Dear Parents,
Over the past two weeks, Key Stage 3 students have been on their Expedition and the feedback I have received has been very positive. The atmosphere in Vlastina and Kamyk is very different after the trips and so positive. New friendships have been formed, existing ones reinforced and new students have been made to feel part of our community. Year 10’s and Year 12’s will go next week and I hope that they too find it a great experience.
Clubs have now started and children are getting used to the new routines. There is a wide range of clubs on offer, something for everyone! Buses continue to be a challenge, so another plea from me. Please let school know if there are any changes to your child’s routine that can affect the buses. This and traffic is the main cause of bus delays.
Student leadership elections are taking place over the new few weeks. We feel that student voice is very important in school and I would encourage all students to be involved.
Finally, our new fitness suite has been opened in Libus. It will be available to students during their PE lessons, clubs or CAS activity. It will be located on the bottom corridor next to the café until the new Sports and Exercise area is completed which is expected to be in November.
Michael Bardsley
Principal
Year 7 - 9 Expeditions
The last of our year groups returned to school yesterday after spending time on their team building expedition. Ensuring all the paperwork is collected from parents in the first few weeks is a huge task and I would like to thank those who helped behind the scenes ensuring everything was in place. The feedback from teachers and students has been so positive. The organisation and the quality of the activities was excellent and the students thoroughly enjoyed the challenges. I would also like to thank the teachers who supported the students whilst they were away. The aim of the trips was to help the children develop relationships with their peers and teachers. These aims were certainly met and I am sure the experience will help the students for the remainder of the year.
Year 7 residential trip photos
Changes to Kiss and Ride
A number of families are arriving in the kiss and ride after 8.30. The children are coming into school without being registered. From Monday the Kiss and Ride gates will be closed at 8.30. Children arriving to school late after 8.30 should arrive through the main receptions so that the receptionists can make them as present in the school register.
Primary House Captain Elections
On Monday 16th September, children from Year 6 put themselves forward to be elected the new House Captains. They presented (twice!) to their houses to earn votes. During this week, they have also been interviewed by the KLT.
We had TWENTY-SIX(!) students who put themselves forward as candidates. It is hugely impressive that there are so many brilliant and capable students in our school who are eager to take on positions of responsibility. With so many excellent candidates, there are of course a lot of children who will be disappointed - we can only choose 8 house captains (two for each house). All we can do is congratulate them on going for it - they should be extremely proud of the way they conducted themselves, even if they were not successful.
To find out who our new House Captains are and to see photographs of the event, please follow this link: https://pbis.fireflycloud.net/events-2/kamyk/kamyk-house-captain-elections-1
House Football Competition
Back by popular demand, our house football competition has returned! This week Year 3 got us started, with wins for Hluboka and Lednice over Karlstejn and Konopiste respectively. Each week there will be different year groups with fixtures. Next week (week beginning 23rd September) there will be matches for Year 5 and Year 2. Anyone can get involved in these lunchtime matches (boys and girls) and children should bring sports kit for their matches. Please check your child’s diary for details of when each match takes place.
School Photographer
Just a reminder that our school photographer is on school next week. To access the complete schedule follow the link below.
https://pbis.fireflycloud.net/events-2/kamyk/individual-photographs
He is also available to take a limited number of sibling photographs next week. To sign up for a appointment please follow the following link below.
https://form.jotformeu.com/92605006158352
Student Lunch accounts
As I mentioned 2 weeks ago, we have the following policy regarding lunch accounts:
· For children in Year 6 and below a negative balance of up to -1200CZK per child is tolerated.
· For children in Year 7 and above accounts must always have a positive balance (ie. students will not be able to purchase items in the dining room if they do not have sufficient funds on their cards)
The instructions on how to charge accounts are HERE
Please note that this policy will be applied strictly from the end of September.
