Welcome I hope you are all reading this now that we have migrated to the Parent Portal. I hope you all enjoyed the short week last week and found plenty of opportunities to spend some time with family and friends away from your devices. As I write this, I am also reading news from two of our Orbital schools who are already back on their campus sites – Shanghai and Ljubljana. We wish them good luck and happy learning. I know that we can take comfort from the fact that many schools around the world are returning to their physical classrooms and celebrating the fact that they are together again – as will we. We are now in the final month of our school year with all activities due to end on June 30 2020, we will be making changes to many of the traditional end of year events such as awards ceremonies, class parties and graduations. More news will follow. Today is Children’s Day. For many children, this year brings little to celebrate as they are unable to see their friends, they miss their family members, they miss sports or music or playing in the park together and many children around the world will have had to experience death and sickness as a result of COVID-19. Today we should find some time to think about those children and send them a wish of hope and happiness. For this year, we should all be proud of what our children at BSQ have achieved since the middle of March. Well done to all the students of BSQ for leading the way as learners. Happy Children’s Day! 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 Positive thinking. Just as the families receive support and advice from the school Student Support Department, so the staff also receive daily thoughts and last week it was this that caught my eye with thanks to Sofy Leon. It shares the message of hope that after COVID-19 has run its course, we will return to BSQ ‘more vibrant’ than ever before. When trees are pruned, when they are down to their bare essence, they enter a period of apparent dormancy. In time, the trees stand tall again, lusher and more beautiful, in the morning light. During these difficult circumstances, we have also had to hit pause on many things. Let’s hope and trust that when this period ends, we, too, will emerge from our global seclusion more vibrant and beautiful than before. E-learning survey. Last month I reported the overwhelmingly positive response to the e-learning survey. This week I would like to share that many families were asking for additional support with emotional states. Currently we offer many ways to support families with this including our weekly publications from the SSD team, our parent workshops run in the early evening by our SSD team, well-being sessions at the end of the day for primary students, 1-1 sessions for EYFS students, tutor time and assemblies in secondary and primary and, of course, easy access to our school doctor and counselling team members at any time during the school week. To add further support please do let us know when you need our help as we understand the one size does not necessarily fit all and you may need some personal advice and guidance. Our computer doors are always open – get in touch Michelle O. Fried recipes. Here is our second recipe published in conjunction with Michelle. How much fun to make crunchy, crunchy cookies!! Children love putting their hands in this dough as they form the logs and we all get to indulge in a healthy treat, made with local flours. Enriching both white and whole wheat flour with flours of quinoa, amaranto, haba, arveja creates products with a wide spectrum of micronutrients and lots of fiber, so often lacking in modern, processed diets. The recipe as I invented it preCOVID uses some ingredients which may not be in your pantry. I have been noticing that many recipes can be simplified with whatever I have on hand. As long as you use 3 and a half cups or 650 grams of flours, these indestructible cookies will come out perfectly. For example, I left out the polenta and the almond extract and never missed them. I had “panela molida” and no raw sugar and that worked well also. I´m learning to be flexible and less picky and seeing how I can create delicious food without everything I thought was necessary. Cocina Emergente features cooking in times of COVID-19; I´m on every Saturday at 15:00pm, answering questions and having fun with food. Listen, if you´d like, to some of the past programmes. #CocinaEmergente #QuedateEnCasaNoEnSilencio ¿No sabe qué cocinar? Hoy vamos a hablar de las leguminosas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38gXURG-mE4 #QuedateEnCasaNoEnSilencio ¿Qué alimentos no deben faltar en un hogar con niños y adolescentes? En estos días de confinamiento, con menos actividad física que alimentos preferir y cuáles evitar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md-57DTau70 #QuedateEnCasaNoEnSilencio ¿Ha encontrado algún alimento desconocido en su canasta agroecológica? ¿No sabe cómo preparar ciertos alimentos? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cPRJoayUZ Yearbook Whilst we have to postpone some of our traditional end of year activities, there is one that is going ahead as usual – our Yearbook! It will be online for the time being but will be just as glossy and professional as always. Andrea Zambrano may contact you to request a photograph to include. Please respond to make sure that everyone appears in the Yearbook of 2020. This year we are opening the design of the front cover to competition and entries are welcome from anyone in the community – parents, students or staff - by this Friday June 5th. Workshop Receive kind regards, I would like to take this opportunity to extend you an invitation to a Virtual Workshop that will take place on June 16, 2020 at 5:00 p.m. It will be a space to enrich ourselves with knowledge to learn how to generate solutions in your organizations, exploiting their creative and innovative potential. The only requirement for you to join us is that you are willing to challenge your limits. In this workshop we will explore:
Join us in this incredible experience! Register at no cost and get valuable tools for the management you do in your organization. We count on your participation! Important Announcement - time HAS run out. If you are reading this newsletter, then you have accessed it through the Canvas Parent Portal – thank you for signing up. With over half of the families now using this tool we are reaching a wide audience but not one that is big enough yet. Please remind your friends and fellow class parents to make sure they are on Canvas. All letters with important information will also be placed there if they are for the whole school community 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, Ms. Valeria Cano, the Year 1 Team, and Ms. Antonella Coronel from Primary. Ms. Fernanda Espinosa – Drama Teacher During the actual context that we are living, we have seen many people singing on their balconies, or dancing, or playing musical instruments to entertain themselves or their neighbours. Music has become an important tool to bring people together in an impressive scale. Some of the activities that we’ve done during the lessons, in Years 1, 2 and 3, are:
