We have had a busy couple of weeks in school, with the usual teaching and learning and also with various sporting events and plays.
You will read about the sporting achievements in the newsletter and I would like to offer my congratulations to everyone involved. Not only did we receive some silverware in Budapest, which is always nice but we competed with passion and enthusiasm. More importantly, with fairness and consideration. We received some very positive feedback from other schools.
This week we have had the IB Careers Programme Performing Arts One-Act performances at Libus. These are amazing and I really encourage you to catch the final ones tonight. The standard is superb. Today I watched the dress rehearsal for the Vlastina Year 6 play, Treasure Island. It was very impressive and was the audience was captivated for the full hour. When I mention that the audience was Early Years, it shows just how captivating it was! Vlastina Year 6 will do their full performance on Monday, so please come along.
I am sure you have all been following the developments with BREXIT over the last few days, weeks, months and years.
As part of its support of UK nationals in the Czech Republic, the British Embassy has been holding meetings in Prague and have offered to come to school on the 22nd October, to share advice and offer guidance should there be a no deal BREXIT.
The meeting will take place in Libus at 4.45pm and will be open to UK staff and parents.
I appreciate that there is a Key stage 3 parents meeting at Kamyk that evening, however finding a free slot for the Embassy was very difficult so the 22nd was the best option. If you are attending the parents evening and you are also interested in attending the Embassy meeting, then please make your teacher appointments early. If this is not possible, then please attend the Embassy meeting and we will be more than happy to schedule another time for you to meet your child’s teachers.
Best wishes
Michael Bardsley
Principal
Message from the Head
The week started off with a fantastic whole school assembly by Ms Helliwell celebrating Times tables rockstars! We hand a strange bunch of musicians who visited the assembly and played a times table song for the students! It was a fantastic way to start the week!
Throughout the week it was great to pop into classes and be part of a range of lessons. I saw some super 3 digit column addition in Year 4, was part of a Science lesson in Year 7 all about microscopes and was impressed by the Year 9 maths skills as they revise for their assessments next week.
Next week we look forward to ending the half term with our Primary Halloween disco on Friday 25th and our KS3 halloween catwalk which involves tutors too! Getting dressed up for the day is optional. If your child would like to bring in a costume to get changed later, this is fine. If you would like your child to attend the Primary disco from 15.00 - 16.00, please sign up via the VLE.
https://pbis.fireflycloud.net/events-2/vlastina-halloween-disco-25th-october-2019
Key Stage 3 reports
Please be aware that Key Stage 3 reports will be available from Monday. For further information about reporting and how many reports you can expect to receive, please click here. Our Key stage 3 parents’ evening takes place on Thursday 24th October. Do not forget to sign up for a meeting time ahead of Thursday. As these sessions are 5 minutes for each appointment, should you wish to discuss further, please do not hesitate to contact form tutors and subject teachers directly.
Curriculum Day for parents 14th November
There is a curriculum day for parents on the 14th November all day. The day will start off with a session 8.30 - 10.00 by a fantastic team, Akademie Rodicovstvi, who will lead a session for parents on peer pressure. They presented this session at Kamyk this week and it was heavily attended with excellent feedback. Here is an overview of their session:
"We live surrounded by a constant pressure regarding how we should look like, talk like, dress like, behave like. Sometimes we do something we otherwise would not do just because we want to feel accepted and valued by our friends. Being in early to middle adolescence makes the need to feel accepted by peers almost unbearable.
During the upcoming lecture led by a child psychologist we are going to take a look at ways we can encourage our children to talk to us if they are feeling negative influence from their peers , we will discuss possibilities of supporting our children to have strong self-esteem to be better at resisting negative peer pressure and much more."
After this session our staff will provide a range of sessions throughout the rest of the day for you to attend and to learn more about our curriculum and teaching styles within Maths, Creative Curriculum, English, Phonics including a session on what to expect beyond Key Stage 3. More details will follow in next weeks’ newsletter. We hope you will be able to attend.
Mr BIN MAN
Mr Bin Man is a project for all schools in Czech Republic. The aim of this competition is to collect the most paper for recycling throughout the whole school year.
Last year we were 7th with 4940 kg in total of 31 schools !
In Vlastina the competition is between Early Years and Primary classes. We collect the paper approximately 5times a year. Each time we do Mr. Bin Man the top 3 classes will be awarded with Mix and Pick points. The class that collects the most paper throughout the whole year will receive a special prize. The winning class last year – Y5 CzBr chose as a prize a whole afternoon in Laser Games.
