Friday January 29th 2021

From the Director

I am afraid I have no further updates regarding a potential return to school. I think we can all see that Covid cases in the country continue to be on the rise and in this context I think it unlikely that we will have any change soon. 

I will be sending out a survey early next week to parents and students in Grade 10 regarding IGCSE exams. Please read the preamble very carefully in order to try to understand what are quite complex issues and thereby make informed choices in the survey. In brief, I can say this much: Cambridge International Exams (CIE), who run the exams, are being distinctly inflexible in their approach- they will not offer any alternative to written exams but have given no satisfactory assurances about how they intend to account for the fact that some schools have been back to normal for many months whilst others (like ourselves) remain fully online. I have given my support to a strong letter from the Latin American Heads Conference Chief Executive, Alan Downie, denouncing the inequity of this approach. I will keep you posted on any changes in the situation. In the meantime, we should remember that:

1. Grade 10 students do not need CIE IGCSE grades to enter into Grade 11 and commence their IB studies

2. Universities are interested in students IB scores (and/or Avanzo scores), not their IGCSE grades

The IBO position remains that they also intend for their exams to go ahead; however, they have, at least, quite significantly reduced syllabus requirements and assessment activities in the light of the pandemic. Please note that we still intend to offer Grade 12 students a mock exam experience to help prepare them for the final exams. I am meeting with the Grade next week to discuss this and other matters that they have raised with us. 

All that aside, I look forward to seeing many of you at the fireworks on Monday evening!

In the meantime, the author of the following pearls of wisdom was born on this day (Jan 29th) 1737 and wrote a pamphlet that to this day remains one of the best selling books of all time in the United States…..but who was he/she?

“The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”

“Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.”

“That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly.”

“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”

Stephen Lang

Director

From the Head of Primary

50th Anniversary Celebrations

On Monday we will be celebrating our 50th anniversary by burying our very own time capsule, to be opened again on February 1st 2071! Students have chosen which items are to be buried and written letters to future students, maybe even their own grandchildren. The children will watch the burial live on Monday during their lessons.

Some of the objects to be buried:

• Salvadorean Lottery

• A Chromebook (an old broken one!)

• SD card with videos from the children

• Collage of photos

• PE Tribal Uniform T-Shirts

• A Newspaper

Letters to be buried:

Dear children of the future,

Thius letter was written in the year 2021, and 50 years have passed since then. We are writing to you to celebrate the Academia Británica's 50th anniversary. Our class is Pre-Kinder Alger and we want you to know that our class is fun, we have learned a lot, we can now count, know our colours, the seasons ( we wear sunglasses each time we sing the song about seasons and it makes us feel super cool). W ehave also learned about nature and have started speaking more English. We can now say "Good morning, Ms. Marcela" or "Good morning, Ms. Kathy". We are only 3 years old. Yes! We are the youngest ones in school. Our first year has been different to yours, in 2021 we learned from home through a computer. Wow!

But..why are we staying home?

“Coronavirus is very dangerous and can make all of us very sick, that's why we wear masks over our mouths.” Manuel.

“Yes that's true, we don't want to get sick, it is too dangerous.” Jimena. 

That's why we are staying home, because of this ugly and dangerous virus. But we have also had lots of fun at home. We learn every day, see our friends through the screen, we can see each other and sing, play and learn. We have also talked about what we want to be when we grow up. We want to be firefighters (Santiago, Paolo and David), artists (Jimena Monge), doctors (Jimena María and Jose Ignacio), bake sweets and be chefs (Antonina), Iron Spider (Javier), astronauts (Manuel), princesses (María Elena) and vets (Adriana).

The children of Pre-Kinder Alger love the story of The Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf, it is one of our favourites (sometimes we like to pretend we are the wolf blowing on the houses) and we also play football, because we love playting with balls.

Pre_kinder Alger would like to say goodbye to the children of the future with lots of love, we hope you always find adventures to go on and create new things. Enjoy every morning, play, build, draw, play with mud, run on the playground and always be curious and inquisitive, never stop learning and dreaming.

With love, PreKinder Alger. 