During this online learning, children have been very motivated to follow the songs and games, as well as the activities using all the tools that the platform offers. Music is a “very powerful” tool in a quarantine, because when we make music communally, or even dancing a children’s song with your family, it creates bonds and unforgettable memories. Ms. Valeria Cano – Music Teacher In Music, students of Year 4 have been learning how to sing, keep a good posture and proper breathing. Meanwhile in Year 5, students have been learning about pop music and its evolution throughout the years, they have listened to a lot of music they have liked, from Michael Jackson, Madonna, and The Backstreet Boys to Ariana Grande and Bruno Mars. They have been able to tell the differences between the decades. Finally, Year 6 analysed the Harry Potter Suite and their instruments, as well as recognising how important it is for movies to have composed music that expresses emotions. Year 1 Team The students in Year 1 have been working hard to learn about Wassily Kandinsky. We have learnt about Kandinsky’s life and created lots of artwork inspired by his paintings. We have used shapes and colours to make beautiful pieces of abstract art, and tried Kandinsky’s method of listening to music and letting it inspire our painting. As part of this topic, we have learnt about Russia, where Kandinsky lived. We tried out some Russian recipes that Kandinsky might have eaten and created our own Fabergé eggs. In literacy we have been learning to write informal letters. We have written letters from the points of view of characters from Goldilocks and the Three Bears and The Three Little Pigs – we have even written letters from the Big Bad Wolf to apologise for trying to eat the Little Pigs! In science we have learnt about materials. We have experimented to see which materials are strong enough to make a house to protect the Little Pigs from the Big Bad Wolf, and tested materials in our homes to find out if they are waterproof. Ms. Antonella Coronel – Head of EYFS Wow, the children have truly been so busy over the last week both in Nursery and Reception. We are fully enrolled in our 1:1 sessions and the children are showing a lot of independence during the live session and self-awareness when on camera! In Reception the superhero topic is still going strong, so strong that the children made their very own comics strips! Each child used their creativity to come up with a story of a superhero named ‘Supertato’. Each story included a villain and supporting characters that Supertato saved from falling in his evil plans. Through this fantastic activity the children worked on building short sentences and creating a few of them to narrate a coherent story. In Nursery we have been learning about life in a zoo through the story ‘Dear Zoo’. We encouraged the children to select their favourite animal and explain why to their parents, then the children went on to create their very own animal mask. Conversations and activities like these are a great opportunity for children to rehearse vocabulary and increase their love for research and investigating. We also asked children to make a zoo and think about what type of environment they would need to make for each animal in their zoo. The children in Early years have also been learning about money. We suggested to the parents making a piggy bank and allow the children to earn coins throughout the upcoming weeks. This teaches the children the value of saving up and it is a great first step to learning maths through money. By the end, how much will each child save up, will it be enough for a lollipop or an ice cream? We will soon find out! Enjoy a wonderful week. Kind regards, Ms. Coronel Dates for your Diary
Emma Newman Principal Being BSQ – Primary Update With only just under five weeks of this academic year remaining, the teachers are in the process of writing the formal written reports for each student, highlighting their key strengths, skills, knowledge and understanding while also suggesting suitable next steps for them as they move onto the next phase of their education. Moving onto a new year group can always be stressful, and perhaps more so this year as we are unable to complete the full transition process that usually takes place in school. Nevertheless, each teacher will be spending more and more time over the coming weeks to make sure that every student has the relevant information to help them feel prepared for the move to their new year groups and also to feel happy in their personal progress and attainment in their current year group. As part of this process, the Year 6 students are meeting their new tutors and teachers online over the coming week and a half, discovering many of the differences that being a student in Secondary will bring and the chance to ask some questions about all of these changes. Next week we will also welcome the Reception students to the Key Stage One Assembly at 2:30pm on Thursday 4th June – please click on this link to access this assembly page on Canvas. Marcus Madden Head of Primary Being BSQ – Secondary Update Quimestre 2 Exams The only way to be sure that knowledge and skills have been learned in the long term, and not just in the lesson, is to come back to them later. That is why in Secondary at BSQ we close out each Quimestre with summative tests of skills and knowledge: so that we can reliably ascertain what has and hasn't been learned. This, in turn, helps us provide targeted feedback on next steps for each and every individual, as well as allowing us to plan the next round of teaching and learning knowing what gaps remain to be filled. This year, our Quimestre 2 tests will take place online. Students can be tested on anything they've studied over the past year. The grades should be of no concern to you, them, and they certainly are of no concern to us. All we are interested in, in any internal examination at BSQ, is getting a clear picture of what has been learned. Exams begin on 11th June for Year 12, and the next day for everybody else (apart from Years and 11 and 13, who have already completed their testing for the year). Full timetables will be published later this week. In the meantime, students should look over what they have learned this year, and address any gaps they identify in their own understanding. Jim Wild Head of Secondary From the BSQ Counselling Team This week our school counsellor, Andrea Carrera, talks about things that mentally strong parents do.
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