A unique Primary School, offering a British based, child centred education in the Turks and Caicos Islands
As our fully-fledged graduating class of 2015 and leaving students take flight from our Flamingo Lake location, we would like to share with them some ‘Flamingo Wisdom’ which encourages them to make good choices as they continue to soar.
At Provo Primary, our PSHCE and MindUp programmes promote children’s personal, social and emotional development, as well as their health and well-being. [Read more…]
During her 12 years as a parent of the school, Krys has contributed much to Provo Primary and we would like to thank her for her support over the years. Her dedication and commitment to producing our wonderful school yearbook for an amazing 11 years is so much appreciated by us all.
With over 30,000+ photos and 11 beautiful yearbooks in total, which have no doubt travelled to the far corners of the world, Krys has created a lifetime of memories for around 300 families and teachers to enjoy and share – thank you!
As well as creating the yearbook, Krys has volunteered her time for the past 6 years to teach our older children the wonders of photo editing and photography, as if that weren’t enough, she has also been an integral part of our library team and our PTA. Thank you, Krys! You will most definitely be missed.
We are very excited to announce that Provo Primary’s Flamingos and Chicks is back in session tomorrow and will continue throughout the summer on Tuesdays, 8.30 to 10am.
These free sessions invite new families (parents and toddlers from birth to 2 years) to join us in our soft play room for some fun activities. We have lots of great toys and exploratory activity centres available for your young chicks to enjoy.
Our theme throughout the summer will be ‘Under the Sea’, so let’s get our feathers wet in a variety of ‘swimmingly’ fun activities. See you tomorrow!
Remember to bring a small snack!
We look forward to seeing a whole flock of Flamingos at Provo Primary soon; so please spread the word via air-mail, email or word of beak!
Congratulations to our fully-fledged graduating class of 2015 as they take flight from their Flamingo Lake location onto pastures new!
All of us here at Provo Primary School are extremely proud of all of our students’ individual achievements. 8 of our 14 graduating students have attended the school since Preschool and over their 9 years at Provo Primary School it has been both a privilege and pleasure to watch them grow and develop into the fine young people they are today.
Academic achievement—although important—is not the ultimate end goal for learning at Provo Primary. Our students’ social, physical, and emotional well-being is just as important. [Read more…]
All of us here at Provo Primary School are immensely proud of our Year 6 students and their attainments in external examinations this year.
* Top 8 positions in the TCI Middle School Entrance Examination and 10 of the 12 available places.
* We scooped 6 of the top 10 positions in the British West Indies Collegiate Entrance Examination, including 2nd, 3rd and 4th positions.
* In total, 12 of our Year 6 students have accepted offers from the British West Indies Collegiate for entry into their Year 7.
At Provo Primary, we firmly believe that our creative, hands on approach to learning, makes learning meaningful, develops curious learners, and helps to develop higher academic attainment.
Doughnuts for Dads….was all about celebrating our dads! We invited them in to spend the morning with the Toddler class to celebrate father’s day together.
All Dads (and one special grandpa) were greeted with a tie shaped card that was tied around their necks with a promise to wear it all day. Not sure how many did?!
Dads, daughters and sons played together outside for a while with the bikes, sand and water play. Inside there were several activities which were enjoyed by all, including eating doughnuts! They enjoyed making a trail mix with Goldfish, Cheerios, raisins and pretzels, shaving a toy ball with a popsicle stick and painting each other’s foot which was placed on a paper with the caption “Following in your footprints, Dad.”
We ended our morning with the song, ‘We love our Daddy, He’s the best. My Daddy is awesome! D-A-D-D-Y, D-A-D-D-Y, D-A-D-D-Y and Daddy is his name-o!’
Provo Primary cordially invites you to our
Graduation, Leavers & Celebration Assembly
at 9 AM on Thursday 25th June, 2015.
Come join us as our amazing Year 6 students graduate, we thank all who have helped us, say farewell to our leaving students and teachers and celebrate a wonderful year of learning together.
What a fantastic year it’s been for soccer at Provo Primary! Our weekly Soccer Club was booming this term in preparation for the annual TCI Inter-Island School Competition. With interest high from the children, we were fortunate enough to field 3 soccer teams, an ‘A’ and a ‘B’ team for the boys and a girls’ team.
The competition matches were all played over the course of a week, culminating with the finals on the last day of the tournament. After some hard fought games, great team work and sportsmanship, Provo Primary were delighted to walk away with two well-deserved trophies for the boys’ ‘A’ team and the girls’ team.
The ‘B’ team, coached by the magnificent Mr Toby, secured a comfortable 3-1 victory over The International School. They showed a tremendous display of working as a squad and sportsmanship, a promising set of players for the future!
All in all, everyone was able to walk away feeling a champion in every sense!
