BISM Newsletter - November 2019

ISSUE 1 SCHOOL NEWSLETTER #42

The British International School of Marbella

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

November 2019

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SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Headteacher’s Message Dear Parents, By the time you receive this, the latest addition of our BSF Newsletter, the Festive Season will be well and truly upon us. At this busy time of year, it is often worth pausing and reflecting on the things we can be grateful for.

I am grateful for all of our community, the teachers and the children, and everything they do to make our school such a wonderful place to be every day.

The engagement and commitment of the children here is amongst the best I have seen and matched step by step by our very talented teachers. I am grateful for our parents and wider community, all of whom have welcomed me to the school with warmth and support.

As well as pausing to reflect, we might also look to the future and, here at BISM, our future is very bright. Our new campus is well underway and making excellent progress. In 2020, we will move into a campus that supports the aims of the school by offering opportunities for improved efficiency, academic success and, above all, the welfare and personal development of the children. I am grateful for you patience but, looking forwards, I see so many possibilities and I can’t help but be enormously excited about the year ahead.

This year, of course, saw the launch of our Extended Curriculum. By offering the

children choice in their learning our aim is to create independent thinkers, to offer our pupils ownership of their learning and, in so doing, improve the outcomes of our children both academically and personally.

I am very pleased to note we have made excellent progress in this regard.

Finally, on behalf of all of us here, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you, your families and your friends a very Merry Christmas and a healthy and Happy New Year.

With very best wishes, Dean Moore Headteacher

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Foundation Stage One Smoothies for Supertato!

As part of our topic on Superheroes, the children have been looking at the story ‘Supertato’, this is a fantastic story about a Super Potato who saves his friends in the supermarket from the Evil Pea. The children loved learning about all the fruits and vegetables and why they are so good for our bodies.

Albie said, “Superheroes must eat all their vegetables to be super strong and have lots of vitamins, I eat all my vegetables to make my muscles grow!”

The children were challenged to work together to make a superhero smoothie. They did every part of the process independently and worked hard together. They chopped up all the fruit, mashed and whisked it up. They added some soya milk and honey and then shared it out in the classroom. The children were very proud of their culinary efforts and the superhero smoothie was tried and tested by all.

Mrs Riddell Foundation Stage One Teacher

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Foundation Stage Two How Far Can it Go?

The children of FS2 have been looking at different ways of measuring. A few weeks ago, the children completed an introduction module to measuring where they learnt how to use interlocking cubes and rulers to measure various objects.

The children were intrigued when they came into class to see a ramp, some paper and some wooden cars. It was no surprise that when asked how they could measure the distance travelled by their cars in a race down the ramp, they all replied ‘use a ruler’ or ‘with the blocks’. The confusion on their faces was evident when they were told that they were not allowed to use a ruler or the blocks. Luca suggested that we used a tape measure “like his Grandad”, a great suggestion!

We explained that you don’t always need a measuring tool to measure and that you can use many things around you. We modelled how to use the cars themselves to measure, making our own number line in car lengths.

Finally came the best part, the race itself! It turns out that the blue car travelled the furthest, travelling 8 car lengths. The orange travelled the shortest distance, travelling just 2 car lengths. The children then had great fun suggesting what other things they could use to measure.

Well done FS2, some clever measuring and great ideas!

Mrs Rutherford Foundation Stage Two Teacher

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Year 1 Mindfulness in Year One At the end of each day in school the children have lessons all about themselves, to learn about their emotions and how to deal with them. Once a week we practise yoga and rehearse breathing exercises.

Participating in yoga at the end of the day is a really worthwhile exercise to channel their energy and emotions in a positive way. The children are able to perform many basic yoga moves and on the whole are able to do them very well. The yoga programme we follow teaches us yoga through interesting stories that are very current in their themes. For example we have participated in yoga with a Halloween theme, Trolls etc.

I am very impressed with the children’s social skills in Year 1. I have said it from the very beginning of the year how amazed I am with their feeling of togetherness and how socially aware of others they are. Exercises like yoga, I am sure really helps.

Well done class, keep up the good work!