Miss Marcela and Miss Kathy

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This is a letter from the children of 2nd Ware 2021. We currently receive classes online instead of in school due to the Covid Virus, it has been a difficult year but we still have a lot of fun! Here is our message to you:

Dear Children of 2071,

Dear students of the future, you are very lucky to go to the ABC. It is the best school, even online! We hope you always follow your dreams and eat healthy with some chocolate. Play with and help your friends and families.  Visit your grandmother and grandads lots, as we can’t right now. Listen to your teachers, be curious, independent and creative. Do you still use cars and computers? Love, grow and care for animals, plants and each other. Play everyday, paint lots and work hard. Be good to each other and have fun. Grow plants and have a farm. Eat ice cream often. 

Love from 2nd Ware

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Dear  people of the future, 

My name is Lourdes Martinez Fuentes and I am writing on behalf of 5W (5th Williams). We are a class of 26 students from El Salvador, Costa Rica, USA and the UK.

We want to tell you everything and anything about our experiences of 2020 and 2021. The global pandemic that is called Coronavirus or Covid19 and has taken many lives. We are thankful for our health and that we are safe. We are grateful for online learning - we have been learning online for 10 months now! Because of covid we have to wear masks and have social distancing,  and we can not touch our faces or other people! We have had to stay home and many people lost their jobs because of covid . 

Now I want to tell you all about all  the cool stuff! You should play Kahoot online, (which is a quiz game),  because it is a really cool game where you can compete with your friends. We have been using voice chat to keep in touch with our friends on our computers and phones. We spend a lot of time watching Netflix Kids - have you seen any shows on Netflix? We can choose tv shows to watch anytime. 

You must treat your teachers and class friends well - we have had a lot of time at home to think and reflect, and we feel very lucky to attend the ABC. Working online, we have used Google Classroom and Chrome computers. We have had to have lots of breaks because it can be hard to work at a computer all day! Make sure you enjoy 5th grade and have a lot of fun, because life is short.  Last but not least,  do not spend all of your time in the mirror, telling yourself that you are ugly, because you are not! Do not let social media poison your mind, keep a strong grip on reality.

We hope in 50 years there is no virus.

BY Lourdes Martinez Fuentes                

Sign up for Extras

We have lots of exciting extras on offer, please see the following documents to find out what is on offer.

Pre-Kinder

Kinder

Prepa

1st Grade

Upper Primary

Celebrating Our Primary Artists!

Mateo Belloso

Georges Seurat - Pointillism

Natalia Bonet

Andy Warhol- Pop Art

Maria Fernanda Guardado

Georges Seurat- Pointillism

Valeria Renee Chacón

Andy Warhol- Pop Art

Marianne Taylor

Head of Primary

From the Secondary Leadership Team

Due to the current situation our children are now online more than ever before. Whether it's using the internet through mobile phones, social media, online gaming, emails etc. We all have the responsibility to ensure that us and our children understand how to keep ourselves safe when using the internet. 

To remind us all about how to be safer online Safer Internet Day is celebrated at the ABC for an entire week each year. This year Safer Internet Day 2021 will be celebrated globally on February 9th, 2021 with a focus on the theme, "Together for a better internet"

Here are some driving statements and questions to prompt powerful conversations focused on this topic:

• Let's face it the internet is a powerful place to connect with others, but issues can occur.

• How could we work together as a class, a school, a country or a planet to make it a better, safer place for everyone to connect?

• Can you think of a few ideas that you as a student would be able to do to help make this happen?

(saferinternetday.org)

This coming week students in each grade will work on a series of short mini lessons during tutor time and Life Skills. In doing so they will explore a variety of positive and negative impacts of the internet, as well as the various ways to conduct themselves in a safe, ethical and positive manner online, while making the most of the positive opportunities that are available.

We encourage you to browse our resources by grade level and engage in conversations with your child which focus on these topics.

We have also provided a list of videos for conversation starters as well as additional resource collections from leading organisations, lower down on the home page, which we hope you will find useful.

We would also like you to draw your attention to the ABC Secondary Digital Learning Pledge (which can be found on the student and parent portals). Please ensure that you have read this through with your son or daughter and ensure they fully understand the expectations outlined in this document. 