Last week Year 4 were extremely fortunate to have a TCI kayaking and snorkeling field trip in association with Big Blue Unlimited. This was to coincide with their topic work this term. We have been immersing ourselves in the wonders of the Turks and Caicos Islands and all the amazing habitats and creatures with which we are blessed . We’ve studied how different living organisms work together in our beautiful mangroves and coral reefs. We have also looked at how these ecosystems have been affected by our society over the years and how we can ensure that we preserve them.
Last week, our teachers were very happy to be surprised by a special Provo Primary Teacher Appreciation Week. A HUGE thank you to Kate, our PTA Chair, for organising a host of children and parents into celebrating and thanking all of our teachers for the hard work they have done this year.
Thank you to all of the kind parents who took the time to bake and prepare treats. All of those daily morning goodies brought an extra smile to everyone’s faces at the start of each day.
Relieving teachers of their lunchtime duties was such a luxury. Thank you to all who volunteered.
The teachers also very much enjoyed all the delightful messages and surprises from the children.
On behalf of all of the teachers, I would like to thank everyone for your recognition and support of all that they do – everyone felt full of gratitude! Thank you.
Developing our breathing techniques.
This half term the children of Provo Primary have been taking part in a series of swimming lessons. The staff have been working hard to create a stream of lessons, which cater for all swimming experiences and abilities for children from Kindergarten right up to Year 6. There is an ocean of talent in the pool each week!
Provo Primary’s swimming policy enables children to focus on water confidence and moving through the water, to the later stages of finely tuning swimming strokes such as: front crawl, back stroke and breast stroke and developing breathing techniques.
At the start, each year group was carefully assessed and grouped so that they could be taught based on their swimming ability and confidence. The progression so far has been immense and there is still two more weeks of swimming sessions to go! Please take a look at the photos and get a sneak peak of the activities the children have been doing.
During their recent science topic on Growing Plants, Hummingbird Class Year 1 students were challenged to learn all the different parts of a plant. By observing, drawing, labeling and even translating into Spanish, all children became able to discuss the terms root, stem, leaf, flower, seed and fruit. We explored these in our own school garden and noticed the huge variety in plants we see every day.
Tall trees – small weeds. Almonds, wild cherries and cotton seeds. Huge palms vs small leaves. We have them all in our garden!’
Take look at all of our Talk4Writing projects that we engaged in this year at Provo Primary and find out more about this innovative approach to writing.
We want to say a big “Well done!” to all our teachers for experimenting with this teaching technique throughout the year. As part of our ongoing professional development, teachers did a great job in learning, implementing and evaluating the strategy in their classes.
We hope you have enjoyed the diverse range of quality Talk4Writing projects undertaken and we will look forward to seeing this technique develop in the future!
Click here if you want a quick link to an album of all of our fantastic talking text videos.
In our final Talk4Writing video, we wanted to share our wonderful Year 1 storytellers! Last term, as part of their topic on Growing and Changes, the class learned a talking text for The Enormous Turnip. As you will see from the video, the children’s actions and words brought this complicated story to life!
By learning to read a pictorial story map, children developed the confidence to retell this extended story – complete with the finer details of characters, speech and, of course, an exciting ending!
Each talking text provides a wealth of opportunities for the teacher to model techniques for writing. This traditional tale has huge potential for teaching characters and story sequences. On a grammatical level, the story clearly demonstrates how to make lists and use punctuation such as commas and full stops. As they have the story memorised, children typically become more confident in their writing and are more able to make adaptations of their own.
In Year 6, the children go on a week long field trip to really develop their sense of independence and confidence before they transition to secondary school. In the last few years, I have introduced an overnight stay to North and Middle Caicos in Year 5 as a precursor to the Year 6 trip. It has been hugely successful and this year was no exception! We would like to thank Mr. Mark Parrish from Big Blue for his outstanding local environmental knowledge and our amazing parent helper, Mr Anthony. We would also like to thank all of the friendly residents of North and Middle Caicos for welcoming and looking after us.
Our Year 6 adventurers returned home today full of stories and tales to tell of their 5 day trip to Rancho Baiguate in the Dominican Republic.
Their trip has been action-packed with activities – hikes to waterfalls, visits to a bird sanctuary and a coffee plantation, horse riding and zip-lining, to name a few. Handling a snake was a new experience for some. Tasting some authentic Dominican ice-cream involved some interesting flavours; including sweet potato. Here are a few photos – I know there will be lots more to share next week!
We have missed you Year 6 and look forward to hearing your news on Monday, after a well deserved weekend’s rest and relaxation.
Thank you to our superstar teachers Mr. Jason, Mrs. Yorka and all of our amazing parent volunteers for making this trip such a memorable and fun one for everyone. [Read more…]
There’s an exciting new children’s book on the island, written by one of our resident pastors, Mr. Bradley Handfield.
Entitled, ‘The Adventures of Auntie Fannie, Mattie and the Talking Potatoes’, it tells of Auntie Fannie’s trip to market, where she meets a small kitten (Mattie) and buys some very special potato seeds.
