Dear Parents,
We hope you have all had a great start to the new school year. After spending a couple of weeks in the school preparing classrooms for the students, nothing beats seeing the school full of energy and life again as the students return.
It has been a busy week back and we hope it has been enjoyable for you all. This week the students have all been exploring a different element from the seven elements of art. On Monday we will have an open exhibition from 8.30 – 9.00 instead of our regular assembly. If you can make it in, please do walk around with the classes or with your child to enjoy the exhibition.
It was great to see many of you attending our information afternoon sessions for Primary and Secondary school. If you were unable to attend the Primary information afternoon, or would like to refer back to them, you can find them all here: https://pbis.fireflycloud.net/joining-pbis/vlastina-information-evening-presentations-2019 Also, linked with the parent information sessions, if you are interested in learning more about the content of the national curriculum for both Primary and Secondary you can do so here: https://pbis.fireflycloud.net/joining-pbis/curriculum-overview
Also this week we enjoyed the welcome back BBQ which unfortunately got cut shorter than planned due to the rain. Thank you to all the parents who could make it and to the staff and students for providing some musical entertainment!
We wish you all
pleasant weekend,
PBIS Vlastina
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. If your child is a beginner, 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.
For detailed information about this programme and sign-up instructions, please follow this link: https://pbis.fireflycloud.net/language-lessons/pbis-primary---czech-for-foreigners-optional
Student Lunch accounts
As the new school year gets underway I would like to highlight the policy regarding Student Accounts. Student Accounts are used for lunch payment, as well as for some trips and extra activities.
· 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)
Of course I understand that at the beginning of the school year it may take some time to set up your preferred regular payment method and, as such, there will be some flexibility during the first couple of weeks. I would however like to ask for your support and understanding with this as soon as possible. For instructions on how to charge student accounts please click HERE
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.
Join the Annual Charity Walk and support victims of domestic violence. The walk - organized by ACORUS, Vlastina school charity - will take place on Saturday, 21st September. Start in camp Džbán is open between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. It goes throughout beautiful natural Divoká Šárka Park in Prague 6. There will be two circular routes: 6 km family and 11km long touristic circular route. Family Fun Afternoon including performance by The Conditionals.
All proceeds go to the ACORUS center for helping victims of domestic violence.
SIGN UP NOW at www.acorus.cz and get a gift bag for the first 100 online registered participants.
https://www.darujme.cz/darovat/1201935?locale=en&frequency=once&widget=1200611
Week ahead
Next week on Monday we have our first group out on the KS3 expedition. A reminder of the dates are below. Further details can be found here: https://pbis.fireflycloud.net/school-trips-2/secondary-school-trips/secondary-school-trips-201920/ks3andks4-school-expedition
Y7 Arrival September 9th 2019, Y7 Departure September 11th 2019
Y8 Arrival September 11th 2019, Y8 Departure September 13th 2019
Y9 Arrival September 16th 2019, Y9 Departure September 19th 2019
Early Years
Early Years have had a busy but fun start to this school year. Everyone seems to have settled in well and we have spent the week exploring the classrooms and our outside area as well as learning the routines for our new class.
The lions began by looking at colours with the help of the story “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?” We practised naming the colourful characters, and used soft toys and puppets to help us tell the story and sing a song. We made colourful balloons, getting our fingers sticky in the process. We even had our first music lesson with Miss Higgins!
Next week, we will continue to explore our termly topic of “The World” by going down on the farm with Old MacDonald and all of his animals. It promises to be a noisy and fun adventure.
In the Tigers’ class, we have been looking at colour mixing for our Art week focus and the children have tried painting with ice, paint and using different materials to stamp pictures. We have also been singing a new version of ‘Mary had a little lamb’, did you know she also had a giraffe, rhinoceros and a kangaroo? Then we made our own version using our names in the song, what animal do you think your child would choose?
Year 1
We had a wonderful start to the year in both 1A and 1B. It was lovely to see the children, eager to learn, with smiling faces and full of tales from their summer holidays. In English, we read Handa’s surprise and focused on retelling the story in our own special way. In Maths, we reinforced number systems and number formation. Best of all, we had a fabulous Art Week and explored shape and colour through the famous artists Le Corbusier and Mondrian. Please come to the art show to see our beautiful creations and ask your student to spot the shapes.
Dear Y1C parents, welcome to school! We hope you all had a great and relaxing holiday and returned from your trips safely! Year 1C have had a fantastic first week at school. We talked about our school and about new role in children’s life. Everything is new. New school, new classroom, new friends… We know that we are part of our school and we promised to follow the Golden Rules. We wish you the very best first school year ever!
Year 2
Welcome back!
The children have had a brilliant start to Year 2 this week. We have been getting to know each other and finding out about our similarities and differences.