Mr Thomas Year One Teacher

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Year 2

Do We Measure Up? Maths Year 2 are growing in confidence each week in Maths as they develop their knowledge of number, place value and mental addition/subtraction. This month Year 2 have been looking at measurement, such as centimetres, millimeters and metres! The children have also been looking at positional and directional language, and competed in several challenges where they had to give clear and precise instructions to their partners in order to complete mini obstacle courses!

English In English, Year 2 have been developing their knowledge of punctuation, in particular using exclamation marks to make their writing exciting! The children have been working on newspaper reports and food leaflets, developing their vocabulary and working hard to interest the reader.

A big well done to Diana for winning Big Writer of the Month. Her hard work throughout English to improve her spelling and create flow to her writing has really paid off! She was also the first winner of one of Ms Flanagan’s special Scottish pens!

Reading This month has seen the children improve on reading with the help of reading buddies.

The children have paired up and now read together, testing each other’s reading comprehension and most importantly, having fun when reading!

Anti-bullying initiative During PSHE sessions, the children have discussed and invented ways to prevent bullying in school and how we behave towards others. The children have really tried hard to treat others with respect, show kindness and consideration to one another and appreciate the importance that everyone is different in their own way. Several children took part in Odd Sock Day, where the children came into school with odd socks to promote the idea of being unique!

It has been a wonderful month in Year 2 at BISM and it is refreshing to see that the children are becoming more independent, mature and hard working pupils. Keep up the good work!

Miss Flanagan Year Two Teacher

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Year 3

Spelling Champions The Year 3 children have been rocking out whilst learning about sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous rocks!

They have had great fun learning about how they are formed and their different properties before testing their density and toughness.

The children discovered that many different types of rock are used in their homes and all have different purposes. They even discovered that there are some man made rocks like brick and concrete.

A favourite lesson for most was learning about volcanoes and seeing footage of the explosions from Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland (2010), drawing cross sections of a volcano and making their own from paper mache.

Seeing the “lava” erupt thanks to a little chemical reaction from vinegar and baking powder, was the icing on the cake, or should we say the crater on the volcano!

Mr Holden Year Three Teacher

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Extended Curriculum Key Stage 1 Creating and Performing KS1 Carnival Brazil

We have started preparing for our Brazilian carnival. The children have enjoyed finding out about Brazil, where it is in the world, where the major cities are, some of the landmarks that you would find there and why Portuguese is the main spoken language.

The children have played the samba, developing their samba skills even further, and they have started to learn a beautiful Brazilian bossa nova ballad called Baiao Ninar. This is a difficult song to learn as it’s in Portuguese! As well as singing in Portuguese, the children have been accompanying themselves using a variety of authentic instruments and bossa nova rhythms.

The children have also been looking at other elements of the carnival and will soon be making decorative headdresses to wear.

Miss Conlan Primary Music Teacher

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Enterprise and Challenge KS1 We Need a Hero!

It has been hard to avoid news of it in recent times, which is a good thing in my opinion, but our world is under threat from...us.

Rapid climate change is a very real problem and it is clear all humans and their governments need to start taking actions to help avoid global catastrophe.

In our Extended Curriculum “Save our World, We need a hero!” module I was delighted by the children ́s existing knowledge and positive attitudes to how we can, no matter how small, make a difference.

We discussed the importance of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle and endeavoured to make it not just a slogan but something we all actually do by surveying the school and what we do already and feeding back on possible improvements.

The children spoke in front of assemblies appealing for their peers and teachers to follow the three 3Rs approach and made posters to put up around the school reminding others of this more considerate approach. They even told teachers off for printing unnecessary sheets of paper!

They weighed food waste at lunch time to try and encourage children to reduce their waste at all meal times, especially when eating animals, and completed questionnaires of the students and teachers on how they travelled to and from schools. Hopefully as a result more will now consider using more environmentally friendly means of travelling.

The children who participated in this module were amazing and if you are looking for someone to help save our world, I think we have 13 heroes ready to answer your call!

