Kamyk Newsletter [11/10/2019]

Maximum Music Day

Maximum Music Day is now just hours away! We have the sheet music, the schedule, stickers, stamps, worksheets, certificates and five very enthusiastic teachers! All we need now are your children!

Maximum Music 

All parents should have received an e-mail yesterday, confirming the details for the day. If you have any questions, please email Miss Frazer ailsa.frazer@pbis.cz.

Most important details:

Students should arrive at 1000 tomorrow at the Libus campus and the concert is at 1700.

If your child is from Kamyk or Vlastina, you will need to sign them in at reception, so please come into the reception with them.

All students need a packed lunch, 150 CZK, a water bottle and their school uniform - they can wear it or bring it - but bear in mind that they will be eating pizza half way through the day!. If your child is not able to eat cheese and tomato pizza, please let me know.

All students from Kamyk and Vlastina need to be picked up by an adult. If your child is making their own way home we need to have received an e-mail from you before we can let them leave the building at 1800. We look forward to seeing you tomorrow!

Juilliard Training - Music and Dance

Last weekend, PBIS hosted the Juilliard NAE Regional European and Middle East Dance and Music Professional Development course and welcomed 40 performing arts teachers. This is a wonderful opportunity for teachers to collaborate and learn both from Juilliard curriculum specialists and each other. Photos and information can be found https://www.nordangliaeducation.com/schools/prague/british-international/article/2019/10/7/juilliard-nae-regional-music-and-dance-professional-development-course-at-pbis

A big thank you to the students in year 2, 6 and 9 who shared their learning.

Class and Year Group Representatives

I am pleased to hear that we have almost recruited representatives for every primary school class. This is wonderful news and next week I will contact the representatives with the schedule of meetings for the year. The representatives are an additional channel of communication for parents to use. If any parents have concerns, questions or suggestions we welcome these and they can be shared with the class teacher, head of year, Deputy head or myself. However, if you feel more comfortable speaking to your class representative this is what they are for! Next week I will send a full list of representatives.

We are also looking for a few more representatives to join our Year 7 - 9 group. If you are interested in being a representative please let me know. We are hoping to have around 6 meetings a year.

Parent Session ‘Supporting our teenagers- helping them build self-esteem Thursday 17th October at 8.30

We have arranged another session for parents through the Academy

of Parenting in Prague. After the success of the sessions that were held

last year we were keen to continue our link with the agency. The session will

be held in the Music Auditorium at Kamyk on 17th October. The session is recommended

for those with students in years 6 - 9 however all parents are welcome to

attend.

Please note that last week I mentioned that the sessions starts at 10.30. This is the end time so please be sure to note the start time of 8.30.

Swimming (Y1-3)

We would like to ask for your support with swimming attendance. Many thanks for your cooperation and understanding.

We have been having an increase in last minute requests for pupils at school to be excused from swimming. It is very difficult to organise with little or very late notice. We do not move pupils into the other classes because they are also swimming at the same time. We do not have the capacity nor the resources to cater for pupils who remain when their class goes swimming. It is very difficult for the other teachers and classes to have a pupil from another class moved into their lessons. Moreover, for health and safety reasons, we cannot take pupils to the pool.

If there is a medical reason (doctor’s note) for being excused from only swimming for a short or extended period of time, the parents typically pick their child up from school before departure or opt to drop them off after the class has swum.

If the child has a cold or runny nose and cannot swim, we would question whether it is a good idea for the pupil to take part in other activities at school such as playground games or academic lessons. If they are slightly too ill for swimming, they are probably too ill to be at school. Again, we would request that parents pick their child up from school before pool departure or opt to drop them off after the class has swum.

We completely understand that it is inconvenient for parents to pick up their children, but we cannot cater for children who are unable to swim.

Many thanks for your cooperation and understanding.

Kamyk and Libus Friends

On Monday our Korean community hosted a coffee morning at Kamyk. Photos from the event can be seen here.

After the coffee morning we met to start planning the Primary Halloween Disco on 6th November. If you would like to get involved, email Tony Peachment at school. 

Charity bakesale

Next Friday (18.10) we will be running a charity bake sale at both Kamyk and Libus. We will be raising money for PBIS supported charities as well as for the events that the Friends put on for our students.

We would like to ask you to bring donations to school in the morning and leave them in the main reception. It would be much easier for us if you can bring in individual cakes, cookies or biscuits that are easy for us to serve. It is more difficult and messy for us when we have to cut cakes into slices for the children on Friday morning. Remember that they can be sweet or savoury. 

They will cost 10/20 kc and therefore the children will need to bring some money into school too. The children will visit the sale during the day with their class teachers.

For students who have food allergies, I would suggest parents bring in cakes that they know they can eat. The parents running the sale will be able to help with this. Also, please could you ensure that your donations do not contain nuts.

