BST Newsletter Term 2 2016-17 (english)

ISSUE 1 SCHOOL NEWSLETTER #05

Th e B r i tis h Sc h o o l o f Ta s h ke n t

NEWSLETTER A newsletter for parents, students and friends of our school

2016 - 2017

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SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Headteacher’s Message

Dear parents, I hope that you enjoy this latest newsletter and reading all about our achievements so far this term.

As I write this I am preparing to interview a high quality field of candidates for teaching positions for 2017/18. As we continue to grow and develop, new staff will arrive with fresh ideas and enthusiasm, which will complement our existing high quality provision.

To continue the development of our communication with parents, our weekly workshops have started along with a chance for coffee afterwards. We have had a good level of attendance and I have been really pleased with the feedback. These will continue throughout the year and please let me know if you wish for certain topics to be covered.

I was very proud recently to visit our local children’s hospital which we have been supporting to deliver presents donated by staff, as well as medicines using the money raised by the Winter Fayre.

This type of project should highlight to us all how fortunate we are, and I hope that we can play an even bigger part in supporting this charity.

With the IGCSE options evening we are starting to look towards our Year 10 next year. We are currently CIE accredited and we will shortly be welcoming Edexcel Examination Board for an Inspection visit, which will allow us to offer a larger variety of subjects.

Exciting things lie ahead and I look forward to sharing these times with you all.

Kind regards Adrian Macaulay Headmaster

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Message from the Head of Primary After their winter break, the children returned to school fully rested and ready to learn. Full school reports were added to the Parent Portal in January and I thoroughly enjoyed reading every child’s report.

Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) taught in school helps to give our children the knowledge, skills and understanding they need to lead confident, healthy and independent lives. Our PSHE topics this term are Changes, Self-discipline and Presence. Children were lucky enough to have an assembly led by Ravshan Irmatov, Uzbekistan’s highly decorated International referee, and they loved listening to his stories and asking him questions about self-discipline.

Last term’s Winter Fayre gave children the opportunity to raise money to buy medicine for a children’s cancer charity and we raised 15 million Soum. Thank you to everyone who came and contributed to this successful event.

Parent workshops have replaced our monthly coffee mornings. They will be held every Wednesday at 9am in the theatre and you will be informed of upcoming workshops on a monthly basis. After the workshops you can stay for a coffee, share your thoughts and ask any questions you may have.

With your continued support, we will continue to make sure every child achieves their best; become caring and responsible individuals and grow to become confident and successful learners.

Matthew Walker Head of Primary

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SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Message from Head of Secondary

Congratulations go to the following three boys for their performances in the internal school chess competition.

Sarvar Bakhtiyorov 7B Winner

Junyi Yan Runner up

Saidazim Asadkhujaev Third place

Last week Year 9 were finally given their MacBook Air laptops and they have made sure to use them at every opportunity, even during their own break times. This is great to see and I think we can safely say they have been a successful addition to the curriculum.

Head of Secondary Nick Cardall

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Pre-Nursery In Pre-Nursery we learnt all about the chefs and bakers. We made cookies and sandwiches, and talked about the ingredients which we used to make them. We learned the “I am a Baker” song with actions, and in the craft area we made special baker hats. We were decorating cakes with glitter and pompoms where children used their counting skills to tell how old they are. We read a “Chocolate Mousse for Greedy Goose” story and put on a role play of the book.

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SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Nursery This term the Nursery children have been busy learning about fairy tales and nursery rhymes.

We reviewed familiar rhymes and learned new ones. Our young learners were encouraged to retell and act the stories out, to make sound effects to the actions as they read the book, to talk about the sequence of the stories and to learn new words. In addition, the children completed a rich assortment of literacy and maths activities, and enjoyed themed art and craft activities all around favourite fairy tales and songs. We made our own houses for the Three Little Pigs using different materials, helped Old MacDonald to collect all the farm animals in his farmyard and made beautiful rainbow fish.

The children liked character acting the “We are going on a Bear hunt” story with toy peoplegoing through wavy grass, oozy mud and running away from a bear. The story of “Little Red Riding Hood” gave a great chance for acting and playing with handmade paper puppets, and also “The Rainbow Fish” story helped the children understand that we need to share and be friendly.

“5 little monkeys jumping on the bed” and “10 fat sausages sizzling in a pan” were great songs for practicing counting backwards, learning numbers and acting out for our nursery learners.

We also practiced naming, drawing and cutting out the shapes working with various textured materials. The children enjoyed searching for the different shapes in the classroom and then sorting them.

We will continue learning Nursery Rhymes and enjoy exploring new stories and fairy tales.