Paul Baker Head of Kamýk Campus
Kamyk and Libus Friends
This week we held our first Kamyk and Libus Friends Committee Meeting. We discussed the calendar for the year as well as the upcoming Halloween Disco. Minutes from the meeting are here. If you would like to get involved in the organising of events, please contact anthony.peachment@pbis.cz
Friends Social Event 27th September
Come and join us for a night of wine and Tuscan cuisine in
Vinohrady on Friday 27th September. A wonderful opportunity to meet other parents from all three
campuses. More details here
Places are limited. Sign up here.
Transport update
Dear parents of children traveling on the Průhonice shuttle bus,
Due to roadworks and heavy traffic around Průhonice and Kunratrická spojka, please note that there will be a 5 minutes earlier departure time for the Průhonice shuttle bus in the morning. Please make sure your child(ren) is (are) ready to board the Průhonice shuttle bus before 7:40 am.
The new departure time will be 7:40 am as from Monday 23rd September 2019 until further notice.
Thank you for your understanding.
I wish you a lovely weekend,
Soňa Nováková"Trusting Children" Baby Playgroup
PBIS parents with small babies will now have the exciting opportunity to join a baby playgroup at Kamyk. The playgroup will be run by Aisha Nayyar and Kim Ashton who are both PBIS employees currently on maternity leave. Aisha and Kim would like to offer a unique experience for parents and their babies inviting them to participate in a group where they will have the chance to socialise, learn and explore.
The play group is based on the philosophies of Dr Maria Montessori and Magda Gerber who were both very strong advocates for children leading their own learning. Babies are learning all the time from the moment they are born. We would like to offer them an opportunity to follow their natural curiosity and be allowed to explore different resources and materials in a safe and respectful environment.
Aisha has worked as an Early Years teacher for 11 years. She was the Early Years co-ordinator at Vlastina before going on maternity leave. She has a 2.5 year old daughter and 8 month old twin boys. Her passion is early childhood development and child-centred education.
Kim qualified as a Teaching Assistant in 2016. Having worked in Early Years for 4 years at Kamyk, she is very passionate about the development of children in particular child-led learning. She has a 1 year old daughter.
They would both like to share their knowledge and experience with other parents during the Trusting Children baby playgroup.
If you have a baby aged between 6-14 months please contact trustingchildren@gmail.com to book your place. The sessions will be held in the Early Years multi-function room, every Wednesday from 8:45 to 9:30 starting on Wednesday, 2nd October 2019.
Please see the attached poster for more details. We look forward to welcoming you and your babies to our playgroup.
Pre-Nursery
An exciting week for the Pre-Nursery class! The children all made fantastic progress in their Personal, Social and Emotional development and have continued working on building a trusting relationship with their teachers. This has been reflecting positively on the atmosphere in the class and it means that we have been able to focus on more activities. We worked on many creative projects and made kites, hedgehogs, autumn leaves and grapes. We explored more of the school environment and made our first visit to the sports hall which we really enjoyed.
We are really happy to see the children enjoying school so much and can’t wait to have more good time together next week!
Nursery
It is wonderful to see how easily most of the children have adapted to life in their new learning environment. Friendships are being made and there is a lovely buzz in the classrooms where the children are playing and interacting. The children are developing an awareness of behavioural expectations and we are trying our best to remember to use our manners and say ‘please’ when we are asking for something and ‘thank you’ when we receive something.
This week we started to talk about body parts and focused on the parts of our face. We read the story ‘Go Away Big Green Monster’. It’s a very fun and clever book; the children say it’s magic! We have also been revising the names of common colours during various learning experiences this week. After reading the story the children created their own monsters: they chose a colour sheet for the face, drew a face shape and cut it out developing our cutting skills. The children then chose different materials to make a monster face and they look amazing. Later on in the week we described our monster faces to our friends. We learnt a new number song this week: ‘5 little men in a flying saucer’ and our mathematical focus was big and small, the children sorted big and small versions of the same object onto a T chart.