K&L Friends

Trusting Children Baby Playgroup

Calling all Parents with young babies! Come and join our baby playgroup every Wednesday from 8:45 until 9:30 in the Early Years Multifunctional room. The playgroup follows the philosophies of Maria Montessori and Magda Gerber who both encouraged children's natural development. Join other parents in discovering the beauty of independent play. Watch your babies explore various resources, follow their curiosity and discover new friendships.

The playgroup is led by Aisha Nayyar and Kim Ashton who are both PBIS employees currently on maternity leave.

If you have a baby aged between 6-18 months get in touch to book your place. Email trustingchildren@gmail.com

EXTERNAL CLUB PAYMENTS

Please be aware that over the coming weeks fees relating to externally provided activities will be deducted from your child's PBIS account. Please can you ensure that the relevant amount is credited to your child's account, to maintain a positive balance. If you have any query relating to fees for an externally led activity, the termly fees and provider contact information are displayed for each activity in the MyPBIS club enrolment platform. For full information relating to enrolment and payment of external activities please visit the following VLE page:

https://pbis.fireflycloud.net/extra-curricular-clubs/externally-provided-extracurricular-activities

HALF TERM SPORTS CAMP IS BACK!!!

The half term is just three weeks away and registration is now open for our Half Term Sports Camp. Our four day, action packed sports themed programme is open to all children aged 4 - 13 years. Each day will run from 08:30 - 17:00, and the programme will include training in gymnastics, tennis, floorball and wall climbing!

The programme will be based at our campus in Kamýk, with a complimentary daily bus service available from our Vlastina site. For full details and access to the online registration form please visit the following VLE page:

https://pbis.fireflycloud.net/extra-time/holiday-programmes/half-term-sports-camp-2019

Portrait Photo Orders

This year's class photos are ready and can be seen at http://www.pbisphotos.cz Just enter the password (case sensitive): PBIS2019

Please note that the order deadline is FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25, and that orders placed before the deadline should be delivered by the first week of December.

Prices for the photographs are displayed in the form. The final amount will be deducted from your child’s school account.

In the meantime, we hope you like the photos! If you have any questions, concerns, or comments, please email pbisphotographer@gmail.com.

Pre-Nursery

This week in Pre-Nursery we continued learning about ‘Autumn’. We finished the fingerprint autumn trees from last week and made new trees using real leaves. We were discussing their colour and talked about the fact that they fall down at this time of the year.

We also visited the library for the first time on Monday. We looked at the books and chose some to take home. Please remember to return the library book before or on Monday in order to be able to get a new book to take home.

On Thursday, we celebrated Alex’s birthday. We would like to thank him for the delicious cupcakes and, on behalf of all of us, to wish him a very happy birthday.

A big thank you to those parents who returned the parental involvement form. It is really beneficial for children if their parents get involved in their learning and we can’t wait to start the cooperation.

Monday will be an exciting day as we will go on an autumn walk around the school. We will be looking at the changes in nature and will be collecting collage materials. It should be a lovely, warm day but please make sure your child has appropriate footwear for a walk in the forest.

Thank you and have a lovely weekend!

Nursery

Another busy week in nursery had gone by. We have been looking at feelings and emotions in depth this week. We examined feelings, such as: happy, sad, angry and scared. In the Lions class the children have been amazing at making all these different faces when being photographed. We will use these facial expressions for the ‘emotions’ activity. In the Tigers class the children made wonderful wooden spoon happy and sad puppets. Furthermore, we have been exploring pictures of faces with different emotions and have been talking about what makes us feel happy and sad.

To follow up on our learning about emotions, we explored the story of the Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister. This is a lovely story focusing on the feelings and friendships. In relation to this story, the children enjoyed participating in a variety of activities such as modelling a rainbow fish out of blue playdough and clay. I was amazed watching the children making their sparkling fish and even monsters. The children made rainbow fish puppets, which we will use for acting out the story. Thinking about maths, we introduced the 5 Little Ducks song to the children. The children took part in a sequencing activity and enjoyed acting out the story of this popular song.

We have been impressed to see children’s overall progress and excitement for learning in these first six weeks. Next week we will continue learning about feelings and emotions and we will explore autumn in more depth.

We wish everyone a happy weekend.

Reception

In reception this week we ‘travelled’ to...Australia!

We have been busy finding out about all the different animals you could find in Australia and we used the iPads to research and answer our questions and then presented what we found to our peers. Did you know that koalas can sleep up to 18 hours a day? We used our imagination to move like different animals and represent them in our mark making.

We also thought about the Aboriginal Australians and took part in some of their customs, such as: dancing to different music, leaf painting and body art. We had a go at representing their symbols and telling a story through our drawings.

