Welcome
Here at BSQ it is not just the students that keep learning – our staff do too - and we are currently all working on exploring a book called ‘Making Kids Cleverer’ by David Didau. One of the questions we have been examining as research is linked to this quotation: 'But teachers? They just, well, teach, don't they?' Our job was to consider what else we do and what actually constitutes teaching. Of course, we have lots of responses linked to all the other work of our teachers – pastoral care, planning, assessment, rewards, exploration, parent meetings, staff development, listening and so much more.. The most wonderful thing about our own learning as teachers is exploring how passionate the team are about education and your children’s learning. e-Learning at BSQ BSQ 25th Anniversary Scholars We are very proud to share with our community that one of our BSQ 25th Anniversary Scholars, Anabella, participated and applied to the Immerse Education Essay Competition obtaining a Scholarship. Congratulations Anabella! From the Staff and the Students Continuing with our teachers and their stories about e-learning this new period. This week we have Mr. Simon Newman, Mrs. Moors and Mr. Bradley Edwards from Secondary and Ms. Polly Hall and Ms. Antonella Coronel from Primary. Mr. Simon Newman and Mrs. Natalie Moors – Secondary English Teachers and Y7 tutors We are really proud of the way our Year 7 class has settled into senior school. The children took the virtual transition in their stride and are managing the many more Canvas pages really well in secondary. Gonzalo tells us that, “Getting used to online classes was a very easy process, however I struggled a bit with google drive, apart from that, I was fine!” Lyla mentioned that, “I like the first couple of weeks at school but it was a bit tiring at first. I like how we weren’t set homework and we only needed to do work in the lesson.” We have welcomed four new students into the class: Antonella, Natalia, Rossy and Tomas. These new friends are great classmates and we are all looking forward to a time when we can be with them in person. Tomas said of the new start that, “The first day was very hard but when I got my Gmail ready all went better and I now I am used to working this way.” Natalia mentioned that, “All the teachers are very nice. I need help on how to use google drive, because I am struggling on that and it is a bit confusing when to use the DW.” It’s not only case of new students in Year 7: we also have a new form tutor – Mrs. Moors. In fact, the truth is we are all new in Year 7 to the secondary school, what with Mr. Newman also joining us as form tutor and teaching the seniors as well. Like all classes at BSQ, we have had to reset some things to take into account our online situation. One of those is the Year 6 production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, which would have been staged last June. We currently have that marked down on the calendar for early December; rehearsals start again this week and we are committed to bringing our work to the stage for the BSQ community, no matter how long it takes. Passing our days online with kindness to one another pretty sums up how Year 7 has been working during these early weeks of the new school year – as shown below in the kindness cards to other classmates, from Anna, Isabella Sisa, Lyla, Nicole and Tomas. Secondary - House Captains Last Friday morning the voting took place for this year's House Captains. It was incredible to see the quality of candidates and the videos. All those candidates have received house points. Well-deserved for the courage, dedication and passion you demonstrated for each of your house's! I must say I am very excited to see all the exciting events unfold this year. Please see your winners and your new Heads of Houses! Mr. Bradley Edwards. Ms. Polly Hall – Year 1A Teacher The children of 1A have made a great start to the school year. The children have approached the transition from reception to Year 1 with enthusiasm and positive attitudes. We have some students in our class who are new to BSQ, and it has been great to see them joining in with our lessons and settling into our class. Our topic for this term is Ecuador. The children have enjoyed telling me about some of their favourite landmarks in Quito and suggesting places for our new classmates to visit. This week they have also been preparing food from some of the different regions of Ecuador – with some help from an adult of course! In science we have been learning about plants. We discussed what a plant needs to grow, and this week the children started an experiment. They are going to grow a plant at home and observe its progress. Plants are also present in our art lessons, as the children have been created potato prints. They have used different shapes and colours to make potato print patterns. Ms. Antonella Coronel – Head of EYFS Dear parents, Welcome to week 4 of online and home learning. The children continue to show great progress and enthusiasm during both the live sessions and home learning opportunities. Here in BSQ we offer support to our families because we understand the impact a family has on the development of each child. One way we do this is through workshops. We have prepared two excellent parent workshops that will take place on Canvas through the “BSQ parent portal” and we would like to extend this invitation to all of our EYFS families. It is important that you are enrolled on this course to participate in these; follow the link "Parent portal" and enroll. Workshop dates:
