BISM Newsletter - January 2019

ISSUE 1 SCHOOL NEWSLETTER #34

The British International School of Marbella

NEWSLETTER A Newsletter for Parents, Students and Friends of our School

January 2019

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SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Headteacher’s Message Dear Parents and Guardians, Happy new year and welcome back for the Spring Term. I hope you all had a restful break and feel ready for an exciting term at BISM. We started the month by taking the opportunity to reflect on ourselves. In schools we are lucky to have two fresh starts each year so we took the opportunity to think about the targets we set ourselves in September and consider how we are measuring up. During our whole school assembly we discussed the mindset and attitude we need to adopt in order to meet our targets to become the best version of ourselves that we can be. We agreed we need to have a growth mindset and never give up. We also agreed we need to be kind to all those around us and treat others how we ourselves would like to be treated.

We also agreed not to be boastful and have too high an opinion of ourselves. I hope you can encourage your child to meet their targets and new year resolutions.

To start the year on the right foot, this month we held Environmental Week. Throughout the week the children were involved in a variety of activities and received informative talks from visiting environmentalists including Pancho Campo, who works closely with Al Gore on tackling climate change. The week was very informative, if a little scary, as the effects of how we are mistreating our planet are more immediate than many of us first thought. We are trying

new initiatives at school in an attempt to make our carbon footprint as light as possible. We hope we can rely on your support at home too.

This month we also received a visit from the new Headteacher, Mr Dean Moore. Over the two days he was in school he joined a school assembly where he was asked a variety of questions from the students and met with the parents as well as the staff.

The highlight for him though was visiting classrooms and talking with students - he was really impressed with their confidence, excellent behaviour and positive attitudes towards learning. He really enjoyed his visit and the warm welcome he received from the whole school community and is looking forward to joining the BISM family.

Next month, we look forward to our Environmental Awareness trips that we had to postpone due to the weather. We will also be holding a Numeracy Open Morning and Mastery class for parents; I look forward to welcoming you to school.

Best wishes, Ms Kirkham Headmistress

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Pre-Nursery The Journey Home From Grandpa’s

The children in Pre-Nursery are very interested in vehicles. When Ms Pottinger sets up small world activities such as; the garage and cars or the train track, the children play imaginatively and for prolonged periods of time. With this in mind Ms Pottinger thought that the children would enjoy the story ‘The Journey Home from Grandpa’s.

The children listened well to the story, they pointed out the vehicles, naming them and describing what they could see on each page. They used sentences such as; “It’s a white helicopter” or “ It goes nee naw”. Some of the children joined in with the repeated refrains, enjoying the rhythm of the story.

The children were so interested in the vehicles Ms Pottinger thought it would be fun for them to create their own, using recycled items such as tissue boxes, kitchen roll tubes and of course lots of sticky glue!

The children created some fantastic models, Albie said his was an aeroplane, he even made it fly around the classroom.

The children loved creating a blue boat just like the blue barge in the story. They used large blue rollers and lots of blue paint. They did get very messy, but they had lots of fun!

When the boat was finished the children sat in it and sang “Row row your boat”. They especially loved the verse with the crocodile!

This story was a definite favourite with the Pre-Nursery children. If you would like to read it with them at home, there is an animated version on You Tube. Enjoy!

Ms Pottinger Pre-Nursery Teacher

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Nursery Silver Foil Boats As part of our topic on ‘Explorers’ Nursery have been investigating floating and sinking and looking at different types of boats. The children were then challenged to make their own boat from silver foil, make it float and then see how many coins it could hold before it sank. It was very tricky for the children to get the foil boats water tight and took several attempts before they managed to get the holes sealed by pinching and folding the foil. The children were extremely proud of their boats when they did manage to float.

Luca - “My boat is a fast as a speed boat.”

When the boats were floating the children set about finding out which boat held the most coins. The children had designed their boats so well that they carried a lot of coins and it wasn´t long before we were creating waves and tsunamis to try and sink them.

Camelia - “I think my boat is the best at floating and it has lots of coins.”