In maths this week we have been exploring capacity, seeing how many cups a jug can fill and measuring with different containers. Why not add some different sized bottles and containers to your bathtime and see how much water they can hold?

As the temperatures are dropping and rain is a more common occurrence please ensure that your child has waterproof trousers and wellington boots in school. We would like them to stay warm and dry no matter what the weather decides!

This week your child has bought home their reading folder, please return this folder every Monday so that we can read with your child and change their reading book. It was great to see many of you at the phonics workshop today. The presentation can be viewed here.

Thank you for your support and have a lovely weekend.

The Reception Team

Year 1

Year 1 have been working very, very hard this week in all areas of the curriculum. We have had lots of fun learning all about holidays in the past and comparing them to holidays now in our creative curriculum lessons. As historians, we found out that some activities people did in the past during their seaside holiday we still do today. We found out many facts about people long ago using a variety of resources, for example, books, pictures, videos and the internet.

In maths, we have continued our work on number, this week we have been looking at place value, comparing numbers and practising 1 more/1 less using a number grid and we have used lots of interactive maths games on the computer. We have learned all about ‘teens’ numbers and used very important mathematical vocabulary.

We have been designing our own holiday destination posters in English this week, learning about the features of a poster and thinking about what makes a good poster. We even thought about persuasive language and how we could make people want to go to the different holiday destinations.

In computing we have been teaching our Beebots to dance by making algorithms to create dance sequences that our Beebots performed to music. The children also had fun programming their teachers. ‘We got the moves like Jagger’!

Please bear in mind that the weather is now turning colder and there is a nip in the air so please remind them to bring their coats to school as well as a pair of tracksuit bottoms on PE and dance days.

We would like to design our very own dioramas in our creative curriculum lessons in the last two weeks of this term, (see below). Please could you bring a shoe box to school.

The phonics and maths workshop for parents this week was a great success so thank you to all those parents that participated. If you did not manage to make it, you can find the presentations on the VLE. Please see the link below as the presentations will give you lots of ideas on how to help your child at home.

https://pbis.fireflycloud.net/year-1-3/kamyk/home-learning

Thank you for your support and have a wonderful weekend.

The Year 1 Team.

Year 2

In maths this week we have been looking at greater than and less than and counting on in ones and tens. We have also been practising putting numbers on a number line and some children have been looking at place value. In morning work this week we also looked at the problem solving challenge ‘37’ and the children were investigating whether you can get an odd or even number when you add two odd or two even numbers together.

In English, we continue to look at fact files. Last week the children learnt the talk-for-writing text about the Sydney Opera House and this week they are using the language to create new fact files about The Tower of Pisa and The Burj Khalifa. They now feel more confident including not only interesting information but also a rhetorical question.

In Creative Curriculum this week, we have been doing science and the children have been looking at the properties of different materials. They have also been classifying materials into transparent and non-transparent and looking at how materials can change their shape. We have also been discussing why certain materials are used for building different types of houses. 2B also had a lovely afternoon on Thursday identifying different materials in the forest. They particularly enjoyed the wonderful autumn colours and smells.

Year 3

We have been designers in year 3 this week, analysing existing chocolate and biscuit packaging to see what features they have, and how marketers use different colours to appeal to different audiences. The children have been enhancing their 3D-shape maths skills in creating nets for their chocolate bars, remembering to check that there are enough faces to cover the chocolate!

In maths we have been problem solving and reasoning using our understanding of multiplication, addition and subtraction, whilst in English we have been writing up our short stories, editing them to ensure there are a range of conjunctions, adverbs and sentence openers.

The highlight of the week for 3B and 3D was their wonderful trip to Chocotopia on Thursday, where they were able to see lots of exhibitions about the Maya and the history of chocolate, as well as participating in a fun workshop. 3A and 3Cz are excited to be going next week.

Year 4

This week in maths, we have been working on expanded column addition and subtraction. This can be a tricky topic so please continue to practice your skills at home and on Mathletics. We have also revised time and have been practising converting between analogue and digital times. To support your child at home, continue to ask them questions about what the time is!

In English, we have finished writing our rainforest diaries and visited Year 6 to share our amazing work! They gave us important feedback on our writing to ensure we knew what we had done well and what we needed to improve on. We also became judges and voted on their debate on wildfires in the rainforest! Great work Year 6! We also began writing a story, first by working in groups to create a story tree, and then deciding what parts and characters we wanted to include in our own story. We are really looking forward to seeing what the children will produce.

As part of our Creative Curriculum topic, on Monday 4A and 4D visited the Botanical Gardens. We had a fantastic time sketching plants and different shapes of leaves, as well as discovering lines in the background, midground and foreground. This work will help us to produce our final piece of art in this topic, inspired by Henri Rousseau. In addition to this, we started learning about how the rainforest is being destroyed by natural disasters and humans, and started a DT project about healthy eating and food groups.