Mr Holden Year Three Teacher

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SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Sports and Wellness KS1 Fantasy Football Fun The children in Lower School have loved the Fantasy Football unit. They have improved their skills through a variety of drills, smallsided games and large games, improving their knowledge of the tactical elements of the game in addition to their understanding of the rules of the game.

It has been fantastic to see so much progress over this unit and the children have always displayed a positive attitudes and contributed to a positive atmosphere by supporting their teammates and sharing their knowledge.

Fantasy into reality, a great unit overall!

Miss Bruce PE Teacher

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Key Stage 1 Special Event

We’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain Who knew we had such great hikers in the lower school?

Well it turns out we do as proved on our recent and fantastic walking trip in the mountains, enjoying the spectacular views at Mirador del Corzo and Mirador del Juanar.

The children’s attitudes were fantastic, very few moaned about the amount of walking (estimated about 6km) and plenty of them enjoyed exploring the natural environment, learning about pine cones, wild animals and much more. We even got the pleasure of seeing a large ibex running across the rocky mountain. It was quite a sight.

Year 3 children took their recent classroombased learning about rocks into the field, discovering limestone, sandstone, clay, sandy soil, quartz and others. Luckily we had Miss Conlan on hand, who it turns out, is something of a rock expert.

Some children were even heard saying this was the best school trip they have ever been on and how they would like to do this sort of thing again.

Mr Holden Year Three Teacher

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SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Upper Primary English Years 4-6 Year Four This month, Year 4 have had fun studying and devising Haiku poetry. Haiku is a traditional form of Japanese poetry. Haiku poems consist of 3 lines. The first and last lines of a Haiku have 5 syllables and the middle line has 7 syllables. The lines rarely rhyme. Because Haikus are such short poems, they are usually written about things that are recognisable to the reader. Animals and seasons are often topics of Haiku poems.

There were many good, original creations produced by the children. Below is a nice example, written by Misha: The Eagle The Eagle can fight.

With his big, powerful wings He soars in the sky.

Year Five Over the last few weeks, Year 5 have been looking at the poetry of Charles Causley and Michael Rosen. They have been looking at a mixture of rhyming and non-rhyming poetry but something that both of these poets have in common is that they like to write about their own personal experiences and use poetry as a form of treasuring memories.

While enjoying poems by Causley, the class learned about ballads and wrote their own.

Ballads are a form of poetry that tell a story, these kinds of poems were very popular in the past. We looked at Causley’s example, I saw a Jolly hunter, with the repeated use of the word ‘jolly’. Below is Gracie’s short rhyming ballad about a crazy dog!

There was a crazy dog Who had a crazy owner There was a crazy neighbour But the dog was a crazy moaner!

Gracie Roberts, Year 5 Year Six In the future, physical schools should not exist and all learning should take place online. Do you agree? This the question that Year 6 have been busy arguing and debating this week.

What do you think?

Over the past few weeks, Year 6 have learnt about how to structure an argument; how the use of rhetorical questions and examples can strengthen your argument; and how to anticipate any counter arguments. The class has also looked at the success criteria for a formal debate and Mr Moore was our VIP invited to watch and help judge our class debate this week. There were some very strong arguments! Watch the link below to see and judge the debate for yourselves!

Year Six Debate: https://youtu.be/5qlGohc0fAw Miss Marseglia Upper Primary English Teacher

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

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Upper Primary Maths Years 4-6 Year 5 This week Year 5 have been looking at division. At the start of the week Year 5 were working pictorially to show that when we divide we are putting the dividend into equal groups depending on what the divisor is. Then they started to use this knowledge in short division and then they started to apply in reasoning and problem solving. See if you can find all the possibilities to this Year 5 problem.

Year 6 This week Year 6 have been working extremely hard on percentages. Firstly, they were comparing fractions to their percentages and then finding percentages of amounts. As Christmas is nearing and it is Black Friday today they investigated how much Father Christmas would save if he bought all our presents today. They worked out that he would save a massive ÂŁ12,000 Well done Year 6.

Mr Whyman Upper Primary Maths Teacher

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Extended Curriculum Key Stage 2 Creating and Performing KS2 Play the Blues

The children have made a great start on the Extended Curriculum Guitar Module, this time based around the musical genre of ‘The Blues’ and are well into understanding all about the importance of improvisation within this type of music.

