International School Tag

“Kindness is something anyone can give without losing anything of themselves”

As a year 3 group, we have been focussing on kindness in our skills week. Mrs Cronje and Ms Blake’s class have adopted kindness jars. Inside of these jars are wonderful stories of kindness that our children have either been involved in or acts of kindness that they have received.

Here are some of them:

“My sister helped me do a back-bend. Thank you Umi”
“I helped my friend build a puzzle”
“I calmed my friend down and it helped her”
“We gave R20 to the office that we found. We were honest”
“I helped my friend when she got hurt”
“I was looking for my eraser and Keona gave me hers. I did not ask for it but it was very kind”
“I helped my friend build a puzzle”
“I used ice words to my friends and my friends helped my alot”
“I helped my friend”
“My friend gave me a health Pokemon card”
“I helped lots of people to clean their desks”
“In Science my friend and I helped each other”
“I gave play-dough to my friend”
“My friend was being kind to me”
“It was my birthday and I gave everyone their favourite doughnut”
“My friend had nobody to play with so I played with him”

Even if we don’t have physical kindness jars in our homes, why not begin to collect your kindness memories in your heart?

“Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you.”  – Princess Diana

Carol Blake
Year 3 Teacher

We are pleased to share with you some exciting news about a Year 6 skills lesson that took place this term. Mrs. Oosthuizen taught the students how to sew buttons on clothing, and we are thrilled to say that it was a great success.

The children were provided with needles, buttons, thread, and cloth, and were given step-by-step instructions on how to sew a button. Although some students struggled with getting the thread through the needle at first, they quickly overcame this challenge and progressed to sewing their buttons with ease. Mrs. Oosthuizen, Mrs. Kirkaldy and even Mr. O was on hand to offer extra help to those who needed it, ensuring that everyone was able to complete the task successfully.

We are particularly proud of two students, Alistair and Nivad, who went the extra mile with this lesson. Alistair brought his own pants and button that he wanted to mend, and Nivad was so inspired by the lesson that he sewed a miniature pillow the next day.

Sewing is a valuable life skill that can come in handy in many situations, and we are confident that the Year 6 students will benefit from this lesson for years to come. We are grateful to Mrs Oosthuizen for her dedication and hard work in preparing for this lesson, and we hope that the children enjoyed it as much as we did.

In one of the future lessons, we would like to teach the students how to change a plug. If parents have any extra plugs or cables they can spare, please send them to school so that we can use them for the lesson.

Vihann Oosthuizen
Year 6 Teacher

The general objective in the Spanish Class this year is to develop the intellectual, personal, and professional abilities of the students. They need to acquire basic language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) to be able to communicate with speakers of the target language: Spanish.

One of the most relevant aspects in my opinion is to create active listeners: The students will acquire necessary listening skills to follow and comprehend discourse such as lectures, conversations, interviews and discussions.

They will produce a written response based on the information listening texts and they will learn to use strategies to listen actively: taking notes, preparing questions and providing feedback.

Regarding speaking skills, the objective is to develop adequate speaking skills to communicate effectively in different situations about different and relevant topics in real life situations: at the restaurant, shopping for clothes, at the travel agency, booking a flight or reserve a hotel room or introducing ourselves for the first time.

For their writing skills, the idea is to develop important writing skills that will enable them to produce academic texts required in their respective year groups. Use the correct linguistic structures and grammar when expressing their thoughts.

The students will be able to write grammatically accurate basic and complex sentences using the subject’s pronouns, verbs and adjectives correctly. Also promoting creative writing for example: the script of the role-plays or writing the lyrics for the introducing myself rap project in year 6.

Creating habits and improving their confidence: In every lesson, the year 3 to year 5 students are writing and then reading to the class information about the date, the time, how they are feeling, the season of the year, the weather, clothes that they are wearing and school subjects for the day.

Reading and comprehension exercises: The students will analyse and synthesize information presented in different sources: stories, comics, articles and news. The students will identify words and/or phrases related to the topic.

To improve in their reading and comprehension skills they must learn the question words or interrogative questions: what, where, when, why, how, how much/many, who and which, to be capable of understanding what they need to answer.

After answering all the questions about the text, the class will participate in discussions about their own experiences, to increase their knowledge and vocabulary about the specific topic they need to participate in these conversations.

The role plays help them to develop collaboration and interaction skills and creative writing and thinking. The students also prepare questions for the class to increase their interaction and participation.

Javier Vidal
Spanish Teacher

The music department had a prosperous year in 2022: the high school band, string ensemble and percussion band were added as new ensembles. We also had a successful BIS eisteddfod for the second year running, and held our very first choir concert featuring all our school choirs, and our staff choir, at the end of the year.

