End of Week 2
There has been so much positivity around school this week. The first week is always about getting back into the normal routine and getting to know new teachers and classmates. The second week has seen things calm down and the start of clubs and the primary Czech for foreigners lessons. Please do not forget to sign up for more clubs if you would like to keep your child busy after school and also to sign up for Czech for foreigners lessons if you want your child to have Czech lessons in the mornings. For more information about Cech lessons please follow this link.
https://pbis.fireflycloud.net/language-lessons/pbis-primary---czech-for-foreigners-optional
The year 7 and 8 students have had a brilliant time on their team building expeditions. I have received so much positive feedback from all involved which is great to hear. A huge thank you to those staff who supported the children whilst away from school. I am sure year 9 will have an equally positive experience next week.
I really enjoyed visiting the year 1 camping experience on Thursday afternoon. It was an amazing start to their new topic and all the children and staff were having a great time. On Thursday I was also pleased to see so many girls taking part in the football team training session at lunch time with the PE staff. Mr Hayes mentioned that all the sessions they have held during lunch times this week have been really popular. He was already worried about how to choose the teams for the first formal fixtures with so many children to choose from. This is a great problem for him to have!
Paul Baker
Head of Kamýk Campus
Kamyk Primary Update and Buses
The start of the year has been very positive but as always, bus logistics are a challenge and traffic congestion around Kamyk a frustration.
One of the changes that we made at Kamyk this year was to slightly extend the day for the Primary school, to coincide with Secondary. This was to ensure a smoother end to the day, finishing with a class activity such as reading or a story and ensuring the children have everything needed for home. It also means that for children in a school club, they can go straight into it rather than waiting.
However, we have listened to feedback from parents and two issues have been raised. Firstly, it has increased traffic around the school and secondly, it has impacted on bus registration and afternoon out of school activities.
We have monitored the situation this week and have discussed the matter at length. Based on the feedback and our discussions, SLT have agreed that the end of the school day for Primary will be adjusted to 3.10pm. This will have a stagger time of 10 minutes before Secondary finish, it will still allow for a final session in classrooms and only a short waiting time for Primary before school clubs begin. This change will come into effect from Monday 23rd September, so that you have time to change any baby sitting or collecting arrangements.
For school buses, one challenge is the daily afternoon registration of children for the bus. What causes huge difficulty is when children on the register do not arrive or when children not on the register turn up. We take the safety of the children very seriously, so in both cases, the bus monitor has to try and find out why the child is there or where the child is, parents are also contacted.
Last night for example, everyone was delayed 25 minutes while two children were checked and buses departed Kamyk at 3.45pm which is not satisfactory. The reason why the children were not on the list was that parents had not informed school of a change.
So please, if you have a child in Primary that uses any of the school buses, please ensure they know what bus they should be catching and the school is informed of any changes to clubs or bus use.
Also, please ensure that your Primary school child has been registered on the school bus, this registration is done with Sona Novakova (sona.novakova@pbis.cz).
For changes to clubs, whether daily or longer term, please contact
Early Years – Year 2 - Andrea Vermirovska (andrea.vermirovska@pbis.cz)
Year 3 – 6 - Zdenka Hrebejkova (zdenka.hrebejkova@pbis.cz)
Years 6 – 9 - David Vo Tien (david.vo@pbis.cz)
Best wishes
Michael Bardsley
Principal
Summer Reading Challenge - Final reminder
I have received lots of primary completed summer reading challenge forms. I would like to send the order for t shirts next friday. To guarantee receiving a t-shirts all forms must be returned to school by Wednesday.
Czech for Foreigners – Czech lessons for beginners (optional) at PBIS Primary
Are you new to this country? Do you plan to stay here for some time and would like your children to learn basic Czech so that they can easily get around Prague? If your answer to these questions is 'yes', we're ready to help.