They have started off by learning the all important chords – I, IV and V (A7, D7 and E7) and have been able to move onto strumming a 12 Bar Blues from these chords. In doing this, they have learnt how to read chord charts but have also begun to read TAB notation and are now familiarising themselves with the Blues Scale, around which they can now begin to improvise whilst others play the 12 Bar Blues chords. In addition, they have just begun writing their own AAB 3 verse lyric for the Blues, in a blues idiom – there are some wonderful ideas coming from the children!

We’ve also been looking at some of the famous Blues musicians, including B. B. King, Chuck Berry and John Lee Hooker, and we’ve all enjoyed listening to and watching some of these legends’ music.

Finally, we have looked at the history of the Blues, and how it can be traced right back to the American southern plantations in the 19th Century – fascinating stuff.

Mr Everist Secondary Music Teacher

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SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Enterprise and Challenge KS2 Ultimate Team

Who are the best footballers in the Premier League? The children in Ultimate Team have been using rigorous statistical analysis find this out!

This week they have been looking at who is the best goalkeeper. They have been developing their knowledge of spreadsheets and they have learnt how to insert formulas, order data using the Sort function and learnt how to produce a graph to present their data. They have also just learnt how to convert their data into percentages. Well done everyone for all your hard work!

Mr Whyman Upper Primary Maths Teacher

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Knowledge and Understanding KS2 World War 1

Why do we wear poppies?

‘We wear poppies to commemorate the day the ‘Great War’ or WW1 ended and as it is a way to remember all fallen soldiers and their bravery to give their lives for a brighter future for all the innocent people out there. Poppies are a symbol of remembrance, blood and death (including all the deaths in World War 1) and other wars which many lives were lost. After World War 1 ended many poppies bloomed across some of the roughest battlefields one of them called Flanders Fields where the poppies acted like graves’ Amirlan Sabyrbayer Year Six Student Year 4, 5 and 6 have been working hard over the past few weeks to understand why wars happen, what were the relationships like in Europe and how a sandwich could be involved in starting a war!

Furthering our knowledge of life in 1914-18, we are about to embark on a battle of our own reenacting the Somme, rationing and finishing off with our own street party to commemorate the ending of the War. Students will be bringing home their own rationing cards in the next few weeks to see if they could survive on WW1 rations.

Ms Townsend Secondary Art Teacher

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Sports and Wellness KS2 Girls Football Girls football proved to be a very popular module, particularly with the girls in Year 5 and 6.

They have all worked really hard in lessons and have improved lots of skills, with a particular focus on controlling and passing the ball.

The girls progressed into playing small sided matches against each other and the main focus here was to develop aspects such as positioning, awareness, teamwork, and decision making. either small sided or pairs cricket matches.

The girls had a lot of fun throughout the module and showed a great attitude to learning and improving in football. We are planning to arrange some football fixtures and competitions against other schools in the new year and many of the girls will be well prepared to grasp this opportunity.

Mr Allen Sports Teacher

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Secondary English Years 7-9 Thermatic Presentational Work

The study of A Monster Calls has been very enjoyable with Year 9! Through their exploration of the novel, the Year 9’s analysed the writer’s craft, characterisation and key themes. During their analysis of key themes, the class worked hard to teach their peers about their thematic focus.

Themes included: death, suffering, family and grief. The Year 9’s dealt with these themes in a very mature way and produced some fantastic written and spoken core assessment material as a result. The pictures show some of the Year 9 pupils delivering their analysis of key themes to the rest of the class.

Pupils thoroughly enjoyed reading A Monster Calls and would highly recommend it to other Key Stage Three pupils.

Claudia explained in her book review of the novel that she feels ‘this would be an appropriate novel for young adults. Readers should have an interest in reading about dealing with society, social life and the feelings and emotions of others’.

Year 9’s are now studying creative writing and have been exploring aspects of narration such as: use of linguistic devices, use of narrative hooks, setting and characterisation. They have produced some fantastic pieces of creative writing imagining they are soldiers during WW1 and imagining they are on board a slave ship. Their creative writing continues to grow from strength to strength! Well done Year 9.

