda Espinosa – Secondary Teacher, Y10 Tutor First Look to the IGCSE (Perspective of Year 10) These weeks after coming back from the extensive and necessary Christmas break, Year 10 students have been working arduously. The first week our classes were focused on creating study material and our teachers held beneficial revision lessons facilitating our introduction to the IGCSE papers and questions. This and the past week we have been doing our quimester exams, which are crucial to us as they are our first mock IGCSE exams, our first opportunity to be tested on the knowledge needed for this program. Nevertheless, as a team we have persevered and been determined to do our best in each exam and with the help of our teachers and our dedicated tutors, who are always taking care of our mental health we have achieved to have our exams. Therefore, online learning has brought a different perspective to the IGCSE course and the exams. Exams are now done through exam.net; a platform that stops the students from visiting other websites for assistance! However, there still are a lot of ways that students could get help and that is why teachers try their best to inculcate the BSQ values to the year 10 students. This, along with IGCSE mock exam help understand the atmosphere present in a real IGCSE. It is very clear that teachers are always doing their best and we students are looking forward to successfully finishing exams on Friday to continue with our regular learning. By: Barbara and Ana Paula – Y10 Students Mrs. Patricia Tufiño – Secondary Spanish Teacher Year 9 students in Spanish lessons are studying the subject of literary figures to know the resources that writers use at the time of writing. Ma. Victoria and Amyra, for example, made her flashcards to facilitate her study, in this way she develops study skills. Ms. Natalie Sawyers – Secondary Humanities Teacher For the past few weeks, Year 9 have spent Friday afternoons discussing abortion. We have looked at biological information, religious and personal viewpoints. We have discussed both sides of the argument; pro-choice and pro-life and many thoughts in between. We had open discussions where the class share their thoughts, opinions and ideas, asking questions and considered all angles of the argument. The class were fantastic and respectful of the ideas of others and considered opinions other to their own. They considered why different people would have different opinions based on different factors and why people may change what they think based on different circumstances. For our final lesson on this, I split the class in half and the students were asked to create a poster on their given ‘side’ of the argument Pro-life or Pro-choice. Sponsorship challenge Firstly, another massive thank you to everyone who donated and participated in this year’s whole school sponsored challenge to raise money for Hogar Para Sus Niños. Thanks to everyone who filled in the Primary and Secondary google forms we can announce that BSQ raised an incredible amount of: $1415.60 A huge thank you to everyone who participated and helped change the lives of some of Quito’s most vulnerable children. Miss Dean and Mr Edwards. Mr. Oliver Kyle – Year 6 Teacher A warm HOLA! from year 6. We hope this update from the top of the Primary school finds you all well. ‘What have Year 6 been up to?’ we hear you cry. Well, dear reader, persist with your efforts and all will be revealed: Literacy – Autobiography In Literacy, we have been reading various autobiographies and studying a features checklist against each text. The children wrote an autobiography about their first day of school, at the start of this term and we are just about to look back at that piece of writing and decide – with our 3 weeks’ worth of learning – how to make it better. Try not to look at the list here and ask yourself this question – What needs to be included in an upper Key Stage 2 autobiography? If this were in class, I would put the timer on for 2 minutes, but I’ll leave that up to you. Have a look at our check list (Credit: Mr Newman from last year) and see what we are including. Throughout this term we have also been getting to grips with complex sentences with subordinating conjunctions, such as the example below: It was her childhood she thought of, before her time as a scientist in the Amazon, and the memories made her cry. Child and Parent Challenge: Choose one of the subordinating conjunctions – After, When, Although, Since – and attempt to create an MC, SC, MC sentence. MC – Main Clause, SC – Subordinating Clause. Answers to [email protected] house points to be won! Art – Betriz Milhazes I love art and could not imagine life without it and I think the children are with me. We are studying the medium of Collage this term and have been taking inspiration from the work of Brazil’s Beatriz Milhazes – cast your eyes to the right. Beatriz is one the key expressionist artists alive today and I urge you to search out her work. We will be using our lessons to eventually produce our own collage based upon modern songs to do with female empowerment – linking to our Topic work on Women’s Rights. Milhazes inspired art is due to be finished this week but our final pieces won’t be ready until half term. Should you wish to see any of them, please do get in touch, I know the children would be happy to display their artwork. Ms. Antonella Coronel – Head of EYFS Over the course of the last few weeks, the Early Years teachers have been working on specific ways to improve on the online learning provision that is already in place. With this in mind, I am delighted to share with you the great news that Little Kickers will begin live teaching sessions through our main online platform, Canvas, very soon. Each class teacher will share specific information with you regarding time and day. As always, we will share the corresponding materials needed for each session a week prior through the weekly planning document. At this time, teachers are completing written reports. These individual documents are a reflection of your child’s progress and attainment over the course of Partial 2/ Quimestre 2 through the teacher’s observations. Next steps will also be shared on the reports to support future progress. Finally, I would like to say thank you for the fantastic support given to the children at home and also share how amazed we are of the students' work and their motivation towards learning. Dates for your Diary
Emma Newman Principal Being BSQ – Primary Update As I visit a variety of different conferences throughout the week, the one thing that really resonates with me is our students’ ability to adapt to this new way of learning and engage in a variety of ways with their teachers and peers that would not have been imaginable this time last year. Although this period of online learning has seen many changes in the way we interact as a community, we have continued to support each other, discovered new ways to communicate with each other and retained our collective love for learning. However, it is still important to focus on ways that we can support our students to achieve the very best they can, through ensuring that they feel safe, secure and ready to learn. Please do take a little time to revisit the points below and make any small adjustments to your daily routines that you feel necessary. More advice to follow next week.