We are very proud of achieving the ECO SCHOOL accreditation two years ago. Throughout the whole school year we fulfil many ecological projects and Mr. Bin Man is a big part of it.
We strongly agree that it is very important to educate our children in environmental issues to save our planet.
Please, encourage your children to bring as much paper as possible.
The first Mr. Bin Man will take place from Monday 21st October – 25th October. The collection point is in the “shed” in the playground every morning from 8 – 8.30.
Whole School Maximum Music Weekend
We had a fantastic time at Libuš last Saturday. Ms Higgins was proud of all the pupils who took part, most especially the Vlastina team: Sabina, Olivia, Shriyan, Finn, Claudia, Medha, YuMin and Lara. It was a long day, with lots of hard work and a great experience for all three sites to mix for a great day of music making. Well done all!
Please click this link for photographs and video clips.
https://pbis.fireflycloud.net/the-arts-3/music/pbis-maximum-music-day
Primary Music
Nursery have been responding to tempo changes by singing ‘Ratta’s Dance’ and Reception have been making sounds and actions to go with ‘Little Miss Muffet.’ Year 1 have been completing a rhythm from Bach’s Cello Suite. Year 2 have been learning about contours in music, listening to ‘Blue Monk’ and discovering where the pitch changes. Year 3 have been learning all about dotted rhythms, responding to the music of Beethoven. Year 4 have discussed complexity through rhythmic variation and have done a great job of making some of their own theme and variations. Year 5 have been concentrating on musical sequences, finding where the tension and release point are in music. Year 6 have been doing final rehearsals for their show on Monday, and also managed to learn about tones and semitones. Enjoy the photographs and video: https://youtu.be/21DwLJJ10YU
EAL 1, 2 and 3
With some of the children we have been learning about rhyming words and they used them with prepositions to write our own versions of Shark in the Park on a Windy Day.
Early Years
Early Years have had a busy week as always. Luckily the weather has been kind to us this week, so we have made the most of the time we can spend outside in the sun before the weather changes to be colder and wetter. The children have been trying out different sports in our outside area including creating their own versions of football and tennis. We have started thinking about Halloween this week, and lots of the children have already started making Halloween pictures and decorations to hang up in our classrooms.
“Is there room on the broom?” The lions have really enjoyed the story “Room on the Broom”, about a witch, a cat, a dog, a bird, a frog and a dragon! They’ve been excitedly repeating lines from the story, acting it out with puppets, even taking a ride around the classroom on their very own magic broom. It was lovely to see them cooperating and sharing the experience together. And what would a journey be without music to go along with it? They shared different percussion instruments and sang some of their favourite songs. We’ve also been busy getting ready for halloween, making different spooky crafts and creating a bat cave in the middle of our classroom. Next week, we will look at witches, skeletons, black cats and bats before dressing up for our Halloween disco on Friday.
In the tigers group this week, we have been learning to take like a robot. Splitting words into individual sounds and counting how many sounds we can hear in a word. In maths, we have continued looking at the number 4, talking in detail about 1 more and 1 less and also looking at the difference between squares and rectangles. We also enjoyed watching a story about the 3 little pigs and the big bad square. The tigers enjoyed a walk to Divoka Sarka on Tuesday afternoon and we looked at how the trees and plants have been changing as Autumn continues.
Year 1
In Year 1 this week we went on an exciting holiday to space! We decided what to pack, we weathered intergalactic hurricanes and sang and danced to songs about space. We ended the week with a trip to the Planetarium and watched a show about our solar system.
In English we have been exploring the book “Too Much Talk” a story from Ghana. The students practiced retelling the story, and created their own version with new objects and characters. Ask your child to retell the story to you!
In Maths we have been practicing our addition skills. What addition can you do at home, in the garden and in the shop?
A big thank you to all the parents who came and spoke with us. As you know, our door is always open, and we so appreciate your support!
Year 2
It has been another busy week in Year 2 this week! In maths we have been learning all about shape. We have worked hard to memorise the names of a variety of shapes and can now identify their properties such as number of sides or vertices. We have worked at sorting shapes in venn diagrams or tables and have been thinking about how many lines of symmetry different shapes have. Some of us have even begun to explore the names and properties of 3D shapes.
In English we have been editing and improving our setting descriptions of famous buildings from around the world. We then wrote our final draft up in neat and decorated a lovely border around our writing.
In CC we have used 2D and 3D shapes to draw and create famous buildings from around the world. We have also tested a range of materials to find out what properties they have. We used our knew knowledge of tables and venn diagrams to group materials based on these properties.