PBIS Primary will lead Czech lessons for beginners (for pupils in the Birtish classes). If your child is a beginner, they can study Czech as a foreign language for up to three 30-minute sessions per week. These sessions will be held from 08: 30-09: 00 Tue-Thu. For more information, email Mrs O’Leary at petra.oleary@pbis.cz or go to:
https://pbis.fireflycloud.net/language-lessons/pbis-primary---czech-for-foreigners-optional
Czech lessons for intermediates (optional) at PBIS Primary - Kamýk campus
Has your child attended Czech lessons for foreigners last year? Would you like him/her to continue learning Czech again this academic year? If your answer to these questions is 'yes', we are pleased to announce that as of Tuesday, September 17, 2019 we will open two groups (A and B) of Czech for intermediate students.
If your child is an intermediate, he/she can study Czech as a foreign language for up to three 30-minute sessions per week. These sessions will be held from 08: 30-09: 00 Tue-Thu. Those who will not study Czech as a foreign language will attend a Music assembly and two additional first language English lessons.
Group A will be for students of Years 2 and 3, group B for students of Years 5 and 6, while Year 4 will be evenly distributed between groups A and B. The main reason for this division is to ensure an adequate quality of teaching, to which the optimum pupil-to-teacher ratio contributes greatly to language teaching.
Places in each both groups are limited and the registration system operates on a first-come-first-served basis.
For detailed information about this programme and sign-up instructions, please follow this link: https://pbis.fireflycloud.net/language-lessons/pbis-kamyk-primary---czech-for-beginners-optional/pbis-primary---czech-for-intermediates-optional
Parent Information Sessions
I have been delighted to hear the feedback from both parents and teachers after the year group information sessions. It is so important that you are aware of what is happening in your child’s year group. Below you can find all the presentations to refer to. If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to speak to your child’s teacher. We are looking at arranging further information sessions for parents throughout the year. If any parents have request for sessions that they would find useful please contact me.
School Photographer
Our school photographer will be visiting school next week and the week after to take individual photographs of all of our children. He will start with year 7 – 9 students on Thursday (19th) and Friday (20th) and then the week after (23rd – 27th) he will take primary students photographs. I will send a complete schedule early next week so that you know when to have your child looking their best!
Whole School Maximum Music Weekend - Sign Up Now Open!
With only four weeks to go, sign-up is now open for the PBIS Maximum Music event on Saturday 12th October. This is the first event of its kind, gathering together musicians in years 3-13 from Vlastina, Libus and Kamyk for a day of music making and workshops. All the PBIS music teachers will be there leading choir and instrumental rehearsals, with some visiting musicians dropping in throughout the day.
All students in Vlastina Singers Unlimited, Kamyk KS2 Choir, Musical Theatre Ensemble, Kamyk KS3 Show Choir, Libus Senior Choir, Kamyk String Ensemble, KS3 Orchestra, Libu Senior Band: sign up now!
https://pbis.fireflycloud.net/the-arts-3/music/pbis-maximum-music-weekend
School ensemble clubs are already rehearsing and the singing repertoire can be found on the Maximum Music page on the VLE. If your child would like to participate but isn’t yet in an ensemble, please e-mail ailsa.frazer@pbis.cz and we will give them the music that they need to practise!
If there are parents who would like to participate either in choir or orchestra, also just send an email to the address above!
Key Stage 3 Music
Years 7,8 and 9 have been revising the elements, focusing particularly on timbre, sound quality and extended techniques; exploring beyond the conventional boundaries of musical instruments and composer expectations.
We have investigated the prepared piano, in which John Cage added nuts, bolts, erasers and other objects to the piano strings to create a percussion orchestra, as well as the Juilliard core work ‘Sequenza V’ in which Berio pushes the trombone player to the limits of performance. Students have had fun producing contrasting timbres and techniques on percussion instruments and questioning the relationship between sounds and symbols.
Dance:
Irish Dancing for adults
Irish dancing for adults is back! Come and join us on a Tuesday morning from 08.30-09.30 in the PAC. Everyone welcome. Come and have some fun, meet some new friends and dance along to some lovely Irish music! You'll have a skip in your step for the rest of the day!
Classes start Tuesday 17 September - see you there!