The children made careful observations about what eventually made their boat sink and were excited by how they could make their boats even stronger.

Ariana - “I could use corks to help my boat float more.”

Mrs Riddell Nursery Teacher

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Reception

Design, Build and Test The children in Reception have become engineers. They were given the challenge of designing, building and testing a boat to see of they could make it float.

The children started by learning all about the different types of boat, what they are made of and what they carry. In Maths, the children weighed objects and tested objects that float to see which might be the best material to use for their boat.

When planning, the children had to think about how their boat would look and most importantly what they were going to call it. There were some interesting designs!

Next came the building phase. The children chose from a range of materials and constructed their boat, attempting to match their design where possible.

The amount of concentration and thought put into the boats by the children was amazing!

The final phase was the testing phase, the children proudly took their boats and set them sail on the open water (in a tray). Most of them floated beautifully.

Well done, Reception.

Mrs Rutherford Reception Teacher

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Foundation Stage

Foundation Stage Wow Day On a beautiful sunny day in January the whole of the Foundation Stage left on a great adventure to explore our local area.

Our first destination was the new pirate ship playground on the terrace at the beach.

Here we climbed the rigging, scaled the bird´s nest to look for treasure and walked the plank down a slide. There was also chance to swing and ride a bouncy octopus.

After a quick stop for a drink and snack we headed for the beach. Here the children got to explore in little groups. Everyone collected as much treasure as they could carry off the beach including shells, rocks and pebbles. The children were delighted to explore the beach and see who could find the best shells. Everyone was extremely well behaved and listened carefully to all the rules to keep safe while near the water.

Everyone managed the walk back to school with a good sense of humour and ready for their lunch. In the afternoon we enjoyed making telescopes and binoculars while exploring all the treasures we had fetched back from the beach. What a fantastic day! Well done, FS and thank you to all the parents, helpers and staff who made our trip possible.

Mrs Riddell Foundation Stage Leader

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Year 1

Coding in Year One

United Kingdom Wow Day

Impressively, the Year One Class have started a unit of work in Computing lessons called Coding. Coding is used in almost everything digital that we use, from our smartphones to computers. Its function is to command digital devices or objects.

To start our new topic with a bang we celebrated all things British and compared them to Spain. Our topic this term is the United Kingdom and it’s main features, eventually we will compare London to Madrid, the capital of Spain.

There are so many hundreds of thousands of jobs created worldwide each year based on coding. It is such an important area for us to move with the times as new jobs that don’t even exist yet will be based on the skills learnt from coding.

Everyone came to school on this special day wearing the colours of the U.K flag, some even had face paint and a wig! We went to the playground to begin with to play some typical British playground games and also enjoyed Spanish game called Pilla Pilla. The children especially enjoyed “Stuck in the Mud” and “British Bulldog”.

The children have been commanding different characters on a programme to move around and create their own story.

Eventually, they will create their own game based on their commands. Importantly also they have worked as partners to share their skills and discuss what new things they have learnt.

They have enjoyed the lessons a lot and are learning a great deal in their first steps into the world of coding!

Mr Thomas Year One Teacher

During the afternoon the class made their own cucumber sandwiches to have for our very own tea party! They enjoyed their sandwiches and even tasted some decaffeinated tea! To compare these tasty delights to Spanish cuisine we had some lovely chorizo bocadillos!

A great day was had by all and lots of learning took place.

Mr Thomas Year One Teacher

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Year 2

Freddy the Frog

Year Two Wow Day There were fireworks in Year Two as they celebrated their new topic ‘The Great Fire of London.’ Firstly, the children created some beautiful artwork based on fireworks in the night sky. The children decorated a background with colourful stripes and then covered this in black crayon to resemble the night sky. Then the children use scissors to carve out firework designs allowing the bright colours to shine through.

After break the ‘bright sparks’ of Year Two participated in a quiz, allowing them to show off their knowledge of the events of September 1666. The children also demonstrated their acting abilities using their bodies to show the story of the great fire. To finish the day with a bang, the children were given sparklers to enjoy and everyone demonstrated how to use these safely. Well done, Year Two!