We look forward to another great week of learning opportunities, sharing feedback with the students and supporting them in the very best way that we can – please do let us know if there is anything we can do to help in any way. Marcus Madden Head of Primary Being BSQ – Secondary Update There is feedback everywhere – what is important is what we do with it? I am so impressed with our students who are following exam subjects in key stage 4 and 5. We are now emerging from the grueling task of exams that they have all been tackling for the last two weeks. It has been an enormous challenge for them as they have had to endure this online using new tools and the need to follow complex plans and expectations. I have been involved with the process of invigilation on occasions and I have been enormously impressed with their diligence and ability to not only respond to their exams well, but also do this with absolutely no issues at all. Well done all. It is time now to move our focus to what we will do with this information on each students’ academic position within their subject syllabus. Staff are very busy marking papers and starting to consider ideas about intervention, action plans and how this is shared not only with them, but you as their parents as well. As I reported last week that parents of year 11 and 13 will be invited to attend an additional parent teacher conference on the 9th February 2021. It is super important that you engage in this process and also gain an understanding on how your son or daughter has fared in their exam. The teachers are now preparing for this really important process. We will also be considering exam entries for IB and IGCSE, and also considering where we may need to make changes between core and extended IGCSE subjects or standard or higher level IB exams. Students in years 10 and 12 will have their exam grade included in the report this time. The report which reflects performance in Partial 2 and Quimestre 1 Students in year’s 7-9 will have a teacher assessed grade that will be presented in place of the exam grade. Also in the report you will receive written comments and a target for each subject. This is really important information and I appeal to you all to look at these closely with your children so that you have a very clear understanding of their performance, skill development and their approach to their own learning. On the subject of progress and how we monitor this in core subjects, being English, Mathematics and Science, children in years 7-10 have also been doing online progress tests that we use internally. Over recent years the trend in learning attainment has been steadily rising in all areas. This reflects the hard work BSQ has done to ensure sound teaching pedagogy and standards. These tests outcomes will be analysed again to see what we need to do to develop the curriculum in these subjects to secure the ongoing upward trend into the future. All students this week are being interviewed by their tutors to assess their individual wellbeing. This is an important initiative from the Ministry of Education that is now considering the overall impact of online learning. The interview is framed around a set of questions written by the MoE and the data gained from these will be collected for a local and wider view. I have written extensively about the benefits gained from the online learning process, but inevitably some are finding this extremely hard indeed. We are acutely aware of the challenges that online learning poses, and of course, the children who are in need of support and guidance at this difficult time. We work hard to mitigate this with high quality and well informed intervention. I am pleased that the policy makers and overall governance of education in Ecuador are looking at this closely. It is an extremely important area. On a similar note, before Christmas, all students were involved in a survey called PASS. It is an all-age survey for pupils aged 4 – 18+ years that helps us understand our student’s mindsets at school, and if they are confident, ready and motivated to learn. The results and themes were taken to student focus groups so that the Middle Leaders can gain a greater insight on the thoughts and views of our children. Ms. Sadotra and I are almost there with the evidence gathering of this and next week we will set some key actions to address the areas where students feel that things are not quite right. Of course, as this becomes clearer and after this has been shared with staff I will write to inform you of some of the things we are considering. Once again I am extremely impressed with the level of importance that BSQ holds with our ongoing approach to seeking and valuing the views of our student body. Finally, do look out for the ‘Inside Out’ day as students will be encouraged to wear an item of clothing inside out. It is an event during Children’s Mental Health Week which is an awareness campaign that aims to enable young people to start talking about their mental health. How someone looks on the outside doesn’t necessarily reflect how they are truly feeling on the inside, so it is important to always be kind and think of others. The campaign asks people involved to turn their clothes inside out to get important conversations started. No one should be embarrassed about how they feel. Many schools across the world are urged to support Inside Out Day. It is hoped that this simple premise is easy to get involved in and it is also a meaningful way to engage pupils in discussions around emotional well-being. This is so critical at this time. If you want more information or advice do please visit this website: https://www.insideoutday.org.uk/ Have a great week everyone. Lee Moors Head of Secondary From the BSQ Counselling Team This week our school counsellor, Andrea Carrera, talks about Wabi-Sabi: Finding beauty in imperfection.
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