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Reception

It has been a very exciting term for the children in Reception. They have been learning all about animals as part of their topic. Each of the children was asked what animal they wanted to learn about. In addition to this, they were asked to think of a question they would like answered about their animal. The teachers looked at the different animals that the children chose and built a plan to teach based on that particular animal. The children looked at pets, savannah animals, jungle animals, desert animals, animals that fly, polar animals and underwater animals. Each week, the children have learned about the different habitats these animals live in, the animals that live there and what makes these animals special. The children have used the recent BBC television series “Planet Earth 2� as a source to help them learn about the different animals.

The weekly activities that children have been doing include; making a fact book, labelling animals, learning how to draw animals and sequencing stories. The children have also enjoyed exploring a number of different craft opportunities using a range of mixed media. Many of the creations they have made can be seen in and around the reception classroom. For mathematics, the children have completed activities that occasionally match the topics, but most importantly teaching children important mathematical skills.

We are sure that if you happen to speak to the children in Reception you are sure to learn a thing or two about wildlife!

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SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Year 1 The children in Year 1 have enjoyed learning about rhyming words (words that sound similar) and they have written some acrostic poems using their names and about the topic ‘Chocolate’ which we are learning about this half term. The children continue to work on remembering how to write a good sentence and they are beginning to write using more descriptive words i.e. instead of ‘The cat is on the mat’ they might write ‘The small cat is on the red mat.’

In Maths the children have been working on skip counting in 2’s, 10’s and 5’s; working out the patterns and being able to count forwards as well as backwards. The children were introduced to UK coins, which they need to recognise and have been using coins to add and subtract as well as going shopping for different items and working together to see what coins are needed to buy the different items.

Year 1 have enjoyed this topic especially tasting the chocolate treats they made – yum yum. They have also worked on their predictive skills by looking at chocolate, discussing what happens when it melts, what happens when heat is applied and what happens when it gets cold.

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Year 2 Hello again from Year 2 Lions and Year 2 Bears!

It has been a fantastic start to the spring term and we are excited to share with you all that we have learned and what we have been busy doing in our classrooms.

In our English lessons, we have been focusing on the concept of a ‘big write’ on a Thursday, and our weekly lessons prepare us for this.

During this time we have learned about fiction and non-fiction texts, reports, recounts and letters. In the week we discuss, distinguish and then practice writing the particular features of these texts. Some examples of our work include making our own non-fiction book, a recount of something we did in the past and writing a letter to Mr Will in England.

Multiplication, division, time and measuring have been our topics for Maths this half term.

We have had lots of exciting lessons and different ways of learning, even using apples in one lesson to explain division! Our topic of time helped when we learned about measurement, as we used seconds to time ourselves running.

We have also covered centimeters, kilograms and grams. Finally, we reminded ourselves how multiplication and division, and addition and subtraction work together.

We have had many creative and imaginative lessons during our Integrated curriculum time and have been introduced to some fascinating subjects. Looking at New Year celebrations from around the world, we made lots of colourful posters with some interesting facts about New Year in the UK, Uzbekistan, China and Thailand.

Also, we have explored different habitats such as tundra, deserts, freshwater and rainforests and how different animals can survive there.

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SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Year 3 The Year 3 Geography topic this half-term is ‘Rainforests’ which is fascinating.

We have worked collaboratively to research animals and plants of the rainforest, finding out that many of them are now endangered. Our Art project also relates to rainforests. We have used the work of Oenone Hammersley to inspire us. The children’s paintings are full of colour and life – we really enjoyed painting them.

Our exciting project in Science has been about what plants need in order to grow. We set up a group investigation, which involved growing plants from seeds then observing what happens when we take away things like water, warmth and light. It was interesting to discover that a seed can germinate in the dark but a plant cannot grow in the dark.

Maths has been both challenging and fun as we explore fractions and think about how we use fractions in our daily lives. We enjoyed using play dough to create mini pizzas that we had to divide-up into fractions.

Our key vocabulary is: ● ● ● ●

numerator denominator half quarter

Please remember to use MyMaths for further practice!

The Year 3 children have worked very hard on independent writing, collaborative tasks and whole class discussions. They have had fun creating original artwork and were challenged to write good quality non-fiction texts, and to make sense of fractions.

They have produced work of which they can be very proud. The Year 3 team would like to congratulate all children who have been reading every day at home and have managed to progress through the reading scheme – well done!

Year 3 Team

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Year 4 We have been working hard this week to develop our mountain models. The children have been cutting and gluing the cardboard and most are now covering the mountains. We hope they will look good when they are finished. We are now into our topic of learning about rivers and water.