Year Two were introduced to a helpful little creature this month whose name is Freddie the Frog.

He helps children turn tricky subtractions into easy additions, using counting on. The children learnt that Freddie likes sitting on the next ten so that is where he hops to, before finally hopping to the end number.

Counting his hops tells the children how many more to the next ten and then how many more to the answer. To support the children to understand further, they became Freddie getting the opportunity to experience jumping along the number line, just like the helpful amphibian!

Miss Allen Year Two Teacher

Miss Allen Year Two Teacher

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Year 3 Show and Tell

Egyptian Wow Day

Show and Tell is always popular with the confident individuals who make up the student body at The British International School of Marbella.

In Year Three this January, the children were given the option to bring in something from home to show their teachers and classmates.

Miss de la Riva and I were very impressed by their confidence in standing up in front of their peers and explaining what the item they brought into class was. The children also asked fantastic questions of each other too.

Some of the fascinating items brought in included; a signed picture by Michel Platini, a photograph of a house that had been in the family for generations and an ancient Egyptian mask which linked in perfectly with the topic we are exploring in class at the moment.

Mr Holden Year Three Teacher

The children of Year Three travelled back to ancient Egypt on their recent Wow Day! They did many of the things the ancient Egyptians are so famous for.

Early on in the day they enjoyed wrapping dolls in tissue, as if Mummifying them! This was after explorer “Istvan Carter”, great grandson of Howard Carter, who discovered Tutankhamun´s tomb in 1922, opened a mysterious package that was covered in gold in our classroom.

Other children enjoyed drawing pictures inspired by ancient Egypt and we definitely have some budding artists in our class.

Some children were busy cracking hieroglyphic codes of the names of ancient Egyptian gods, like Osiris, Horus and Anubis and also figured out how to write their own name.

There was an ancient Egyptian themed dance off (Bangles, Walk like an Egyptian, got a lot of our air time!) and the children displayed their fantastic knowledge of all things Egyptian in a Kahoot quiz to end the day.

Mr Holden Year Three Teacher

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Year 4 Sound!

Mighty Mountains

Our new Science topic, ‘Sound’, started VERY loudly with a lesson experimenting with making different sounds, changing the volume of sounds and how sound is made.

There were ukuleles, drums, bells, triangles, plastic pots, elastic bands, thumb pianos, balloons filled with glitter and much more!

By the end of the lesson we were appreciating some peace and quiet in the room but we had also discovered that all sounds are made by something vibrating (even our voices!). We could feel and identify these vibrations in most of the objects that we were experimenting with.

Later in this Science topic we are going to be learning more about volume, pitch and how to measure these. We will also be learning about how these sound vibrations travel to the ear, how fast sound travels and how it travels through solids, liquids or gases. I think it is going to be a very interesting topic!

Miss Marseglia Year Four Teacher

We started our new topic with a fun day of mountain filled activities! They began the day with some mountain-themed Maths of calculating the heights of the 7 summits. The class then learnt more about the 7 summits (the 7 highest mountains on each of the 7 continents). They used maps and atlases to locate these and some famous mountain ranges in each continent.

Later that morning, the children showed excellent team work in their mountain building challenge! With only a few bits of materials (3 sheets of paper, a cup, 30cm of sticky tape and scissors), their challenge was to create the best mountain that fulfilled a certain success criteria. All children worked very well as a team, but our guest judge (Mr Herron!) had the difficult task of selecting the winning team. Well done to Ekaterina, Polina and Taisiya for winning the competition.

We ended the Wow day with some mountain inspired art using paints or pens and a fun Kahoot quiz!

Miss Marseglia Year Four Teacher

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Year 5

Maths Environmental Week As part of our Environmental Awareness Week, we have been crunching the numbers in our Maths lessons to see to what extend, us humans, are damaging the earth. We explored what statistics are and how that information is useful, not only to the scientists, but to everyone living on this planet. Some of the numbers we came across were so big that it was actually quite hard to read it, or to write it down. For example: The Earth is around 4,500,000,000 years old.

