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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Welcome![]() A short week at BSQ with Labour Day remaining in place as usual on Friday this week. It will seem strange to many members of our own community, and the wider country, to be having a day away from work to celebrate the rights of workers when so many people are already experiencing extended work breaks – many not from choice. However, May Day/Labour Day/International Solidarity for Workers Day is also about standing together, about recognising the essential importance of work and those who undertake it. We know there are many workers around the world still required to face dangerous environments, challenging situations and potentially life-threatening expectations – including some of our own families. Perhaps on Friday we could take some time to think about and thank those still working in healthcare, food provision, security, transport, government and education – to name a few. Here are some images from around the world to get us started. Diary dates. Following our extended teaching days and shorted Ester holiday, the three days we have to spare have been added to our current long weekends. Please see the new dates below. 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 Celebrating Success Following another first for BSQ last week – Parent Teacher Conferences Online – we are able to review some of our learning online practices and we hope that you all enjoyed the opportunity to discuss the progress and process of online learning with the BSQ teachers. Over the next few days, we will be taking the opportunity to ask for your opinion through a sort survey about the online learning experience for you as parents. Please find a few minutes to help us explore more ways to continue developing our provision. Earth Day Earth Day was on Wednesday 22nd April and many students celebrated on the day and during the week with many themed lessons and optional activities. Here are some examples of the fantastic ways the students celebrated our beautiful planet earth: Secondary students took part in many optional activities including planting seeds, creating a garden, making a bird box, creating a picture collage or poster, recorded the birds singing, participating in an earth day quiz, cooking vegetarian food, writing poetry and messaging a friend to wish them Happy Earth Day. In the lessons students enjoyed Earth day themed lessons in Sociales, Humanities, English, Maths, Art, Science and History. Primary students in all year groups enjoyed Earth day themed lessons and the activities included making recycling bins, creating posters, model building from recycled materials, pictograms and 'no paper' day, language and our connection to the natural world and connecting with nature, birds, insects and plants. Nursery promoted the theme of the 3 R's: Reduce-Reuse-Recycle and the children acted out the part of a Recycling Superhero. Since 1970 people around the world have been celebrating Earth Day but let's not make it just about one day! Earth Day is simply a reminder of how precious our natural world is and what we can do to enjoy and protect it. Thank you to all the BSQ students and teachers who celebrated the day and continue to celebrate our beautiful planet. 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! Dates for your Diary
From the Staff and the StudentsContinuing with our teachers and their stories about e-learning this new period. This week we have Mr. Bradley Edwards from Secondary and Ms. Ana Espinosa and Mr. Óscar Tabango from Spanish Department and Ms. Coronel from Primary. Mr. Bradley Edwards – Secondary PE Teacher For this week´s House competition students entered 5 different events including Tik Tok dancing, Loo roll keep up challenge, Blind drawing, longest plank and Best flip cup. There were some very creative entries and it was fantastic to see so many students getting involved from home. With all the excitement the teachers couldn´t resist but enter a video themselves. Ms. Ana Espinosa – Spanish & Sociales Teacher Year 3 - Spanish: During these weeks the Y3 students have been learning about “Textos para jugar”. There are several kinds of texts and we have learned: Riddles, tongue twisters, greguerías and children's songs.. Year 3 Sociales: Year 3 has been learning about our beautiful Ecuador, specifically this week on Civic Holidays, Religious Holidays and Family Holidays. Year 4 - Spanish: Comprehensive reading is very important for learning, for this reason the students delighted in the story of "El mejor regalo para Hugo", a story that contains values such as friendship and respect. They enjoyed learning vocabulary and answering questions about reading. Year 5 – Spanish: "Poemitas divertidos" is the topic that the students are learning. Their creativity and imagination will help them continue creating poems that they will enjoy sharing with the rest of the class. Year 6: During this week the Y6 students have shared the reading of an informative text, leading them to reflect and learn more about what is happening around us. We have done comprehensive reading with the development of questions and answers of personal opinion. Mr. Óscar Tabango – Sociales Teacher Dear BSQ family, I am very pleased to see the enthusiasm, dedication and above all the consistency with which all the students in Sociales have been working during these times of crisis around the world. We have had the opportunity to continue working on the contents planned at the beginning of the year. In Year 2 we have been studying the “My Neighborhood” Unit in which the children have gained new knowledge about their environment, which includes the different places found in the neighborhood (church, park, carpentry, among others). In addition, we have talked about the importance of living in harmony and security. Finally, among other activities I can highlight the activity in which we listened to and saw the book "Dinosaurs and all that rubbish" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_huzL_FPZg which showed the importance of caring for children. nature and respect animals. In Year 4 we are studying the province in which we live, its division into cantons and parishes, the importance of knowing it and also knowing its tourist sites, most outstanding monuments and the different cultures that we find in each province of the country. In addition, we enjoyed listening to various legends from different parts of Ecuador which helped students to reflect on values such as humility and respect. Finally, did you know that Cantuña did exist? Please ask year 4 children to tell you about this.
Thanks to the support that parents make at home, the children have been very successful in the virtual Social classes. I hope to see you all soon, remember to wash your hands, eat your vegetables and listen to your parents Ms. Antonella Coronel – Head of EYFS Dear parents, It has been a great week of online sessions. It is so wonderful to hear the children answering questions, interacting with the learning opportunities and growing their confidence. You have all shown great resilience through these special circumstances, thank you for your amazing work. We want to share 6 top tips to keep the children motivated and the learning opportunities enriching!
Emma Newman Principal Being BSQ – Primary Update ![]() I hope that you all managed to discuss your child’s progress with their class teachers and have a better understanding of how best to support them during this period of home online learning. Thank you for sharing this time together and all of the positive feedback you gave to the teachers who are working tirelessly to continue your child’s learning and development. We also welcome any suggestions that you make to help us improve our provision and make sure that we do the very best for our students in these circumstances. One way that you can further support your child is to make sure you play an active part in their online sessions. Consider sitting with them for a session each day, finding out what they are learning, discussing their understanding of the topic and then praising them for their finished product – the power of having a personal teacher sat next to them is incredible. Thank you to everyone who participated in the two international events we promoted this week - Earth Day on Wednesday 22nd April and World Book Day on Thursday 23rd April – it is really appreciated. This week is a four-day week, with no online classes on Friday. Please continue to access all of the different learning opportunities shared by the teachers here at BSQ, but also find time for yourself and your families to relax and do one of those activities you have been meaning to do for a while. We look forward to finding out what extraordinary activities you have shared with your families. Marcus Madden Head of Primary Being BSQ – Secondary Update ![]() Student Surveys With so much new about the way we are currently teaching in learning, it's vital that we take into account all perspectives when making improvements. Last week in Secondary we conducted a survey of the students to get a sense of their experience thus far with our systems of remote learning. From the 51 respondents, we gleaned a great deal of very useful information, much of which we will act upon. These include ideas about what works best, and what works less well, in online classes; how they prefer to receive one-to-one feedback and help when they are struggling; and what we need to develop about the ways in which we, as a community, communicate with one another. This input has been valuable in helping shape our ongoing conversations about how we can improve the education we provide. Our ears remain open, to the students, the parents, and each other. Assessment Calendar One of things students told us they wanted was a clearer understanding of how and when they were to be assessed for the learning they are engaged in, including when and how they will take any exams. Partial assessments remain the same as ever: students are graded on numerous activities and pieces of work completed during a Partial period, with their progress being measured against four criteria: Knowledge and Understanding, Communication, Critical Thinking, and Study Skills (with grade descriptors for Study Skills having been adapted to reflect the nature of school during this last Partial). Exams, including the Year 12 'mocks', will take place remotely from 11th June. A full calendar will be shared with the whole community later today. Jim Wild Head of Secondary From the BSQ Counselling Team This week our school counsellor, Andrea Carrera, talks about how to teach children the value of price, not things.