Year 3
Did you know that humans have been using cocoa beans for over 5000 years? Or that human hands still test every bag of cocoa beans to ensure their quality? These are just a couple facts we learned while visiting the Chocolate Museum in Old Town. The museum was absolutely fascinating and included a very thorough history of chocolate not only in the countries where it originated but also its history in Czech Republic. The children really enjoyed wandering through the various rooms dedicated to chocolate and seeing the wax statues of those who contributed to the development of chocolate. At the end of the tour the children observed the process of how chocolate is made and then they got to make their own chocolate bars. As if that wasn’t enough we then visited the gift shop where the kids were able to purchase a sweet treat as a souvenir. What a way to spend a Tuesday morning!
In maths the children enjoyed seeing the teachers rock out to the Times Table Rap in assembly and many were inspired to play TT Rockstars. Encourage your child to play as it really helps improve recall. In Ms Privara’s maths group we reviewed telling the time and compared analogue and digital clocks. The children were very impressive in their ability to use the appropriate vocabulary and some were even able to tell time to the nearest 5 minute. Practise telling the time with your child whenever the opportunity presents itself. Miss Napier’s maths group have been looking at number lines and places three digit numbers in the correct position.
In English we invented our own magical candies just like Willy Wonka’s Everlasting Gobstopper. We spent the rest of the week learning about persuasive writing and how we could persuade people to buy our new invention. Ask your child about his/her invention and see if you are persuaded to buy it!
Year 4
What a fun week we have enjoyed in Year 4 as dancing ducks, grooving giraffes and swaying snakes have all featured in our computing lessons this week as Year 4 used their coding skills to create dancing animals amongst other unique coding experiences.
In English we began our new topic of adventure stories, after studying the features of adventure stories we then looked in detail at two stories; ‘The Tunnel’ and ‘Where The Wild Things Are’, we wrote alternative endings and then concentrated on techniques we can use to add detail and description to our writing.
In maths we have studied written addition and subtraction techniques as well as revising techniques we have previously encountered the children also spent time mastering new calculation methods they can use to solve these types of problems
Finally in CC we have been getting our artistic groove on as we studied the rainforest inspired work of Henri Rousseau, we evaluated his artworks, used viewfinders to copy small portions of his work and then created our own artwork inspired by his paintings!
Year 5
Another week has been and gone as we creep ever closer to the half-term break. Although you may think that tiredness is beginning to creep in, this is certainly not the case. We have been learning lots this week about electricity in Creative Curriculum and it has been a ‘shocking’ experience! The children have been learning about the scientific terms and symbols used in electrical circuits, and have drawn their own. We have also been experimenting with different components and creating our own circuits, making observations on how the amount of volts applied has an effect on a circuit.
At the beginning of the week, we went outside for maths as we have been learning about the area and perimeter of rectilinear shapes and how to calculate them. Very complex mathematical concepts to understand but not the case for Year 5!
Over the course of the week in English, the children have been writing newspaper articles based on flooding. After learning the fundamentals and techniques used in journalistic writing in previous lesson, the children have now written their own. The class teachers have been very impressed by the great work that has been produced.
Year 6
It has been one of the busiest weeks of the year, so far, in year 6. All of the children have been working extremely hard, practicing for the show on Monday. All of the teachers have been so impressed with their attitudes and efforts in rehearsals and are hoping that all of the hard work pays off! On Friday the children performed to Early Years in the morning and it was great to see our youngest learners enjoying a performance delivered by our oldest!
All parents should have received and email confirming the time for our performance on Monday. We will start at 2:00pm in the assembly hall. Please make sure you arrive before the start time, so we can begin promptly at 2:00pm.
Next week, the teachers will organise a small party for the children to congratulate them on all of their hard work. The teachers will arrange all of the refreshments for the children.
Have a great weekend and we look forward to welcoming you to our Year 6 show next Monday.
Class of the week
Congratulations to 5a and 2a for earning the most class pints to become class of the week this week.
EAL Y4,5 and 6.
This week in EAL we have been learning about verbs and how they are actions we are able to do. We also revisited countable and uncountable nouns and the correct use of some and any. We played different games and activities to apply and help us remember our newfound knowledge on these topics.
Paddy has gone missing! He is a little leprechaun and lives in Ms Ellis’ room. The children wrote a wanted poster asking for help to find him.