We have learned that such a big number can be written in another way to make it easier to read and write. That is called the scientific notation. This large number can now be written as 4.5 Ă— 109.

The task for the children was to come up with a background design, that would elicit a particular environmental issue, and then their calculations can be added for effect. The children had to calculate percentages, decimals and fractions to show, in numbers, the effect we have on our planet. Quite devastating results, but a great way for the children to further understand the importance to preserve our beautiful planet for future generations.

Mr Kuhn Middle School Maths Teacher

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Year 6

Stone Age Tools

This month, as part of our unit of learning on The Stone Age to the Iron Age, we have been researching what life was like for prehistoric humans. The children had to consider how they would go about getting the basic necessities of food, warmth and shelter. We learnt how nearly every part of an animal that had been killed was used for food, warmth and tools. It is believed that early man even ate the contents of the stomach for extra nourishment.

The ability to create tools greatly increased the chances of survival. The use of bows and arrows by humans for hunting predates recorded history and was common to many prehistoric cultures. The children were given the opportunity to see how good they were with a bow and arrow. The children themselves noted that they were shooting at a static target and hunting live prey would be much more difficult.

It seems that our dependence on modern life and amenities such as supermarkets is well and truly entrenched. We did have a few sharpshooters in the class but others recognised if they weren’t to go hungry and cold they would need to improve their archery skills considerably!

Mr Herron Middle School Humanities Teacher

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Year 7

Character Hot Seating Year 7 have been studying the novel ‘Tribes´ by Catherine McPhail this term. The novel deals with the themes of friendship, gangs and family relationships. Year 7 had a great lesson planning and preparing open questions for the main protagonists Salom and Kevin.

The ‘talk show’ began with the host (Emma) getting the audience (the class) excited about the prospect of being introduced to the infamous Kevin and Salom! When the audience were suitably enticed, she asked Salom and Kevin to join the stage!

The ‘baddy´ Salom was played by Maria and Charlie, while the ‘sensible’ character of Kevin was played by Aggie and Sydney. There were lots of juicy secrets revealed and some fantastic questions asked by the audience. The class really gave these characters an interrogation! As evident in the pictures, we had lots of laughs along the way and I have no doubt they will remember the day they met the infamous ‘Kevin´and ´Salom´from the gang Tribes!

Miss Kerlin Middle School English Teacher

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Year 8

Friction in Shoes Pupils in Year Eight have been studying the topic of Forces. Forces are pushes and pulls in a particular direction which are shown by arrows in diagrams. The direction of the arrow shows the direction in which the force is acting. The bigger the arrow, the bigger the force. Forces can be a balanced force or unbalanced. If two forces are balanced, it means the forces are the same size but are acting in opposite directions.

If two balanced forces are acting on an object, that object will not change its motion.

If it is still, the object will stay still or if it is moving, it will continue moving in the same direction and at the same speed.

When two forces acting on an object are not equal in size, we say that they are unbalanced forces. Unbalanced forces do change the way something is moving. They can make objects start to move, speed up, slow down or change direction. The Year Eight’s decided that they wanted to investigate the force of friction, the force that slows objects down! They investigated which of their shoes provided the greatest frictional force, they identified their variables to be: Independent (the one you change) - The type of shoe Dependent (the one you measure) - The force needed to move the shoe (N) Controls (the ones you keep the same) - Size of shoe, surfece, newton meter, person pulling.

They carried out the investigation on the school lawn, they tried to move each shoe with a force meter and recorded the force needed to cause the initial movement. They repeated the process with a variety of different shoes three times to ensure that they obtained reliable results. They were able to see which shoes provided the best grip when walking and playing different sports. Have a look at the photos for the results!

Miss Ladds Middle School Science Teacher

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Spanish

Cocinando en la Escuela In Years Three and Four of the non-native Spanish class we have been cooking, as part of the topic “Food”. But, before cooking, there has been a long and meticulous learning process.