Welcome![]() Hello everyone and welcome to the second week of this final term. When we first started online learning, one worry was that the time would go very slowly, but in fact it seems to be passing more quickly than ever. Already we are at the 30th newsletter of this academic year. In the UK and the USA, 30 years are celebrated with the symbol of the pearl and it is fitting that this lines up with our current online learning journey. It would be easy to only see the challenges in our current situation but the pearl symbolises much that we can be proud of. The pearl is highly valued in many cultures as it represents unity, wisdom, uniqueness, calm and integrity – amongst many other qualities. And of course, pearls are created when an ‘irritant’ enters the shell of an oyster (usually) and layers of protective coating called nacre build up around it. The final product is a beautiful and highly prized object. I hope that we can all see the layers of BSQ that are being grown throughout this time. When we finally emerge from this particular shell, we will certainly take some time to reflect on those layers and be thankful. This week we see the start of the Early Years live learning sessions. See how they have gone here. Nursery: Reception: ![]() Helping others Actually, there is much to be thankful for during this time and there is also much that we can do to support others. In the UK this 99-year-old man has already (much to his own amazement) managed to raise over $1,000,000 by walking around his garden. The money is for the National Health Service. ![]() One of the foundations we regularly support has a great need for support at this time. PAE (Protección Animal Ecuador) can benefit from financial gifts and fostering or adopting of dogs at this time. One way is to foster a puppy during the lockdown period and in fact, Mr. Lee has already done this, and he can definitely recommend it! You can contact PAE via the enquiry form on their website. Parent Teacher Conferences. The communication between school and home is an extremely important part of the learning process – more so now than ever. Today and Wednesday we are looking forward to seeing all our parents face to face for online parent teacher conferences. A great opportunity to catch up and talk about the progress your child has been making this year and particularly during the last few weeks. International Book Day Books and reading are a very important part of our life. That is why every year on International Book Day we celebrate the power of books, reading and sharing stories to help foster a sense of community and lifelong learning. This year the celebration around the world will be different, but while the world seems to be paused, we have the perfect opportunity to resume neglected reading or grab a new book and go on an unknown journey. The proposal for the BSQ Book Day Celebration 2020 is to capture a moment of this reading journey and share it within our community. We would appreciate it if you could send us a picture of these reading moments before April 23th, International Book Day, so we can all share our reading. Please send the photos to [email protected] Ms. Maggie Novoa Little Kickers Dear parents and my lovely students: Little Kickers is close to you! We are going to send you some really fun sports classes to do at home. It is important that all the family can play together. Our objective is to make your children move, develop their gross motor skills and continue developing other physical and cognitive abilities. I know we are going through complicated days, but sports are really important so that we can all release all that energy we have and have fun! I wish you all good. Coach Julian Little Kickers Important Announcement. To allow us to get messages to you quickly and efficiently we will be increasingly using our parent portals – Canvas for Years 1-13 and Memo for Nursery and Reception. PLEASE make sure that you are logged onto these platforms using the invites you have had from school. We now have over 90 families signed up – but we have 239 families at BSQ so still quite a way to go! From the Staff and the StudentsContinuing with our teachers and their stories about e-learning this new period. This week we have Ms. Sara Avent and the Ms. Aditi Sadotra from Secondary and the Year 2 Team and Ms. Coronel from Primary. Ms. Sara Avent – Secondary Science Teacher Year 7 students have been concluding their learning about the rock cycle and begin their summative project this week. Students have the flexibility to choose any medium they like to demonstrate their learning, for example a podcast, comic book, model, etc. I am looking forward to seeing what year 7s produce! In year 8, we draw to a close on our acids and bases unit and students begin their independent research assignment. Year 9 are learning about the importance of making accurate measurements in physics. They are using a variety of online simulations to learn how to use specialized tools, such as Vernier calipers and micrometers as well as a virtual pendulum lab. In year 12 ESS, lab work continues as normal, and students have just completed an experiment to learn more about natural selection. Students simulated different beak shapes using household tools such as tweezers, chopsticks, and forks and collected different “seed types” found from their kitchen cupboards – popcorn, dried beans, and rice! Ms. Aditi Sadotra - Secondary Maths Teacher On Monday 13th March we celebrated Ecuadorian Teachers Day. During the day students were given an opportunity to share their messages of thanks to their teachers for all that they do. The messages from the students were shared with teachers on the day and really made their days! I have collated some of the messages of thanks for all teachers to share with you all! Our students are truly grateful for the hard work of all of their teachers, particularly during this difficult time! Year 2 Team Year 2 has been busy, busy, busy having returned from the long weekend. We started our Topic this term and it is all about a female artist from Japan - Yayoi Kasuma. Her amazing artwork using dots and spots is incredible and we look forward to creating our own designs in the coming weeks. In literacy, the children have been learning how to write informal letters. Whilst at home, letters are a great way to communicate with our friends and this week we will be writing letters to each other in class - check your mail boxes! In science, we have been learning about plants in different habitats and what they need to survive. We then chose a habitat and created our own plants, considering how they have adapted to live there. This week is Earth Day on Thursday and Year 2 is doing a 'paper free' day. This encourages us to think about our actions and behaviour and also allows for some fun. So the boys and girls will be encouraged to do their learning using things that are available - like using fruit to make pictograms in maths or using recycled materials to create arts and crafts. We have been so impressed with all the children's continued enthusiasm and effort in Year 2 so far. Keep up the excellent work everybody! Ms. Antonella Coronel – Head of EYFS Dear parents, We are happy to start our second week of live teaching session. It was really great to hear from all the children last week and share a wonderful time with them. We do want to encourage all parents to join with your child for these live sessions since they are filled with interactive learning opportunities. Nursery students start their sessions at 10:00 and Reception at 10:30 every morning. This week it will be a little different due to the parent teacher conferences however the planning documents are filled with excellent learning opportunities and extra activities to stretch your child's learning. We look forward to receiving your weekly summary posts through Tapestry with all the pictures of the activities your children have done every Friday. Last week we celebrated Teachers day and it was lovely to receive this wonderful shout-outs from the children. The students want to give a huge thank you to all the teachers for all the amazing work and love you put into making every lesson a fun learning opportunity! Also another great thing that is happening in EYFS is Little Kickers! Mr. Julian will join us through our online learning journey with activities for the children to work on their balance, agility, aim and other gross motor skills. Stay tuned for the links that will be shared through Tapestry by your class teacher! Enjoy another great week, Ms. Coronel. Emma Newman Principal Being BSQ – Primary Update![]() This morning and on Wednesday in the whole school parents and students will be meeting with their teachers to discuss their progress and development so far this year, agree their next steps and to share their experiences of their online learning so far. This is a formal event so please do dress appropriately and have any questions you would like to ask prepared. It is also Earth Day on Wednesday, with many students and teachers focussing on activities related to environmental awareness. Then it is World Book Day on Thursday so please do focus on reading and the enjoyment of books. Last week many of the students from Primary entered the Easter Egg decorating competition organised by Mrs Dávila. This was a great success with a huge variety of decorations, styles and additional costumes added to the humble boiled egg. I shared these designs at the Key Stage One and Two assemblies last week and I hope you enjoy looking at all the designs in this newsletter. We decided that all the entries were wonderful so we awarded them all 5 House Points/Class Dojos and a certificate. Early Years started their Canvas conferences last week, with the teachers sharing a daily learning opportunity with their students to encourage participation and engagement with the learning. This is one example of the development and investment the school is making in your child’s learning. Please do continue to suggest changes we can make to our provision. As time goes on, I am amazed by the creativity and enthusiasm of our Primary staff during both their online sessions and their dedication to continuing giving extra learning opportunities away from the screen. Please also continue to support your child with their online learning, including meeting deadlines for learning to be submitted and always following the online protocols and rules, in particular listening to their teachers’ instructions about using the Public and Private chat functions. We have been impressed by the students’’ attitudes and behaviours during these conferences but do need your support to make sure the students know that the conferences are their formal lessons and that they need to focus on their learning, saving any personal, social interactions with their friends to outside of these sessions, using a private form of communication such as WhatsApp, Skype etc. Please do also put the Reception, Key Stage One and Key Stage Two Assemblies into your calendars and let me know if you are having trouble accessing these:
Finally, thank you for your continued support and positivity about the online provision here at BSQ and have a great week. Marcus Madden Head of Primary Being BSQ – Secondary Update![]() The End of the IBDP This week traditionally marks the end of the Year 13s' study for the IB Diploma Programme, as they change gears ahead of the exam session in May. This year, there's an understandable lack of the catharsis that these exams usually bring, so it's more important than ever to recognise the achievements of these remarkable young people. Despite the lack of examinations, we are on course for a tremendous set of IB results. Individuals have already secured places at amazing universities in the UK, the US, and the Netherlands. And they have grown, so much, over the past few years, in so many ways. They are not done yet, but I hope they realise how proud we are of all that they have achieved. Student Progress Conferences In the current environment it would be easy to become isolated from one another as a community. We are therefore delighted to be able to connect with parents at this time, to discuss, face-to-face, the academic progress of your children, our students. Please use this time productively, ask tough questions about learning, and I hope to meet with as many of you as possible. And outside of these meetings, please do continue to stay connected, to communicate any concerns and questions you may have, and to respond to communications sent to you by the teachers. Jim Wild Head of Secondary From the BSQ Counselling TeamThis week our school counsellor, Andrea Carrera, shares an article about talking to children about difficult topics.
