Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…
This week we learnt all about different sea animals. How some live in the ocean and others can live both in the sea and on land. The students loved learning more about the sea: who doesn’t love sharks and jellyfish!
We did the following hands on learning activities this week:
Numeracy: The students had to find different numbered shells in the sand to complete the number line.
Literacy: The students wrote their names and sounds in the sand with the shells, this activity strengthens their pencil grip.
Fine motor activity: The students enjoyed building and creating ocean sculptures while developing their problem solving, fine motor and social skills at the playdough area.
Construction area: We have added boats, ocean animals, shells and gems to our construction area. The students were very excited to build something new, which will extend their thinking as they build something different than they usually do.
Arts and crafts: The students made lovely crafts this week practising and developing their scissor and fine motor skills.
Music and Movement: The students shake out the sillies by copying the actions of the ocean animals. They had to “wobble like a jellyfish”, “clap like a seal”, “slide like a sea snail” and “leap like a dolphin “ .
Sensory Area: We created an underwater sensory bin filled with water beads and sea creatures for some imaginative exploratory play.
We reminded the students to be safe when they go to the beach and follow the following rules:
- Wear a hat with a wide brim to shade your face and neck.
- Sunglasses can help to protect your eyes.
- Cover up with a t-shirt to protect your shoulders and upper arms.
- Always wear sun cream.
- Drink lots of water.
- Just swim where it is safe.
- Make sure you can swim NEVER swim alone and make sure you are always supervised by an adult at the beach.
We also encouraged the students to get involved in protecting the ocean by:
- Reduce and recycle.
- Joining a beach clean up.
- Asking shops and restaurants if they have plastic-free alternatives.
The students had a blast doing all of the activities.
Martie van Dyk
Pre-Reception Teacher
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Creating community in the Spanish class
Building community is one of the most important aspects in the Spanish class.
Personally, I have the feeling that I have failed in the past to build a more positive environment with certain year groups that would have improved the quality of my Spanish lessons and the learning experience of my students.
For that reason, my main objective for this last term and for the whole 2023 is to improve that relationship with my students, focusing on making genuine connections.
This aspect based on my experience is key to creating a better dynamic in the class, a class where the students can find a safe place with low levels of stress and zero anxiety.
My first step to achieve this goal will be to give them the opportunity during this last term of asking me questions in Spanish through an activity that I have called: Interviewing the Spanish teacher.
I think that by giving them certain details about my family, pets, travels, favourite things, and memorable moments will help me to build better connections with them.
Generating an excuse to start a conversation
Secondly, I am planning to have more conversations with the students about things and topics that interest them, of course they must be able to understand the message to start a conversation and the teacher must be the facilitator of the language acquisition.
Introduce more projects that interest them and topics that would like to talk about.
Some of the Term 4 projects:
Year 5 and 6 – Interviewing the teacher. Every student can ask me one question in Spanish.
Year 5 – This is me: the students are going to introduce themselves in groups of two having little conversations asking each other’s names, ages, nationalities, place of residence and grade.
Year 6 – Interviewing a classmate: Asking questions about his or her favourite food, music and sport.
Other little thing on my list that helps to connect and establish better relationships with them:
· What would my students like to be called? Are they using other names rather than the ones on your class list?
· How much do I know about them? Hobbies; sports that they practice; siblings…
Learning about each other
The students can also learn about each other to create bonds with other classmates over common interest they may not have discovered yet
From little conversations to great conversations
Engage them in a follow-up conversation, simplest way is by using WHY? so, they can express themselves further.
Making learning fun, useful and interactive
In this article’s featured photographs you will find some special moments of the Year 5 and 6 students performing their role-play activities: At the restaurant and at the clothing shop.
At the end of each role-play, the group has been asking questions in Spanish to their classmates about their stories promoting their interaction.
I look forward to a wonderful term of building a strong community in the Spanish class.
Javier Vidal
Spanish Teacher Primary School
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Welcome back to school!
There was much excitement in the Year 2 classes as they returned to school this week! Watching the different facial expressions as they walked into class, one could definitely see that, most of them were very happy to be back.
Within the first hour, however, questions like: When is it break? Can we eat yet? Do we have to do more work? Or statements like I’m tired, made me realise that it was going to take a while for the students to get back into their normal routine.
When asked what they missed about school, answers like, break time, playing with my friends, free time in class, or we missed you, were quite openly shared. Obviously school work did not rank high in the popularity poll!
However, given a few days to settle in, the students were soon eager and ready to start learning again. I was reminded that, especially, with younger children, their minds absorb information like sponges.
As we enter the final term of 2022, one looks back at the beginning of the year and appreciates just how much they have grown, academically, emotionally and socially.
