Welcome I hope that you all enjoyed your Labour Day extended weekend and that you had a chance to relax away from your computers. Well, we are now in May and entering the 8th full week of home learning. As always, we remain determined to seek ways to improve your experiences as parents and learners at BSQ and so we have prepared a short survey for parents about the online learning experience. It will not take long to complete, you can find the link here and I really would be grateful if you could take a few minutes to complete this so that we can review, amend and improve. The survey will be open until 5pm on Friday. Mother’s Day This Sunday is Mother’s Day and this year we are looking for ways to celebrate the time we are spending with our families at home. Let's take some time before Friday this week to capture a photograph or short video of the mothers in the family spending time with their children – cooking, singing, dancing, gardening, reading, sewing, drawing, puzzling... anything you enjoy. e-Learning at BSQ Opportunities for all. As mentioned in the original letter linked to discounts, we will continue to work through this period to find ways to support you to enjoy activities, benefits and opportunities that would normally be easily accessible to us during normal days. Our friend and supporter Dina has prepared some packages for the students of BSQ who might like to access online classes during this time. Music classes
Also, for the month of July Dina will open the vacation workshops that consist of: Theatre creation of puppets and masks, cooking - preparation of desserts and cookies, breakfasts - garden workshops on your terrace, painting, light meditation and hatha yoga for children. All workshops are online. Dina also supports three foundations which will certainly benefit from her work during this time.
If you want to contact Dina, she is on this email address [email protected] or you can go directly to the chat on her website at https://www.escuelademusicasaraswati.com/contacto/ Remember to mention that you are a BSQ family. Important Announcement - time is running out. By the end of May, we are aiming to have all our parents signed up to the Canvas Parent Portal and to STOP USING EMAIL AS A MEANS OF COMMUNICATING WITH YOU. PLEASE make sure that you are logged onto this platform using the invites you have had from school. We do now have over 100 families signed up – but we have 239 families at BSQ so still quite a way to go! From the Staff and the Students Continuing with our teachers and their stories about e-learning this new period. This week we have Mrs. Rocío Rueda from Secondary and the Year 4 team and Ms. Coronel from Primary. Mrs. Rocío Rueda – Secondary Spanish Teacher COVID-19, pandemic, quarantine, confinement, distancing, teleconference, distance education. How many terms cascaded down 44 days ago! How many unknown or distant words we had to make part of our everyday vocabulary, both adults and children! In this new, different panorama, crowded with frightening information, BSQ students connect daily to responsibly receive their classes, their lessons; and teachers, in turn, develop new work techniques that, in many cases, we have had to learn at the time of action. This has been, without a doubt, a challenge for everyone, children, teachers and parents. In this new form of school, class routines emerged; among them that of promoting reflection on the historical moment of which we are all part, starting with everyday questions: How are they? What do they do after school? What do you think of the events? Their responses loaded with curiosity, anguish and, above all, uncertainty led us to reflections that were raised weekly. It was then that in the Spanish class the need was seen to open a space in which the students could capture their thoughts and emotions verbally, not only orally but in writing. These will be stored in a digital memory that can serve as a historical resource to tell the next generations how the pandemic was experienced from the centre of the world where this small country is located with serious social, political and economic problems but with people who have the courage to get up to go ahead and thus, deliver this information not from the official version but from that of young people who, generally, have interesting visions that escape us adults. Some of the reflections have been the importance of finding activities that help them deal with confinement, the computer screen, information, the painful and worrying reality of 70% of Ecuadorian students who do not access the benefits of technology and the luck and responsibility of belonging to the remaining 30%. The last reflection we have is to ask ourselves if life will be the same after this pandemic and the need to project ourselves with a new meaning. Here are some of their reflections and concerns. On these a new era will be built, a new world, and our young people will be a fundamental part of this new history. Year 4 Team In Year 4 we have been studying the artist Picasso! First, we did some research to learn all about him. Did you know that his full name had 23 words! Next, we looked at some of his artwork and critiqued it. This week we have been learning about Cubism which is where Picasso used 3D shapes to represent figures in his work and played with perspective. We tried to recreate one of his pieces in which a face is drawn from both a side angle and face on. Here is what we produced. Ms. Antonella Coronel – Head of EYFS Welcome back to another week of online learning. We are so happy to watch the children applying early mathematics skills to accomplish the wide variety of activities the teachers have been sharing with the parents and students. The teachers in Early Years have been implementing a lot of creative activities to rehearse previously learnt skills to successfully apply them in solving early mathematical problems. For the Nursery students this involves a lot of number recognition and matching number quantity activities to later solve addition problems. This week the children carried out the activities suggested by the teachers. One activity was to put the number-quantity pizza back together as quickly as possible. Also using a memory game is an excellent way to practice number recognition. Finally doing a number-quantity match race game is fun, active and rehearses a lot of early mathematical skills. In reception teachers have been rehearsing using and applying confidently number lines to solve subtraction and addition problems. By rehearsing the number line as a technique to solve mathematical problems the children are now able to venture through addition and subtraction games and activities. These are only a few ideas of all the excellent ways to keep your children excited about maths and encourage them to become active learners. Enjoy an excellent week! Dates for your Diary
Our Heads of School have prepared calendars that include our activities for the remaining days and weeks. You can find them here. Please note that changes may be made to this calendar depending on decisions made by other authorities - we will keep you informed. Primary: Secondary: Emma Newman Principal Being BSQ – Primary Update
This partial, to maintain both consistency and also the high expectations of BSQ, we have adapted the usual descriptors to reflect the nature of the online learning undertaken to decide each student’s Effort and Conduct Grades. These descriptors will be shared with you and your child when the reports are published. The teachers have been constantly in awe of the efforts and attitude of our students, who have adapted well to this new form of learning. We know that they miss their friends, teachers and the social interactions that make up a huge part of their school experience, so do please encourage them to keep in touch with their friends throughout this time and be aware of the challenges they are facing on a daily basis attending their online sessions. We continue to encourage you all to sign up for the Parent Portal on canvas, which we use to share school information. Please do share this with your friends from school as we look to reduce the number of emails sent centrally from school. This week we will continue to host the Key Stage One Assembly on Thursday at 2:30pm and the Key Stage Two Assembly on Friday at 2:30pm. Early Years will also host their own reward assemblies after their sessions on Friday – watch out for details of these from your child’s class teachers. Further Enrichment activities will also be posted towards the middle of the week, though please do look back and access previous activities and ideas and adapt them as you see fit. Marcus Madden Head of Primary Being BSQ – Secondary Update Assemblies One aspect of our remote teaching and learning programme that has proven extremely popular and effective is the assembly. While at first there was some hesitation about how this might work in an online environment, assemblies have proven very entertaining. We have been able to celebrate success, share individual stories, and get together as a wider community to share some fun. What's even more exciting is that we are no longer limited for space, and as such, parents are also able to come along. We have our next Reward and Recognition assembly on Monday 11th May. You are more than welcome to join us. Exam Platform With the Year 11 IGCSE assessments taking place this week and next, we are using the opportunity to trial an online exam platform, exam.net, which we will then continue to use for the Quimestre 2 exams later in the year. This secure platform allows us to set question papers, time students' responses, and ensures that students use only the resources permitted by the teacher. This will allow us to assess every student's progress fairly and accurately. Jim Wild Head of Secondary From the BSQ Counselling Team Dear parents, Please remember the Student Support Department is available for having conversations, answering questions or giving support. Do not hesitate to contact us if you need it. Have a great day. BSQ SSD Team Weekly article
This week our school counsellor, Andrea Carrera, talks about ways to motivate your child.
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May 2024
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