Welcome ![]() Welcome to the start of Term 3 after a very short Easter weekend. I hope that everyone is ready to start the online classes again with a renewed energy and excitement after a couple of days extra rest. As always, we have been reviewing the way in which we have been teaching and working with students and we will be making some additional tweaks and changes as we move forward. In Early Years we will be sharing videos of our teachers with our youngest children because we know how important it is for those students to see their teachers and for us to support those parents in as many ways as possible. We also welcome our Early Years parents to Canvas and their own blogs. In Primary and Secondary we will be holding parent-teacher-student conferences in a few weeks where we will be able to share feedback on the online effort and engagement of students and offer personal and individual support and guidance. As always there is much to be thankful for during this time and one of those things is the development of a different set of learning skills for all of us – teachers, students and parents. I have seen some remarkable outcomes to learning tasks set and led by the teachers where it is clear that students have been truly inspired by the lesson content and delivery. Students have built their own museums, made their own jewellery, planted their own seeds. Around the world people are finding something to smile about, such as when Jacinda Arden announced that the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny are all keyworkers in New Zealand. Or when Wagamama launched their Wok from Home initiative. Here you can see how to fold and cook gyoza! https://www.instagram.com/p/B-cfYW6h1f8/ I hope that during the long weekend you too were able to find something to laugh about and something to share together. Please also spare some time to think about our teachers from the UK who do not have family and friends close by and are unable to be with them at this uncertain time but are continuing to work as hard as they can for your children. Parent Teacher Conferences. The communication between school and home is an extremely important part of the learning process – more so now than ever and as a result we are scheduling parent teacher conferences on Monday April 20th and Wednesday April 22nd through our online learning platform – Canvas. Mr Madden and Mr Wild will share more details about appointments. Important Announcement. To allow us to get messages to you quickly and efficiently we will be increasingly using our parent portals – Canvas for Years 1-13 and Memo for Nursery and Reception. PLEASE make sure that you are logged onto these platforms using the invites you have had from school. From the Staff and the Students Continuing with our teachers and their stories about e-learning this new period. This week we have the Ms. Aditi Sadotra and Ms. Valeria Cano from Secondary and Ms. Coronel from Primary. Ms. Aditi Sadotra – Secondary Maths Teacher Gratitude During our life and learning skills lesson last week all secondary students were asked to think about gratitude and spend some time focusing on the things we can be thankful for during this difficult period. There were so many lovely messages of gratitude from all students and it was a real pleasure to read them all. All of the messages were collated from every tutor group and are displayed in the picture below. Family was by far the biggest thing that we are grateful for as a community during this time. The extra time you are all spending together is certainly greatly appreciated by the students! This session was a great reminder to students and staff of all the positives that we can focus on during these times to support one another. Ms. Valeria Cano – Music Teacher Online music learning It has been amazing to see the commitment that students have to their online classes. In music we have been learning about different topics. With year 4 we have focused on learning about opera and the students had an opportunity to see one and be music critics for a day. Years 5 and 6 have been learning about orchestras and the instruments that make them up, seeing examples of orchestras playing songs that they enjoy. In year 7 and 8 the students have been working on different composers, getting to know their life and works. The year 9 students have been working on learning to make chords (triads and 7th chords), with which they will be able to create their own music very soon. Year 10 and Year 11 have been continuing their IGCSE preparation process, Year 10 students are making progress in musical genres, ensembles, instruments, and their preparation for the instrumental assessment, while Year 11 students have been dedicated to completing their compositions in different genres, with examples of waltz, blues and classical. I am very happy with the way things have developed and very proud of my students as I can see the effort they have put into online learning. Ms. Antonella Coronel – Head of EYFS Dear parents, It has been a short yet exciting week, filled with great new learning opportunities. We have received amazing examples of this through Tapestry. Thank you parents for your work and excellent guidance. The children also worked very hard on getting ready for Easter. They made some wonderful and colorful Easter eggs! The children have also been exploring through their imagination with forts and camping tents. Some have travelled to incredible new places. Others met new friends and together they made wonderful new memories. All of these through the comfort and safety of their homes. Through this very simple and fun activity the children work on vocabulary, communication skills, resilience, gross motor skills, investigation and many other skills that are essential to the different areas of development. We are also happy to share the very exciting news that we will begin live teaching sessions this week! There will be more detailed information to come regarding this later on today! We also want to remind everyone of our EYFS challenge, camouflage yourself then reveal yourself. We are excited to see the great ideas you all come up with and share them with our BSQ community. Remember to read all the guidelines and restrictions before submitting your video to [email protected] until this afternoon. Enjoy the rest of your week! Ms. Coronel Emma Newman Principal Being BSQ – Primary Update ![]() I hope you were all able to enjoy the long Easter weekend and some well-earned rest and perhaps some Easter chocolate! I want to take this opportunity to thank you all for your continued support, both for your child and our staff, during this difficult and unprecedented situation. Here at BSQ we live by our values and work tirelessly to help instil them in our community. It is a testament to your dedication and resilience that these values still shine brightly and clearly through your interactions with us and your child's continued commitment to their learning and development. The staff here at BSQ will support your child through this challenging period, answering their questions and making sure that the end of the academic year runs as smoothly as possible in the circumstances. The Primary Team are looking forward to meeting with you next week at the Parent Teacher Conferences to share your child’s progress, discuss their adaptation to the Online Learning and talk about their next steps in their development. I will be sending you further details about these conferences tomorrow and separate details about arranging a suitable time will also be sent to you by your child’s class teacher. These conferences will be on Monday 20th April and Wednesday 22nd April – on these days, all Primary students will be given appropriate activities and learning for them to complete, but there will be no online conferences in those two days. Thank you to all the parents that have already signed up for our Parent Portal – if you have not done so already, click on this link Parent Portal to activate your membership. Finally, we look forward to welcoming the Early Years students and their parents to the Canvas portal later this week – full instructions have been sent to these parents on how to join this exciting development. Marcus Madden Head of Primary Being BSQ – Secondary Update ![]() When we began this journey, all of this was new to us. Since then, and with your help and support, we've adapted very successfully to the online environment. To ensure that learning continues uninterrupted, we have maintained the structure of the school day and school week, while reacting to your concerns by reducing lesson duration and therefore screen-time. We have also experimented with ways of getting students to engage with learning away from their laptops, while at the same time developing new ways to record and track student progress so that we can offer consistent and meaningful feedback and assistance. We continue to meet as a team to look for more ways in which we can improve. The lessons being taught each day have been superb. I have witnessed IB Visual Arts students presenting analyses of van Gogh paintings to their classmates, Year 8 Humanities students reading powerful speeches on human rights, Maths teachers using visualizers to model concepts on the screen, and a great many small-group and whole-class discussions. It really is like a normal day at BSQ. Years 13 and 11 have faced challenges as the exams themselves were cancelled, but have attended, engaged, and worked brilliantly. They are assured now that their courses will be completed, and teachers are working tirelessly from home to ensure that the grades and certification that students will receive from the IB and Cambridge respectively will be a fair representation of the skills and knowledge they have learned, developed and demonstrated across the two years of their course. Year 11 will soon begin their pre-IB preparation. Year 13 will begin preparing for the Ineval examinations. There will be an opportunity in a couple of weeks for face-to-face parent and teacher conferences to discuss student progress. Thank you all, so very much, for the positive feedback you've given us, and the support you've given your children, as we all continue to strive for success and happiness Jim Wild Head of Secondary From the BSQ Counselling Team This week our school counsellor, Andrea Carrera, talks about ways to make children enjoy chores.