On Wednesday there was a cooking focus in each class. In Nursery A they made healthy muffins as it was Miss Silvie’s birthday. In Nursery B we made tomato pasta sauce with the tomatoes from our garden. Some children collected the tomatoes and we talked about the sizes, some were big, some were small and one was tiny. The children helped to chop the tomatoes and after cooking helped Miss Lesley to blend it with the special machine, we ate it with spaghetti, it was delicious.
Next week the school photographer will be in school. The time slot for Nursery A Lions class is 8.30-9.30am on Tuesday morning and for the Nursery B Tigers class is 8.30 – 9.30am on Wednesday morning. Please could you make sure that your child is in school by 8.30am at the latest and that he/she is wearing full school uniform.
Next week we will be talking about ‘this is me’. We will look at pictures of ourselves and we would like to look at pictures of ourselves when we were smaller. We would like one photograph of your child as a baby and one photograph of your child age around 2 years old. Could you please send the two photographs to your child’s class teacher by email by Monday, 23rd September. lesley.eichel@pbis.cz silvie.flakova@pbis.cz
We thank you for your continued support and wish you a lovely weekend.
Reception
This week has been so much fun! We have been learning all about dinosaurs - and this has meant we have been researching, drawing, cutting, modelling, HUNTING, STOMPING, ROARING and imagining our way through the week!
The dinosaurs in both classes have been up to no good this week, and each day they have been found in the middle of some activity whilst we have been at home! They have been having a party, doing some life drawing and building a car!! It's not just the dinosaurs who have been busy either; we have made our very own erupting volcanoes, dinosaur gloop and been hatching icy dinosaur eggs!
We have learnt the sounds d,t and i and also looked deeply into making and recognising numbers 6-10. The children have loved dinosaur maths!
On Thursday we went for the first time to the forest and the children were so wonderfully behaved keeping in their pairs and making sure they stayed near to a teacher. We went hunting for dinosaurs, and whilst we were hunting... found foot prints and heard a roar!! But it's ok, because the dinosaurs are more scared of us and we roared even louder!
Next week we'll carry on with more dinosaur learning, based around the story books of Harry and his Bucketful of Dinosaurs.
Thanks for a fabulous week Leopards and Cheetahs!
Year 1
WOW! It is only just the end of week 3 and the children are well and truly settled into year 1 life…. getting to grips with routines and expectations.
They are well on the way to becoming real life weather reporters (watch this space) – learning weather related vocabulary by writing and drawing symbols. We can’t wait to see them in action next week. We have continued with our phonics program this week and we are pleased to see how the children are progressing.
In maths it has been all about making 10 and doubles-doubles. We have enjoyed taking our learning outdoors with our giant Numicon as well as getting down with some rapping of our doubles too!
Colour chaos has reigned in creative curriculum as we begin to explore primary colours and produce our very own pieces of Piet Mondrian inspired pieces of work.
Congratulations to Maryam (1A), Alexandra (1B), Maxmillian (1C) and Milana (1D) who were elected as student council members. They will meet fortnightly with Ms Harrison and our year 2 student council members to discuss and influence decisions being made about our school.
Thank you to parents who have volunteered to become involved with our classes. We are looking forward to working with you over the coming year. No matter what time you can commit, please let us know if you are interested in helping out.
Don’t forget:
Read your daily news to find out what you need to bring each day as some children are still without their PE kit, diary and homework book.
As a year group we have decided to check Magic Word progress each Friday so please keep your Magic Word books at home to practise and ensure they are at school on Fridays. Thank you.
Swimming is every Tuesday.
Have a wonderful weekend.
The Year 1 Team
Year 2
Year 2 have been out and about exploring the local environment this week. We followed a map and searched for different buildings that are common in small towns (or suburb of Prague). It was quite surprising that in a small area from the school we have shops, restaurants, transport links (bus stop), two hairdressers and a beauty shop, a service shop to fix items made from metal, an office from the local council, a police station, a doctors surgery, three schools and lots of housing. Using these ideas we planned what made a good town, brainstorming ideas in four categories of buildings, natural areas, transport and play areas. In pairs the children were then able to draw their ideal map of a town, adding in keys or symbols to help others find their way around. Next week, we will begin the Art unit starting with a walk around Prague Castle looking at different styles of architecture.