Lost Property
We have lots of lost property remaining from the end of the last school year including school uniform and sports kits. We will place everything we have in the main reception on Monday for a couple of days. Please come and look through the items.
Student Leadership
On Monday 16th September we will have our House Captain Elections in the Primary School. Candidates from Year 6 will present to the rest of their house and explain why they would be a good house captain. All children will then have the chance to vote for their favourite. Following these votes, the children will be interviewed by the leadership team next week. Our new house captains will be announced in assembly on Friday 20th September.
For children in other years, there are lots of other student leadership opportunities. Children can get involved in our Eco-Team and Student Council or could become Digital Leaders. Children will find out more about these opportunities in their classes. If you’d like to find out more, please speak to the class teachers.
Student Learning (EAL and Learning Support)
Welcome to the new ‘Faculty of Student Learning’. Our team in Kamyk covers EAL and Learning Support for the whole campus.
In Primary:
EAL Kamila Hamel (Coordinator), Hannah Batten and Natalia Fajcikova
LS Tricia Gray (Head of Faculty), Mark Sigsworth and Sasha Long
In Secondary:
EAL Liam Bunce and Lisa Wickham-Ghaffar
LS James Gray
We also have a visiting Speech and Language Therapist, Alena Netolicka
We are excited to be working with your children and will use both Seesaw and this Newsletter to keep you updated.
National Poetry Day
Pre-Nursery
Another successful week for the Pre-Nursery class! We have continued working on settling in and are really getting used to school routines. We have spent a lot of time interacting with our teachers and peers and have started to work on activities aimed at developing our fine motor skills. We made clouds and umbrellas that can be seen on the window in our classroom. We are hoping to start exploring our school further next week by, for instance, visiting the gym!
Nursery
Our second week went really quickly and the children in the nursery classes have been settling in. The children have been forming friendships with their teachers and classmates. They have been focusing on sitting still during circle times and on paying attention. The children have made a wonderful progress at familiarising themselves with the new classroom routine. This week’s focus was around colours and the story of “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you See?” by Bill Martin. We made wonderful puppets and pictures based on the story and the children have been reciting the story as a rhyme within our circle time. The children participated in many exciting art activities with the colour focus, such as: sorting coloured objects, making colour pictures using a salad spinner, throwing a paint ball or squirting different coloured paint to create unique colourful pictures. The children enjoyed our colour experiment with tissue paper and ink colouring. We were amazed to observe the colour mixing.
On Wednesdays in our PE lesson, the Lions class have had their first yoga lesson with Ms Adela and the Tigers class have had their PE lesson at the gym with Ms Jo. The classes will be swapping lessons every half term.
We are looking forward to exploring “Who am I?” next week. We will be focusing on our body and feelings in the next coming days.
Thank you for all your positive energy at the start of the year and we wish you a lovely weekend.
Reception
Here in Cheetah and Leopards classes we have been having a fun filled week getting into the routines of reception with lots of learning in our play!
We have started the term with beginning phonics lessons each morning and have learnt the sounds ‘m’, ‘a’ and ‘s’ this week - see if your child can spot anything that begins with these sounds when you are out and about this weekend! In maths, we have started learning how to recognise, count and represent numbers 1-5 to give a solid foundation of number that we will build upon throughout the year. In P.E: Cheetah class are doing yoga this term, whilst Leopards work on negotiating space and moving in new ways.
We’ve been making our own leopards and cheetahs, please come and look at all of our efforts in the reception corridor! The children were very independent in their cutting, sticking and writing and so their big cats show off their personalities. :-)
Our topic circle times have been based on families and we have read many funny stories (our favourite was ‘Dirty Bertie’!!) that have prompted our talk of family members that live in our house, and those that live further away like cousins and grandparents.
We welcomed Mr David to our wonderful early years team this week. He is a qualified teacher who joins us in the TA position, being based in Miss Andrea’s class alongside Miss Adela.
Next week we’ll be starting our topic of ‘The World’ millions of years ago in the time of the dinosaurs… and the teachers are very excited to go fossil hunting, make dinosaur eggs and make dinosaur traps! We hope the children will enjoy what we have planned!
