WelcomeI hope that you all enjoyed Mother’s Day. It has been a difficult year where many people have been unable to spend time with their mothers or grandmothers and as we move into our 9th week of home learning these relationships and support networks are crucial. Here is a great montage of your photos of activities of love with mums across our community. One of most important things we can do during this time is to be kind to each other, to think of our friends and families and the Red Cross have shared a set of home activities for children linked to that. One really great family activity is this Kindness calendar where – although it is meant for children – anyone can add their commitment to kindness for specific days of the week. Whether you are being kind to others or to yourself, there are lots of ideas on the Red Cross site to get you started. e-Learning at BSQ BSQ Parents Quotes Thanks to our staff and community for your hard work and support, here are more comments from our BSQ parents about e-learning at BSQ Survey outcomes. Many thanks to all who completed the online learning survey last week. The key highlights were that most of our children are coping well with the learning at home – and so are you the parents! Thank you. We will also be working on ways to develop our support systems linked ot motivation and using time effectively at home. More details to follow. 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. Michelle O’Fried recipes. Some of you will have attended our practical workshops with Michelle last year where she talked to us about healthy eating and many of us bought copies of her fantastic recipe book. We have teamed up with Michelle to bring you some free tips and advice about happy and healthy eating as a family during lockdown. With thanks to Michelle and I hope you enjoy these ideas from next week. Music Announcement Remember that there are opportunities for discounted music lessons with Dina’s music school.
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. Patricia Tufiño from Secondary, the Reception team and Ms. Antonella Coronel from Primary. Mrs. Patricia Tufiño – Secondary Spanish Teacher Literature, and specifically poetry, is a means of liberation for the deepest emotions of the heart. Poets like Benedetti, Borges, Neruda and many more, manage to transport the reader to an endless world, where the word is the owner of dreams, where the pencil and paper dance to the son of the chords of each one of the verses, stanzas and rhymes. With this preamble, where poetry governs the inner world of being, the students of year 12 of the Language A: Literature subject are working with this literary genre. For a few weeks everything related to the structures of poetry has been reviewed, so that the work of Argentine singer-author León Gieco can be understood and considered in depth. In the Spanish class hours, the students have researched and explored the author's trajectory, the biographical data, the sociocultural contexts, we have also enjoyed listening and singing some of the songs composed by him, in such a way that the students connect with this analysis process. The first poem with which we began this journey is titled "I only ask God." After a careful and comprehensive reading, we explored the content of each word, each verse and each stanza. The expected effect on the readers was immediate, the students appropriated the poem, releasing critical contributions and comments about what the poet says. The students valued and appreciated this text made up of twenty-four verses along which the passionate singer-author reflects with melancholy on the horror of war, the pain of injustice and the terrible of fate. To obtain a detailed and insightful analysis of stylistic resources, in the Literature class you will have the characteristics of the lyrical genre, the metric, the verses, the stanzas, the rhyme, etc., resources used as tools to create beauty with the word. In this way we put literary analysis into practice, promoting the development of critical thinking, as well as communication and self-management skills. Finally, it is a great satisfaction for me to work with children so dedicated to responsible and creative work, in each hour of class I enjoy teaching my students and I feel that this is the greatest reward in this adventure of sharing through a virtual environment. Reception Team The face to face online learning sessions are now truly underway and they have been received well by both children and parents alike. They are now well settled into the routine of the sessions. We also celebrated our first assembly via canvas, where we talked about resilience. The children were very excited for the star of the week to start again and are all looking forward to their turn. In literacy, the children have been learning about adjectives and verbs, learning how to put it in a sentence structure. They have all been receptive to the session. They are able to start writing their own sentences after each session. In Numeracy, we have been discovering money, learning to recognize dollars and cents, as well as designing their own money for their role play stores in the home. The children have been working hard as usual with many extra activities. This week in the build-up to Mother's Day celebration they are making cards and gifts at home to say ‘thank you’ to their mothers and