Welcome![]() Happy Easter This is a short week before we take a break from online learning for our Easter weekend. Normally a time to travel, meet with friends and celebrate with family, this year will be very different. Our travel will be limited to the rooms in our own homes; our meetings with friends will be virtual and our celebrations with extended families will have to wait for calmer times. Nevertheless, there is still a great deal to be thankful for as we wait for the storm to pass and calmer waters to arrive. Children and artists in Melbourne have been using the streets to share messages of hope and positivity like this: In the UK, thousands of people stood on their doorsteps to celebrate the doctors and nurses working in the National Health Service. Here at BSQ, our staff have been working to keep all our students purposeful and engaged whilst also coming up with ways to keep themselves busy and happy whilst #QuedateEnCasa. For example, baking bread, sharing music playlists, learning a new language, learning an instrument and checking in with colleagues who may be lonely. These may be difficult times for many in our community and sharing positive messages will always help. Thank you once again to those of you who have kept in touch and supported our work. Finally, today, and before the holiday, there is a poem that seems to fit these times very well and is taken from John O´Donohue’s Book of Blessings. It is better listened to here. This is the time to be slow, Lie low to the wall Until the bitter weather passes. Try, as best you can, not to let The wire brush of doubt Scrape from your heart All sense of yourself And your hesitant light. If you remain generous, Time will come good; And you will find your feet Again on fresh pastures of promise, Where the air will be kind And blushed with beginning. My thanks to all the staff who continue to work with the same dedication as always, and to the families who are getting involved in the learning process with such energy and enthusiasm. Have a very happy and safe Easter break. Online Learning It was another great week in the virtual classroom last week and the students and teachers once again found brilliant ways to learn together. Important Announcement. To allow us to get messages to you quickly and efficiently we will be increasingly using our parent portals – Canvas for Years 1-13 and Memo for Nursery and Reception. PLEASE make sure that you are logged onto these platforms using the invites you have had from school. From the Staff and the Students Continuing with our teachers and their stories about e-learning this period. This week we have the Year 1 Team and Ms. Coronel from Primary. Year 1 Team Literacy: Creating a story This week we’ve been trying to use our creativity in different classes. In Literacy we were learning how we can create a story, we came up with a lot of funny and scary characters. Here you can see the problem part of the story as written by Vivi from 1A. In Literacy lessons, some children have been working on creating sentences which describe pictures. Here is a sentence written by Paula from 1B and the picture that it describes: Art: Ecuadorian designs In Art we have learned about Ecuadorian designs, we learned about different patterns and how, by using different tools, we can create our own designs. Here you can look at some of the designs that we have created. In Art we have also looked at paintings of the jungle by Henri Rousseau and created our own artwork based on the rainforest. Here are some of these pieces of art. ![]() And finally, just to show how everyone is involved in our online learning at home. Here is Antonella writing her resolution and ending to her story with the support of her cat, Suki. Ms. Antonella Coronel – Head of EYFS Dear parents, We have just finished our third week of Online Learning and we are truly impressed by all your work and dedication. The children seem to be enjoying themselves and as important continuing their learning process. This of course is mainly because of the love you are putting into every activity you support your child in. This week we suggested a lot of fun ways to stay active. Here are the children doing so through exercise, yoga, building forts and doing literacy to-go style! We also love seeing how children help around in the kitchen. This is a great way to keep children stress free and a creative way to incorporate maths into a fun learning experience. Activities like cooking supports your child’s language development, fine motor skills as well as gross motor skills and much more. Continue to enjoy activities like this at home, the children are loving it! We have the Easter holidays coming up which makes next week a short one. You will find all the daily activities on the Google drive and also on Tapestry under the memos tab. Wednesday will be the last day of online learning until Monday April 13th when we are back. We have some very exciting things coming up in EYFS, so make sure you are checking the daily posts on Tapestry to be informed of everything. Have a lovely week, Ms. Coronel Emma Newman Principal Being BSQ – Primary Update ![]() Dear Parents, As we enter our fourth week of Online Learning and experience three days of school during what would have been the Easter break, I want to say a huge, heartfelt thank you to you all for supporting both your child and your child’s teachers during this difficult time. All around the world, parents and teachers are demonstrating resilience, adaptability and new, untapped skills, knowledge and understanding as we all work together to make this situation as manageable as possible. At BSQ, we have an amazing team of professionals working alongside our parent body to ensure that our students are not only engaged in their continuous learning but also developing their so-called ‘soft skills’ as a result of all the other activities and opportunities both you and their teachers are providing. Please do continue to share your child's learning with their teachers and celebrate all of their achievements, both from inside the virtual classroom and beyond. Marcus Madden Head of Primary Being BSQ – Secondary Update ![]() While the lack of close personal relationships means that the online learning environment will never be able to compete in the long-term with traditional face-to-face education, a trip around the virtual classrooms can demonstrate some powerful teaching and learning going on at BSQ right now. Just this week I've witnessed Ms Arellano's Year 12 IB Art students doing live analysis of paintings by annotating and presenting to the group. Mr Edwards' Year 10 IGCSE PE students showing each other the forces involved in movement by taking turns at the virtual whiteboard; and Mrs Madden's Year 8 Humanities students reading aloud their speeches on Human Rights to the rest of their class. I've seen Science experiments demonstrated through video, while Ms Avent explains, pauses, clarifies, and checks for understanding. And I've seen exam classes in Years 11 and 13, despite having no exams, continuing to work on their knowledge and skills in Mr Dobson's Year 13 Geography class and Ms Miranda's Year 11 English lessons. We have an amazing team of dedicated professionals at BSQ, who regardless of their personal circumstances continue to provide great teaching and learning opportunities for our students, your children. And while we hope this situation doesn't last too much longer, I feel confident that we are providing the very best education possible. Jim Wild Head of Secondary From the BSQ Counselling Team This week our school counsellor, Andrea Carrera, talks about how to teach problem-solving skills to children.
Welcome ![]() Online and Home Learning. As we start our third week of home learning and with no fixed end point, we are rapidly becoming more expert in the best ways to work together to support our students – your children – to make the most out of these unusual circumstances. There have been some fabulous activities set for home learning linked to intellectual, social, emotional, creative, dynamic and physical development. Positive stories. Many of us want to help others at time like this and thanks to our CAS and Community Service Coordinator, Paola Montenegro, we have a guide to how we can do that. If you would like to help, then here are some tips. Important Announcement. To allow us to get messages to you quickly and efficiently we will be increasingly using our parent portals – Canvas for Years 1-13 and Memo for Nursery and Reception. PLEASE make sure that you are logged onto these platforms using the invites you have had from school. From the Staff and the Students Continuing with our teachers and their stories about learning in the classroom this period. This week we have Ms. Aditi Sadotra from Secondary and Ms. Lauren Backhouse, Ms. Hayley Dean and Ms. Coronel from Primary. Maths Puzzle Winner! Last week in my newsletter article I posed a puzzle that one of my year 12 students shared with me (thanks Juan Perla 12b!). I opened this out to students and parents and we have a winner!! Question: Can you spot the pattern in the following sequences and if so, how would you describe the pattern mathematically? 1, 4, 27, 256, ... 6, 15, 35, 77, ... 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 8, 12, 18, 27, ... Well done to Mr. Michael Alarcon who submitted the following:
These were really challenging sequences, particularly the last one, very impressive Mr Alarcon!! Ms. Aditi Sadotra – Secondary Maths Teacher Secondary Rewards Assembly On Friday we got the whole of the secondary together for a massive online conference to share in the achievements of our students from partial 4. Unfortunately, we were not in school when the assembly was scheduled due to the current circumstances. However, we felt it was even more important during these difficult times to keep up the positivity through sharing the achievements of our amazing student community in the last partial and also this current time. In place of students being able to physically collect their awards we had photos and I know all the students at home were clapping and cheering along with the sound effects! Well done to all our award winners and an even bigger well done to ALL STUDENTS for the resilience and adaptability you are demonstrating during these challenging times. – Ms. Aditi Sadotra Ms. Lauren Backhouse – Year 4A Teacher The Rockstars of the world asked Year 4 to design some headphones to help young people muffle the sound of music at their concerts. year 4 had to test some different materials and use e best one to crear their designs. Ms. Hayley Dean – Year 4B Teacher In Year 4B we have been completing a range of activities during our home learning. For our science topic of sound, we looked at how loud sounds can affect and damage our hearing. The challenge was given to 4B to help all young rock stars who want to go to rock concerts without damaging their hearing: could they find way to help these young rock stars? 4B rose to the challenge and created many different ear muffs and gave fantastic reasons as to why they chose certain materials. Here are some photos of 4B fantastic creations. Ms. Antonella Coronel – Head of EYFS Dear parents, Hope you all enjoyed a calm and restful weekend Last week in Early years we had a lot of parents involved in the extra activities posted by the teachers on the Tapestry platform. These activities are planned to meet the different interests the children have and ensure that their time at home is spent making fun new learning experiences. The children learned a few fun ways to control their emotions. A few children did their very own stress balls, as for others, emotional monsters. Some went out to do a bit of gardening as a great way to relieve stress and connect with the world around us. The children have also been working hard at growing their independence. They have been joining their parents in the kitchen to make a lot of delicious food, some even helped wash fruits and vegetables. We are so happy to see how much the children are working on during this home learning process. A big round of applause for every child and parent, you all deserve it, we can’t wait to see all the great things you will share with us this week. Enjoy a wonderful week. Warm regards, Ms. Coronel Emma Newman Principal Being BSQ – Primary Update ![]() As we move into our third week of Online Home Learning, supported by our wonderful teachers here at BSQ, I hope that you are all able to see the benefits of continuing with the routines and structure of the sessions in KS1 and KS2 and the learning opportunities and suggestions from EYFS. Although these are worrying times, we need to support our students in their learning and continual development, whilst also being aware of their well-being and understanding of the current situation. This is why it is extremely important to have a programme of activities prepared for your child at home for when they are not directly involved in their online home learning, away from the computer or tablet and preferably with another family member to support them. This a great opportunity to spend quality time together learning a new skill, such as baking bread, a new game or practising their drawing or painting. Of course, your access to materials is limited, but your imagination is not – take a look at some of these suggestions and come up with your own to create a full and engaging day of learning and exploration for your child! Please do continue to look regularly at the Canvas Parent Portal (and Tapestry Memo posts for EYFS) and the BSQ Newsletter to keep up-to-date with news from school. Our teachers continue to be available during normal school working hours for school-related questions - please avoid contacting them in the evenings and weekends, as this is the time they have to prepare their next sessions etc. Marcus Madden Head of Primary Being BSQ – Secondary Update ![]() Thank you I want to thank all of you, sincerely, for the positive engagement you've shown these past two weeks as we've navigated this new remote learning landscape together. The level of student attendance to lessons has been extraordinary, and the work being done has been terrific. None of this would be possible without the active and determined support of parents who value education, who trust BSQ, and who are committed, even in times like these, to living and learning together. Tracking Progress With the clear success of the small improvements we made to the timetable last week, the only changes we will seek to make this week are to the ways in which we monitor student work and provide feedback on their progress. After all, we are not engaged in this process in order to simply keep students busy or to pass the time, but rather to ensure that their learning continues and that they keep on developing the knowledge and skills needed for success. To do this, we have developed a system whereby Google Docs will serve to role of exercise book. Whilst being taught through Canvas, student's will either work directly on Google Docs, or attach images of work done in their books to the documents once the work is completed. This will allow their teachers to track everything they do so that we can continue to assess student learning and plan our lessons based on that assessment, even from a distance. Jim Wild Head of Secondary From the BSQ Counselling Team This week our school counsellor, Andrea Carrera, talks about whether boredom is good for your children.
