School Newsletter 20.03.2015

Whole School NewsFrom the Head of Teaching and Learning

Dear Parents and Guardians,

May I begin by reminding you that if your children will not be returning to SIS in September 2015, you need to inform us by 4pm on March 27^th, either in person or by email to admissions@sis.gl.

On Friday 13th Mr. Wickersham took a group of M4 students up to the San Roque Campus where he and Mark Fea set up a recording studio.  The M4 music students then spent the day recording the songs they had written. When I turned up to visit, I was lucky enough to hear Thomas De la Rosa finalising the last of his lyrics to his song.  Thanks to Mr. Wickersham and Mark for their help and support.

Sunday 15^th saw a wonderful turnout of families at Bucintoro to support a Danii’s Children’s Cancer Charity event organized by Miss Laura.  It was really lovely to see performers of all ages take their turn to shine on the stage. Thanks to everyone for their support and for raising over 700€ to make wishes come true for children who have cancer. You can read more about this charity below.

Monday 16th was a particularly exciting day as the M1 students welcomed the arrival of their animals for the M1 farm project. The animals have been named … ‘Brigadier Sebastian Wiggles III, Cambridge and Bar’ amongst others.  If you would like to visit the animals, please ask the M1 team or students for a tour.

On Tuesday 17^th the 2015 cohort of Parent Ambassadors completed their penultimate training event at the San Roque campus where Mr. Paul Templeton and Mrs. Andrea Bennett made links between how the brain works and develops as we grow older and the learning ethos of our school.  The Parent Ambassadors have just one more session before they complete their training.  Well done to all who attended.

Wednesday 18^th was a very busy day for Primary with a second P6 exhibition session for parents, while simultaneously P3 performed their summative assessment pieces for their Unit of Inquiry on Stories for their parents. Thanks to parents and staff for an energetic morning.  I loved seeing the P3 puppet shows!

Lastly, may I please ask any new parents to complete a “new parent” questionnaire by clicking here. If you have already completed this, thank you for your time.  Getting feedback on all aspects of our school helps us to develop, refine and improve for you and your children.

I wish you a restful and enjoyable weekend,
Jak Kearney.

Summer Opportunities

New! If you reserve and pay before April 15th 2015 for our Summer Camp (period July, 5th – 18th) we can offer you a 20% reduction on the catalogue price!

We are pleased to present our summer activities program. With the same philosophy as SIS and adapted to a shorter but intense time, students will enjoy and develop their skills in their chosen areas.
​Our summer camp is designed for young people between 11 and 18 years.​ The program includes specialised courses in golf, cinema, horse riding, sailing, tennis, padel tennis and kitesurfing, among others. All this combined with a variety of experiences, language learning and educational and cultural activities.

For those families who wish, we offer the option of accommodation at our boarding school, giving students the opportunity to meet and make new friends during this experience. If you wish to have more information about our Summer Camp, please contact the school reception or email to summercamp@sis.gl or visit summercamps.sis.ac 
Sotosol Walk in aid of Danii’s Charity

The date for the annual Sotosol Walk has been set for Saturday 30th May (registration from 9.30am onwards). So dust off your trainers and join us for a 10 or 16km walk/run, starting at the school and finishing with a lovely lunch at the Hairy Lemon in Puerto Sotogrande. We will have the usual T-shirts for sale nearer the time. Please join us for what is always a fantastic community event.
For more information or if you would like to help with organisation, please call Jo Tromans on 671733522.

This long-standing annual event in aid of cancer charities has always been well supported by the school, particularly in the last few years when all the money raised has gone to Danii’s Children’s Cancer Charity. Danii, who graduated from SIS last year, started this charity several years ago as she herself fought her first battle with the ‘big C’; to date she has raised over 73,000€ to support the work of Andex, the children’s oncology ward at Virgen Del Rocio hospital, Sevilla and Fundacion Pequeño Deseo – three other charities helping seriously ill children and their families.

Book Recycling Project = Supporting The Kindred Project

Next week the Primary Student Council will be on duty at the main gate both mornings and afternoons on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to receive any donations of books your family no longer wants.  We are happy to recycle books in any language for both adults and children. Full details of this scheme here.

Moulin Rouge

This year’s Secondary production is a family friendly adaptation of Moulin Rouge. This iconic love story is set in 1899 Paris and tells of the doomed love between Christian, a young English writer, and Satine a dancer at the Moulin Rouge. This show is a breathtaking whirl of brilliant characterisations, snappy choreography and mesmerising musical numbers, resulting in a truly ´Spectacular, Spectacular´ show, suitable for all ages.
Taking place at San Roque Theatre on Wednesday and Thursday 29^th and 30^th April, we expect an audience in excess of 800.

There will be some limited advertising spaces available in the programme, so if you might be interested in this please contact Fred-Eric on favrilleaud@sis.gl for information (or Wendy Moody on wmoody@sis.gl).