In maths, we have been reviewing number bonds to both ten and twenty (two numbers that add together to make first 10 then 20) before quickly moving on to using this knowledge to work out bonds to a hundred.
In English, we have continued to write descriptive texts but this week we have been concentrating on punctuating sentences using a full stop, exclamation mark or a question mark whilst remembering we use capital letters at the start of sentences, for the pronoun I, for names of people, countries, months of the year and days of the week.
Please remember to sign up on the VLE for the trip happening on Monday for 2A and 2B and Friday for 2C and 2D. Children will need a packed lunch for this day that we will eat when we return to school.
2B also have the photographer on Monday so we will try to stay smart looking on our walk!
Year 3
We welcomed the Maya into our classrooms this week, as the children became historians and researched using different sources to find out about this ancient culture. What does this have to do with Chocolate? Everything! Thanks to the Maya who discovered they could grind cacao beans into a hot drink, the chocolate industry began to flourish. They used a different style of writing from us, and year 3 have been developing their artistic sense of line and space in creating their interpretations of different glyphs.
In maths, we have been working on counting in 3s and 4s to help with multiplication, and using numicon and base 10 resources to find doubles and halves of numbers. Our computing lessons have taken off in the classroom with coding using Scratch online program - feel free to explore this more at home with your child. We are eager to find out who this year’s ‘digital leaders’ will be to support us even more with our ICT knowledge and skills.
Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory has really come alive in the descriptions that the children have been working on this week. The air ‘smells like strawberry and orange’, the ‘funny gummy bears were hopping everywhere’, you could ‘hear the Ooompaloompas footsteps’ and the ‘biggest sploshing river in the world’ runs right through the middle. Ask your child to describe the factory to you as if they were there - you might start to wonder if they were!
Year 4
We have had another busy week in Year 4 and had the ‘responsible’ challenge of handing in our homework for the first time. Some students managed this really well… congratulations to you! Others are still working on themselves to become more responsible in their new school year routines. Great efforts everyone!
It’s great to walk in the corridor where our Year 4 designed rainforest doors welcome the students every day. Our Creative Curriculum topic is being deepened in our English lessons as we are reading non chronological texts more closely. We are upscaling sentences into paragraphs from our note taking on the topic of Rainforests by finding good nouns and adjectives. We are learning to take notes and write sentences in our own words. Once we have written strong sentences, we are able to construct a paragraph with some support!
Focusing on our Maths, we have been strengthening our understanding of place value and comparing numbers. Last Friday we had our first mental maths session and are training ourselves with times table knowledge. Times Tables Rockstars is a fun place to learn them, please don’t forget to go on! Good luck. Don’t forget to log into Mathletics this weekend and complete at least 20 minutes of homework online.
Some students went on a mindfulness hunt in the forest where they were using their senses to notice their surroundings. We saw squirrels and birds, hugged trees and listened to the sounds amongst the trees. The opportunity for artistic observational drawings in nature has helped us to connect and think about the possible differences between a rainforest and a temperate forest. It would be great if you could spend some time this weekend out in nature to share with your child the wonders of the local forests in Czech Republic. You may be surprised at what they share in return with you especially as they have been researching animals that live in the rainforests!
Have a wonderful weekend,
The Year 4 Team
Reminders:
There are Individual Photographs next week. Please provide your child with a comb/hairbrush so they can tidy their hair before their shoot :) - 4D Monday 23rd September, 4A+4B Tuesday 24th
Please ensure you or your child are writing or signing in the homework diary when reading.
Year 5
Year 5 have really enjoyed their week and the classrooms just get busier and busier. There is a lot to look forward to over the next couple of weeks.
Some reminders:
Please encourage the children to check our Year 5 VLE regularly as homework and class reminders will be set here.
