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Music approach in EYFS - enhancing the musical experience at home
One question I hear very often when I say I teach Music to Early Years pupils is, “How do you teach Music to such little children?”. I think this happens because there is a misconception that learning Music is only related to knowing how to read music notation or playing an instrument accurately. However, learning Music goes far beyond this. Music is inherent to human beings. It is a way of expressing ourselves. It is about emotional connection. It is about creativity and sensibility.
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The Arts
In the arts we are enjoying the experience of teaching and learning practical work again. Our students are doing a range of activities including; printing, perspective, painting, playing instruments, playing in ensembles and performing in front of an audience.
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A New Year brings the start of the Extended Essay
January, the start of Term 2 and without doubt the most demanding period of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program (IBDP) for students and staff at BCB. For our IBDP2 cohort, the final deadlines of their controlled assessments arrive and as their courses finish revision picks up pace. For staff, alongside their usual workload comes the added need to mark and moderate assessed work. As well as plan interesting and worthwhile revision activities. It is also in the second term of the IBDP that the weight and expectations of the program become a reality for our IBDP1 cohort.
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The Power of Talk
“Reading and writing float on a sea of talk” (James Britton, 1983)
We are all aware of the benefits that talking with our children brings for them. Research suggests that children whose parents talk with them frequently hear about 45 million words in the first four years, in families that don’t talk as much children heard 13 million words. This is a stark difference you might say, however the news is not all bleak as more recent research tells us that it is not the quantity of words children are exposed to but the quality. A report for the Education Endowment Foundation on Early Language Development in October 2017 found that “The quality of input that children receive is likely to be more important than the quantity.” They found that “putting words together may be a better predictor of later abilities than the number of words that a child uses.”
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IGCSE Exams at BCB
In most international schools, Year 11 is considered to be one of the most important years on a student’s learning journey. This is the year in which students complete their Cambridge IGCSE exams. These exams can seem extremely formal but this also makes them rigorous and fair - in fact, they are often the first (but not the last) externally assessed exam that students take on their educational journey.
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Raising and Educating Multilingual Children
Ah the joys of multilingualism! I will never forget the day one of my students answered the question: ‘where are you from?’ He was a very blond little boy, whose mother was English and father was Swedish. They spoke to him in Swedish and English at home. This little boy spoke English at school and learnt Mandarin as a second language. His nanny was Malaysian and spoke to him in Malay. His best friend was Korean and they sometimes communicated in Korean. When asked ‘where are you from?’, this little boy answered: ‘I’m from Singapore!’ After some initial confusion and a little investigating, I discovered he was born in Singapore, had lived there for 2 years before moving to Vietnam and then to Malaysia. He identified as a Singaporean more than as Swedish or British as he had never lived in either country.
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Multi-lingual Mnemonics
In the Y11 ESL classes, we were looking at spelling words and ways to learn new forms of vocabulary. We looked at several ways, from learning synanyms, to translating, to writing sentences in context and having dedicated vocabulary books. One of the more interesting ways to help us to remember words and spellings is by using mnemonics. We found some of the examples we were given interesting and so I thought I wood share them here.
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