As this week has been ‘Art Week’ we have been getting very creative (and a little bit messy). At the beginning of the week we learnt about the seven elements of art. We created a display to help us remember the elements and use them throughout the year. For the rest of the week we focused on the element ‘texture’. As our first CC topic is ‘Buildings’ we linked our art with our topic. Each class created a brick using different textures and materials. We also created our own buildings using a variety of materials. 2B have made an amazing igloo and 2A have created a fantastic mud hut. Finally, we each made an art piece of our own by creating stampers using recycled materials. We used our stampers and paints to create some beautiful patters. All Year 2’s artwork will be displayed in the open area outside 2A and we do hope that families will have a chance to pop by and see the children’s hard work.
As it is the first week there will be no maths or spelling homework but as always we encourage children to read their reading book at home with an adult.
Year 3
Welcome back to school everyone! Is it really only the first week of school? It seems like we have been in session for weeks already! Most of the children have settled in very quickly and they have been very busy creating wonderful pieces of art to celebrate Art Week. All Year 3 classes focussed on the element of line and Year 3A & B studied American pop artist, Keith Waring. The children had a lot of fun recreating his playful type of art which you will get the chance to see on Monday morning during our Art Exhibition. Don’t forget to check out our Aztec line animals inspired by the Aztec civilization as well.
In English the children began reading a Mayan story called The Rainmaker which is filled with phenomenal pictures and vocabulary. They brainstormed adjectives to describe both the characters and settings and put these words into sentences. We will continue working with the story next week.
In maths the children reviewed skip counting in 2s, 5s and 10s and looked at number bonds to 10 and 100. Additionally some children already had a chance to kick off their rock star status by logging into Times Table Rockstars. We were very impressed with some of their knowledge of the multiplication and division facts!
We will not be assigning any homework this weekend but do encourage you to read with your child and help them get familiar with Reading Eggs and Times Table Rockstars.
Year 4
What a fantastic start to the new school year! The students came back, happy, enthusiastic and ready to learn. It was great to see so many happy faces.
4A and 4B got together to introduce ourselves to another, before playing a game where we had to ask one another questions to fill names in on a grid. You would be surprised who doesn’t like pizza, and who has a pet that isn’t a cat or a dog.
For art week our theme was ‘The seven elements of art’, so our first task was to learn what these were and see some examples. Year 4 then focussed on the element of form. Form is the element of art that is three-dimension and has volume (length, width and height.) a form can be geometric or organic.
Taking inspiration from our ‘Remarkable Rainforests’ unit, 4A and 4B used different materials to explore making three-dimensional rainforest art. Please come along to our art exhibition on Monday morning to see our work.
Finally we would like to share a brief message from our Year 4 parent rep Nicole Cermak:
Dear parents,
As you know, each class has a parent representative who can and will advocate your ideas, concerns, and joys with the school management.
Your class parent rep is Ms. Nicole Cermak. Please use Nicole's phone number +420 722 941 235 to contact her on WhatsApp, so she can add you to the class parent group.
Have a great weekend
Year 4 team
Year 5
First of all, a huge welcome back to you all! It has been an action-packed week in Year 5, filled with fun and excitement and, getting to know some new faces. We have gone through all the rules and expectations for the year. Log ins and passwords for the online resources: Mathletics, Readings Eggspress and Times Table Rock Stars have been distributed and stuck into diaries.
This week has been Art Week, where each group has focussed on one of the 7 elements of art, looking specifically at the ‘Value’ element in Year 5. The children did excellently as, over the course of the week the children developed vast knowledge and understanding of key terms such as high and low-key values. We looked at some of Pablo Picasso’s earlier art, which involved the use of value and the children gathered information to produce fact-files about him. Furthermore, we spent time at Divoká Šarká to support us when learning about ‘Landscape Value Art’. Value was incorporated to show how close or far an area of the landscape is. If you would like to come and view these amazing pieces of art then please come and visit our art gallery on Monday.
Year 6
Welcome back to school everyone! Year 6 have had a great week getting to know each other better. We have been learning about how our brains work and what our thoughts and memories might look like. Some of us have rooms and cupboards, others have bubbles and circles. We also discussed the qualities of a good teacher and the qualities of a good learner and the children used this information to plan their own lesson to teach a skill that they can do well. It was a very worthwhile exercise to set the expectations of both teacher and learner at the start of the year. We have also set up everyone with passwords for our online resources; Reading eggs, Mathletics and Times Table Rock Stars. You will find these passwords stuck in your child’s homework diary. This week was also Art Week and we learned about the seven elements of art; line, colour, shape, value, space, form and texture. Year 6 focussed on space, in particular, positive and negative space. Come in on Monday and see the masterpieces that we have created through printing, cutting, collage and PowerPoint. Additionally, 6C have been learning about using perspective in their art, as well as the importance of proportion.
Reminder: Please fill in the approval form for the trip to IQ port on Wednesday 11th September and remember that your child requires a packed lunch on this day.
EAL
All students have had the opportunity to meet each other and demonstrate their levels of English. They have been sharing information about themselves and I am now looking forward to working with them to improve their English.