Year
1
What another amazing week in Year 1. We are still settling in and getting to know each other in our classes and in the year group. Each day the children wow us with how independent they are becoming. They are doing a super job!
This week in English we have started our Read, Write Inc phonics programme and beginning to learn our magic words. We have been looking at rhyming words through the nursery rhyme ‘Incy Wincy Spider’ such as ‘spout’ and ‘out’, ‘rain’ and ‘again’. Please help the children to practise and learn more simple rhyming words to support them with their reading and spelling.
We have been marvellous mathematicians this week, learning all about number bonds to 5/10 so that we can become fast and fluent at recalling them. The children have participated in lots of fun maths activities inside and outside the classroom to support their learning.
Our creative curriculum lessons have transformed us into curious scientists and excited explorers! We have been investigating materials to find out which material is the best for a special task. Did Teddy get soaked??? You can find out when you read our results. Our camping day experience was out of this world - walking through the forest, collecting wood, learning how to build a fire, singing camp songs, exploring the camping equipment and best of all… eating ice cream!
Swimming was also a great success, the children showed us what fantastic swimmers they are and they took everything in their stride.
What a week! We can not wait for the next one.
NB. Please use your ‘Daily News’ for each of the classes to help you remember what you need to bring to school every day.
This week homework starts, it is not compulsory but reading is!!
Thank you for your support.
The Year 1 Team
Year
2
Year 2 have worked incredibly hard this week! The teachers are extremely pleased with the maturity and positive attitude the students have shown towards school life.
Clubs started this week with most children taking part in at least one activity. Swimming started this week with most of the Year 2 children knowing where to go and the routines from the previous year. Although the lesson was enjoyable, please could we ask for children to have water shoes to walk around the poolside and shower area as it does get quite wet and unfortunately one student slipped and hurt herself.
In English, we have continued our descriptive text using adjectives and a range of verbs. Some children have begun to explore similes and have used to good effect in their writing. In maths this week, children have worked with numbers to a hundred, ordering and using the vocabulary greater than and less than.
We have been looking at different famous buildings around the world and their location on a world map this week in creative curriculum and this geography element will continue next week when exploring the local environment looking at the different uses for buildings close to the school. Please look on the VLE, Kamyk Year 2 page for the trips and events for a permission slip so we can take your child on a walk in the area close to school. Please email your child’s class teacher if you would like a more detailed description of where we will be walking, the specific dates and times involved.
Year
3
Lots has been going on in year 3 this week - we started the week with Mrs Nosalova coming in and speaking to the children about where chocolate comes from, showing us some large, dried cacao pods and discussing the different quantities of ingredients for the different types of chocolates. It was great to meet a real Chocolatier, thank you! Creative Curriculum continued with developing our map skills when locating cacao tree growing countries and learning about the relevance of the equator.
Our English lessons have been continuing with descriptive work, as the children have been exploring sensory appeal and started using a thesaurus to find synonyms of words they already know. Their homework this week has been linked to this, and we look forward to reading their sensory descriptions of the school playground! In reading groups, the children have begun to make predictions about events and inferences about character emotions in stories.
Maths has had a focus on place value when comparing and adding numbers. The children have been problem solving too, becoming more confident with ‘trial and error’, and reasoning their thinking using some mathematical vocabulary.
On Tuesday, we had our first swimming lessons of the year. The children were confident and really enjoyed being back in the water. Please do remember to send your child with a swimming hat if they have long hair - it saves us so much time afterwards.
Year
4
It’s been a busy and exciting week in Year 4 with lots of learning and energy during lessons!
In class, we have continued to get to know each other and reinforce the school rules and expectations. All classes are already earning Flag Points for displaying good behaviour around the school. Last week, 4B were Class of the Week and earned an extra 15 minutes of play time. Well done!