grandmothers for helping them to develop new skills such as cooking, gardening and other skills outside of the planning timetable. Ms. Antonella Coronel – Head of EYFS Dear parents, Welcome to a new week of online learning. This will be our first full week of 1:1 online sessions using a 2-way live video session on Canvas. The scheduled timetables are available in the shared google drive folder. Over the past few weeks we have been working to build the children’s independence when accessing the live sessions by asking them to work with their parents turning their microphones on/off, drawing on the screen and answering polls. It has been a great learning journey for us all, and the Early Years students have been eager to participate and learn. Little by little they are learning to use the computer mouse, the mouse pad or the touch screen device. The students are now able to access a wide variety of games, learning opportunities, activities and resources through the planning documents shared by the teachers. Little Kickers has proven to be a great addition to the planning document. The children are staying active, practising balancing skills and concentration in front of their coach Julian. Great work Nursery and Reception students We also want to congratulate Ms. Anna Vasilokonstantaki, our Nursery A teacher, for her exceptional work through our transition to online learning. She shows her love and passion for teaching through the learning opportunities and experiences planned every week. She is dedicated to teaching children to become active learners. Thank you Ms. Vasilokonstantaki for everything you do! Dates for your Diary
Emma Newman Principal Being BSQ – Primary Update This week’s newsletter is dedicated to your child’s resilience, determination and courage, all attributes that will have served them well during their time learning and developing at home for the past weeks. Throughout their time at home, our students (and your children) have been faced with challenges that are unprecedented and extraordinary, yet they have overcome these trials with the support of their family, friends and teachers and have adapted to their new circumstances admirably. This journey will not have been without its ups and downs, as we all find ways to live and learn together with patience, understanding and flexibility, but the growing maturity and resilience has been really demonstrated by the quality of the learning your child has shared with us. In our assemblies last week, we discussed the British aviator Amy Johnson. Amy Johnson CBE (1903-1941) was one of the most influential and inspirational women of the twentieth century. She was the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia in 1930 and set a string of other records throughout her career. From a humble background, she defied the conventions of the era and demonstrated that it is possible to achieve your ambitions if you are determined, dedicated and focused on your dreams. Our children may only be starting to think about their personal dreams and ambitions for the future, but this current experience and the skills they are developing will support this process and open their eyes to the unlimited opportunities that they will undoubtedly have. We are extremely pleased to announce the latest developments in our online learning provision, with the addition of 1-1 sessions in Early Years to highlight key learning opportunities and the addition of video sessions each afternoon in Years 1-6 for the older students. These modifications will help our students connect more with their teachers and allow the teachers to demonstrate key learning points. Have a great week of learning and development and remember we are here to support you through this challenging time. Marcus Madden Head of Primary Being BSQ – Secondary Update IG to IB In the absence of the customary official, externally assessed summative examinations from Cambridge this year for our Year 11 students, it has been hard for some to find closure. As stressful as such exams inevitably are, they offer an important cathartic release as well as very real recognition of all the hard work done. Hopefully, the online exam process we have put in place will help fill this gap. Last week and this, all Year 11 students have been and are engaged in a new system of online examination, using the exam.net platform, which allows us to remotely administer and monitor live tests. These exams will constitute their Quimestre 2 exam grades, as well as contributing to the 'predicted' grades that we send to Cambridge, and as such carry weight, and, hopefully, provide that much needed closure. We'll have an 'end of IG' celebration assembly on Friday 29th May. From Monday 18th May, these same students will begin a week-long 'tour' of the IB Diploma Programme subject options. Each student will attend one lesson of each of the classes we offer at IBDP level, with the hope that having done so, and armed with the insights about their aptitude gleaned from these summative IG assessments, they will be in an even stronger position to make informed and wise decisions about their next steps at BSQ. Jim Wild Head of Secondary From the BSQ Counselling Team This week our school counsellor, Andrea Carrera, talks about teaching empathy.
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May 2024
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