The BIS Music Department is excited for what is to come in 2023. As the department continues to grow, we look forward to many more firsts. This term, we started off with our introductory ensemble concert on Founder’s Day, featuring our variety of ensemble groups. Our choirs will also be taking part in the Tygerberg Eisteddfod, where they will compete against other schools in the Western Cape.

Later on this year, we look forward to hosting our inaugural IES Eisteddfod, which will include Helderberg and Hout Bay, and will consist of solo, ensemble, choir, poetry and dance categories.

In August, the high school will present a ‘Barnyard Show’, themed 80’s vs 90’s. This will be an entertaining show worth watching!

We look forward to an eventful and successful 2023 where we continue to showcase and celebrate the wonderful talent we have in our school!

Heidi La Bercensie
Music Teacher

Our quarterly tourism excursion took place last Thursday the 16th of February.

The Year 9 and 10 Travel & Tourism students visited the Hotel Sky. Leigh, the client consultant, took us on a site visit of note. We experienced the unrivalled panoramic views across the City Bowl to Table Mountain and out over the Waterfront and Table Bay from most floors. Other features include the Infinity Restaurant on the 26th floor, AI-powered robots, and a 30m thrill ride on the rooftop! We saw that the well-being of Hotel Sky’s guests is of foremost importance. They implemented stringent health and safety protocols as well as hygiene measures throughout the hotel to ensure this.

From there onwards, we strolled through St. Georges Mall and the Company’s Gardens and witnessed the heart of Cape Town through a tourist’s eye. Even the very strong Southeaster could not dampen our excitement.

Our final destination was the SunSquare Cape Town Gardens Hotel. The lovely gardens are quite secluded so that all the students had a swim and enjoyed a sumptuous lunch at the pool, compliments of the Zepi restaurant at the Hotel!

We learned that the SunSquare Cape Town Gardens is a Sunpet-friendly hotel that offers a warm welcome and a selection of amenities to ensure that your pet is as comfortable as you are when you stay with them. Your pet will receive a welcome treat on arrival, pet bedding for the ultimate Sunpet sleep experience, and a range of tail-wagging meals from the Sunpet Gourmet menu.

Both Year groups of Travel & Tourism students and the teachers that accompanied them agree that it is a very tough choice if we had to choose between these two hotels. Both hotels went out of their way to impress our students with their warm hospitality and answered questions that assisted the students with the completion of their CASS assignments.

We will definitely be back for another visit!

Carmen de Villiers
High School Travel and Tourism Teacher

This week has been extra special to the BIS family, as we have been celebrating the BIS Kindness Challenge for 2023. This wonderful initiative was introduced by our amazing school counsellor, Kayla Smith, and is targeted at the Year 4 to 12 students.

The goal is to spread kindness throughout our school this month, ensuring that it is a value our students and staff uphold at BIS.

Students are encouraged to show each other kindness by doing a variety of challenges and tasks. Some of these activities include:

• The Kindness Challenge: There are multiple random acts of kindness that students are challenged to complete. Such as: Write a list of 5 things that you love about yourself or Make sure your pets know how much they’re loved!
• A Kindness Tree: This tree will be popping up on a display board and it is going to blossom with the handprints of students containing kind messages and pictures.
• Mirror Motivation: Teachers will leave a motivational or kind message for students that will be added to the bathroom mirrors.
• Kindness Stone: Students decorate a stone with kind words that will be added to our garden.
• Chain of Kindness: Students had to reflect and write down a time that someone was kind to them. This will be added together to form a long kindness paper chain.
• “Caught you being kind” vouchers: These are given to students when they complete random acts of kindness. This will be kept for a surprise towards the end of the Kindness Challenge!

Class 5RdP has our very own No Drama Llama Award that is handed out at the end of every week to a student that has shown kind, caring and encouraging behaviour.

We look forward to seeing the entire school participate in the BIS Kindness Challenge and spread kindness like confetti!

“If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely!” – Roald Dahl

Ria du Plessis
Year 5 Teacher and Coordinator

In Year 2, we have been learning to add and subtract numbers in different ways.

In the first lesson of the week, we had fun learning about Four way sums, also called turn around sums, that can be made up of numbers. Four way sums mean that there are two addition sums and two subtraction sums that can be worked out.

For example:
2 + 9 = 11
9 + 2 = 11
11- 2 = 9
11 – 9 = 2

To help the students work out their sums we learnt the number facts that the answer to an addition sum is always the highest number and the first number in a subtraction sum is always the highest number.

Then we learnt about bonds of 20 or numbers that can be added or subtracted to make 20. We also calculated the answers to Four way or turn around sums with these numbers in our workbooks.

