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“In play it is as though (the child) were a head taller than himself. As in the focus of a magnifying glass, play contains all developmental tendencies in a condensed form and is itself a major form of development.” Leo Vygotsky

Dear Parents, It is almost a year to the day that we originally closed and so I have been searching for a positive topic to discuss with you all, something light-hearted, something not pandemic related. It isn’t easy at the moment, but I am inspired by the children and their positive growth mindsets. The ‘Not Yet’ motto, I haven’t learnt it yet, I am not fluent yet…all with the positive belief that one day it will be achieved, anything is possible.

Assessment is a key part of every school. However, it is also an extremely scary part for most students and sadly, exam anxiety is something that most of us remember from our own school days.

Dear Parents, This week we held our monthly Parent Teacher Association (PTA) meeting and have some great news to share and thanks to give. Our PTA is also an officially recognised body and will soon receive its CNPJ enabling them to have a bank account to efficiently deal with finances.

As I settle into my favorite khmer couch that has traveled thousands of miles from Cambodia, I contemplate on this week’s learner profile focus in Key stage 3.  I’m reminded of  a quote by Robby Novak who is an American media personality best known for portraying Kid President on YouTube and on television. “You don't need a cape to be a hero, you just need to care”. This was also what we asked our students to ponder on, in our weekly assembly this week.

ess-pee-ee-ell-ell-eye-en-jee tea-ee-ess-tea-ess Spelling tests - a perennial part of the weekly Primary class timetable. A tiny part of the assessment process, they seem to hold disproportionate weight in the minds of some pupils and parents. This can probably be explained by the fact that the spelling test has traditionally been one of the very few times that children in a Primary school are given a raw score based on their performance. Scoring a test in this way is problematic in itself, and it has been long recognised that rote learning of an isolated list of words is very unlikely to lead to lasting spelling improvements in independent work. So is there still room for the spelling test in our already jam-packed class schedules?

Although I always was a child who was quite confident with my English learning, finding the motivation to sit down, open a book and spend time really getting into a story was difficult for me - and still can be. Now, this may not be exactly what you want to hear from the English Coordinator of your child’s school, but bear with me; there is a point!

Dear Parents, On Wednesday the Primary Leadership Team hosted an extremely successful Coffee Morning. We had listened to feedback and gathered questions before the meeting so we could answer the community questions we received. The team of Mrs. Priestley, Miss Mastrantone and Mr McDaniel, were all able to share experiences and expectations over the last four weeks since we have been attending school each day. We felt this structure worked extremely well and we will continue this for our future coffee mornings.

Our Key Stage 3 students did a great job in reflecting and creating solutions to local and global problems using an inquiry based approach.

We have finished the first ever Mock Exam week for both our year 11 and our first ever graduating class, year 13´s. As I was pondering what to write for my blog I was drawn to what was the core message I wanted to convey at the end of a very significant moment in the short life of BCB.

Three of our secondary students won this year’s Global Campus Creative Writing Competition. This is an outstanding achievement as their writing was judged against possible entrants from 69 schools across 29 countries.

Dear Parents, We have had a couple of extremely successful weeks with our students who have engaged with the Nord Anglia Global Campus activities. Five BCB students have been recognised globally by not only Nord Anglia, but two experts in their fields.

Today, our lives are far more convenient and easy, with everything we need at our fingertips. The world of computers is growing at an un-recordable rate everyday, and needless to say that computers are the most influential tools in our lives, they are our present and future. We also need to remember at the same time that what we have today is the culmination of hundreds of years of scientific progress and breakthrough. “Inventions such as the Internet and mobile phones have changed the world forever”, I am sure we all agree with this statement and experience the same in our day-to-day living.

In April of last year, the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary did something unusual.In April, and again in July, the dictionary’s editors released special updates, citing a need to document the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the English language.  Some of the new inclusions were based on the language of quarantine; such as social-distance, shielding and self-isolate, others based on new social experiences such as elbow-bump (a safe way of greeting people),  zoombombing (which is when strangers intrude on video conferences), doomscrolling (which happens when you skim anxiety-inducing pandemic-related stories on your smartphone) and more globally, my personal favourite,  the German term “hamsterkauf” (literal translation ‘buying hamsters) as a way of describing panic buying. Whether such terms will be in common usage after the pandemic is anyone’s guess.

Dear Parents, Hopefully today we can help clarify some of the current organisation and decisions made. We are only reporting on the situation today as we don’t want to add confusion. Changes, calls for feedback, and future changes will be communicated at the necessary time.

Let’s face it. The art of persuasion and rhetoric has helped to build local communities, cities and empires. We can celebrate the great orators of ancient Greece and Rome for crafting the skill that has stood the test of time for over two thousand years. Many modern day politicians still look back to some of the classical greats for inspiration to stir up crowds and nations in times of both peace and war.

One of BCB students' MIT project has been selected to be part of the MIT reaction video.

Despite challenging conditions, students on the IGCSE and IBDP - Geography curriculum, found their fieldtrip to the River Paraitinga a rewarding experience.

As teachers, we try to know all of our students as well as possible: we try to understand how they work and feel and then we use this to help them achieve their very best.