We have learned what the typical food of Spain is. We realised that they had tried very little of the Spanish cuisine! We have also learned what a recipe is and how to write it. To do that, students have analysed different recipes (such as “tortilla de patata” or “bizcocho de yogur”) and they have done activities such as put the ingredients in the correct order or write the steps to follow.

As a final project to this topic, we had a cooking class. First, we brainstormed what things can be cooked in a classroom. It had to be something simple to do, since we only had one hour. Of course, and given the dietary differences found in our class, the menu had to be suitable for all the students. The students showed very positive, inclusive values during ​​ this activity, since they perfectly understood that each child has different eating habits or needs.

The class was a great success. The students demonstrated that they had learned a lot of vocabulary about food and they used it during the recipe. In addition, they demonstrated values ​​such as responsibility (they cleaned everything after cooking), companionship (they helped each other and shared material and ingredients) or respect (they respected shifts and listened to each other) and most importantly, the students enjoyed the activity so much!

It’s great to see children collaborating and working together. In addition, they can put into practice what they have learned at home, helping the family when cooking. Now, it is their turn to use all what they have learned in the supermarket and restaurants!

Miss Aburuza Spanish Teacher

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Sport

Sports Scores Benjamin Football Team The Benjamin team have started 2019 in style! They have had three comprehensive wins and are in the top third of the table. They beat CD Pena Los Compadres 10-5 in a fantastic show of football. They then went on to beat Alboran, 10-3 the following week.

Their third victory was against Vasquez Cultural, a 9-6 victory. It is wonderful to see the children so committed and a huge thank you to the parents for their support.

Benjamin team top scorer for January - Frankie Alevin Football Team The Alevin team had a couple of tough matches to start off the new year. The first against Marbella FC A team ended in a 9-9 draw! BISM dominated this game and should have taken the win but some defensive errors near the end meant it was two points dropped.

The second match of January was against a very strong UD San Pedro A team which we lost 6-3. However, the Alevins´ showed great character and were praised for their effort and determination to keep the game competitive. The most recent result was a very high scoring and impressive win against Peùa Los Compadres, the final scoreline was 15-2 although the referee apparently only saw 9 of the goals!

Alevin team top scorer for January - Adam (11 goals) Basketball Team The basketball team had their first games on Saturday 19th January. They did really well, considering it was their first game and the other teams were well established.

Most importantly, they enjoyed themselves and represented the school really well. Thank you so much to the parents who supported the team by showing up to the game and cheering the school team on. We wish them good luck for next month! They will play again on February 16th.

Mr Allen Sports Teacher

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Music

Line Notes and Space Notes Composing Years One and Two are having a busy time reading and writing Music.

The children in Year One have all composed their own four beat rhythms to include in their whole class samba band. This makes the piece unique to them. The children have used crotchets, quavers and minims, or as we call them, walks, joggings and strides. The challenge is for the children to memorise their rhythm so that they can play it as part of the samba performance. Miss Frost and I will be testing their memories this week!

The children in Year Two have been developing their note reading skills. They can all play the notes B, A and G on the recorder, and now they are reading those notes on the stave. It is quite challenging to coordinate your fingers, your tongue and your eyes, but the children are rising to it.

Mrs Conlan Lower School Music Teacher

Students in Middle School have been busy honing their creativity and compositional skills this month. Working in pairs, they have created AABA rhythms in 4/4 time, using minims, crotchets, quavers and semiquavers (plus the occasional semibreve!). They have had to use their mathematical skills to ensure that each bar adds up to 4 beats, and they´ve had to learn how to write it all out as well.

Once the rhythms have been checked for accuracy, and can actually be played, it´s time for the glockenspiels to come into play, as the children learn to turn their rhythms into melodies.

We have all discussed what makes a good melody and concluded that most good melodies restrict their range to between an octave and an octave and a half, and most use repeated elements, comprised of stepwise motion with occasional leaps. The children have had to bear all this in mind whilst using the glockenspiels to test out their chosen notes and phrases.