Miss Kerlin Secondary English Teacher

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SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Secondary Maths Years 7-9 Algebra, Simplifying Expressions

In year 7, students have been learning how to simplify expressions by collecting like terms.

First, we establish what a term is - In algebra a term is either a single number or variable or numbers and variables multiplied together. Terms are mostly separated by + or −. To be able to add and subtract terms they have to be like terms. Like terms are terms that contain the same variables raised to the same power. Only the numerical coefficients are different. In an expression, only like terms can be combined. For example, 3a and 6a are like terms and can be added to get 9a, whereas 6a and 5a2 do have the same variable, but raised to a different power so can not be simplified. During the lesson we discussed the reasons why we can’t add unlike terms. Think of it as adding 1cm to 1mm - we won’t get a valid answer unless the different units are converted to the same unit. That same rule applies to terms in algebra.

The children were quick to spot where the like terms were and made great progress with their knowledge and understanding of algebra.

Can you spot the like terms in this expression?

5ab + 7a2 + 2c + 4ab + 6y + 2c2 + 9ab + 8a2 Mr Kuhn Secondary Maths Teacher

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Secondary Science Years 7-9 Seed Dispersal Investigation The Year 8 children have been learning about plant reproduction. We have been investigating the life cycle of a flowering plant. The pupils have completed the dissection of a flower and are able to name both the male and female parts. They have learnt how pollination occurs and the importance of bees in this process. The Netherlands had started a new initiative to ensure the survival of these essential pollinators.

The Dutch city of Utrecht has transformed 316 of its bus stops into “bee stops” to combat the declining bee population.

The Netherlands is home to 358 different bee species but more than half of them are already endangered and have been placed on the Dutch Red List of threatened species. In response to the growing problem, officials in Utrecht, the country’s fourth-largest city, are investing in urban beekeeping in a rather ingenious way.

Up to 316 bus stops have recently been transformed into little bee sanctuaries.

These bee sanctuaries or rather ‘bee stops’ are essentially standard bus stops with grass and wildflowers planted on the roofs to encourage pollination. Not only do bee stops support the city’s biodiversity by attracting honey bees and bumblebees, they also help capture fine dust and store rainwater.

We have been studying the process of fertilisation and how the ovules develop into the seed and the need (like most of us) to move away from their parent plant

and find their own space to grow and develop. We collected some sycamore seeds from the local area and conducted an investigation to see how the wing length affects how far the seed can disperse away from the parent plant. They wrote up their first scientific investigation as a formal lab report.

Ms Ladds Secondary Science Teacher

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Extended Curriculum Key Stage 3 Sports and Wellness KS3 Basketball

The basketball group has been working very hard to improve their hand speed, skill, and effectiveness in games. Even the warm ups have been tough, with shuttle runs to work on fitness and wall drills to develop close control and hand speed with skills such cross-overs.

Students have further developed existing skills such as passing, dribbling, set shots, and have also learnt new skills such as advanced lay-ups, rebounds and 3-man weave.

The group has progressed really well and participated in competitive matches towards the end of the module. Students demonstrated great teamwork, good tactical and positional awareness and have played with good sportsmanship. Some students also showed good independence skills by taking charge of certain drills for their teams.

Mr Allen Sports Teacher

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Enterprise and Challenge KS3 Introduction to HTML

For the Enterprise and Challenge extended study group, we have been learning how to code with HTML. As we are browsing through hundreds, if not thousands of websites on a weekly basis, we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t always realise just how much work has gone into developing these webpages. All of the webpages are written in code and at some point, someone has designed all of that. To give an example, the opening BISM school webpage has 1081 lines of pure HTML code. (If you want to see the code, right-click and then click View Page Source) We started our journey into HTML code by understanding the vocabulary associated with HTML, including: angle brackets, tags, paragraphs and headings. The first code we learned was to insert tex using the <p> code. The next step was to include a heading and a subheading by using the <h1> and the <h2> commands.

The children picked up the basic coding language very quickly and by the end of the lesson everyone was creating a simple web page about Insects using headings, paragraphs and images.