Year 5 all have their school photos booked for next week. You can check the exact days in the general section of the newsletter. Please ensure the children are in school uniform.
Year 5 completed their personal recounts this week and now we have moved onto a different type of recount – journalistic writing. This links nicely with our topic as the children have been researching Extreme Weather both from a geographical and human point of view. We have started to look at interviews and the difference between open and closed questions. This will continue next week as we start to write our own newspaper report.
In Maths, we have been working on our mental multiplication and division skills investigating what happens when we multiply and divide decimals by 10, 100 and 100. Next week we will be looking at measurement reminding ourselves about 12 and 24-hour clock. You can practise this great skill with your child over the weekend. As well as asking them what the time is, you could also ask them duration questions such as: “How long until we….?” and “We are going to be doing this for an hour and a half, what time will we finish?”.
In our Creative Curriculum, we have moved from our Wonderful World into Outer Space as we investigate the forces of gravity and our solar system. The children were also thinking like scientists as we investigated craters. Take a look at Seesaw to seem some videos, photos and reflections from their experiments.
Year 6
This week in Year 6 we have started some exciting new maths concepts which the students, although a little frazzled by the name, have found really fun - ALGEBRA! In addition to solving algebraic equations we have been learning new rules of calculation including BODMAS and the order of operations. Also this week the students have been having individual discussions with their class teachers about which math group they would feel they would most benefit from. The maths groups will begin next week and the students have been informed of which group they will be in and which teacher they will have. This is also recorded in their homework diary.
In English we have continued to look at newspaper reports and have continued to write about the Amazon Fires. After completing our revision of the Year 3 and 4 statutory spelling words this week we will move to the spell scheme for Year 6 next week. Words will be on the VLE as well as on Spelling City, which the students can use at home.
In science we have been moving toward classifying groups of living things using more scientific terminology including the Linnaean system. In particular the students have explored the enormous variety of species within the Amazon Rainforest.
In art we have used a variety of real fruits to position and make observational drawings of, using pastels for colour, tone, and shading.
In computing we have talked about Geotagging technology and we are hoping to take our own photos to Geotag next week. To do so, please ensure you have completed the consent form for walk around our local area.
In our Islands topic we have continued to explore the Shetland Islands and have been looking in particular at the physical and human geographical changes to the islands over time.
Next week we have planned a trip to the Zofin Ostrov and Detsky Ostrov in Prague to carry out some field work on the islands. We will combine this with our science by looking for specific species that inhabit on the islands. We will also try out Geotagging to support our computing topic and will be looking out for still life to recreate in art.
Reminders:
Please encourage the children to use the VLE for homework and spelling lists
Next week the students will have their individual photos. You can check the exact days in the general section of the newsletter. Please ensure the children are in school uniform and they can bring a hairbrush with them if desired.
Please complete the trip form on the VLE by Monday and send transport tickets in by next Wednesday for our Prague Islands trip
Remember to also complete the walk in our local area consent form if you have not already done so
Happy Fridays!
The Year 6 Team
Creative Arts Department
Maximum Music Weekend
Well done to those who have already signed up! If your child is able to participate, please sign up this weekend - this will help us to plan the events and catering for the day itself. All student musicians from Vlastina, Kamyk and Libus who sing or play an orchestral instrument are welcome to join us, as are musical parents! The VLE links to information, rehearsal videos and sign up sheets are here.
Information
https://pbis.fireflycloud.net/the-arts-3/music/pbis-maximum-music-weekend
Sign up
https://pbis.fireflycloud.net/the-arts-3/music/pbis-maximum-music-weekend/maximum-music-sign-up
Instrumental Lessons for Years 7 - 9
All of the timetables for instrumental lessons are now up and running and it’s been an exciting week with students and teachers meeting again after the holiday and some students starting instruments for the first time. We have been very pleased with how organised the students have been with regard to remembering their instruments and lesson times - long may it continue!
