Issue 3 | Term 1 9th November 2017

NEWSLETTER IMPORTANT MESSAGES:

News

Parents’ Evening We held our first Secondary Parents’ Evening of this year on Wednesday 8th November. Students were busy making appointments with their teachers in the run-up to Parents’ Evening. The evening was an opportunity for parents to meet their children’s teachers and discuss their progress so far this year. This proved to be an invaluable opportunity for all involved. We look forward to hosting another Parents’ evening in Term 2.

Options Evening Students in Year 8 need to start thinking about which subjects they would like to study at IGCSE level starting from next year. Students will study a total of eight subjects, all of which will be examined at the end of Year 10. There is an Options Information Evening scheduled for Tuesday 28th November when we will be giving parents more information about our options system and the subjects that we have on offer here at BISM. Look out for a letter containing more information about this event in the next couple of weeks.

Important Dates for Primary Year 2D Parents Assembly - Wednesday 15th November Year 5A Parents Assembly Thursday 16th November FS2A-E Parents Assemblies 20th-28th November

Year 6 Assembly

Congratulations to all the Y6 classes for presenting two amazing assemblies! First of Y6A awed the audience with their talents, showing one and all that to be successful in life one should NEVER GIVE UP! Two days later Y6B followed successfully in their footsteps to entertain and challenge the audience. They showed that success is possible when you are PREPARED and willing to CHALLENGE YOURSELF.

Year 3 Production Year 3 students have been practicing their song and dance for their upcoming production ‘When Sasha got swept up the chimney’. They have particularly enjoyed the actions they came up with as a class and are very excited to perform in front of their parents in December!

Secondary House

Engineering Event

NEWSLETTER

Last Thursday afternoon the Secondary students were given the excellent opportunity to be involved in an engineering focused problem solving and team building activity. They worked together creatively in their houses to construct the tallest free standing Straw Tower and the strongest Bridge made out of newspaper. The tasks were designed to improve their communication, problem solving and thinking skills. All students actively participated and found different ways to approach the assignment. The winner of the Straw Tower challenge was Blue House, winning 100 House points and the winner for the Newspaper Bridge were Red House winning also 100 House points. The most successful teams were those that spent time discussing and planning their structures.

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FS2 Humpty Dumpty

NEWSLETTER

This week we have learnt who the police believe are our number one suspects for pushing Humpty Dumpty off of the wall. They are Mrs Tabram, Ms Routledge and Mrs Challis!! The children have been investigating which one of these pushed Humpty Dumpty by thinking up interview questions before telling the rest of the class what the suspects said. We are hoping to find out very soon who pushed our beloved Humpty from his wall.

News

Word Mania Word Mania is well underway at BISM. Students have until 10th November for Round One. All students have a login. Please encourage your child to join in “The World’s Most Fun” Literacy for Schools Competition. Tick, tock, tick, tock ….Round Two begins in 5 days. Will you be a Word Mania winner? Follow the link on the school website homepage to find out how to play!

GrandParents’ Day Primary classes are getting very excited about welcoming Grandparents into school on Tuesday 14th November. Please make sure you have filled in and returned the form to sign-up 2 Adults to represent the family on this very special day.

Winter is Coming! A quick uniform notification. The days are getting cooler and soon Winter will be upon us. Please send your child to school suitably dressed. Please remember that at BISM all children have outdoor break-times unless the weather is severe. Our normal cool winter days here in Cairo are not considered severe. You can expect that your child will be playing outdoors in the fresh air at break-times most days during the winter months. We advise wearing layers of uniform clothes which can be removed when indoors. It’s time for jumpers, cardigans, jackets, hats, scarves and gloves! Please remember these should all be labelled with your child’s name and class.

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Our keen Detective's and Mrs Routledge being interviewed!!!

Year 4 students have been learning about the different types of teeth that humans have. They used mirrors to identify their own types of teeth and learnt a lot of new vocabulary. The children shared information and knowledge about dental health and discovered some interesting facts along their dental learning journey!

Year 4 Teeth

Upcoming Events

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NEWSLETTER Year 1 Absorbent or Waterproof

Science in Year One has been very practical this first term. Pupils have been given plenty of opportunity to make predictions and to try experiments to see if their predictions are correct. We have identified materials and researched where they originated. Now we are examining certain characteristics of these materials. Just this week we tested paper, fabric, glass, plastic, metal and rubber to see which were absorbent and which were waterproof. Some materials were easy to make an educated guess about while others proved more difficult. Of course, glass and plastic are waterproof but we found fabric to be more absorbent than paper. We have to thank Soumaya, Year 1D’s class teddy, for helping us with our experiments. She volunteered to put her foot in a tub of water!

During the two weeks leading up to half-term, secondary students were busy doing their first assessments of the year. Students were revising in the days leading up to the assessments, both at home and in school during their lessons. We even saw students showing their keenness by testing each other about what they knew during break and lunch times! The results of these assessments will indicate how students are progressing so far this year. This is especially important for Years 9 and 10 as they have just completed the first six weeks of a two-year IGCSE course in each subject. Teachers will now be able to identify student’s strengths and areas of improvement and work together on these to help them progress even further.

Secondary Assessments

Year 2 Phonics

Phonics is a method of teaching children to read by linking sounds (phonemes) and the symbols that represent them (graphemes, or letter groups). The aim is for children to be able to see a letter and then say the sound it represents out loud. This is called decoding. Children then need to go from saying the individual sounds of each letter, to being able to put the sounds together and say the whole word. This is called blending.

In Year 2, we have daily phonics sessions and the children are in groups that focus on the sounds and spellings that they need. Once they are comfortable and confident with letter sounds, we move on to alternative spellings for different sounds, homophones (words that sound the same, but are spelt differently and have different meanings) and grammar rules. We teach phonics with lots of practice, revision and the use of games.

There are words in English that can’t be sounded out and we call these words ‘tricky words’. They are also part of our Year 2 phonics sessions and the children learn to read and spell these words through practice.

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NEWSLETTER

FS2 Goldilocks and the Three Bears

Our number focus for this week has been number 3, which has been related to the story. The children enjoyed the story book and started to re-tell the story in their own fun version. They also enjoyed dressing up in their home corner as daddy bear, mummy bear and baby bear and acting out the story with their friends. They were continuously counting out the 3 chairs, 3 plates, 3 beds as they were setting up the area to play. The teachers also took advantage of the story topic to elaborate that what Goldilocks did was not correct or safe and that no one should enter anyone’s house or eat their food, sleep on their bed without permission first!