Welcome Orbital Visit There is a real Orbital theme running in the newsletter and at BSQ at the moment. Last week we welcomed Karl Wilkinson back to BSQ for the first time since November 2019. He was delighted to be back with us and commented on how happy and healthy the living and learning environment here at school was – just as he remembered it! Karl spent time visiting classrooms and meeting with staff and students and next time he visits in early June, he is looking forward to meeting with some parents and sharing updates and latest news. Karl’s position at Orbital as Regional Head of Schools (RHOS) and he also works closely with our schools in Budapest and Mallorca. We look forward to his return soon. More visitors! Last week we also enjoyed a visit from Alan Downie who is the Executive Office from LAHC. He was visiting schools in Colombia and Panama on the same trip. Alan spoke very highly of everything he saw at BSQ and was particularly impressed with the students he met as part of the secondary student council so well done to Lyla, Isa, Marcel, Katherine, Isabella and Martin! Our students have benefitted from participation in a range of activities through LAHC including Race4Good and a weekend of drama. We hope that there will be many more activities and also that we see Alan again soon! Family Funday Plans are moving forward for this exciting event and last week the committees met to explore how the day will look, what we will eat and what kind of entertainment we will enjoy. As usual there will be a range of delicious food from the countries represented at BSQ, cultural entertainment and much more. As always, this event is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate and share together so make sure the date is in your diary. More to follow. A message from the PA British Sign Language (BSL) This week three of our Y4B students will be demonstrating our BSQ colours using BSL. Please watch this brilliant video: Ms. Hayley Dean, KS2 Lead Join our Yearbook Cover Pages Contest! Our BSQ community members - students, parents, staff - are invited to participate in our Yearbook Cover Page Contest. The theme is A place for every learner, where you create a design. We will choose 3 winners (one for students, one for parents and one for staff members) and their designs will appear on the Yearbook Cover Pages. Please send your proposed designs, considering the following parameters:
If you have any further questions, please contact Andrea Zambrano to: [email protected] Music Corner Dear BSQ community, welcome to our new section in the newsletter "The Music Corner", where each week the students' creations or performances will be presented. We hope you enjoy seeing and listening to our students develop their musicianship in many ways. Last week in IB music Y12s were learning how to arrange a song. The idea was to take a ballet song (AOI3, Music for dramatic impact, movement and entertainment) and change the instruments and genre. Daniela S. did an outstanding job by changing the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy into a Salsa song. She did a lot of investigation about instruments, rhythms, ornaments, harmonization between brasses and more. It was amazing to see how Daniela played with all the instruments she chose and developed her ideas. Here you can have a listen of the final result. Have a great day and see you next week. Ms Cano, Music Teacher Dates for your Diary As always please check this section carefully and ensure that you have all the details in your calendars.
Mrs. Emma Newman Principal Being BSQ – Primary Update Thank you to all the students who came by either my office or Mr Edwards / Mr Ruiz’s PE office to claim lost property. It is extremely important that you support your child by naming every item they have in school, either with a label or by writing with a permanent pen somewhere on each item. All the things we have in lost property are unnamed. As mentioned a few weeks ago, Thursday 14th April is World Book Day here at BSQ and we will be encouraging all students to dress up as a character of their choice. We will also be participating in an event after the Easter holidays organised by Secondary students to celebrate Easter, with the students encouraged to dress up in ocean-inspired costumes or colours e.g. blues, greens, reds etc. More details about this will follow, but please put the date in your diaries - Wednesday 27th April. And finally, we plan to resume Swimming Lessons after the Easter break with all Primary and Early years students, so please get the kit ready. We will be flexible in terms of swimming costumes, with each child needing a swimming costume, a rash vest (e.g. sun-protective top), swimming goggles, towel, suitable waterproof swim shoes to get to the pool and an optional hat. Mr. Marcus Madden Head of Primary 5B Newsletter entry This term Year 5B are learning all about the Incas – from learning about their culture and beliefs, key events in their history, and their geographic range in Topic, to creating Inca-inspired videos using a cardboard-modelling style of animation in ICT. Whilst in their Art lessons the children have been learning about how the Incas used masks to represent some of their gods. Time has been dedicated to designing our own ‘Inca gods’ and creating masks out of cardboard (with just a sprinkle of gold spray paint) and then using various colourful buttons and pieces of plastic film to create jewels. In the photo gallery below you can see the children of 5B modelling their masks which I think you’ll agree look fantastic! Mr. Kevin Dobson, Year 5B teacher Celebrations We would like to share with our BSQ community that Bruce, Year 2, won the national Karting X30 Championship I, category Baby. Congratulations Bruce for this achievement, we look forward to supporting him in future competitions! Being BSQ – Secondary Update At the weekend I had the pleasure of spending some time watching just how hard one of our students was working in the pursuit of his elite sport dreams. To do something that well you need to make sacrifices and love everything that you do that is connected to your sport. You would assume that the activity was merely training with the coach on the courts but no, it was interspersed with fitness training and fun on the football pitch. The difference was that he was with peers of similar ability and clearly as part of a focused talent programme. For gifted and talented children it is important that they are supported and given activities and experiences that are designed to nurture this and provide adequate challenges to improve. In education, we call this the zone of proximal development. This refers to the difference between what a learner can do without help and what they can achieve with guidance and encouragement from a skilled partner or more skilled peers around them. In the case of our tennis player, the coach becomes the skilled partner in the learning process and the talented group around him in the talent programme become the skilled peers who share the journey. In lessons in school differentiated activity and scaffolded support are timed so that every child is not stretched too far and is not experiencing tasks that are too easy. The best learning takes place when the challenge is just right for them, and this is of course different for all children. Our gifted and talented programme will eventually present information on students with significant abilities in the arts and sports as well. Please do make Mrs Todd aware if your son or daughter has any particular talents so we can encourage and support this at school. This week I have started the process of planning the remaining activities for the rest of the year. At BSQ we pride ourselves on the fact that expectations are high and there is an intensity of activity to stretch everyone for the better. We have just under 12 working weeks left of the academic year and there is so much on the programme for everyone still to come. I look forward to the wonderful events and experiences that continually support our community and bring us all closer together. There is a lot of information to take in over the next few weeks so do please look out for this in the newsletter. Finally, from me can I remind you that on Wednesday this week all students will be working at home as we have very important parent-teacher conferences for year 11 and 13 students as they approach their exams. Things really are getting very serious for them over the next couple of weeks and we all need to support them towards their success. Work will be set for students to complete independently at home. Celebrations Following on from our ‘gifted and talented’ students, one of our young tennis stars José Andrés has won the 16-year-old doubles championship of the G2 Nationals at Club Rancho San Francisco. Congratulations José Andrés! Y10B Music This week in music, Year 10s have been working on different topics. They have learnt about compositional devices that will help them develop and create better compositions whilst composing their own song with structure and texture. They have also started to listen to and recognize different music genres like the opera and oratorio. Year 10 has learnt to differentiate between head voice and chest voice and they shared their own examples explaining the context of some opera songs like “Nessun Dorma”, “Carmen”, “La Traviata” and others. We also learnt about oratorios and their difference from operas and we covered how choruses give a sense of glory. Y10 is an amazing year group full of students that are very dedicated to achieve high grades in their IGCSEs, so working with them has been a pleasure and listening to their performance abilities as well as their creativity to compose has been an amazing experience so far. I am sure they will just continue improving. Ms. Valeria Cano, Music Teacher Have a good week everyone.
Mr. Lee Moors Head of Secondary
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May 2024
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