In English, we have been looking at how to research by identifying key words and phrases in a text and using these to write sentences in our words. They have begun to use these skills to research about their chosen rainforest animal, eventually they will post this information on their own website. The children are really looking forward to this! We have also looked at a number of online travel guides to understand their layout, content and language; this will help them their guide to one of the world’s rainforests.
Maths has been fun and challenging. The children have continued to practise number bonds of 10, 20 and 100 using this knowledge to add and subtract to the next 100. They have used number lines to help them find the difference between two three-digit numbers. They have also revised digital and analogue time and practised their mental maths skills.
During Creative Curriculum lessons, we plotted important lines of latitude and longitude, and the location of rainforests on world maps, noting how most lie between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. We revised the world’s continents using the excellent online game: https://world-geography-games.com/. In art, the children have been practising the important element of Line in readiness for sketching leaves next week. They experimented using pencils to create different types of line, including swirly, zig-zagged, straight and curved. They invented some funny names for these lines.
All the children are excited to have now signed up to Seesaw and will be regularly posting reflections of the work of which they are most proud. Please try to find time to talk to them about their posts, or feel free to ‘like’ their work or submit a comment. They really appreciate your feedback!
Homework begins this week. Your child will have their homework glued into their Homework books and written in their Student Planners (Homework Diaries). Additionally, each week your child’s homework can be found in the Year 4 page on the VLE.
Please remember to complete the online consent form for walks in the local environment. We are eager to visit our local forest to make sketches and learn about how it differs from a tropical rainforest.
Year
5
Now we are in our second week, routines are beginning to fix and the children in year 5 have done some amazing learning this week. Thank you to the parents who were able to join us at our year 5 team meeting on Tuesday. You can find a copy of the presentation here: https://pbis.fireflycloud.net/year-5-3/kamyk
Some reminders:
- Please encourage your child to read every night. 10-15 minutes is ideal.
- Please check the VLE every Friday for this week’s homework; there will Maths homework and English homework.
In English this week we started an intriguing story called ‘The Water Tower’. We have been using this as inspiration for our recount writing. It is full of tension and suspense, but the children will have to wait until next week before we find out what happens to the protagonists in the story. Our targets this week have focussed on using: time adverbials (next, later, meanwhile); expanded noun phrases (the rusty, abandoned Water Tower) and powerful verbs (sprint, swirled, grasped).
In Maths, this week we have been adding and subtracting numbers mentally, investigating and practising the most effective methods. We are learning to choose the best method by looking at the numbers. We have used counting up (the frog!), partitioning and rounding.
In our Creative Curriculum, we have been learning more about the wonderful world that we live in. The children investigated floods and what causes them. They discussed different ways of protecting themselves against flooding too.
Year
6
It has been another busy week in Year 6. In maths we have been adding large numbers both mentally and using written methods of calculation as well as adding decimals.
In English we started to review the statutory words from Y3-Y6 and we will continue to consolidate our knowledge of these over the next few weeks. The students have been creative and imaginative and have written a chapter of a story about a journey on ‘The Island of Gunder’. They have used their knowledge of islands to come up with an exciting first piece of writing in Year 6. This week we have also begun to look at newspaper articles and we will be writing our own reports next week.
In science we have been clarifying plants and trees and the students showed keen interest in carnivorous plants. Our Islands topic has taken us on a journey to the Shetland Islands in Scotland, where we have started a geographical case study of these islands.
In art we have continued to look at fruit and in particular we have been exploring the use of colour. We have learnt about the complementary and analogous colour wheels and experimented with these.
Thank you to all the parents who attended the information afternoon on Wednesday; we hope it was useful and we are looking forward to working together with you in Year 6. For those who could not attend, please find the presentation document on the VLE and other useful documents.
The full homework schedule will start this week, please check on the VLE and/or in the student’s diary for more information. Also take some time to read the homework guidelines in the front of the homework books.
Please remember to complete the online consent form for walks in the local environment if you haven’t already done so.
Year 7
Year 7 students started the year with an action-packed Residential Trip in Blaník. They enjoyed team building activities such as building a shelter in the wild, designing and constructing a giant slingshot and a hike to Malý Blaník. It was encouraging to see students working so well together and forging new friendships in the process.