We have also written a few poems this week and the children have been pleased with their writing. We are even making a book of our poems!

In Maths, we have done lots of work on fractions.

We have compared them, ordered them and found equivalent fractions. I am sure we will meet them again!

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SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Year 5 The children have been having great fun being scientists and have learnt a great deal along the way.

It has been a time of discovery, as they will tell you if you ask them about some of their experiments.

We have been using water in the majority of our science experiments, which has tested the children’s pouring accuracy - an interesting experiment to begin with. We investigated a variety of materials to see if they were soluble or insoluble and the children used both edible and non-edible items to test in water. They found out whether they floated, sank or dissolved in water. They have also discovered how absorption can vary, depending on the materials chosen.

Our final watery topic was to investigate how to separate mixtures using different filters. The favourite filter (if not the most effective) was a patch from Mr Blake’s torn trousers, which he kindly brought into school.

We were very lucky to be allowed to use some of the Secondary school resources, when we borrowed their rock samples, to try and discover which rocks are the hardest and which are the softest. There were lots of dirty fingernails when the softest rocks were tested, using our nails to drag across the piece of rock. Unfortunately, there were no diamonds in the rock samples!

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Year 6 As a final activity to end our Explorer topic, the Year 6 students worked in pairs to research and create presentations that they delivered using the projector in class and in the theatre.

They used the Key Note app on their iPad to help create them. The factual presentations were about different countries that Alistair Humphreys (an explorer that cycled around the world) visited on his epic journey. The students delivered their presentations in front of the whole year group and to their teachers. They did a wonderful job as presenters! Their approach was very mature and they learned and used many new skills along the way. They even taught their teachers a few new facts about different countries.

We have just begun our new Inventors topic, so watch this space as we have some very creative students and budding inventors!

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SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Russian It has been a week of new discoveries for the Reception class, which they will be able to tell you about by sharing the details of the experiments that we have done in our Russian language lessons.

We have been studying the topic of ‘Marine Animals’. The students looked at marine life with a magnifying glass, then made small dioramas of a sea world using waste material. We wanted to find out as much as possible about fish: where they live, what they eat, what they need gills for, what helps them move fast though the water, whether they can live on land and the what the difference is between fish scales and human skin. In addition, Artur and Augustine put on masks and immediately started imitating the movement of fish in the water; Charlie and Ben blew bubbles, showing how fish breathe in the water; and Jamshid and Albena explored the structure of a fish skeleton on the picture. The children painted fish made from salt dough and decorated them with sequins, before coming up with names and adventures that could happen to them.

SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

Music On 27 January, BST applauded another round of the competitive talent show. Students auditioned with Ms Aves for over two weeks and only the well-rehearsed and most promising acts were allowed to compete in the final show.

Nine students from Years 3-5 stood on the stage in turn to show off their talent to the Primary school. Sara-Michelle Shvarts (5B) gained first prize for her cha-cha dancing, with Samira K (4 B) taking second place, and Diyora Bakhodirova (4 C) taking third place.

Another nine students were selected to perform from Years 6-9. The diversity of talent amongst our students is very promising and encouraging.

Elizaveta Yagudaeva (9) took the trophy cup for her singing, whilst Diana Son and Nozaninkhon Shokirova (8) were awarded second place for their duo act. Khumoyun Karimov (8) was awarded third prize for his heart-felt rendition of a Russian song.

Amongst other acts were dances, instrumental performances, and even a magic trick show.

There were some very polished performances from our students and it was a hard decision for our judges to make. We would like to thank Mrs Catherine Buatois (Head of the French School), Diyora Djamalova (Director of Uspensky), and our very own Mr Walker (Head of Primary) for their support of the event and collaborative decision.

Congratulations to all students who took part, and we look forward to what you will contribute next year.

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SCHOOL NEWSLETTER

PE On Thursday 2 February, BST hosted a competitive chess tournament against TUIS. 10 children from Years 5-9 competed against Juniors and Secondary pupils from TUIS in an epic struggle, which lasted two hours. Each pupil played three different opponents and at the end of the evening all of the results were totaled, whilst the competitors relaxed and chatted with each other over cake and juice.

BST managed to win a third of their matches, but finished runners-up to a most talented set of opponents. Despite our loss, all the staff involved felt justifiably proud of our players and the good sportsmanship they showed.

Particular praise goes to Rakhimov Ansor and to Kim Leyla who were unbeaten during the evening and secured the most points for BST with their skill. Thanks must also go to Shorasul Isroilov, Miss Fotima Homidova and Paul Burke for organising and running the competition.

We are looking forward to a rematch later in the year!

The British School of Tashkent www.britishschool.uz info@britishschool.uz