• Parent's evening is Wednesday 16th October. We would love to see as many people as possible so please do sign up or contact your child's class teacher.
• Please encourage your child to keep writing in their diary when they read! Most reading progress happens at home and it also helps them to become more responsible with their diary.

Year 5

Whatever the weather, year 5 are always ready to learn!

Some reminders for next week:

• Parent's evening is Wednesday 16th October. We would love to see as many people as possible so please do sign up or contact your child's class teacher.
• Year 5 trip to the planetarium is Thursday 17th October. Please see further information here and also you can sign your child up here: https://pbis.fireflycloud.net/year-5-3/kamyk/trips-and-excursions/y5-trip-to-the-planetarium-17th-october-2019
• We need your (clean) rubbish! Please see the note in the Creative Curriculum paragraph

In English, we have loved learning about and exploring the world of Doctor Who. The children have thought hard about what makes the storylines so exciting and suspenseful and have linked this to the needed skills of a writer. Next week we will be starting to write our own short science-fiction stories inspired by The Doctor.

In maths, we have been testing our knowledge of angles and learning how to use a protractor and a compass. We have really enjoyed doing this practical skill and thinking about what professions might need it. Next week we will have the opportunity to review what we have been learning so far and to try some more challenging problem solving and reasoning.

We have been continuing to write our own games in computing using block coding. In our Creative Curriculum, we have completed science work based on Earth and space investigating the constellations and building an Eggonaut to protect a very important astronaut (the egg!) when it lands back to earth. Next week we will be thinking like designers and engineers as we plan and build our own electric games. To help support with this, the children will need to bring a shoebox (or a box of a similar size) and other junk recycling. Yogurt pots, plastic bottles, boxes and take away cartons are always useful so please save them up over the holiday.

We wish you a safe and happy weekend!

Year 6

This week has seen another busy schedule especially for our budding young entrepreneurs who have spent a lot of time and focus on preparing their business proposals and pitches for the first round of presentations which will take place next week. The students have voluntarily been defining their roles in the business, from financial directors to marketing managers. On Tuesday 22nd October the finale with take place in Libus Campus. Please see more details and complete the permission form on the VLE. https://pbis.fireflycloud.net/year-6-3/kamyk/trips/y6-trip-to-libus-tuesday-22nd-october

We continued to observe our science investigation throughout the week to find out what causes mould to grow fast on bread. We found out that not only does it look bad but also smells bad too!

Art has been spread out across the week as we have been painting our fruit bowls in steps. We hope to put the finishing touches on these early next week.

In maths we have been focusing on timetables and using these within short and long multiplication strategies which includes multiplying decimals. We have looked at a variety of real life situations involving money in which these skills are useful.

In English we have been working on speaking and listening skills, particularly focusing on the concept of debates. We have explored statements that we feel are fair or unfair and verbalised our argument for these. On Friday we conducted a formal debate with the motion, ‘We should allow intentional fires to be set in the Amazon Rainforest’ to a Year 4 audience (who have also been learning about rainforests). The Year 6 students also took time to peer mentor written work from the Year 4 students.

Some news from a staffing front in Year 6. Mr Victor has been given the opportunity to join the language department as a Spanish teacher and join the Learning Support team within the senior school. Therefore, he will no longer be Teaching Assistant in Year 6. Whilst we are very sad to lose Mr Victor (who promises to continually ‘drop in’ on Year 6), we are also very happy and supportive of this new opportunity for him. Equally we are delighted to have a wonderful replacement join our Year 6 team. Mrs Sarah Nelmes, who has been working as a TA across the lower primary school will now be working full time in Year 6. She is very keen and excited about her new role and we are thrilled to have her.

Enjoy a wonderful sunny autumn weekend!

The Year 6 Team

Regional Professional Development for dance teachers in Europe and the Middle East in collaboration with Juilliard

10 dance teachers from Nord Anglia Schools, and Hilary Easton, Juilliard Faculty member and head of Global K-12 dance programme, observed a KS1 class being taught by Ms Byrne, and a KS3 class taught by guest teacher, Ms Earnest from The British School Warsaw. Teachers were astounded by the creative abilities of the students, and in particular noted how engaged boys were with the subject. Students in Year 8 explored the movement of the spine in a workshop linked to core work Re-III by Shen Wei, and students in Year 2 did Juilliard activity ‘The March of Time’. We are very proud of all our students, their conduct, hard work and respect for the performing arts.

Dragons Dance Squad

We have some very exciting plans for this year! Look out for further details over the next couple of weeks...

If you would like to order a hoodie, the deadline for the next order is Friday 18 Oct. Click below to order:

https://pbis.fireflycloud.net/the-arts-3/dance/pbis-dragons-dance-squad/pbis-dragons-dance-squad-hoodie