Any questions or concerns, feel free to contact me, Kind regards, Ms Coronel Dates for your Diary
Emma Newman Principal Being BSQ – Primary Update This week I am focusing on feedback and how to support your child’s development and progress. The teachers here at The British School Quito are highly trained in using feedback to help their students improve both their understanding and their skills in specific areas. Our teachers closely monitor each student’s achievements, related to the task or concept being explored, providing them with timely and specific feedback on their learning. This feedback can be verbal, written or a combination of the two, often highlighting areas in which the student is successful and next steps for how they can improve in the future. As parents, we must not only focus on the improvement cycle but make sure we positively reinforce the areas in which our children are already successful, to encourage them to continue doing the things they are good at, while gradually supporting them to make small changes to help improve their learning. As I have said before, learning is not a linear, sequential process in many cases – we often have to fail a few times before we grasp a new concept or skill. We can support our students in this process by being positive, showing them different ways to solve a problem and find examples of the skill or concept that we are trying to master. The teachers at BSQ will give suggestions and advice to their students on how to improve their skills and understanding in the future, often revisiting concepts to make sure that all their students are ready to move onto the next phase of their development. This week Miss Cook is leading the Key Stage One Assembly on Thursday at 2:30pm and Miss Stollery is leading the Key Stage Two assembly at 2:30pm on Friday. Please join them to celebrate the achievements of our students and to hear about the end of our Kindness Challenge. Many of our students have already shared their acts of kindness – please do continue to share these with your child’s class teachers and remember to encourage them to continue their kindness. Marcus Madden Head of Primary Being BSQ – Secondary Update Once again I am reflecting on the challenges we were all facing two weeks ago, and the progress we have made in securing success. At the start of any academic year we focus initially on welcoming, giving information, developing relationships and settling teaching and learning. I have had many positive reports from teachers, students and parents about all of these things across the school. Whether you are a parent, a student, or a teacher, you have all played your part in settling the start of the year. Success is always delivered as a combined approach. Well done and thank you! We are constantly considering the way that our students learn, and research published in the British journal of Educational Psychology, (Topping and Trickey, 2007) examined the impact that thinking skills, honed through collaborative interactive dialogue, led to gains in cognitive ability, verbal dialogue and reasoning. Put more simply, group involvement and activity through engagement and more personalised contact, led to greater engagement, commitment and outcomes. The staff in the Secondary school are looking at ways we can get students to turn their cameras and microphones on so that they interact more with their peers and the staff. We really do feel that there are not only obvious benefits to wellbeing, but in time outcomes as well. Please help us by encouraging your son or daughter to take the plunge, be brave, and turn their cameras on. You may recall last week my thanks for the feedback from parents regarding the start to this year. We really do appreciate your input and ideas. It is rich information indeed and we will do what we can to facilitate actions that may arise from this where possible or appropriate. We are very aware that the start for year 7 has required the need for speedy training to facilitate access to the demands of some Secondary subjects. We have had a number of activities to upskill students so that they can cope. There are still sessions planned and each teacher is slowly guiding students toward understanding. Teachers of Year 7 are now considering this more in the activities they are planning and I have asked that they will spend time ensuring that children know exactly what is asked of them in each lesson. Following a request from some parents we are running a session this week to train students on note taking. We think that this will be a great help in Secondary subjects. Socialization has been noted as an area of opportunity by some parents and as a result we are responding by offering after school sessions to allow students to simply hang out and chat with each other. This will be supervised by staff and we hope that this will have a positive impact on wellbeing. We are also increasing the amount of feedback this year from twice a partial to once every 2 weeks. This will give students information on what went well and what could be better. Students will be invited to contribute to the feedback and also respond to a task linked to the missed knowledge so that the learning loop can be closed. I hope that these things help and I always welcome feedback in due course. I am confident that these interventions will make a difference where they impact the most. Have a great week. Lee Moors Head of Secondary From the BSQ Counselling Team This week our school counsellor, Andrea Carrera, talks about parental burn out.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
CategoriesArchives
May 2024
|