Let's make every day a safer internet day, together!

Dates for your diary

SECONDARY

February 

Monday 1st to Friday 5th - Internet Safety Week

Monday 1st - ABC Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration

Wednesday 17th to Monday 22nd - Half Term holidays (school closed)

Monday 22nd - Staff INSET Day (School closed for students)

Friday January 22nd 2021

From the Director

Next Monday February 1st marks exactly 50 years since the ABC opened its doors to children. There will be a range of activities going on throughout the day culminating in a fireworks extravaganza at the school at 18:00, which families may attend in their cars. Save the date! Spaces will be limited, so please RSVP by filling out this form.

As many of you will know by now, I am a proud Scot (and sometime poet!) so today, January 25th is a special day for me as it is the anniversary of the birth of the great Scottish poet Rabbie Burns in 1759. Burns is renowned the world over as one of the great poets; Abraham Lincoln, a great admirer, once said when asked to propose a toast to Burns:

“I cannot frame a toast to Burns. I can say nothing worthy of his generous heart, and transcendent genius. Thinking of what he has said, I cannot say anything which seems worth saying.”

There is so much to admire about Burns’ poetry, its cadence and rich pastoral imagery and the way in which it celebrates the beauty of the Scottish landscape and the lives of the humble peasants who inhabit it. However, for me one of the most important aspects of Burns’ is the way in which it promotes the notion of brotherhood and reminds us of the profoundness of the connections we share in our human experience no matter where we come from, what language we speak, what colour our skin is or what status we hold in society. This of course, is a value that we share and promote as a learning community, especially when we think of our core value of Empathy. Burns put it this way in his song A Man’s a Man for a’ That:

Then let us pray that come it may,

(As come it will for a' that,)

That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,

Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.

For a' that, an' a' that,

It's coming yet for a' that,

That Man to Man, the world o'er,

Shall brothers be for a' that.

Best wishes everybody and do stay safe…..

Stephen Lang

Director

From the Head of Primary

Performance Poetry

This week we saw a very powerful performance by Amanda Gorman delivering her poem ‘The Hill We Climb’ at Joe Biden's inauguration. It reminded me how important it is for children to see poetry performed. Here are some links for you to share with your children,

CBBC Stars Perform Poems!

Michael Rosen Playlist

Solli Raphael, 12, becomes youngest winner of Australian Poetry Slam

Michael Rosen Reads Classic Poems

Student Council

Our Upper Primary Student Council, led by Ms. Ana Mena, has been meeting and discussing ideas about how we can keep mentally and physically healthy during online learning. They have been visiting classes to share their ideas.

• Sending emails to friends and family

• Playing online games

• Spending some time outdoors: in the sunshine

• Going out in the neighborhood with friends; on bike rides or nature walks, and playing outdoor games

• Family time: movie nights, board games, etc

• Doing homework together (online)

• Showing friends how to do something you are good at

• Asking parents to arrange google-zoom meetings with friends in the afternoon

• Eating healthy and having enough sleep

Thank you to our Student Council 2020/21

• 2nd Ware - Helena Muñoz

• 2nd Avilés - Lucía Atanacio

• 2nd Padilla - Elena Pérez

• 2nd Carbajal - Natalia Lourdes Henríquez

• 3rd Mena - Julieta Rosales

• 3rd Pineda - Sara Lucía Solórzano

• 3rd Pashley - Alejandro Rivas

• 3rd Quintanilla - Bautista Saravia

• 4th Cáceres - Marco Planas

• 4th Segovia - Diego Cisneros

• 4th Borgo - Mariana González

• 4th Reston - Rebecca Fahy Portillo

• 5th Hernández - Isabel Urías

• 5th Quijano - Julian Inagaki

• 5th Guzmán - Adriana Guzmán

• 5th Williams - Columba Lang

 

The Power of Self-Organised Learning - The Hole in The Wall Experiment

As school closures across the world continue, the power of self-directed learning by children (or play as we call it at the ABC) becomes more and more apparent. So I wanted to share with you a famous experiment from over twenty years ago that nicely demonstrates the importance of a child-centered educational experience.