In lesson 3, we looked at how to add and subtract 10’s and how knowing bonds below 10 helps us work out sums of 10. For example, if we know 2 + 5 = 7 it is easy to work out that 20 + 50 = 70.

Lesson 4 was also very fun. The students learnt how to use a number line to add and subtract 3 or more numbers. We learnt that the answers stays the same when we add the same numbers in a different order. For example 4 + 3 + 2 = 9 and 2 + 4 + 3 = 9

During the last lesson of the week, we did a revision activity. Each student was given 3 cards. They wrote 5 sums of 20 on the first card, 5 sums of 10 on the second card and 3 train sums on the last card. We strung the cards onto some wool and tied it at the end so that the cards stayed on. Some students wanted to put the cards up like bunting in their room and some of the students wore their new sum necklace.

The students have really enjoyed learning about addition and subtraction of numbers in fun ways and have certainly learnt a lot during these lessons.

Bronwen Nuthall
Year 2 Teacher

In the Jelly Fish class, we have been learning about different parts of the face as well as the function of each of these parts.

Our little students had an amazing time creating different pieces of art to represent their own faces. Some of this art was product focused with the aim being that students create a face with all the right parts in all the right places, an introduction to portraiture.

Other art activities were focused on the process of making art rather than the end result, giving our students the opportunity to select their own materials and create their own artwork which is inspired by an image or object that has been provided. The purpose of this is to provide students with the opportunity to channel their creativity, plan, problem-solve and express themselves without restriction of resources or space.

Activities included drawing a picture of their own face which was inspired by a photograph of themselves, making a face from shapes and newspaper cut-outs and ice painting with primary colours so that we could use sight to observe what happens when these colours mix. Students were captivated by the formation of secondary colours each time the primary colours mixed, this proved to be a great introduction to science within art.

The main purpose of creating Art in the Foundation Phase is not to achieve perfection in a final product, but rather to encourage creativity and self-expression, develop fine motor skills through the manipulation of different materials, and to cultivate a love and appreciation of art.

Candice van der Vyver
Jelly Fish Class Teacher

It has been a pleasure to host the Fine Motor Club in the Junior Primary this term. A group of keen Year 1 to Year 3’s have been putting effort into strengthening the muscles in their fingers, hands, wrists and shoulders. We always warm up by doing hand and finger “gym”; exercises, strengthening and conditioning. This helps to “wake up” the muscles the children will be needing for our session. These are also useful, fun actions that they can implement in their daily routine, and they can practise doing these before completing tasks like homework or handwriting lessons.

During the course of our first lessons, we have used common items, which they can easily find at home or in their class, to complete 3D shape construction, building and weaving. These processes allow for creativity, whilst subconsciously still strengthening their fine motor skills. Simple items such as playdough, prestick, pasta, matches, pipe cleaners, blocks and toothpicks can all be used in a variety of ways to stimulate your child’s development.

Examples of some fun activities include:

• Making 3D shapes, such as a pyramid or a cube, using toothpicks and Prestick or matches and playdough
• Wrapping pipe cleaners around straws, forks, chopsticks, etc. to create curls
• Threading macaroni/looped cereal onto spaghetti or pipe cleaners
• Place sequins/buttons/small items onto the sticky side of Cellotape (try to make a repeating pattern)
• Balance playing cards/dominoes and build stacks or A-frames
• Pick-up sticks (make your own by painting or colouring in Skewer sticks)
• Make your own playdough/salt dough and build letters and numbers to make spelling and maths practise more interactive
• Instead of using your fingers to pick something up, use a pair or tweezers, a peg or kitchen tongs
• Shadow puppets
• Window tracing
• “Ceiling” art – paste or tape a page under a table/chair (correct length for your child’s arm length), lay down on the floor and draw or write on the page (wonderful for shoulder muscle development!)
• Using a ruler to draw lines or measure
• Using a dropper, teaspoon or syringe to do art/mix colours/explore with consistencies of materials (such as oil and water).

Make these activities into timed races and compete as a family – your loadshedding entertainment is now sorted!

Kim Hahn
Year 1 Teacher

This year BIS is thrilled to launch Cambridge IGCSE Economics as a subject. The first two weeks of Economics have been a thought-provoking time wherein we were introduced to the topic and spent time updating ourselves on what is happening around the world ­- both the good and the bad – challenging our thought patterns and debating various issues.

In class, we dreamed up what products might be available in ten years’ time: either new products or how old products could be reinvented. These ideas were put into an envelope to be opened by BIS Economic students in 2033.

With a new subject comes great opportunities and we are excited to make the most of these opportunities to grow and be challenged.

Caroline Grix
Economics Teacher