Welcome![]() Online and Home Learning. Hello everyone and welcome to our first newsletter as part of the time we are spending working from home. I am sure that the last few days have presented as many challenges for you as they have for us but the wonderful thing about BSQ is that we all rise to whatever those challenges may be, with determination and positivity such as I have not seen in other schools. I have been visiting many of the learning sessions online and have been excited to see that all our hard work in preparation for this eventuality has paid off. The teachers are delivering lessons, resources, support and guidance to our students as if they are still in the classroom with them. The students are working hard, and they are being supported by you to stay on track and enjoy activities at home. Thank you. Our counsellors have been sharing tips and advice with you all to help make home learning and wider home life a little easier at this time. Please do contact them if you need any further support. https://britishschoolquito.edu.ec/news Academic matters. This week schools in the UK will close and all GCSE and A level exams have been cancelled. At the moment, no decisions have been made about the International GCSE although Year 13 parents and students have now been informed that the IB exams for this summer will NOT take place. Alternative arrangements for awarding diplomas and certificates will be shared soon. We will keep you up to date with information and any decisions that we make regarding the best way forward for our students. In the meantime, students should keep working as hard as they have been so that all assignments and preparations are completed to a high standard. Positive stories. Even in the most challenging times we can find stories that are uplifting. This neighbour found a way to help others in her street. Supermarket chains across the country are also donating basic supplies and food for low-income people. People are also showing kindness to total strangers - something that we often forget to do in our normal busy lives. Amazingly there are also companies giving services and goods away for free as Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix and Google all announce changes to the way they support their users and their staff. Important Announcement. From Monday you will be able to access your very own Parent Portal on Canvas. Here I will post messages and announcements that will mean we can all keep up to date effectively with any changes. Look out for the email from Sandy. From the Staff and the Students Continuing with our teachers and their stories about learning in the classroom this period. This week Ms. Aditi Sadotra from Secondary and Mrs. Helen Dávila and Ms. Coronel from Primary. Ms. Aditi Sadotra - Secondary Maths Teacher Online learning in mathematics We are now one week into conference teaching and it has been a learning curve for our whole school community. The start has been really successful and I have been so pleased to see how quickly everyone has adjusted, particularly the students. From my own experience in the online maths classroom it has been such a pleasure to be able to interact with students on a daily basis and get as close as possible to our normal lessons during this challenging time. Students have adapted particularly well to the online learning and have been very helpful to me, guiding me through some of the technical aspects! They have picked up the technology very quickly indeed. As we are going into our second week I wanted to share some of the positive things I have seen in my classes from last week.
As we move forward across the coming days I look forward to building on this great start with the students to try and retain as much normality as possible. The students have displayed such a positive attitude and are working incredibly hard and I am sure this will continue throughout this time. Finally, I thought I would share with you a mathematical puzzle a student brought to one of my online lessons. Students and parents please feel free to try it and send me an email if you think you have solved it! [email protected]. Can you spot the pattern in the following sequences and if so, how would you describe the pattern mathematically? 1, 4, 27, 256, ... 6, 15, 35, 77, ... 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 8, 12, 18, 27 Mrs. Helen Davila – Year 3B Teacher What a change to our learning! This week the class have been carrying out our regular lessons but from home. I am amazed at the way 3B have adapted to lessons on Canvas. They are learning to use the blog, search for their work in the homework section and carry on their regular routines in a happy and enthusiastic manner. We have been continuing with our work on Ancient Egyptians and took a look at how to make notes at the beginning of the week. The class then made their own notes about a god of their choice and today started to write about them. In Science, we were looking at the human skeleton and everyone made a skeleton puppet, with excellent results. They even managed to label all the bones on the back of the skeleton. Great work this week everyone. Ms. Antonella Coronel – Head of EYFS Dear parents, I first want to thank you all for your amazing job so far and your quick transition over to the Online learning. I know we are all going through a special situation and you have shown great resilience and determination to push forward with a lot of positivity. So far we have seen amazing work from all the children in EYFS. Through the pictures you have uploaded onto Tapestry we can observe that your children are having fun and enjoying the planned activities of this first week. The children have truly impressed us all with their singing, cooking, cutting, writing, reading and dancing skills, these all are just to name a few. As one of the extra activities we posted, we asked the children to go on a scavenger hunt of shapes and specific items. Here are just a few pictures we received from our pro EYFS photographers, your children. You can continue to do scavenger hunts and change difficulty level by hiding things or by looking for new items they usually don’t usually have a lot of contact with like the dust pan, car keys, etc. Stay safe, Kind regards Emma Newman Principal Being BSQ – Primary Update ![]() I hope you and your families are safe and well and coping with all the changes that the current situation is presenting to our community. Although we are now all meeting in the virtual online world, we are all still here to support each other and care for each other, so if there is anything we can do to help each other, please do contact us. Last week we spoke about developing resilience, an attribute we are all going to have to demonstrate over the next few days and weeks as we adapt to the changes in our personal and collective circumstances. However, our main priority must be our children, modelling resilience, patience and calm during these worrying times, whilst still keeping them informed appropriately about the situation. Please do continue to support your child at home with their home learning – our students need the routines of learning, playing, reading and relaxing to help them cope with these changes and the daily contact with their friends and teachers, even in the virtual world, will support them immensely. Please do share any learning with your child’s teacher. Of course, alongside the scheduled learning from school you have a wonderful opportunity to spend some quality time with your child and introduce other opportunities for them that are usually restricted to weekends and holidays. There is a wealth of information out there about how to widen your child’s experiences while they are unable to leave the house, including Virtual Museum Tours, Virtual Field Trips and lots of opportunities to hear famous authors read books online. I will continue to drop into as many lessons as possible and share your child’s learning with them – if you can do the same to support your child, that would be wonderful! All the staff at BSQ are looking forward to seeing our community again in more normal circumstances – until then, hasta luego. Marcus Madden Head of Primary Being BSQ – Secondary Update ![]() Remote Learning We enjoyed some fantastic remote learning last week, and I am confident that the students at BSQ are receiving the very best teaching and care available at this time. We will make a few minor adjustments this week to improve our provision, including more time for students to get up and move between lesson, a reduction in homework being set, and an increased focus on work that can be completed in books rather than through a screen. For the continued success of this enterprise we need your help at home. Please continue to ensure that your child or children have a quiet space, free from disturbances, where they can work. Please take an active interest in what they are doing, and please check that they are logged in and working. And please respect the timetable, including the lunchtimes. Exam Updates The IB have announced today that the exams scheduled for April and May this year will no longer take place. Instead, students will be awarded a Diploma (or Course certificate) with the grades based on their submitted coursework and the established assessment expertise, rigor and quality control already built into the programmes. At BSQ we will continue to support Year 13 through the completion of all coursework requirements, as well as providing any and all help they need in securing places at their preferred universities. Cambridge have yet to announce what changes, if any, they will make to this year's IGCSE exam session. We will continue to work with the assumption that exams will take place. Should we hear otherwise, we'll let the students and parents of Year 11 know straight away, and share what the plan will for the remainder of Year 11. Jim Wild Head of Secondary From the BSQ Counselling Team This week our school counsellor, Andrea Carrera, talk about how to avoid parental burnout.
