WelcomeLiving Last Saturday was our first whole community event of the year and sharing food and friendship with the BSQ families was a wonderful way to spend it. As always, the Welcome Back Picnic was a lively and happy event organised by the Parent Association with the support of the school staff. Huge thanks to all the parents who provided food, drink, music and entertainment. Many thanks also to our outgoing Parent Association committee, Martha, Pilar, Gloria and María Belén. It has been a pleasure to work with them last year and this year and I will miss their organisation skills, wonderful commitment and great sense of humour. Thanks also to all the class representatives from last year – your work and support is greatly valued. Calendar I am delighted to tell you that our school calendar for 2018-2019 was approved by the Ministry last week. We are therefore able to maintain our schedule for learning and celebrations for another year and this is great news. You will find the detailed calendar under the events tab on the website and the full calendar here. Sport development. Following the launch of our successful new enrichment programme this year, we are also turning our attention to the further development of our sporting teams. In addition to adding Little Kickers to our Reception class timetables, we are also working in partnership with the senior section of Little Kickers - La Canchita - to provide coaching for our senior boys’ football team this year. We are delighted to welcome Juan Licona to our team this year. Juan is part of the Little Kickers staff and he currently plays for the Universidad San Francisco de Quito and will be joining us on Mondays and Wednesdays between 3:30 and 4:40 for team training sessions. Football for fun will continue to be run during enrichment. I would also like to take this opportunity once again to thank Santiago Sanchez and Jaime Albuja who worked tirelessly last year to get the team up and running. Learning Here at BSQ we have a set of classroom strategies that are designed to support our students to learn effectively and you will see these teaching and learning behaviours happening in all our classrooms across the school. Last week I introduce you to Threshold where we greet each of our students at the door before a lesson. This week is the second of our classroom strategies which is a way of ‘engineering’ effective and prompt starts to the learning once the students are in the lesson – sometimes even before they get there. Some of our teachers give the students learning instructions outside the classroom whilst others have something ready and waiting inside the room. This way no learning time is lost and the students know exactly what to do when they arrive. We think it makes a positive difference. This week. This week we look forward to celebrating the Juramento de la Bandera. On Wednesday morning at 09:30 we will celebrate the achievements of our Year 13 students as they honour the flags and reflect on their hard work to date. Invitations will be sent to the families of those students and I look forward to seeing you all here on Wednesday. And finally from me - some reminders and resetsThank you to all those parents who have patiently followed the instructions for the Drive-through this term. Now that things are running more smoothly it is clear to see that if everyone uses the car park and the drive-through as requested, we can get all the children in and out of school on time. The key actions are NOT turning left as you approach the school from the Ruta Viva, not getting out of cars in the drive-through and chatting with the staff and following the instructions of the staff out on duty. If you would like to talk with any of the staff, please do park in the car park and walk in – we are always pleased to see you. Although we seem to be heading into the grey and rainy season, please remember that our students enjoy being outside during break and lunchtimes and that they should always be wearing a hat and sunscreen at those times. Please support us to keep them healthy by providing these items and making sure your children bring them to school every day. We will remind them to wear and use them. From the StaffLast week we heard from Mr. Ashfield, this week it is the turn of Mr Taylor and his year 12 English students. Time. If you ask school staff and students (particularly our year 13 students!) what they need more of, I imagine a lot of them would say “time”. I know I would. It feels, on occasion, as if time is flying by far too quickly, and there just isn’t enough of it available to allow us to do what we want to do - because we’ve spent all of it doing what we need to do. Unfortunately, we can’t create more time for ourselves; but we can make time. From something as simple as organising our schedules using Google Calendar (or even an actual calendar), to ensuring that we have an evening routine (that we stick to!) that allows us to get a good night’s sleep, we can all find ways to be a little more efficient, freeing up time to do the things we want to do. We know that for our exam classes in years 11 and, especially, 13, it can sometimes feel like time is running away, leaving us behind in a storm of homework, coursework and exam preparation - my advice to you is this: organise your time; be self-disciplined; and, of course, ask for help when you need it. You have a whole community of friends, family and staff around you who will support you when you feel overwhelmed. That’s something we’ll always make time for. Mr. Robert Taylor English Teacher - Secondary Introducing the new BSQ Primary Student Council 2018-2019 A new school year means a new Primary Student Council and this week has seen presentations and voting on who will represent each class. Votes were taken and counted, children waited in tense anticipation and eventually an overall winner was announced. The new BSQ Primary Student Council for 2018-2019 are as follows: The SC will be meeting regularly during a working lunch slot. In their meetings they will discuss ways in which the school can be improved. The ideas for these discussions will come from conversations each rep will have with their class on a weekly basis - recording these ideas in a Student Council book which will be present in each class. The Student Council are looking forward to working together in the future and to their first meeting next Thursday lunchtime. Mr. Oliver Kyle Year 5 Class Teacher Dates for your DiarySeptember 26th - Salute to the Flag (Juramento a la Bandera) October 5th - Partial reports. October 9th - Secondary Community Project Trip to Ilaló October 9th - Year 3 trip - Quito October 16th - Open Day: Admissions 2019 - 2020 Emma Newman Principal Being BSQ – Primary UpdateThis week in Primary we have been discussing the concept of Respect and how to both give it and also how to gain respect from our friends and other people. We have focused on the actions that we can all do that help us gain respect from those around us, as well as the strategies we can all use if something goes wrong, for instance a disagreement. Many of our students have the school lunch and snack which are nutritionally balanced and healthy. If you send lunch and snack from home, please make sure that your child understands the benefits of eating a balanced and healthy diet, with reduced sugar, fat and salt and plenty of fruit and vegetables. Last week I shared some thoughts about the importance of reading with your child. Many parents have asked the teachers about how to develop their child’s reading, particularly once they have learnt how to segment words and decode unfamiliar words. Here are some suggestions to help you support and encourage your child to improve their reading skills. Questions for discussion when reading:
Other ways to help your child with reading:
Have a great week of reading and thank you to everyone who helped make the Family Welcome Back Picnic such a great success! Star of the weekWhat is happening in Early Years? Now that your children are more settled to our new routines we have begun the Read, Write, Inclusive programme in Reception. Every afternoon the children will be learning their first set of sounds with the support of staff from Reception and Nursery. Already your children are becoming familiar with some sounds and are even practising writing them. Please see Tapestry this week for more information regarding this. In Nursery we are also learning Early Phonics and have begun Aspect One by tuning into the environmental sounds around us. Marcus Madden Head of Primary Being BSQ – Secondary UpdateBring Your Own Culture It can often go unnoticed just how international BSQ actually is as a school community, and we must take every opportunity to celebrate that diversity. In Secondary alone we have students not only from ten different Latin American nations, but also from India, China, Japan, Australia, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Iraq, Britain and the US. As September 26th is the National Flag Day here in Ecuador, we have taken the opportunity in House of having the students exploring and celebrating the histories and meanings of their own flags. These occasional 'Bring Your Own Culture' activities take the form of non-sporting, multi-age, cross-curricular competitions, and are organised during House periods on Fridays. They are intended and designed to develop in students a wide range of skills, including research, creativity and collaboration, as well as giving them knowledge of topics that might not otherwise be covered in the regular curriculum, and a way to learn and celebrate more about themselves and where they're from. Jim Wild Head of Secondary From the BSQ Counselling TeamThis week our school counsellor, Andrea Carrera, talks about whether conflict is healthy for children.
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May 2024
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