Kim Coetzer
Year 2 Teacher
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Adventures In Space
In English this week in Year 1. we have been working on our creative writing skills as we dramatised stories of our adventures in Space. Turning our desks upside down in class, we pretended they were our ‘spaceships.’ The students worked in groups and had a lot of fun acting and narrating out their space adventure stories. We then used the ipads to video their stories before writing about them. The class has a lot of fun working together and creating their own space adventures!
Clara Chassungo wrote: “I am going to space, I’m taking my brother, Geraldo and am also taking my mum and dad. We are going to look at all the different planets and we are landing on the moon! We will land at 3 o’ clock in the morning and we see aliens and footprints. We will jump in the sky…”
Buhle Sibiya writes: “ I am going to space so I can see the 8 planets in the galaxy and I am taking Ozzie, she is my friend. We landed on the moon and we saw aliens and we are going to land…”
Charlotte Cronje
Year 1 Teacher
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A fun way to learn our initial sounds of words in Pre-Reception
A fun way to learn our initial sounds of words in Pre-Reception
It is important for children to learn letter-sound relationships because the English language uses letters in the alphabet to represent sounds.
Phonics teaches this information to help children learn how to read. Children learn the sounds that each letter makes.
A fun way through which the Pre-Reception students learn the initial sound of words is… I would like to introduce you to a very important member of our class. His name is the Sound Monkey and the students take turns to take him home with them and find something that starts with the letter of the alphabet that we are learning about that week.
The students are always very excited when it is their turn and can’t wait. It is always very interesting to see what the sound monkey has in his bag the next day. It’s usually things that I did not even think of.
It is very interesting to see how quickly the students have been learning the initial sounds of words in this manner. Now let us see whose turn it is today!
Cindy Nunan
Pre-Reception Teacher
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Shaping Positive Eating Habits
Wow! What a busy week it has been. Our main focus in Nursery this week has been on Healthy Eating, and believe me when I tell you that I have had to explain why chocolate is not a fruit more times than I have had to sing “Let it go”, and that’s A LOT.
Explaining to our students why their chips and chocolates should not be eaten in the morning, is similar to arguing with a qualified lawyer about the law, it hardly ever ends well. However, as the week progressed, our little ‘pre-lawyers’ began enjoying learning about healthy eating so much, that we actually had to send some of the unhealthy snacks back home, and that itself is like a snowy day in summer.
This has reinforced my belief that teaching young students about healthy living does not have to be done through a strict, structured routine, but rather through fun, play-based activities. Play-based learning helps support our children’s desire to explore and interact with the world around them. Providing them with opportunities to explore and learn about foods, separate from meal times, not only exposes them to new foods but allows those fussy eaters to explore non-preferred foods in an encouraging way.
As our school follows the wonderful Traffic Light System, our students are already aware of the foods that are not healthy, but maintaining that diet can be tricky with toddlers. So this week, we introduced healthy eating through colour, exploration and a lot of gentle encouragement. Some of the students helped create a healthy eating colour chart that explored the principle of ‘eating the rainbow’ and even chose some of their favourite fruits and created crafty fruit baskets for our next picnic. We also explored shopping for fruits and vegetables, and students picked out various healthy foods that we can find at the grocery store.
By making healthy eating fun, engaging and hands-on, our students found it less daunting to face the vegetables on their plate and supported our long-term goal of building a foundation for lifelong healthy eating habits.
Jo-Anne Dickason
Nursery Teacher
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Administrative Professional’s Day
On Wednesday, 7 September, we celebrated Administrative Professional’s Day aka Secretary’s Day by thanking and paying tribute to all of the wonderful ladies in our Admin department at school. They received cards, sweet treats and a guard of honour from the children throughout the phases as an early morning surprise.
We have such a diverse team of people who fulfil very important roles; Avril – our front desk secretary, Aftercare manager and Mr Swart’s right hand “man”, Razonne – the lady we run to when we need some money for our classrooms, Diana – if it wasn’t for her our children wouldn’t have uniform to wear, Eldri – our school representative and admissions person, and last but not least, Trindade – our librarian and master of communication!
As you can see our team is extremely essential to ensuring that BIS is the well-oiled machine that it is! As these faces are so busy behind the scenes I thought I would ask my Reception Year class what Aunty Avril does all day – here are their responses:
- She works on her computer and in Aftercare sometimes she comes. – Lolwam
- She works in Aftercare. – Amelia
- Aunty Avril is strict! – Naif
- When people don’t listen and they go to Mr Swart then she sends them to his office to visit. – Purity
- She always wants to go home. – Enhle
- When my dad drops off something for me, like money, she will call me. – Anam
- Aunty Avril is a good teacher. – Kopano
- She always comes to Aftercare to talk to the teachers. – Samuel
- She works at the office. – Isabella
Thank you for all that you do, not only on Secretary’s Day, but every day!