Welcome![]() This week I want to say thank you to all our families for the calm and measured way in which you are responding to the decisions and actions we are taking at BSQ to keep our community safe. Our school values of respect and determination are shining through as we continue to provide high quality learning and a truly happy and positive learning environment for our students. For most of last week, early morning revision sessions, assemblies, experiments, sports clubs and celebrations continued to mark the BSQ days and I am proud of all the staff, students and parents who helped to make that happen. This week we see our community moving to online learning using our excellent platform - Canvas. Our staff have been busy preparing for the possibility of online learning since we were closed in October and students will be able to continue with their studies as usual, guided and supported by our wonderful team. All lessons start at 8am on Tuesday morning. Coronavirus. Many thanks to all of you who have communicated with our school doctor about your travel plans – please continue to do so and to be vigilant and aware of your own health. We will keep you posted and in the meantime please ensure that Sandy has a correct email address for you and that you read all communications carefully. Meet the team – First Aid Brigade We are lucky here at BSQ to have the support and guidance of a fully qualified pediatric doctor AND a team of supporters who are first aid trained and ready to help out. ![]() Dr. Sara Luengo - School Doctor Here at BSQ we have the First Aid Brigade, the school doctor is the leader and responsible for the training and decision making. With 5 to 6 members of staff who are part of it as volunteers, we are trained in first aid to respond quickly and effectively to all emergencies that happen on campus and outside in our school trips. The people who participate in this brigade are (Marisabel Nájera, Fernando Ruiz, Ana Espinosa and Alejandra Miranda). As the leader of this group, it is very rewarding to work with friends and colleagues and also to train and teach the entire community. Teaching first aid in a school setting becomes an ideal scenario, we have staff and students all with different backgrounds and social contexts, having their own groups of friends and family, by training all of them (specially the kids) they become multipliers of information on a large scale. First aid education must be universal, everybody can learn first aid, and everybody should. My experience as the doctor of the BSQ community and being responsible for the health and safety of it, has been very rewarding and a constant learning experience. I consider myself lucky due to the fact that, like I said before, I work under ideal conditions. I have a perfect setting to keep an eye on all of my patients, see their evolution, put into practice all the epidemiologic measures that I know would be best for the entire community, do follow ups and focus on prevention. The BSQ community as a whole, is a very healthy one. My focus is on maintaining and improving that even more, being vigilant of the situations in the country and the world that would require immediate action, to ensure we are all living and learning together. From the Staff and the Students Continuing with our teachers and their stories about learning in the classroom this period. This week we have Year 8 students and the Climate Change Committee from Secondary and Mr. Matt Kidd and Ms. Coronel from Primary. Year 8 - Happy Women’s Day! BSQ celebrated the day with a Life and Learning skills lesson planned by Miss Parker and the Equality and Diversity Committee (Samantha Baugh, Silas Tapia, Mateo Almendari). The lesson was engaging and full of thought provoking facts and information about women with the aim of raising awareness of the importance of the continued struggle for gender equality covering topics like: feminism, women in education, violence against women and girls, the achievements of women and women in politics. Year 8 can tell you all about women in politics because they have been learning all about The Suffragettes in Humanities and understand the societal role of women from 1840 to 1920 and reforms women wanted. Through their historical enquiries they have been learning the importance of primary sources and how to analyse information and form a balanced argument. One of their tasks last week was to design a leaflet or poster for the Suffragettes campaign (seen here in the photos). I have been very impressed with how Year 8 have approached this topic and I am looking forward to seeing more from them as we move on to learning about Human Rights. Climate Change Committee The Climate Change Committee raised an amazing $700.80 from their Jeans day and Bake Sale event on Friday 6th March and would like to thank all the parents and students for their baked goods donations and the students and teachers for buying up all the cakes! The money will be going to the Australia Zoo Wildlife Warriors. This charity was established in 2002 by Steve and Terri Irwin as a way to include and involve other caring people in the protection of injured, threatened or endangered wildlife. The charity has been helping hundreds of thousands of native wildlife affected by the Australian bushfires. Click here for more information. The Climate Change Committee continue to meet to discuss the way forward. On Thursday we received confirmation that we are now officially registered as an Eco-School. This is very exciting news and as the Climate Change Committee grows (we have now gone from 3 members to 8 members). With its holistic approach to education the Eco-schools programme will involve students, teachers, school staff, parents, management and the local community. You can find out more by following this link Watch this space for more news from the Climate Change Committee! Mr. Matt Kidd – Year 2B Teacher The boys and girls of Year 1 and Year 2 visited La Rana Sabia Theatre in La Merced last week as part of their drama learning. The students were given a tour of the incredible museum home to puppets and masks from around the world, including India, Pakistan and China. The highlight of the trip was the hilariously educational puppet show in the theatre where the students engaged with the performers with songs and advice giving. A very exciting morning was had by all and we cannot wait to return to La Rana Sabia in the future. Ms. Antonella Coronel - Head of EYFS Last week in Nursery was all about Humpty Dumpty! This traditional and loved nursery rhyme opened the door for a lot of fun filled activities and experiments. The children first began learning the story of this very courageous egg who even though was very fragile was not scared of doing what he loved most of all, climb! And even though he fell off many times, Humpty Dumpty kept going and trying until we helped him figure out how to keep him safe. A few boiled eggs were harmed in the process of this experiment however one was saved and showed the children that if we think outside the box we can find a solution for anything and everything. That is not all, this nursery rhyme also reinforced the children’s rhyming abilities. This skill is very tricky for the children at this age but they showed their love for learning it by asking questions such as “what rhymes with yucky” and trying out a few silly words themselves like oky, doky, tricky, chicky, etc. The children also designed beautiful outfits for Humpty Dumpty with a cutting and sticking activity. They then used the small world area to repeat the nursery rhyme by acting out the story with eggs and the great castle of the King. Emma Newman Principal Being BSQ – Primary Update ![]() Thank you all for your understanding while the staff at BSQ make sure that Online learning is able to continue your child’s education during this period of school closure. We know that this will not be an easy time for many families and students so please be patient with the technology, keep in contact with your child’s class teachers and keep yourselves safe. There will be more specific advice for students from school that we ask you to read and digest, with Online Learning starting at 8am on Tuesday 17th March. In times like these it is important to revisit our school values and the other attributes we aim to instil in our students. Resilience is one of the main attributes that comes to mind when we are talking about coping with any changes as a result of the worldwide crisis. Resilience helps students navigate these stressful situations. When students have the skills and the confidence to confront and work through their problems, they learn that they have what it takes to confront difficult issues. The more they bounce back on their own, the more they internalise the message that they are strong and capable. Strategies to Build Resilience Parents can help their child build resilience and confront uncertainty by teaching them to solve problems independently. While the natural reaction of the parent might be to jump in and help so that the child avoids dealing with discomfort, this actually weakens resilience. Children need to experience discomfort so that they can learn to work through it and develop their own problem-solving skills. Without this skill-set in place, children will experience anxiety and shut down in the face of adversity. Build a Strong Emotional Connection: Spend one-on-one time with your child: children develop coping skills within the context of caring relationships, so it is important to spend one-on-one time with them. This means you need to put down the smart phone and focus on your child. When children know they have the unconditional support of a parent, family member, or even a teacher, they feel empowered to seek guidance and make attempts to work through difficult situations. Positive connections allow adults to model coping and problem-solving skills to children. Resist the Urge to Fix It and Ask Questions Instead: When children come to parents to solve their problems, the natural response is to lecture or explain. A better strategy is to ask questions. By bouncing the problem back to the child with questions, the parent helps the child think through the issue and come up with solutions. Teach Problem-Solving Skills: The goal is not to promote rugged self-reliance. We all need help sometimes, and it is important for children to know they have help. By brainstorming solutions with children, parents engage in the process of solving problems. Encourage children to come up with a list of ideas and weigh the pros and cons of each one. Label Emotions: When stress kicks in, emotions run hot. Teach your children that all feelings are important and that labelling their feelings can help them make sense of what they are experiencing. Tell them it is okay to feel anxious, sad, jealous, etc. and reassure them that bad feelings usually pass. Demonstrate Coping Skills: Deep breathing exercises help children relax and calm themselves when they experience stress or frustration. This enables them to remain calm and process the situation clearly. Embrace Mistakes—Theirs and Yours: Failure avoiders lack resilience. In fact, failure avoiders tend to be highly anxious children. When parents focus on end results, children get caught up in the pass/fail cycle. They either succeed or they don’t. This causes risk avoidance. Embracing mistakes (your own included) helps promote a growth mindset and gives children the message that mistakes help them learn. It can be helpful to talk about a mistake you made and how you recovered from it. Promote the Bright Side: Optimism and resiliency go hand in hand. Some children may appear more naturally optimistic than others, but optimism can be nurtured. If you have a mini pessimist on your hands, acknowledge the feelings that lead to pessimistic thinking and teach your child to reframe his thoughts to find the positive. Model Resiliency: The best way to teach resilience is to model it. We all encounter stressful situations. Use coping and calming strategies. Deep breathing can be an effective way to work through stress. Always label your emotions and talk through your problem-solving process. Star of the Week Marcus Madden Head of Primary Being BSQ – Secondary Update![]() Digital Futures With the temporary closure of access to school, many teachers and students alike find themselves for the first time engaging with perhaps the most significant development in education for generations: online and remote learning. While this presents many challenges, it also opens up a world of opportunity, as we are required to adapt to new strategies for communication and assessment. The habits and skills developed, practiced and honed during this trying time will be useful for many years to come in the worlds of higher education, work, and life. Parents need to support this by encouraging full engagement, and providing the space and resources students need to learn. Exam Sessions Students and parents of Years 11 and 13, please be assured that we are monitoring the situation regarding this year’s exam session on a daily basis, and will communicate with you all directly any issues that will affect these important assessments. In the meantime, please continue to attend all of your online courses and study sessions, and go about your extended learning and revision with the assumption that the exams will go ahead as planned. Jim Wild Head of Secondary From the BSQ Counselling Team This week our school counsellor, Andrea Carrera, shares a Parent Caregiver Guide to help families cope with Coronavirus.