Finally, they´ve had to learn/revise their notereading skills in order to be able to notate what they´ve written onto the stave, and it´s been more complicated than they realised! We´ve had a lot of fun, though, and there are definitely a few memorable melodies from some budding composers…well done, everyone!

Mr Everist Middle School Music Teacher

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Special Event

Environmental Awareness Week

We kick started our environmental awareness week with the pupils from Reception to Year 6 watching the Lorax; a film about the importance of trees and a world where trees no longer existed. The Year 7 and 8 pupils watched extracts from the Leonardo DiCaprio film; Before the flood. They learnt about the causes and catastrophic effects of climate change all over the globe. Pupils were able to witness first hand how humans are destroying the planet. This included interviews with Ex;President Obama and the Pope. We began to talk about ways in which we could begin to slow down the impacts of climate change, beginning right here at BISM! In Foundation Stage and Years 1 and 2, pupils listened to a very informative talk from a real Environmental Engineer Natallia Rozum, who encouraged the children to think of creative ways to help our environment. They completed an exciting workshop where they had to draw an environment and work out the best place to position pylons to get power from a wind turbine.

The pupils throughout the school enjoyed listening to external speakers and taking part in specific themed lessons to help them better understand how we as humans are destroying our planet. We were privileged to have two guest speakers: Safia Aita from ‘Marbella Activa’ and Pancho Campo, a leading environmental activist against climate change and advisor to the Former Vice President of the United States - Al Gore. He talked to the pupils about the causes and impacts of climate change, he was very inspirational and motivated the pupils to come up with many ideas of ways in which they could reduce their energy consumption and help combat global warming. In Lower School the children listened to the story ‘Little Angelia to save our Sea’ and were lucky enough to have a Skype call with the author Keith Siddle.

In English and PSHE the pupils have been very busy on their TeamTap COBIS Litfilm entries. They have planned a short film, written a script and acted out scenes to encourage people to drink tap water rather than continuously buying single use plastic bottles.

In Maths the pupils used statistics to depict the severity of the problems we face today, and showcased it through an art piece. In Science the pupils have already studied the importance of renewable energy resources and created their energy saving islands but have gone one step further and calculated their own carbon footprints and how they can reduce the footprint that they leave each time they use an electrical item, travel or consume a product.

In Spanish, Safia Aita made a visit to our school. She collaborates with an organisation here in Marbella called “Marbella Activa” and she also has her own blog “Mundo Mejor” where she carries out eco-responsible actions and shows her dedication to the environment. Safia taught our students about the importance of not throwing rubbish away and how they should use the different recycling containers appropriately. Finally, she encouraged them to take part in different ongoing clean-up activities happening in our local community.

Please help us in our quest. Play an active part in our greener BISM community and

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

adopt our reduce, reuse and recycle policy. The children have discussed a number of small initiatives that we can all do; turn off lights that are not in use, do not leave electronics on standby, reduce water wastage, reduce meat consumption by adopting meat free Mondays, do not use single use plastics, recycle all plastics, metals and paper, reuse and donate clothes and toys to charity shops. These are just a few of the things we can do but every little helps and together we can help save our planet. Pancho Campo finished his talk with a very prescient quote earlier this week, ‘Remember our planet does not need us, we need it!’ Mrs Rutherford & Miss Ladds PSHE Coordinators

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Special Event

BISM Community Help Out at a Local Beach Ahead of the recent BISM Environmental Awareness Week it was fantastic to see some children, parents and teachers from our school community helping out at a recent beach clean in Marbella.

The beach clean was organised by local initiative Plastic Free Seas Worldwide (PSFW).

Craig from PSFW has previously visited our school to talk to the children about what this initiative is hoping to do and some ways we can all help avoid more plastic ending up in the sea.

Even though I have now attended a few beach cleans myself, it never ceases to amaze me how much rubbish there actually is every time on the beach. On first inspection the beaches always look fine but when you look a little closer, it is never pleasant.