3E Outdoors did an excellent job of providing active, multi-sensory experiences designed for growth and change and I am happy to say that our students fully embraced the opportunities that they were presented with.
A big thank you to the tutors and teachers who attended the trip for their support.
Photos can be found on the Year 7 newsfeed https://pbis.fireflycloud.net/tutor-groups-6/kss-y7
KS3 Humanities
We’ve got a lot of great things planned in the Humanities department this year! We use Twitter to showcase what our students are doing and to share things related to our topics so follow us to learn more: https://twitter.com/PBISHumanities
To stay up-to-date with what your child is doing in class take a look at the VLE pages for their specific year group and subject:
Geography: https://pbis.fireflycloud.net/geography-3
History: https://pbis.fireflycloud.net/history-3
Global Studies: https://pbis.fireflycloud.net/global-studies
Your child can also use these pages to catch up when absent or review material before assessments.
There is lots of information on the VLE and it is updated regularly. As well as materials related to what is done in class there are 4+ learning areas, interesting articles, links to games, learning support and photos.
On Fridays Lunch 2, there is Humanities Catch-up-club for students who need help and support, missed some lessons, want to ask questions before their assessment or want to review their work.
Extra Time
For those that need to collect their children from school later than the regular school day finish time at 3 p.m., we offer our Extra Time service. Extra Time is open to all primary children from Reception - Year 6 and runs every school day from 3:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. (Starting Monday 2nd September.)
The service is managed by dedicated PBIS staff and offers peace of mind that children will be well looked after and entertained in an environment they know well. All children that attend Extra Time receive a complimentary snack, prepared by Lion Catering, and have the option to complete homework, read, participate in a range of fun structured activities, play games and sports or simply relax.
If you would like to find out more about Extra Time or make a booking for your child please click here.
New Breakfast Club
New for 2019/20 we are introducing an early morning breakfast club from 7:30 a.m. - 8:30 a.m. which will allow parents to drop off primary school children at school earlier than the 8:30 a.m. start time.
The Breakfast Club will be based in the Kamyk dining room and will be supervised by a member of staff each morning. Children will be able to eat their breakfast from home, or parents can purchase a breakfast from Lion Catering for their child, or children can simply relax before the start of the school day. All breakfast items purchased at school will be deducted directly from the student's account.
No advance registration is required to use this service. If you ever would like your child to attend the Breakfast Club, simply bring your child directly to the dining room in the morning and sign them in with the member of staff on duty.
There will be a 50 Kč charge for using the service that will be automatically deducted from your child's account each time.
Big Kids Football
Each Saturday morning a group of parents, staff and senior school students (over 16 years old) meet for informal games football. The standard of play is very relaxed and it is a great way to get some exercise and meet other members of the PBIS community.
If you are interested in playing, sign up under this link:
Tick Awareness
Although the peak tick season is almost over you might find the detailed information about tick-born illnesses, prevention and vaccination useful.
I would like to remind you that the vaccination against European tick borne encephalitis should ideally be started in winter. Effective immunity will then be present at the start of the tick season when children enjoy the outdoors, take part in residential trips and camps. You GP or paediatrician can give you further information on vaccination series.
You can find detailed information here.
Kamyk and Libus Friends News
On Monday, we had our first coffee morning of the year at Kamyk. It was wonderful to see old faces and new friends. This year we will be hosting coffee mornings every month. If you and your national group would like to host one, please contact Tony Peachment at school.
Next Monday we will be having our first committee meeting of
the year at 0830 in the Kamyk canteen. If you’d like to find out more about our
activities and get involved in organising events for the school and parents,
come along!
You can find more information about Friends on our VLE page.
Michael Bardsley
Principal
Paul
Baker
Head
of Kamýk Campus
Prague
British International School
Address K Lesu 558/2 | 142 00 Prague 4 | Czech Republic
Tel: + 420 226 096 200 | Mob: +420 725 738 690
paul.baker@pbis.cz
www.pbis.cz