Welcome back to everyone, it is always lovely to see the children and staff back in school after the holidays. Both myself and Mr Peter Rao are very excited about the remainder of the year and our new roles in school and are both fully committed to continuing the high standards of both teaching and learning that Mr. West was so passionate about.
Thursday 1st March was World Book Day. This is the 21st year there’s been a World Book Day, an initiative to bring children of all ages together to appreciate reading; very loudly and very happily. This year, the Primary School chose David Litchfield’s book, ‘‘The Bear & The Piano’ as a whole school focus. This picture book, tells the tale of a young bear cub who finds a discarded piano in the forest. He eventually learns to play it and becomes a world famous pianist. The book was an inspiration to all our staff as it mirrors so many of the values we hold dear at BVIS. ‘Be Ambitious’, a phrase we use so often, ran throughout the whole book where we see the bear persevere and practice daily to achieve a new skill and be successful. Not only that, but we see the bear showing great courage and confidence in his move to a new country, reflection on his success and his future happiness and, of course, the care and respect for his old friends whom he never really left behind. The bear in his move to New York City became a true Global Citizen as he never forgot where he had come from and showed great pride in his humble beginnings. My sincere thanks to all our staff who planned such exciting and engaging activities for the children throughout the week and also to Ms. Nuala Malone our Literacy Coordinator for organising the week, particularly the live Skype interview with the author himself! You can find more information about this book and other books by David Litchfield here.
We now have a full six weeks of focused learning until the Easter break and so this is a time where we will see the children make great progress. We will, of course, be sharing this with you in our Primary Interim reports, due out to parents on Friday 23rd March. There will be lots of events to attend where you can share the children’s learning, themed weeks such as Science and International Weeks, where the children have many opportunities to learn in more creative and practical ways and many trips to look forward to, including our residential trips for Years 4 to 6 in the final week of the term.
Our Parent Ambassadors will again be meeting to discuss communication via Class Dojo and to review our changes to our new Home Learning projects. Both of these initiatives have been a great success in school, particularly the change in Home Learning so that it is more clearly differentiated and promotes creativity, active outdoor activities, family interaction and independent research based learning. Some of the examples I have witnessed are videos created showing our Year 2 families role-playing a trip on the bus and the amazing 3D underwater world models produced by Year 4. My thanks to Ms Kaye Meakin, who led our Home Learning working party where we could review our current practice and make improvements.
I wish you all a great weekend. I myself will be heading off to Pattaya with the Senior
Leadership Team for the Nord Anglia Regional Conference and shall return to school on Wednesday.