ISMFA Woodwind taster
sessions Friday 13 September
Vlastina is lucky enough to have a selection of woodwind instruments which children can borrow. At the moment we have available: four alto saxophones, three clarinets and two flutes. Pupils will have the very exciting chance to use these instruments free of charge for as long as they are at Vlastina and sign up for a course of lessons with the renowned musician Andy Schofield.
Andy Schofield, from Manchester, UK, has been a professional musician and music teacher for 30 years. He has performed at the highest level, including recent tours and recordings with pop superstar George Michael, and has taught music to all age groups, from Key Stage 1 through to adults, as a peripatetic teacher in schools, university lecturer, and summer school course director. Andy used to live in Berlin, where he was an instrumental and ensemble tutor at Berlin British School. He teaches saxophone, clarinet and flute.
The contract for lessons will be through the International School of Music and Fine Arts. The lessons will be 30 minutes, at a very reasonable cost of 400Kc per week.
Mr Schofield will be carrying out taster sessions for Year 4-9 students, which will enable children to try out the instruments and be assessed on what they have an aptitude for.
When: Friday 13 September
What time: From 9:00am
Where: Vlastina instrumental room (V009)
Please sign up on the VLE parental consent form on this page by Wednesday 11 September at the latest:
French
It has been a brilliant start to the term. We have thoroughly enjoyed a fun and rewarding first week with the children at PBIS. We have been refreshing our skills from last year and we have tried exceptionally hard to communicate in French, to introduce ourselves and to greet each others during our lessons throughout all the year groups.
German
This week, we got to know each other, and started to refresh previous knowledge in German. We tried to communicate in German, learning about greetings and we reviewed the most common words. There are students with many different mother tongues in the class. It was great fun and a wonderful experience to discover that we might not speak the same language and making sounds in the correct way is more challenging for some of us. This week was a great start and we will continue to learn and discover more about the German language.
PE
It is great to back after yet another amazing summer break, and what away to kick of the school year in PE with 4 weeks of the ‘beautiful game’. It has been a wonderful first week back here at Vlastina with Ks2 and Ks3 enjoying a variety of fun and energetic football games and activities outside in the sunshine. We have been working on foot skills from basic ball control and ball manipulation to dribbling skills and ball control in a 1 v 1 situation. Ks1 have enjoyed a slightly different start to year with coordination and agility games being the focal point of their lessons. All key stages have also had an incredible time during their dance classes with our super talented new dance teacher Ms Lit.
Year 7 English
Year 7 have made a fantastic start to their year in English. We have started with readings of Shakespeare’s MacBeth, including atmospheric sound effects and dramatic effect. Our visiting Nord Anglia Education expert was thoroughly impressed by what he saw from these early lessons, and Mr Lewis thoroughly enjoyed teaching it.
Humanities
In Key Stage 3 Humanities I have enjoyed getting to know all the classes and preparing for the year ahead. We started the week with 'getting to know you' games, as there were a number of new pupils in the class. In Year 7 we have begun finding out about the different types of Geography and starting to construct our family trees in History. Those who are taking Global Studies are starting learning the story of 'The Island' and are enjoying creating their own characters. Year 8 have been working on their new Geography map skills unit (with a fun focus on halting the Zombie Apocalypse!), while in History we have started our unit on the Renaissance. Year 9 are beginning their Geography map skills unit and in History have just started their Slavery topic. I am very much looking forward to the year ahead in Humanities!
KS3 Maths
It was a fantastic start to all years....
Y7 - Arithmetic with Negative Numbers and Mental Addition and Subtraction.
Y8 - Used Prime number decomposition to find LCM and HCF and Rounding and Estimation.
Y9 - Types of Numbers, Having fun with Triangular numbers, Square and Cube roots of basic numbers.
We played the 4 corners maths game with most of the classes and they were excited and engaged! The boys were especially competitive when we used the timer to complete a set task. Overall it has been a pleasurable first week getting to know my students and looking forward to a successful and fruitful year ahead!
Science
Year 7 have begun earning their "Practical License". In order to be licensed each student must first complete a series of training in laboratory safety skills, working with scientific apparatus, hazards, working with a Bunsen burner and then they must complete an experiment safely using all that they have learned.
Year 8 have started a module on food and nutrition. This week they are learning about the different types of nutrients we get from food, how to read nutritional labels on food and what a healthy balanced diet looks like.
Year 9 are starting the year learning about genetics and evolution. Next week they will jump into DNA and how our genetic information is stored and variation.
Class of the week
Well done to 4C and 2a for earning the most class points this week! Enjoy the top spots of classes of the week!
Michael Bardsley
Principal
Paul Kurczij
Head of Vlastina Campus
Prague British International School
Address: Vlastina 19 | 161 00 Prague 6 | Czech Republic
Tel: + 420 226 096 200 | Mob: +420 775 695 337´
paul.kurczij@pbis.cz
www.pbis.cz