School Bulletin 13 – 5th of May 2023

Upcoming Dates

 
Whole School

Sports Festival
On Monday of next week, the British School will be celebrating its first full Sports Festival since the start of the pandemic.  With a focus on promoting our School value of ‘Honesty’, there will be numerous activities and matches across the week celebrating the sporting talents of our Community.  The festival will begin on Monday lunchtime with our Inauguration Ceremony, complete with special guests.  Then throughout the week, students, staff, alumni and parents will have the opportunity to participate in various football, basketball, volleyball and badminton matches.  Our Sports Festival will end on Saturday with our traditional Grand Classic Race and several exhibition matches.

Kangaroo Mathematics
Congratulations to all students who participated in the Kangaroo International Mathematics Competition 2023 in March.  We now have the results and are very pleased to announce our 18 National Medallists!

Year 4  
Bronze:  Alessandro D’ Arsié

Year 5 
Silver:  Naima Álvarez

Year 6 
Silver:  Kevin Brown, Judy Wu, Lucía Madrigal, Natalie Lipschitz

Year 7 
Bronze: Emiliano Robalino
Silver:  Elena Bonilla        

Year 8
Silver: Daniel Brampton

Year 10
Bronze: Isabella D´Arsié, Cristel Haaversen
Silver:  Leonardo Jiménez, Roberto Zúñiga, Ally Lin

Year 11
Bronze: José Ernesto Villagra
Silver: Diego Chavarría
Gold:  Camila Gutiérrez     

“Student” Category (Highest Level in Secondary)
Silver:  Carlos Shum

Parent Council Meetings
Next week we will be holding our Second Quarter Parent Council meetings.  Please let your year group representative know if you have any topics of general interest (i.e. not specific to an individual or a small number of parents – in such instances parents should contact the School directly) that you would like to raise for discussion.

Charity Food Week
This week, over 50 BSCR staff members participated in our annual Charity Food Week.  During this week, volunteer staff members provide lunch for each of the participants who, in return, donate the money that they would usually spend on their lunches to a worthy cause.  This year, the money donated by staff members will go to the Cleft Lip Campaign that our students are also currently supporting (see below).  Thank you to each of our participants with a special thanks to each of our Chefs for both their generosity and for providing us with such delicious lunches each day.

Cleft Lip Campaign
As part of a Ministry of Education initiative, BSCR students supported the Cleft Lip Palate campaign this week by sharing an educational video and raising funds.  The Cleft Lip and Palate Association has worked for 39 years to ensure complete and comprehensive care, rehabilitation and treatment for more than 85 boys and girls who are born with cleft lip and palate each year throughout Costa Rica. With these treatments, which can take up to 15 or more years, they have managed to restore smiles to thousands of children across the country.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msEjKznoskw

Primary

Book Week
Primary and Early Years students had a wonderful time last week celebrating all types of literature as part of Book Week. We hope you were also able to see some of the many amazing Book Character costumes, on social media, from our Costume parade on Friday. Our judges had a very challenging time choosing the most creative costumes. The winners were:

Early Years:                      Matias Pena (Puss in Boots)
Year 1 – Year 2:                Rodrigo Vásquez (The Lorax)
Year 3 – Year 5:                Jonathan Mora (Captain Underpants)

Loose Parts Entry Point
On Wednesday of this week, Early Years 1 students invited their parents into school to help with their “Loose Parts” unit of study. It was very impressive to see the many ingenious ways that our Early Years 1 students and parents could use cardboard boxes.

Secondary

Astronomy and Astronautically Olympics
Congratulations to Santiago Calvo (Year 9C) on qualifying for the final of the Astronomy and Astronautically Olympics which will take place on the 20^th of May – what a wonderful achievement!

Book Day
As part of the school value, creativity, this week we celebrated Book Day. Friday 28^th of April began with a costume parade for all levels on the football field, for which the students were inspired by their favourite literary characters and achieved wonderful characterisations.  The winners of the different categories in Secondary were:

Year 6 – Year 8:    Hae Yoon Min
Year 9 – Year 10:  Gastón Goddard
Year 11 – Year 12: Ankit Patel

Other outstanding costumes with honourable mentions were: Lucía Madrigal, Isabela Jiménez, Julián Pontigo, Marco Jop, Marcella Patel, Marcelo Rojas, David Álvarez and the National Baccalaureate generation.

At lunch break we had an assembly with artistic performances of: The Little Prince by Saint Exupery, Medea by Euripides, “Concherías” by Aquileo Echeverría and poetry in French. In addition, Year 12 Spanish/Literature students offered a cultural kiosk with artistic displays and Greek food tastings. Congratulations to all the students who explored their creativity and celebrated the existence of books in our lives!

SAT Exams
The last SAT of this semester is on Saturday 3^rd of June 2023 at the school. The registration deadline is Friday 19^th of May.  The test costs $103 and should be paid online. International SAT Dates 2022-2023. The test will be digital from now on.

We recommend that students who register for the first time to take this test coordinate a meeting with Ana Lourdes Baumgartner, University Counsellor to complete the registration procedure.  The SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) is a standardized test, administered by The College Board that many universities around the world, but especially in the United States, take into consideration as either a requirement or as an optional part of the university application process.   Should you have any question, please contact Ana Lourdes at abaumgartner@bscr.ed.cr.
SAT Practice and Preparation Information.