Most of our school instruments have now found homes, but there is still a saxophone, flute and two clarinets waiting to be adopted for the year. If your child is interested in borrowing one of these instruments and having lessons with our teachers in school please e mail: ailsa.frazer@pbis.cz
Kamyk Music Extra Curricular
KS3 Show Choir, Orchestra and Kamyk String Ensemble have started rehearsing this week and we’re delighted to have so many new members. As they are lunchtime clubs, your children are still more than welcome to sign up - there is no maximum number for these activities! There is also non-stop music in primary school with Ukulele Club, African Drumming KS2 Choir and Fuse Drumming - more from these ensembles in next week’s newsletter!
Adult Choir
Adult choir had its first rehearsal last week and were singing in beautiful two part harmony by the end of the session! If you would like to join, please just come to C109 at 8.50 on Thursdays (Week A) and Fridays (Week B).
Year 7 - 9 English News
Well, I have to say it’s been a couple of strange weeks! With the Year 7’s and 8’s being on camp last week and the Year 9’s this week, school has felt a little empty but that does not mean that just because there has been action and adventure outside the classroom that it has not been happening in the classroom.
The Year 7’s have been continuing the story of The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis and learning about the history of Afghanistan and what it is like to live under Taliban rule. The main character, Parvana is 11 so the story really makes the student consider what life would be like in a worn torn country. They had to pack ten items as if they had to leave home quickly and most chose to take photographs, phones and some books (fabulous!). However, they were then told that the Taliban did not allow computers, phones or photographs and, thus, had to reconsider what items they could take to sell to survive. This is a beautiful and enlightening novel, which is why there are many more novels by the author in the library. I hope the children will be inspired to read more!
The year 8’s have been immersed in a world where one race is more superior than the other. Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman has presented the students with a fictional dystopia where African people have gained a social and economic advantage over European people. The protagonists/main characters Sephy and Callum, in their early teens, have to negotiate this alternative 21st century as their friendship crosses the divide of the social groups. This week we read a section of the novel that reflected the events of Little Rock Nine in America in 1957. Black people were being dissuaded from going to school with white people but these students persevered so that the army sent to stop them entering school, actually had to protect them to enable them to enter school – a gripping and enlightening text!
I can’t wait to have the Year 9’s return next week and hear about their exciting escapades on residential but, most importantly, start work on Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.
Year 9 Science
Year 9 returned to school after their residential trip and immediately dived into the deep end by studying polymers. We discussed the uses of polymers and plastics and used Molymods to demonstrate how polymers were made from monomers.
Students learnt how to recognise polymers and plastics and discussed the advantages and disadvantages of each.
Year 7 - 9 Digital Studies and IT news
All Key Stage 3 students have now received their usernames and passwords and access to the VLE and Office365. Office365 is an online version of the Microsoft Office suite and has a number of unique functions which can help your children develop their skills in IT further. Students also have the ability to download and install Office (including Word, PowerPoint and Excel) on their home PCs/laptops.
Over the next couple of weeks, students in Year 7 will dissect a computer to learn about the hardware components, Year 8 will work on a collaborative learning project and Year 9 will learn more about how data is produced and processed by computer and digital technology.
All students have been given a half-term Homework project via the VLE. It is expected they spend four to five hours on this during the half term. The output (the work they produce) is up to them, so students can produce an essay, a poster, a presentation, a website, a movie, a podcast or even an interpretive dance.
If there are any issues regarding student usernames and passwords, they should speak to (or email) Mr Bagnall as soon as they are able to.
Year 9 Expedition
Year 9 had an extremely fun, challenging and educational time on this week’s residential trip. The 48 students from Kamyk and Vlastina campuses who attended the trip spent their time learning a number of useful skills, including fire building, map reading, and shelter building. They were also challenged to build and test a raft using only wooden poles and barrels. The Year 9 groups was extremely enthusiastic about all of the challenges and the form tutors who attended had nothing but praise for the mature, hardworking attitude of all of those who attended, as well as their admirable teamwork and social interactions. A great time was had by all.