It seems unbelievable that in 2019, people still choose to litter. Unfortunately, due to the increasing number of purchases of single use items, such as plastic bottles, it is inevitable that those who do not litter may find that their items end up as litter on our streets, beaches and in the seas as the infrastructure does not cope with this “throwaway society�.

The children we have the privilege of teaching and raising are the leaders of tomorrow and we have a responsibility to educate them about a challenge facing the world presently and one that will only get bigger in the future, especially if left unchecked.

Hoping to see you on a rubbish free beach soon!

Mr Holden Year Three Teacher

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Picture News It is said that politics is present in every aspect of society and there have certainly been a number of political stories this month that relate to us all, in particular the unfolding ramifications of the regional elections here in Andalusia. Also this month, a number of events have unfolded around ‘Brexit’.

Britain is expected to leave the EU on the 29th March this year following a referendum in June 2016. This week, over two hundred Members of Parliament have signed a letter to the Prime Minister asking her to rule out a no-deal Brexit, to try to protect jobs and manufacturing. A no-deal Brexit means the UK would leave the European Union (EU) immediately on 29 March 2019, and there would be no agreements in place about what their relationship would be like in future.

It is always interesting to speak with the children about current affairs. They often suprise me with their take on events and are always full of questions.

Things to talk about at home...

Talk about what you know about Brexit already.

Deciding whether Britain should stay in the European Union or leave it, is a huge decision.

Do you think it should have been made by the government, or do you think it was right for the public to vote?

As always, please encourage the children to share their thoughts or particularly interesting conversations you’ve had with their teachers and friends.

Mr Herron Deputy Headteacher

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E-Safety Regular conversations with your child about their online activities is a great way to support your child’s growth and safety. Below are a few scenarios you could use as conversation starters and points for discussion.

This happens online....

What would you do?

Someone has written an unkind message to your friend in a group message and everyone else can see it.

Your friend has a bad day at school, then later you see them post a sad face emoji online Everyone seems to have more followers than you, so you change your account to public Everyone seems to be really good at a certain online game, but you can’t get past level 1 and you feel annoyed You send your friend a message but they still haven’t responded even though they have been online so you get really angry You see a photo of your friends hanging out without you Your friend doesn’t have a phone and they miss what you and your other friends talk about online Do let me know if these conversations raise any issues that you believe we should be aware of.

Mr Herron Deputy Headteacher

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Talking Point

Drink Tap Water and Save Our Planet BOTTLED WATER: THE FACTS - For every gallon of water that goes into plastic bottles, two gallons of water are wasted during production.

- Only 1 in 5 bottles is actually recycled - It takes approximately three times more water to produce a single plastic bottle than to fill it!

- Tap water is around 3500 times cheaper than bottled water WHAT’S GOING ON? Bottled water is currently the largest growing beverage in the world, with consumption in Europe alone doubling over the last 10 years to 54 billion litres. The unsustainable use of bottled water is having a heavy and unnecessary impact globally on our environment and on communities, often in the poorest parts of the world.

Although most types of plastic water bottles are recyclable, only 1 in 5 is actually recycled. The remainder get sent to landfills but careless waste management leads to plastic bottles littering rivers and beaches, polluting watercourses, endangering wildlife and spoiling the landscape. Somewhere between 60 and 95% of all marine debris is made of plastic.

Despite being the main consumers of bottled water, many rich countries are reluctant to go on filling up their own landfills, so ship half a million tonnes of used plastic bottles every year to other countries particularly India and China. These waste imports have led to recycling in hazardous conditions without any protection for workers putting them at risk of injury or even death.

Furthermore, the growth in the bottled water industry is creating water shortages for farmers worldwide as large multi-national corporations buy up public water sources.

The water shortage means that farmers produce fewer crops adding to the world’s food crisis.

So what’s the alternative? A more sustainable and practical way to provide water for our communities is through self-service water coolers connected to the mains. They are not only environmentally friendly (no transportation costs, no plastic, no waste) but also very cost effective.

TAKE ACTION! Plastic bottles destroy our planet. Say NO to bottled water and please take the I Drink Tap pledge!

Global Citizen

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