What a great start into the world of HTML code! Although we have lots more HTML code to discover, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;m sure we have many aspiring coders amongst us that would be able to build their own interactive website from scratch very soon.

Mr Kuhn Secondary Maths Teacher

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Knowledge and Understanding KS3 L’Italiano at BISM

PAROLE, PAROLE, PAROLE… Ascoltami!

“More than words is all you have to do to make it real” as some other song goes. Ours was never designed to be a cookery course or just any ordinary Italian language course.

We wanted our BISM students to have a taste of what Italian “feels” like and we wanted to make it real for them…

Being in love with the language and the culture, I always knew I did not want to offer an EC module and reduce Italian to a commonplace, a cliché. Geography, pronunciation, gestures, cultural aspects are still explored, though. And so are feelings and emotions...

Interviews, TV advertisements, short comedy videos, actual (and recent) songs, and clips from Italian films… In short, Italian, real Italian. These are the ingredients for our lessons.

Our students are very much exposed to the Italian language and are equally encouraged to start uttering their first parole in Italian whenever they can. I had been partly hoping they would sooner or later realise the Italian language is not that far from its sister language Spanish. Now I am pleased at witnessing some “a-ha! moments”, if you like, on the part of some students who seem to have understood as much.

Our project is for them to be able to use what they know from other disciplines, and even modules, and create in Italian… maybe a new TV advertisement, maybe their own lyrics to already existing songs. L’ultima parola è loro! (The last word is theirs to speak) Miss Rodriguez Spanish Teacher

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Creating and Performing KS3 Benahavis Art Competition

On 20th February 2020 The British International School of Marbella will be taking part in the 6th Annual ‘Art in Action’ Competition hosted by Benahavis Fine Art Society. 8 students will be selected from KS3 to represent the school at the competition at the Grand Hotel, Benahavis.

The Extended Curriculum class are following a GCSE style series of lessons designed to give them a thorough understanding of the competition and art techniques needed to complete original and high quality piece. The work is themed on one of five themes set by the Fine Art society.

These themes are ‘Agatha Christie’, ‘Oscar Wilde’, ‘Charles Dickens’, ‘Horatio Nelson’, ‘Francisco Goya’ and ‘The History of Wine’.

The students involved are showing an exceptional maturity in their approach to the competition and work is at a high standard. Work on final pieces is starting this week with photographs posted on parent portal and work progresses.

Ms Townsend Secondary Art Teacher

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SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Key Stage 3 Special Event El Torcal de Antequera

We took the KS3 children on a trip to El Torcal de Antequera. This trip was organised as part of the Science and PSHE Curriculum. The rock formations and Geology of the area is very unique.

The pupils in KS3 study weathering and the rock cycle as part of the Science Curriculum. This area is one of great global importance, Geologists have been studying it for years to try and piece together important parts of the Andalusian history and the geological history of our planet Earth.

The Natural Park of El Torcal is characterized by the impressive karstic landscape made of limestone. Its formation is due to a process that has lasted several hundred million years. If we go back about 200 million years, when much of Europe and the Middle East were submerged under the sea of Tethys, begins a process of carbonated sedimentation, caused by the accumulation and deposit of skeletons and shells of marine animals at the bottom of the sea that will last about 175 million years.

These sediments have been accumulating and compacting at different levels, forming the horizontal strata of thicknesses of thousands of meters.

Towards the middle Miocene period, as a consequence of the thrust between the Iberian plates to the north of the Tethys Sea and the African to the south, the accumulated sediments are compressed, deformed and fractured until emerging in a slow and continuous process that still remains. Once the relief emerged, the prolonged action of meteorological agents such as water, ice and wind on the limestone, modeled the spectacular karst landscape of El Torcal de Antequera.

The pupils enjoyed walking around the area and using their imagination to picture mythical creatures and other objects in the rock formations. They took the time to look up into the sky and see how fast the clouds moved over head due to the incredible air currents. It is a spectacular place full of wonder and history. We look forward to going back again to see the giant ammonite fossils which still remain to this day.