Welcome![]() Saturday was an exciting day here at BSQ with all the students exploring STEM activities (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths) in classrooms and workshops. Huge thanks to all the teachers and assistants who designed and ran the projects and particularly to Mrs Maudsley whose vision led to such a range of exciting activities in Secondary – including our very own Escape Room! Coronavirus. Many thanks to all of you who have communicated with our school doctor about your travel plans – please continue to do so and to be vigilant and aware of your own health. Please note that we will be considering all out of school activities in the light of any developments here in Ecuador and it may be necessary to either cancel or postpone activities if the situation here changes. We will keep you posted. After School Clubs. Unfortunately, due to a very low attendance, we have decided to start our Music Club this week. Please do come and join us. Meet the team – Year 4 Team Driving Change 2020 – Save the Date Thank you to those of you who have signed up to attend our conference later this month. The event is getting closer and the committee are very excited about the speakers. Before the break we introduced you to two of our speakers – here are two more. ![]() Gizella Greene. Is it possible to be a mother, wife, businesswoman and mentor at the same time? Surely, yes, and you can also inspire and impel many women to fulfill their dreams without sacrificing their personal lives and succeeding in their professions. Join me on this journey and let me tell you about this adventure called SuperFoods Ecuador. She cofounded SuperFoods Ecuador in 2015, an inclusive enterprise, run by a group of entrepreneurial and empowered women. It promotes wellness, integral nutrition and healthy lifestyles, by offering a space with a flexitarian restaurant, an organic store, and healthy cooking classes. As a pioneer in this industry in Ecuador, Gizella promotes gender equality, environmental awareness and generates a positive impact on society, working with more than 300 small businesses and entrepreneurs whose families depend on what they sell. ![]() Patricio Lloret. Social Housing Community Building Programme and the role of women as positive change agents. Master in Public Policy, MSc, University College London (UCL). Experience in Public Policy, Public Planning, Social Development, Information Society, E-Government, Telecommunications, Tourism, Human Resources and Research and Development. Master in Business Administration, MBA, INCAE Business School, minor in sustainable development, industry and technology. Consultant in the areas of retail and renewable energy with experience in several industries: pharmaceutical, construction, shipping and hospitality, marketing, sales and customer service. From the Staff and the Students Continuing with our teachers and their stories about learning in the classroom this period. This week we have Mr. Christopher Leadbeter, Ms. Fernanda Espinosa and Ms. Coronel from Primary. Mr. Christopher Leadbeter – Year 3A Teacher The new half term has meant the start of a new fascinating topic in 3A, ancient Egypt. In our literacy lessons we have started looking at non chronological reports all about the many interesting gods the ancient Egyptians believed in. The class have been thinking about using sub headings, prepositions and the tricky area of apostrophes. The children have been busy discussing which god is their favourite. In addition to this, the children have looked at why the River Nile was so important to this civilization. Also, the children have created beautiful paintings depicting pyramids at sunset. In non-Egyptian related learning we have been finding out all about money in Maths lessons. The children have had to make amounts using the fewest number of coin, calculate the amount of change they should get and solve word problems. In Science lessons we have also begun a new topic ‘Animals including humans. We sorted animals based on whether they are carnivores, herbivores or omnivores. Drama Trip – Ms. Fernanda Espinosa + Y1 & Y2 team The children enjoyed the play "The Cave of the Mice" (La Cueva de los Ratones), a story about the importance of not throwing garbage in the street and separating it before disposal. They also visited the puppet museum, with the owner of the place and puppet master Claudia Monsalve. She shared information about the puppets and the work of La Rana Sabia. Both teachers and students enjoyed this experience, and allowed the children to have more contact with the world of the arts. Ms. Antonella Coronel – Head of EYFS This weekend we enjoyed the first Early Years family picnic in the British School Quito big football field. With some relocation and your amazing flexibility, the children were able to enjoy a wonderful picnic with us and yourselves. The children enjoyed a variety of activities such as the balloon pop race where we saw some great skills and very fast runners. Twister was also a hit, where children competed with their teachers and classmates. A few students enjoyed time designing their own balloons by drawing and coloring great art work on them. Ms. Vasilokonstantaki organized horse races where children got on the back of an adult and raced to the finish line. The children also practiced their jump roping skills. It was a beautiful experience to watch the students enjoy some outdoor play time with their families and friends, as well as watch parents connecting. Being parents is never an easy task but it is rewarding and an incredible experience. Sharing with other parents and each other’s experiences gives us new ways of working through whatever may be going on at home in a positive way. Thank you for your time and sharing these moments with us. Dates for your Diary March 13th – Ross Jennings visiting March 18th – Admissions General Open Day March 20th – 21st – Driving Change 2020 March 25th – Admissions EYFS Open Day March 28th – IB Art Exhibition Emma Newman Principal Being BSQ – Primary Update![]() The whole BSQ community enjoyed Science Day on Saturday, with the Early Years team hosting an activity session at BSQ. This was a great opportunity to work and learn in different ways and was enjoyed by all who came. This week we are looking forward to the visit of Ross OC Jennings, aka The First Piper. Ross is attempting to play the bagpipes, a traditional Scottish musical instrument, in every country and is visiting BSQ on Friday to both perform the bagpipes and also answers questions about his motivation for this trip. On Tuesday 24th March it is our Parent Teacher Conference for all Primary students. Please do let either Mr Santiago Salazar ([email protected]) or your child’s class teacher know your preferred time. On Friday 27th March it is the end of our Book Week celebrations and learning and the students are encouraged to come dressed as their favourite book character. More details to follow about this event and also other ways you can support your child to celebrate Book Week. Please do contact Miss Nicole Camacho ([email protected]) if you would like your child to participate in the music lessons at school, on Tuesday and Thursdays. One area of the curriculum I want to discuss this week is our ICT provision and how it aims to develop ICT capabilities in our students. ICT stands for Information and Communication Technology and refers to any mode of education that uses information and communications technology to support, enhance, and optimise the creation, delivery, storage or management of information. We all know about how technical our society is now and the predictions that technology will play an even larger part in our lives in the future. Our job as parents and teachers is to ensure that we prepare our students for this future, while still retaining our core values and aces to traditional means of communication and information sharing, such as books, museums and real-time conversations. If technology is already a part of their present and inevitably, their future, then it is essential that we develop our students’ ICT capabilities. ICT is widely used in many industries and employers now expect staff to have a degree of ICT literacy when they are hired. ICT skills in primary education can be broken down into several components which together constitute ICT capability, such as:
Processes and higher order skills are developed through examples, exploration, experience and reflection. The teacher’s role will be one of support and guidance, rather than direct teaching. Here at BSQ we feel the best way to develop a student’s ICT skills within their ICT capability is to provide them with meaningful activities, embedded in purposeful subject-related contexts. We use a variety of online tools and applications to give our students opportunities to practise and refine their ICT capability, while learning about e-safety and appropriate use of ICT. This is one area that you as parents can support your child, reminding and modelling good e-safety, monitoring their use of ICT and ensuring that the appropriate filters are in place to make sure the content is appropriate for your child. Star of the WeekMarcus Madden Head of Primary Being BSQ – Secondary Update ![]() International-Mindedness The terms Global Citizenship and International-Mindedness are often used interchangeably in education, but they are not the same thing at all. In fact, in many ways, they are often the opposite. The first is focused on ideas and issues that affect us all, as one people on one planet. This includes things like the climate emergency. The second is about how we are all different, have different perspectives and different concerns, and how we must appreciate those differences in order to be able to work and exist successfully together. At BSQ we work hard on developing international-mindedness through the taught curriculum. In subjects such as Literature, Geography, History, and even Science, we learn about the concerns of different people around the world and in TOK, we explore those cultures and perspectives in increasing depth. Arguably though, it is the Model United Nations programme that is the most valuable in revealing and promoting these different mindsets. MUN is an internationally renowned and highly respected creative and academic exercise combining research, problem-solving, negotiation and debating skills with an astute awareness of current and historical global events and issues. Students gather together to ‘role-play’ the functions and processes of the United Nations, bringing a depth of understanding, a focus on the wider world and a skill-set unmatched by the regular curriculum. It is designed to allow good students to become excellent ones, and to develop their potential as leaders. Last week, numerous members of our ever-growing TOK team took part in three days of high level debate at Isaac Newton School, with great success. Thank you to Mathias Bustos in Year 12 for leading the MUN this year, to all those teachers supporting, and to all the students attending. Jim Wild Head of Secondary From the BSQ Counselling Team This week our school counsellor, Andrea Carrera, talks about whether you really "see" your child.