Also we are looking for any parents who maybe interested in either coordinating or being part of a backstage hair and make-up team. This is going to be an explosive and dynamic production and we can pretty much guarantee that being part of the crew will be a really buzz! Please contact Christine cbarling@sis.gl if you would like to help.

Welcome to the first Sotogrande International School Film Festival

Calling all filmmakers, screenwriters, actors & creative minds alike.
Students will be able to express themselves through story, character and film techniques in their very own local film festival hosted by Mad Hatter’s Film Camp.  Enjoy the food, live music and of course all the submitted student films. The evening kicks off on Saturday 9^th of May at 5pm. All students are welcome to submit a film, which must be under 10 minutes long, at a cost of 25 euros.
If you have any questions and for further information please email: info@reynardproductions.com.

If any students would like help creating their film, Mad Hatter’s Film Camp will run two weekends of intensive movie making courses where students will learn how to write, act and direct their own movie, which will then be ready to enter into the 2015 film festival. Students can sign up by emailing: info@reynardprodictions.com or facebook MadHattersFilmCamp

Weekend dates are April 18^th/19^th and April 25^th/ 26^th.

Initiation courses for tennis champions

SotoTennis Academy is a professional training centre located in Sotogrande, which is exclusively dedicated to training young tennis players to become professional players.The school has convinced Dan Kiernan, the founder of SotoTennis to offer our young students an opportunity to get a taste of and develop an interest in, or even a passion for, this fun and challenging sport, supported by his great team of professional coaches.
Tennis helps to develop life skills such as resilience, independence, discipline and humility to name but a few.

Initiation courses will be held in San Roque for children aged 8 to 12 years on Mondays from 5:00 – 6:00pm and on Thursdays in San Roque from 5:00 – 6:00pm for students over 12 years old. Lessons will start after the Easter break on April 20^th and will finish at the end of the summer term. The cost will be €225 for the term including transport from the school to the activity. Students will have to bring their own racquet and wear tennis shoes.
Take advantage of this great opportunity before the summer and sign up with Nancy (nchristow@sis.gl) at the reception desk before March 20^th, as places are limited.

Primary School News

Thank you PTA

EC1 and EC2 teachers and students would like to thank the PTA for buying us 6 bright and colourful mini-sized new picnic benches. These are a fabulous addition to our outside play area. THANK YOU!

End of unit assessment for P3

On Wednesday morning P3 performed their summative assessment pieces for their Unit of Inquiry on Stories for their parents. To show their understanding the children were able to choose to work on a dance performance, a play, an iMovie or a puppet show.  Once they had chosen their type of performance, they collaborated in groups make a storyboard of a “fractured” or “twisted” fairy tale. The groups then used computers to produce a play script together. Once the play scripts were completed, the children began to make their props and organise their costumes and scenery.  Mr. Sanchez helped the iMovie groups to edit their plays that they had recorded on the iPads.

On the day all the children made a fabulous job of performing to the parents; their teachers were extremely proud of their collaboration, work ethic and overall performances.

Friday 27th March

Next Friday is a ‘Send my friend to school’ day. In exchange for a 1€ donation, students in EC1-P2 can come dressed in their home clothes and for P3-P6 we are asking students to come to school dressed as their sports hero.
We will be doing further fund-raising for The Kindred Project in the afternoon with a charity sale in the playground, starting at 3.30pm.

Changes To The Primary Reports

As mentioned in the previous newsletter, this term Primary staff have been reviewing our reporting criteria.  This review has taken into account feedback from teachers and parents, which has resulted in the creation of a new set of criteria reflecting both progress and effort.  Effort is essential for effective learning and this will be recorded in the report card by a number. Attainment is recorded in the report card by a letter.

IB learning outcomes are organized around “phases” rather than age-banded stages. This is in recognition that learning is a developmental process and that the learner does not always progress through age-related stages in a strictly linear fashion. The last phase in PYP is from 9 –12 years, because there are schools where primary continues up to age 12. At SIS PYP finishes at age 11 and the transition is made to MYP.
As a Primary school we want to report on the progress a child is making in relation to outcomes within the two or three years of a phase. If they are making good progress and are meeting the expectations for their year group, this will be indicated with G for good.  We also recognise that children do not all learn at the same speed, so they may be working towards or exceeding this expectation. There are some outcomes that are very complex and take time to cover all aspects; with our new criteria we can indicate if a child is making the progress towards that outcome that we would expect at that point in the year.

Primary Parent Information Session

The Kindred Project News

Global Citizenship Programme

Our M2-M3 GCP students participated in a great session led by our colleagues from Knowmads Sevilla about The Future of Education and identifying possible ways of supporting the up-coming “Edu on Tour: Iberia” event, which looks for education initiatives around Spain and Portugal that live and practise the future of education today, focusing on global citizenship, sustainability, entrepreneurship, technology, democracy, arts, etc. By looking into different learning initiatives, students were also able to develop their reading comprehension skills (skim text, give a context, making inferences, extract key words and apply) and well as setting new targets for their GCP classroom work. Special thanks go to Ivo and Patri from Knowmads for opening a “window” to innovative education in Spain.