In early 1999, a group of educational theorists sunk a computer into the opening of a wall in Kalkaji, New Delhi. The area was located in a slum, with desperately poor people struggling to survive. The screen was visible from the street, and the PC was available to anyone who passed by. The computer had online access and a number of programs that could be used, but no instructions were given for its use. What happened next astonished them. Children came running out of the nearest slum and glued themselves to the computer. They couldn't get enough. They began to click and explore. They began to learn how to use this strange thing. A few hours later, the children were actually surfing the Web. Within six months the children had learned all the mouse operations, could open and close programs, and were going online to download games, music and videos. When asked how they had learned all of these sophisticated maneuvers, each time they said they had taught themselves.

Over the next decade they continued their research in self-directed learning, in many places and through many cultures. Each time, the children were able to develop deep learning by teaching themselves and some common observations of the process emerged;

• Discoveries tend to happen in one of two ways: When one child in a group already knows something, he or she shows off those skills to the others. Or, while the others watch, one child explores randomly until an accidental discovery is made.

• Several children repeat the discovery for themselves.

• One or more children make more accidental or incidental discoveries.

• All the children repeat all the discoveries made and, in the process, make more discoveries. They soon start to create a vocabulary to describe their experiences.

• The vocabulary encourages them to perceive generalizations

• They memorize entire procedures for doing something. Whenever a child finds a shorter procedure, he or she teaches it to the others. They discuss, hold small conferences, make their own timetables and research plans. 

• The group divides itself into the "knows" and the "know-nots," a child that knows will share that knowledge in return for friendship and reciprocity of information, unlike with the ownership of physical things, when you "take" information, the donor doesn't "lose" it!

• A stage is reached when no further discoveries are being made and the children occupy themselves with practicing what they have already learned. At this point, intervention is required to plant a new seed for discovery. 

Marianne Taylor

Head of Primary

Dates for your Diary

PRIMARY

February

Monday 1st - ABC’s 50th Anniversary Celebration

Monday 1st to Friday 5th - Internet Safety Week

Wednesday 17th -  Half Term Holiday (school closed)

Monday 22nd - Inset for Teachers (school closed for students)

Tuesday 23rd - School resumes from Half Term Holiday

From the Secondary Leadership Team

On Monday 18th we celebrated Martin Luther King day.

Each year on the third Monday of January we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and reflect on the work that still needs to be done for racial equality. Each grade has celebrated MLK day in different ways. G9 prepared a fantastic assembly, lead 100% by students to students. Other Grades had different presentations recognising the rights of equality.

This January 18, is more than a holiday and  just a day off ,it  is a  time to reflect and take action on civil rights issues across the globe. Martin Luther King was a Baptist minister who advocated the use of nonviolent means to end racial segregation, he was also the most influential of African American civil rights leader during the 1960s, he was instrumental in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination in public accommodations, facilities, and employment, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 1964 he was awarded the Noble Peace Prize. 

As a school we value differences because we believe in freedom of speech, freedom of belief, we tolerate differences, but not only that, we accept them and we welcome them as part of the beauty of being different. Our Mission is to change the world by building responsible outstanding citizens (ROCs) through our commitment to a values-based and holistic learning experience.

Our aspiration to change the world is founded upon a core set of shared beliefs:

We believe the world needs to change - to become more peaceful, more equitable and more sustainable.

We believe we have a duty to engender in young people a commitment to serve as agents of that change.

We believe we have a duty to enable young people with the values, personal qualities and skills to be agents of that change.

We believe the development of this commitment, and these values and skills, relies upon our learning community nurturing in young people a strong sense of care and respect for oneself, others and society.

This week is also dedicated to our Value “Respect” respect to others points of view, others differences, others ideas. 

Kind regards,

Carmen Chávez

Assistant Headteacher - Student Wellbeing

Dates for your diary

SECONDARY

January 2021

Wednesday 27th - IB Spanish EE

February 

Monday 1st to Friday 5th - Internet Safety Week

Monday 1st - ABC Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration

Wednesday 17th to Monday 22nd - Half Term holidays (school closed)

Monday 22nd - Staff INSET Day (School closed for students)