Welcome![]() A warm welcome back to all our families from the Carnival break. I hope you were able to spend precious time with family and friends and recharge your batteries ready for the next five weeks. It is a short term until Easter but, as always, we have much to pack in. It is a worrying time for many around the world as Coronavirus continues to spread. You will have read about the precautions we are taking to keep our community safe and this may change of course as events develop. Please continue to monitor the health of your family and remember that you can always contact our own doctor Sara Luengo if you need advice. TED-X WOW! After many weeks of preparation and hard work, the TED-X Youth@BSQ event finally came to fruition at BSQ on Thursday before the break. What a wonderful evening and what amazing talks from our very own students Martinna, Martín and Pablo. With my thanks to everyone involved in this event and especially to Sofy León and Andrea Carrera who had the vision to bring this to BSQ. TED-TEDx is an annual event where some of the most important thinkers and entrepreneurs in the world are invited to share what they are most passionate about. "TED" means Technology, Entertainment and Design, three major areas that together are shaping our future because it presents "ideas worth explaining." Over time, speakers from TED and TEDx, including Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Jane Goodall, Frank Gehry, Paul Simon, Sir Richard Branson, Philippe Starck and Bono, have shared this space of personal and professional growth. The TEDxYouth@BSQ is a milestone for the world of education in Ecuador because it opened conversations and experiences of both students and experts towards guests. The theme of TEDxYouth@BSQ was Education: Innovation, Diversity and Wellbeing by adding live translation to sign language to your proposal so that more people can access the content. We received two speakers from the Ecuadorian Amazon. One of them is an English teacher and talked about educational work with diverse classrooms that face high psychosocial risks. The other speaker of the Amazon spoke from her vision as a student to the importance of adults who support her proposals. We also have the expertise of a speaker talking about the role of self-motivation and the scope of the objectives against all odds. We also had a Rugby expert talking about this sport as a tool to improve the quality of life. Three of our students won their opportunity to become TEDx speakers talking about various topics such as communication, study habits and sports - student life. They made it amazing after almost 5 months of hard preparation. Behind the realization of TEDx were several BSQ staff all united with the emotion of having obtained the TEDx license and being hosts of this world-renowned event. Likewise, we thank the support and professionalism of the USFQ and COCOA for the audio-visual realization of the event, mandatory action so that the talks can be uploaded to the TEDx platform. It was all a collective, passionate and passionate work of BSQ staff. This experience has definitely enriched us as a BSQ community and gave us the opportunity to share this space with other people and organizations outside the BSQ, contributing again to collective growth. There is a saying that mentions: "Walking the extra mile is complicated and requires effort. The advantage is that there is hardly anyone on that route." Thanks to all who supported this proposal and continue the dream of continuing to change the world from the classrooms walking the extra mile. Ms. León and Ms. Carrera Meet the team – Our Counsellors. We are lucky that Ecuadorian policy is so respectful and caring in terms of the support that is required in schools linked to student well-being. However, we are doubly lucky that our counselling team is so committed and dedicated to our student, parent and staff community. After School Clubs – reminder. Many thanks to those who have signed up to start our brand new music club after school and to join the BSQ String Band. I am delighted to announce that we will be starting the BSQ music club this term. The club runs on Tuesday and Thursday after school from 15h20 to 17h20 at A13 classroom. Driving Change 2020 – Save the Date and volunteer Thank you to those of you who have signed up to attend our conference later this month. The event is getting closer and the committee are very excited about the speakers. Before the break we introduced you to one of our speakers – here is another one. ![]() María Paulina Romo A wife, mum and professional with more than 20 years experience. After these few years working in my own business, I have realised it is still a privilege being a woman in this role and I would like to encourage those incredible women who have not yet decided to believe in themselves to do it. Even more than that, to have the confidence to work with your partner towards the same dream. From the Staff and the Students Continuing with our teachers and their stories about learning in the classroom this period. This week we have Mrs. Alejandra Miranda and Year 9 students from Secondary and Mr. Simon Newman and Ms. Coronel from Primary. Mrs. Alejandra Miranda – Secondary Language Support Coordinator Language Support in Secondary Teaching Spanish as a foreign language is quite challenging, but this letter from my year 9 students makes me want to continue working along them. Language is a powerful tool that lasts forever, and can make my students life easier while they are here. Gracias! ‘I come from Saudi Arabia and Jhoana and Domenik come from the United Kingdom. We are from countries far from Ecuador! However, Miss. Ale makes Spanish learning easy and fun. We enjoy our lessons because we get to watch videos, play some games and listen to songs in Spanish to get the language straight. We also learn grammar and we read books. This is all to make us enjoy and improve. We all want to thank her for the support and time she puts towards us. Thank you so much Ms. Ale, and we appreciate everything you do for us!’ Salam (Year 9 Student) Year 9 students 𝓛𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓲𝓷𝓑𝓢𝓠 The 14th of February is always a special day for everyone, it’s when you can celebrate friendships and relationships. Last week was all about love, friendship and preparing for our Valentine’s Day. This year in BSQ we celebrated Valentine’s Day by giving serenatas, roses, chocolates, and mandarins to who you really have affection for. Also, we had weddings for the students to marry each other. The atmosphere of this event was successful, with students wearing their relationship status. This gave a warm feeling towards others, even if you were heartbroken or single you would still have someone by your side even if it was a friend you didn't know. This atmosphere brought everyone together from different years to meet new people and to interact with them. Mr. Simon Newman – Year 6 Teacher There’s a lot going on down in the Year 6 classroom at the moment. Along with our daily lessons, we are working hard in rehearsals for William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The Year 6 pupils really are an exceptional group when it comes to teamwork and self-management. There’s a hunger in the air to make this production work. There’s much to do and much to enjoy as we are becoming more and more familiar with the lines we need to learn, the actions we need to perform and the songs we need to sing. Our performances will be in late June and we don’t really want to give too much away about our interpretation of The Tempest. However, a few photos here from our weekly rehearsals wouldn’t go amiss! So, take a look at the joy that Shakespeare’s work still brings to young people regardless of culture and location. Ms. Antonella Coronel – Head of EYFS Welcome back! We are very excited for this first week. In class we will be learning about all the wonderful new memories the children have made with you during this long break, we want to hear all about them. Make sure to upload all your stories on Tapestry so the children can tell their friends all about what they have done. We have a lot of fun filled events coming up for the Early Years team. This week we will be celebrating international women's day which means we will be learning about all the great accomplishments women around the world have done in the past and now in the present. We also have our very first EYFS family picnic coming up this weekend for all nursery and reception families, make sure to confirm your attendance with your class teacher. This will be in Parque La Armenia on Saturday March 7th. More information about this will be going out this week in your child’s bag. Also for the very first time we will celebrate grandparents’ day. We will be sending out invitations for your child’s grandparents to join us for a delicious tea party, you will also receive more information about this event soon. Dates for your Diary March 6th – International Women´s Day at BSQ March 17th – Karl Wilkinson visiting March 18th – Admissions General Open Day March 20th – 21st – Driving Change 2020 March 25th – Admissions EYFS Open Day March 27th - IB Art Exhibition Emma Newman Principal Being BSQ – Primary Update ![]() Welcome back to BSQ after the Carnival break – I hope you and your family enjoyed a relaxing and rewarding time together. We now have five weeks of learning before the Easter break, with lots of exciting activities and events planned across the Primary School. This week alone we have a trip to the theatre for Key Stage One on Wednesday, an Own Clothes Day and Bake Sale on Friday to raise money for an Australian Bushfire Charity and Science Day on Saturday morning between 8am and 12pm for Year 1 upwards. On this day, buses will run as normal to get to school for 8am and leave at 12pm and there will be school snack provided for those who usually have it. Nursery and Reception will spend the morning at Parque Metropolitano La Armenia with their teachers – more details to follow from Miss Coronel. Other events to put in your calendar include the Driving Change Conference on 20th and 21st March, the next Parent Teacher Conference Day (when students will only attend school for their meeting time) on Tuesday 24thMarch, with this term finishing at 12pm on Friday 3rd April. This week in assembly time and in PSHE in class we are focussing on the word Ambition, from our school value: We live and learn with an active and determined approach to our ambition. We will be exploring the different ways we can encourage our students to have a clear understanding of their own ambitions, whether they are in the immediate future or more long-term. These are the four statements the students from BSQ came up with when asked to expand on the idea of ambition:
Marcus Madden Head of Primary Being BSQ – Secondary Update ![]() This coming Saturday sees another packed day of learning. All Secondary students are expected to attend, as are parents of students in Years 9 and 11. Science Day The main event is Science Day. The Science team, led by Mrs Maudsley, have put together an extraordinary array of workshops for students to choose from, including hovercraft engineering, Ecuadorian ecosystems, and DNA diversity. As ever, these activities are designed to develop and build valuable skills and knowledge while applying them to real-life, practical problems, and at the same time being engaging, fun, and providing opportunities for mixed-age groups to work together. IB and IG Options Workshops Additionally, parents of Years 9 and 11 are requested to join us to learn all about the Cambridge IGCSE and International Baccalaureate Diploma Programmes. respectively. The coordinators, Ms Todd and Mr Karakashian, will explain what each programme is for, how it's put together, what the teachers and students will be doing over the two years of each course, and how success can be supported by parents at home. On top of this, and of more immediate concern, is an explanation of the subject choices students will need to make before beginning each programme, and the factors on which those choices should be based. We very much hope to see you there. Jim Wild Head of Secondary From the BSQ Counselling Team This week our school counsellor, Andrea Carrera, talks about whether the news is too scary for children.
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