WelcomeOnline and Home Learning. Hello everyone and welcome to our first newsletter as part of the time we are spending working from home. I am sure that the last few days have presented as many challenges for you as they have for us but the wonderful thing about BSQ is that we all rise to whatever those challenges may be, with determination and positivity such as I have not seen in other schools. I have been visiting many of the learning sessions online and have been excited to see that all our hard work in preparation for this eventuality has paid off. The teachers are delivering lessons, resources, support and guidance to our students as if they are still in the classroom with them. The students are working hard, and they are being supported by you to stay on track and enjoy activities at home. Thank you. Our counsellors have been sharing tips and advice with you all to help make home learning and wider home life a little easier at this time. Please do contact them if you need any further support. https://britishschoolquito.edu.ec/news Academic matters. This week schools in the UK will close and all GCSE and A level exams have been cancelled. At the moment, no decisions have been made about the International GCSE although Year 13 parents and students have now been informed that the IB exams for this summer will NOT take place. Alternative arrangements for awarding diplomas and certificates will be shared soon. We will keep you up to date with information and any decisions that we make regarding the best way forward for our students. In the meantime, students should keep working as hard as they have been so that all assignments and preparations are completed to a high standard. Positive stories. Even in the most challenging times we can find stories that are uplifting. This neighbour found a way to help others in her street. Supermarket chains across the country are also donating basic supplies and food for low-income people. People are also showing kindness to total strangers - something that we often forget to do in our normal busy lives. Amazingly there are also companies giving services and goods away for free as Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix and Google all announce changes to the way they support their users and their staff. Important Announcement. From Monday you will be able to access your very own Parent Portal on Canvas. Here I will post messages and announcements that will mean we can all keep up to date effectively with any changes. Look out for the email from Sandy. From the Staff and the Students Continuing with our teachers and their stories about learning in the classroom this period. This week Ms. Aditi Sadotra from Secondary and Mrs. Helen Dávila and Ms. Coronel from Primary. Ms. Aditi Sadotra - Secondary Maths Teacher Online learning in mathematics We are now one week into conference teaching and it has been a learning curve for our whole school community. The start has been really successful and I have been so pleased to see how quickly everyone has adjusted, particularly the students. From my own experience in the online maths classroom it has been such a pleasure to be able to interact with students on a daily basis and get as close as possible to our normal lessons during this challenging time. Students have adapted particularly well to the online learning and have been very helpful to me, guiding me through some of the technical aspects! They have picked up the technology very quickly indeed. As we are going into our second week I wanted to share some of the positive things I have seen in my classes from last week.
As we move forward across the coming days I look forward to building on this great start with the students to try and retain as much normality as possible. The students have displayed such a positive attitude and are working incredibly hard and I am sure this will continue throughout this time. Finally, I thought I would share with you a mathematical puzzle a student brought to one of my online lessons. Students and parents please feel free to try it and send me an email if you think you have solved it! [email protected]. Can you spot the pattern in the following sequences and if so, how would you describe the pattern mathematically? 1, 4, 27, 256, ... 6, 15, 35, 77, ... 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 8, 12, 18, 27 Mrs. Helen Davila – Year 3B Teacher What a change to our learning! This week the class have been carrying out our regular lessons but from home. I am amazed at the way 3B have adapted to lessons on Canvas. They are learning to use the blog, search for their work in the homework section and carry on their regular routines in a happy and enthusiastic manner. We have been continuing with our work on Ancient Egyptians and took a look at how to make notes at the beginning of the week. The class then made their own notes about a god of their choice and today started to write about them. In Science, we were looking at the human skeleton and everyone made a skeleton puppet, with excellent results. They even managed to label all the bones on the back of the skeleton. Great work this week everyone. Ms. Antonella Coronel – Head of EYFS Dear parents, I first want to thank you all for your amazing job so far and your quick transition over to the Online learning. I know we are all going through a special situation and you have shown great resilience and determination to push forward with a lot of positivity. So far we have seen amazing work from all the children in EYFS. Through the pictures you have uploaded onto Tapestry we can observe that your children are having fun and enjoying the planned activities of this first week. The children have truly impressed us all with their singing, cooking, cutting, writing, reading and dancing skills, these all are just to name a few. As one of the extra activities we posted, we asked the children to go on a scavenger hunt of shapes and specific items. Here are just a few pictures we received from our pro EYFS photographers, your children. You can continue to do scavenger hunts and change difficulty level by hiding things or by looking for new items they usually don’t usually have a lot of contact with like the dust pan, car keys, etc. Stay safe, Kind regards Emma Newman Principal Being BSQ – Primary Update I hope you and your families are safe and well and coping with all the changes that the current situation is presenting to our community. Although we are now all meeting in the virtual online world, we are all still here to support each other and care for each other, so if there is anything we can do to help each other, please do contact us. Last week we spoke about developing resilience, an attribute we are all going to have to demonstrate over the next few days and weeks as we adapt to the changes in our personal and collective circumstances. However, our main priority must be our children, modelling resilience, patience and calm during these worrying times, whilst still keeping them informed appropriately about the situation. Please do continue to support your child at home with their home learning – our students need the routines of learning, playing, reading and relaxing to help them cope with these changes and the daily contact with their friends and teachers, even in the virtual world, will support them immensely. Please do share any learning with your child’s teacher. Of course, alongside the scheduled learning from school you have a wonderful opportunity to spend some quality time with your child and introduce other opportunities for them that are usually restricted to weekends and holidays. There is a wealth of information out there about how to widen your child’s experiences while they are unable to leave the house, including Virtual Museum Tours, Virtual Field Trips and lots of opportunities to hear famous authors read books online. I will continue to drop into as many lessons as possible and share your child’s learning with them – if you can do the same to support your child, that would be wonderful! All the staff at BSQ are looking forward to seeing our community again in more normal circumstances – until then, hasta luego. Marcus Madden Head of Primary Being BSQ – Secondary Update Remote Learning We enjoyed some fantastic remote learning last week, and I am confident that the students at BSQ are receiving the very best teaching and care available at this time. We will make a few minor adjustments this week to improve our provision, including more time for students to get up and move between lesson, a reduction in homework being set, and an increased focus on work that can be completed in books rather than through a screen. For the continued success of this enterprise we need your help at home. Please continue to ensure that your child or children have a quiet space, free from disturbances, where they can work. Please take an active interest in what they are doing, and please check that they are logged in and working. And please respect the timetable, including the lunchtimes. Exam Updates The IB have announced today that the exams scheduled for April and May this year will no longer take place. Instead, students will be awarded a Diploma (or Course certificate) with the grades based on their submitted coursework and the established assessment expertise, rigor and quality control already built into the programmes. At BSQ we will continue to support Year 13 through the completion of all coursework requirements, as well as providing any and all help they need in securing places at their preferred universities. Cambridge have yet to announce what changes, if any, they will make to this year's IGCSE exam session. We will continue to work with the assumption that exams will take place. Should we hear otherwise, we'll let the students and parents of Year 11 know straight away, and share what the plan will for the remainder of Year 11. Jim Wild Head of Secondary From the BSQ Counselling Team This week our school counsellor, Andrea Carrera, talk about how to avoid parental burnout.
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May 2024
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