The book was introduced by the author at a special ceremony on June 2nd at the Gus Lightbourne building. Many of the island schools were represented and local dignitaries, including the Minister of Education, spoke to the children about the importance of reading and the magic we can find whenever we enter the world of our imagination. Every child was given a free copy of the book and local sponsors donated copies to the schools. This was followed by some of the children entertained us with their singing.
Two of our Year 6 students were the ambassadors for our school and they did us proud. When Provo Primary was announced, they joined the author on stage to accept copies donated to our school by the Right Honourable Rufus Ewing. Look out for the copies as they circulate around the school. A big thank you goes to Mrs. Betty for accompanying the students. A children’s writer herself, she enjoyed the experience and the celebration of the magic that stories bring to the lives of children.
What a fantastic Friday afternoon at Provo Primary School! After completing a two week project, the children of Osprey class were able to open the doors to the Yr. 2 Class Museum!
The children were set the task of turning their classroom into an interactive museum. But it couldn’t just have any old thing in it…it had to be something ‘interesting, unique or even surprising that is or was from any of the Turks and Caicos Islands.’
Over 19 exhibits later (all with information sheets or posters to accompany them) and we were set for our Grand Opening! Did you know that Grand Turk has a lighthouse? It hasn’t been lived in for some years and is now used for whale watching. Would you believe the sand piles in the Turks and Caicos were originally mistaken for igloos? Some of the other contributions included lemon grass, the turks head cactus, sea fans, driftwood, straw baskets and many more.
The Year 3s were really inspired by their recent visit to a beautiful garden. Having made close observational drawings of fruits and vegetables, they came back to school with sketches and patterns. They used these in a number of activities which, when put together, decorated the special ‘book bags’ that Mrs. Betty had made for them.
First, the children practised their computing skills using the tools in the Paint program. They used their designs to make their own ‘print blocks’ to create a print onto felt. Then, they sewed beads and sequences onto the printed felt, which were then sewed onto their book bags.
The Year 6 have arrived in the Dominican Republic for their week long eco-adventure, residential trip at Rancho Baiguate, Jarabacoa.
The trip links well with the topics the Year 6 have studied throughout the year and will be a wonderful opportunity for them to apply their Spanish learning to real-life situations.
Here is Mr. Jason’s first report of their adventures:
We are here! The Ranch is fantastic; terrific facilities! The kids are having a blast. A fun filled week awaits us with horse-back rides to the famous DR waterfalls, high and low ropes course, flower and coffee plantations! We completed our first ecological tour this evening and the kids were amazed by the natural beauty!
At Provo Primary, we feel that residential field trips integrate academic and social development by providing students with an opportunity to investigate and apply academic knowledge to the outside world, as well as develop their personal and social skills, through a broad range of activities away from their home environment.
Look out for further updates and photos throughout the week.
Last week all of us in Year 3 made a visit to one our class member’s amazing garden. What a lovely time we had. Mr Ryan gave us a very informative tour of their vegetable and fruit growing garden. We learned many new facts about different soils, the different parts of flowers, how flowers pollinate, what plants need to grow plus lots and lots of other amazing features of plants!
Afterwards we had a real treat. Miss Natalie invited us to use some of the fruits and vegetables to practise our cutting and slicing skills. We then made our own sandwiches…which we got to eat as we sat in the shade under the trees – yummy!
We also had time to use our observational sketching skills to carefully draw the beautiful patterns inside particular fruits and vegetables.
Unfortunately, the upcoming PTA Bingo Night has been postponed. Please don’t despair though, a new date will be announced in September.
This term in Year 1, we have been exploring and learning about the Turks and Caicos Islands. We’ve researched our coat of arms and flag, as well as the national colours and what those colours represent. Along this topic, we have also started to learn about the local wildlife and plant life found on Providenciales.
We were lucky to have Mrs. Bonnie come into our classroom for two sessions and with Mrs. Bonnie, we investigated sea turtles. We read a book called ‘One Tiny Turtle’ and used the book as a jumping off point to find out information facts about turtles. We now feel like experts! Did you know that leatherback turtles can grow to be as long as an adult human? Or that when turtles lay eggs, they don’t just lay a few eggs, they lay a lot of eggs?
In our last session together, we watched a short turtle video that showed how turtles glide in the water. We used the video to help us complete a turtle poem. We came up with a few lists of words to help describe turtles and also to describe what turtles like to do. Please have a look through and see the children in Year 1 having fun with poetry!
These parent guides will help you to see the progression of a child’s understanding of number and calculations from the Early Years through to Year 6. They demonstrate the teaching stages of each of the 4 operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. They also include key vocabulary to support each method.
Last year, when our current Year 5s were in Year 4, the class created a series of Maths videos to demonstrate the strategies and methods we use at school to solve addition, subtraction, multiplication and division calculations.
These were shared at our recent Maths Calculation Parents’ Workshop and will now be online and forever available as a reference for both parents and children. If you ever need a reminder, just check out our entertaining newscasts!
Above is our addition video. Click on “Read more” to see videos for subtraction, multiplication and division.