French
Speaking or not speaking? Well, I am delighted to hear more and more students willing to speak up in French. After all, a language should be spoken, shouldn’t it? Year 3 students have learnt about birthday this week and a good idea would be to quiz them at home. Year 4 students have enjoyed learning about breakfast and what they like or dislike. Year 5 and 6 have learnt about different actions they do in the morning before going to school, they have revised hours. Students also have learnt to ask someone to hurry up!
Senior Art
Year 9 are bringing their typography project almost to fruition, and images will follow in a future newsletter. Looking further ahead, they have been set a homework task which involves studying decorative elements on buildings. This is in preparation for a project on Gothicism. Did you know that ‘gothic’ traditionally has nothing to do with horror, or even anything dark or scary? See the link below for the true meaning of gothic (including an article about the old-new synagogue here in Prague!):
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/medieval-world/gothic1/a/gothic-architecture-an-introduction
Science
Year 7 have successfully completed their safety training and have received their safety licenses. They have started on a new topic, Cells, Tissues and Organs. This week they learned about life processes and looked at their own cheek cells and onion cells under the microscope. We will look at tissues and various organs of the body next.
Year 8 have completed their module on Food and Nutrition and are now moving on to learn all about our wonderful Universe. Building on what they have learned at KS2, we will learn more about seasons, the Earth’s magnetic field and gravity. We will also learn about the Solar System and what is beyond.
Year 9 have finished up a module on genetics, natural selection and evolution. They are now leaving biology for a little while and moving to chemistry. This week they are learning about the manufacture, properties and uses of different types of materials such as ceramics, polymers, and composite materials. We will also take a look at some of the problems caused by synthetic materials and possible solutions to these problems. We will also consider the importance of recycling materials.
Humanities
Next week Year 7 are going to be displaying their family trees at parents evening. There are some fantastic pieces of work and I would strongly encourage all parents to come and have a look next Thursday. Students will have the opportunity to add finishing touches or extra information next week (7B on Monday; 7A on Wednesday).
Year 8 have finished off their map skills unit by discussing the global goals. We focused on food waste and the ways that we can make small changes to have a real impact on multiple global goals. Please, encourage your children to talk to you about the changes they could make.
Year 9 are continuing to learn about the slave trade. After the holidays we are going to bring our topic up to the present day and look at the forms slavery exist in today. The holidays are a great opportunity for students to be looking at the news and looking for examples of modern slavery. I would also strongly encourage students to look at the 4+ learning section to deepen their knowledge.
Senior PE: Cross Country Running
Mr Buckley’s favourite segment of the KS3 PE curriculum is here! This week years 7-9 have been stretching their legs around Divoka Sarka and Hvezda parks on some beautiful paths and trails. The enthusiasm shown by these youngsters regardless of the weather and gradient is really impressive. They are learning about breathing, pacing, stride and gait, learning to appreciate the outdoor air and respect nature.
English
Year 7 are getting creative this week and have started work on their own performance poems. In these poems, they will draw together their learning of poetic style from across the term and create something which expresses their identity. These poems will be available for parents to see at the parents evening next week.
Year 8 have finished reading Macbeth this week: an impressive achievement given the difficulty posed by the language. They will be spending the remaining time left this half term, taking their learning and applying it to some detailed essay writing.
Year 9 have been making connections this week. Using these colourful hexagons, they formed links between themes, characters, quotes and analyses in preparation for the writing which they will be doing next week. I was impressed to see how much they could remember and apply of the complex plot to the text.
Fireworks Night SAVE THE DATE
The traditional PBIS Fireworks Night will be happening on Friday November 8th at Libus. Fun for all the family. More information coming next week.
Vlastina Friends
The Halloween Disco is happening next Friday. If any parents would like to help with the preparations on Thursday and/or Friday please contact us at vlastinafriends@pbis.cz or on our Facebook page.
This week we had a successful lampshade workshop in school, photos are here, as well as a chocolate decorating workshop in Prague 1. Again, photos are here. As it was such a success, we will be running another Decorate your Chocolate session on 13th November. Please register by sending an email to vlastinafriends@pbis.cz
Have a wonderful weekend.
Marketa Novakova
Chair, Vlastina Friends.
Senior School Ski Trip News
We are delighted to announce that we will be running two ski trips for the Senior students in 2020.
- Year 9, 10 & 12: Nassfeld, Austria (18-24 January)
- Year 7 & 8: Villars, Switzerland (7-13 February)
Details of these trips are on the VLE:
Year 7-8:
Year 9, 10 & 12:
The sign up will go live on Friday 25th October at 19.00hrs. Please keep an eye on your emails and next weeks' newsletter for more details.
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
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