Miss Ladds Extended Curriculum Coordinator

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Special Event

Extended Curriculum Music Concert Children from Year 1 to Year 9 performed and emceed the Extended Curriculum Music concert on Wednesday 13th November. It was a great opportunity to see the culmination of their hard work in Music over the first rotation of the Extended Curriculum. The children all performed with confidence and were excited to show their progress to their peers and parents.

The concert started with a bang as the combined samba band played a complex arrangement using authentic Brazilian samba instruments and rhythms. Our Head Girl Armelle emceed the concert and introduced the performers. The guitar and ukulele groups sang and played, followed by the choir who sang Africa by Toto. It was time for more percussion, this time a performance of Karige Mombe, a traditional Zimbabwean Mbira piece arranged for mixed percussion. The upper primary keyboards played In the Hall of the Mountain King by Grieg, followed by a turbo charged version performed by the secondary keyboard students.

The concert ended in style with the secondary rock band. They performed ACDCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Highway to Hell and Beat It by Michael Jackson. The audience was very energetic and enjoyed an encore of Highway to Hell.

It was wonderful to see so many children performing such a wide range of music in so many different styles.

Miss Conlan Primary Music Teacher Mr Everist Secondary Music Teacher

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SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

BISM Football/Basketball Team News We are very proud to have three football teams up and running this year. BISM were lucky to have the arrival of some new players, particularly in the Infantil age group and this team has made a very positive start to the season. Despite losing a close game to Aloha College, the other fixtures so far have seen us score a hatful of goals and record excellent wins, first against Marbella Paraiso 23-0 and the second against San Pedro B 8-5. They are currently in 4th place in the league and we are very excited to see how well they can do for the rest of the season.

The Benjamin team has seen a lot of changes due to players having to move up an age group and players that also play for other clubs. Despite this, they have made a good start to the season. Admittedly, the first game was a tough defeat to Laude School, but the team bounced back strongly and only lost narrowly (6-5) against Sportcab (even with all our own players playing against us)! In the next match, the team showed what they can really do, recording an incredible 15-8 win against ECOS A! We hope that if the team can stay together it will be another impressive season for the Benjamins.

The Alevin team has been significantly strengthened by some of the younger players coming up and the fact that we were lucky to keep many of our strong, experienced players from last season. The team have made an excellent start, drawing the first match 5-5 against ECOS B, then going on to beat Atletico Marbelli 9-3 and San Pedro B 7-2. They currently sit 3rd in the league and we are very optimistic that the Alevin team can be a real force to be reckoned with this season.

On Wednesday 13th November, BISM took a group of Year 5 and 6 students to Laude School to play in a basketball competition. They were split into two girls and two boys teams. Each team played two games against their Laude counterparts and produced great performances, showing excellent skill, teamwork, and resilience. Mr Allen and Mr Steele were particularly impressed with the attitude and sportsmanship shown by the BISM students and we are very proud of how they represented the school at the event.

Mr Allen Sports Teacher

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Whole School Spanish Spanish Poetry

“Es importante que los niños lean poesía.

Y es más que importante, es necesario…”

Gloria Fuertes As it states on the quote above, children in the Year 2 and Year 3 Spanish Natives and Bilingual group, have been exposed to different types of poetry over the last couple of weeks. They have met the famous Spanish poetess Gloria Fuertes, for who they have discovered main facts about her life, read some of the poems that she wrote, mainly for children.

The class has shown great work at analysing the rhyme of her verses, as well as, thinking of possible rhyming words which they could use instead. The icing on the cake was when they worked in groups to memorise and recite by heart one of her poems. They were very eloquent when pronouncing their words and also considered using the right intonation when reciting a poem.

The final task for this unit was for children to write their own poems in Spanish. I have to say that they successfully identified the structure of a poem and its parts, such as “estrofa” and “verso”. Overall, children have shown excellent hard work and they have used a wide range of vocabulary to create their own poems about animals, making sure they were maintaining the rhyme at the end of each verse. Great imagination and creativity was shared all across the unit.

I can definitely tell that some of them have great aspirations as future poets.

Miss Escribano Spanish Teacher

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