Kim Hahn
Reception Year Teacher
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Saving Water
The students in Year 1 have been studying the topic Earth and Space in their science lessons. They have learnt about the planet Earth and how it is made up of mostly water and that there is not much fresh water on our planet.
We looked at ways we use water at home and how best we can save water. Although they are too young to remember how close we came to ‘Day Zero’, many of the students have learnt to use water sparingly. They were able to come up with a number of ways to save water as well as spot the places where people waste water.
The water saving game was a big hit with the students.
Ann Cordner
Year 1 Teacher
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The Aim Of PE
Our weekly programme that is derived from the Cambridge curriculum helps us perform different exercises and play games that are skill based and always motivate teamwork rather than focusing on individual skills only.
We learn about our bodies and how we can use them to the best of our abilities within the sports fields.
The curriculum is based on the sporting codes we provide at BIS, thus, it is important for students to participate and enjoy the different skill sets taught throughout the year as per the curriculum requirements.
As coaches we want our students to participate in different activities and expose them to different types of sports within our lessons, hence we provide the support that is needed to achieve this goal.
We cannot achieve all of this without the help of our lovely parents, so we ask that our lunch boxes are filled with health conscious nutritious food on a daily basis.
Promoting good eating habits is vital to a child’s development physically and mentally, It is said that eating healthier 80% of the time and doing 20% exercise compliment each other.
What Experts Say
“The 80/20 rule approaches healthy eating with a message of moderation-80 percent healthy choices and 20 percent flexibility for less healthy option. Nutrition professionals back this approach, as it is feasible for all, allows for variety of foods, and avoids deprivation.” – Chrissy Carrol,RD,MPH
Let’s try and pack a healthy lunch box.
We are most certainly improving and setting the tone at our PE lessons every week and I (Coach Mpho), am getting the greatest joy seeing the improvement and the strides that our students are making, getting the idea of how to move the body over a game of dodgeball, soccer, handball and more.
Also knowing the amount of power needed to make a short or long pass, throwing skills, learning new games and most of all having fun with your peers and improving your game.
Week 6 – Handball skills, teamwork, accuracy and movement.
Class – 5HK
ATL skills observed – Listening and communication skills, self-awareness and sense of urgency – teamwork
Planning
The students warm up by taking a jog around the 5 aside court ,do shuttles that incorporate push ups, sits, lunges, jumping jacks/body weighted squats to get the blood flowing and the heart rate going.
They then go into stretches from neck to toes, whilst illustrating and explaining to them which parts of the muscles they are stretching and the importance thereof.
In this case, a class is split into 2 teams that verse each other etc. (red vs orange team)
Instructions are as follows:
- No one is allowed to keep the ball for more than 3 seconds creating a sense of urgency in their play.
- Teams have to pass to everyone in their team to have a legitimate goal awarded, which creates a team effort where everybody participates, teams are not allowed to run with the ball which forces them to work together – teamwork.
- Teams are allowed to pass the ball by either bouncing or no bounce, two-handed passes for more accurate passes.
Objective
The objective of the lesson is to establish and develop good communication skills, passing accuracy and most importantly following the rules of the game and applying all the skills taught throughout the curriculum.
Assessing
Can a student apply themselves through the activity that is focused and based on team building?
Can they pass, throw and catch the ball?
Can they be creative in terms of movement and creating space on the field?
Are they calling for the ball, communicating to their teammates?
Do they understand the rules of the game abide by them?
The students attitude, enthusiasm and the will to do better is as important as his performance.
In Closing
As the winter season slowly drags on to its end, we welcome Spring and the sunshine. I am grateful for the support that has been shown by our BIS family, parents, teachers, ground staff and all who make our school united and warm throughout the soccer and netball season by rooting for our students.
I also wish congratulate all our junior and senior Tennis teams that represented BIS in Sun City last week as well as all our soccer and netball boys and girls who participated with much courage and enthusiasm in all their matches this season.
Well done to you all, we are all very proud to be part of the winning mindset.
Mpho Mahlangu
PE Teacher
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Litter Challenge
“Educating our children is a key ingredient in the recipe to save our Earth!”
This week our Year 2’s did a school litter pick-up! Before we went out we had a small class discussion where we reminded ourselves about what litter was and chatted a bit about what a good strategy would be in order to cover the area we were going to cover and pick up as much litter as possible. The students were excited at the idea of helping to make their school a cleaner place!
We made a plan to tackle the field and the surrounding areas, a few students carrying some plastic bags for any rubbish to go straight into, all of us walking in our smaller groups across the field making sure to keep a look out for any litter that may be laying around.
All of the students took their role in this clean-up very seriously and seemed to enjoy themselves as they went. Well done Year 2’s, you are making a difference!
Siobhan Hendry
Year 2 Teacher
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