Welcome to the Srping Term! Our school's weekly newsletter, features information on the week's learning, student achievements and special events in our school. Here please find an overview of our latest issue.

As part of Term 1’s Art Project students from Pre-Nursery all the way up to Year 6 experimented with many different colours, media and styles. The school gym was transformed into a lovely ‘Winter Wonderland’ as their wonderful creations were put on display on our first week back. 

This week in Nursery we have been talking about our winter theme. This has involved looking at common weather for this time of year and talking about what we wear.

With the seasonal changes and the colder weather outside it has given the children the chance to demonstrate their growing independence and show us how they can dress themselves by doing things like putting on their coat, hat and scarf.

We have also been reading a book called Little Penguin’s Big Adventure this has given us the chance to look at all the adventures the penguin goes on in the book. We then thought about how we can go on some adventures. So, through doing different activities such as artic small world pretend play and making some crafts such as a penguin headband, we have been able to go on and talk about some adventures of our own using different props and walking around our familiar environment. This has meant we have been able to make some stories of our own about what we did and where we went!

In a school like ours, representation is particularly important due to the many nationalities, religions, cultures and ethnicities who attend. Whilst our curriculum and school culture may be British, we have a duty through our lesson planning, resources and teacher training to ensure that students are able to see themselves in varied contexts and feel included. From the stories that they read in class, to how their teacher treats them, each child has the right to feel respected and should be able to celebrate who they are in world. Representation is also an important objective in schools throughout the UK. However, the demographic make-up of BSB Sanlitun makes this area especially salient. Below, I will summarise some areas in which we integrate representation in the Year 2 curriculum as well as through whole school and community events.

Representation in lessons and lesson content

Although the UK curriculum dictates the learning objectives that students need to meet each year, schools have a lot of freedom when it comes to the content of lessons, exemplar texts, books, stories and multimedia used. In Year 2, we try to have a variety of nationalities, colours and people represented throughout the planning process of our lessons. We choose stories set in various countries that deal with both pride and belonging, we encourage students to discuss, respect and celebrate differences, and through humanities, students are exposed to world music, cuisine, dress and dance. A good example of representation can be seen in our current Topic unit all about inspirational people. Over 5 weeks, students will learn about inspirational people that include woman who faced adversities, Black History Month heroes, inspiring children and disabled sportspeople.         

Representation in our resources

Resources are the tools that teachers use to aid learning in different subjects. These include everything from books and videos to presentation slides and classroom displays.  We ensure that there is a variety of voices, people and groups represented when choosing these resources as these are the things that students will regularly see and use during the school day. Our library does an excellent job in ensuring that students have a broad access to materials that they are able to identify with on a personal level.

Representation across the school

As a school, I think we do an excellent job with both integration and celebrating differences. We have specific events that celebrate important British holidays like the recent Coronation as well as observing local celebrations like Chinese New Year and Dragon Boat Festival. We also make sure to celebrate the beauty of all the different cultures in the school during International Week. One of my personal favourite times of the year is when we ask our class parents to come in and carry out a culture-specific activity with the students. Due to our demographic as a school, students are exposed to so much knowledge, beauty and variety during these activities. This is something that I believe to be very unique about our school, and a contributing factor as to why interracial conflicts are very rare between students.

Inclusion in its broader sense

Representation is a sub-category in the area of Inclusion. All schools have a duty of inclusion, and this reaches far beyond just representation. Inclusion is a broad area that ensures that all students, no matter their social class, race, religion, ability, learning style or gender are able to feel safe, represented, valued and respected whilst at school. All curricula, resources and even teachers will have a natural bias depending on the geographic location of the school or the majority demographic being taught. However, all good schools take active steps to incorporate proactive inclusion steps throughout their planning, events, language and professional development training.

The Upper Primary children started their new Enrichment courses last week.

Our Enrichment programme, specifically designed for Upper Primary students, focuses on real-life skills and student-led learning allowing them to develop into citizens of the future and put their learning into action. Some of the courses on offer this term are Filmography, Art, Debate and Sports Leadership. Children could also choose Journalism, Comic Design, First Aid or Chinese Cooking. 

The students are very excited to be back in school after a pleasant winter vacation. Children in all Chinese classrooms have had a busy and fun week.

The Nursery children were learning about penguins. They enjoyed the songs and stories about the penguins. They also loved to copy how penguins walk which brought the children so much fun.

Year 1 Lama Temple students learnt a text about autumn. They have been working very hard to read the text fluently. They also got to know how to identify paragraphs within a text. They had fun whiteboard games to practise the new Chinese characters and phrases in this text.

Children in Year 3 Lama Temple group were learning two Chinese ancient poems about beautiful scenery in China. While reading the poems, students imagined the scenery described in the poems. They also enjoyed the stories about why and how the poets wrote those poems.