26 Jan 2018

Year 5 Update Wk 19

Wednesday 31st January – Marie Marchand Parent Workshop (6-8pm)

Tuesday 6th February – PTA Bake Sale…please send in a small amount of cash to buy some treats to support our PTA.

Wednesday 7th February – Year 5&6 Minecraft Competition….more details from Mr. Lowe.

Monday 12th February – China Day activities and CNY Assembly for the school. Can the children please wear CNY clothing to school on this day?

Tuesday 13th February – Chinese New Year Performance (6-7.30 pm)

Thursday 15th February – last day of school before CNY break.

Monday 26th February – first day back to school after CNY break

Friday 2nd March – Student Led Conferences…..children will only come to school with you at their appointed time. Please sign up via The Gateway soon, more details to come out in the next few weeks.

Tuesday 13th March – Years 1&2 Sports Day

Friday 16th March – Year 5 Sharing Day and Year 5 Big Business Market to the school.

Big Business – Thank you to all who have paid $200 for the Big Business unit. If you have not yet done this can you please have the money in by Wednesday 31st January. We are encouraging children to take control of sourcing and buying the products they need throughout this unit. We would appreciate any support you can offer to the children with this, but we would like to ask that if you do buy things that you keep the receipts to allow the children to reimburse you from the budget they are working from. This will help them to gain a good understanding about managing a budget, costings and profit.

Parent Volunteers

The children are currently in the middle of creating businesses for their Market Day to help raise funds for the Immanuel Kindergarten in Sudan. As part of this unit the children will be presenting to a panel of experts on Tuesday 6th and Wednesday 7th March. If you have any experience in selling, or are interested in seeing what the children have created and are able to give up some time on either of the above dates, please email Mr. Pheasant – chad.pheasant@bhs.edu.hk stating the dates and preferred times of your availability.

Book Drive

Hi, my name is Muchan, a Student Councillor for 5C. I am organising a Book Drive to help spread my love of reading. The Sony Corporation will collect books to create mobile libraries in South Africa for schools that do not have enough books. If you have books that are:

Written in English
Suitable for 6-12 year olds
Have no yellow or brown pages (due to aging)
Have no missing pages
Have no scribbles inside
Not Textbooks
Not magazines
Not encyclopedias

Please send them to school. There will be a collection box in the school foyer. Any books you can donate will be spread our love of reading.

Portfolios – please can the children remember to bring back their student portfolios that were sent home recently. They will need to add to them throughout the remainder of the year.

Student Led Conferences – our SLCs are coming up on Friday 2nd March, 2018. Just a reminder that the children do not attend school on this day during the normal school hours but rather they come in with you at the appointed time for a 40-50 minute session where they will share their learning at various stations set up in the classroom. You will need to sign up for a session on The Gateway in the next few weeks so there will be more info to follow.

Marie Marchand Workshop

We are delighted to welcome back Marie Marchand to present at Beacon Hill School on January 31st from 6-8pm. This year’s focus will be positive behaviour management strategies for parents – Discipline without Shouting. Please see the details and sign up via the gateway https://tg.esf.edu.hk The cost will be $50 per person.

Marie is an excellent speaker- both entertaining and informative and we thoroughly recommend any parents from year 1-6 to come and enjoy her presentation.

Student Council Fruity Friday

The last term we surveyed our students to find out how we can make BHS even better. A lot of students wanted Fruity Friday back. This is an opportunity for you to help your child have delicious and healthy snacks at least once a week. Can you please support and encourage your child to bring in a fruity snack each Friday. We do not want processed snacks with fruit in them as they contain preservatives and man-made sugar. Thank you in advance for your support. Fruity Friday starts on Friday 19th January, 2018.

BHS 50th Anniversary Art Auction

Our very first Art Auction will take place on the day of our Student Led Conferences! You will be able to bid on some amazing art pieces produced by each class and these will be on display in the hall for the day. More info to follow soon, so watch this space! (Or the newsletter).

The students started the week with a burst of energy taking part in the Y5 morning fitness sessions in the playground. These pilot sessions are being run with the Y5’s on Monday and Friday mornings before school at 8.30am. The sessions aim to get students moving, as research suggests that exercise develops alertness, attention and motivation, which are key components of good learning!

In addition, some children were fortunate enough to work alongside Paul Melson to create a vertical garden in the playground. The children were involved in planting and placing piping around the plants.

In music, children started to explore what a jingle is and considered when, where and why they are used. The children worked together to complete a short piece of music and enjoyed sharing their composition with the class.

UOI

Central Idea : There are many factors at work within a marketplace.

An inquiry into…

functioning effectively as a team
components in a marketplace
research and marketing

Concepts : function, causation, reflection

Related Concepts : business systems, costings

Learner Profile : courageous, communicator

Attitudes : cooperation, confidence

In UOI this week, the students have continued to build their cooperation skills. They have spent a great deal of time working together to develop a theme for their stalls and have inquired into potential products to sell. The students generated survey questions and conducted their survey in the playground over break and lunch times. The purpose of the survey was to help them establish a better idea of what consumers (the students) would be mostly likely to buy to help inform their final decisions about the products to sell.

Mr Thompson came in and taught the students how to effectively use spreadsheets so that their business groups can keep tight control of their budgets.

Number Maths

Central Idea – Fractions, decimals and percentages are ways of representing whole-part relationships.

An inquiry into…

the relationship between decimal fractions and common fractions
the relationships between fractions decimals and percentages
problems involving ratios and proportion

In Maths the children have continued to develop their understanding and confidence when working with fractions, decimals and percentages. A focus this week has been placed on converting between fractions, decimals and percentages. They have considered equivalences and identifying which fraction or decimal is larger.

Strand Maths

Central Idea – Data can be presented effectively for valid communication

An inquiry into….

how data can be collected
using different scales on graphs and charts
how data can be interpreted.

In strand Maths we have been using the information we gathered from our Big Business surveys to graph our findings and analyse our results. This has then been used in our group discussions and will be used to help groups finalise their decision on their products.

Writing

Students have been learning to write play scripts by looking carefully at structure. Ms Heather, the drama teacher, came in this week to work with students on their drama skills which they will need to use in their own TV commercials. The children worked on developing their confidence as well as considering the features of a good TV commercial. Next week we will begin to think about our own scripts.

Reading Comprehension Strategy – Questioning

The students have been developing their questioning skills and considering the best way to structure them for their Big Business surveys.

In addition, they are developing an awareness of the questions they pose whilst reading to help them to make meaning of the text.

Well done to all our Golden Book winners this week in Year 5…

5C Gingerlily Mohammed

5D Carlos Lam

5F Takashi Cheung

5F Sophie Huang – Music

5F Karl Loynd – Mandarin

5D Rachel Shin – Mandarin

homelearning

Read the Weekly Update
Mathletics – continue with the set tasks
Reading – keep up with their reading every night. Don’t forget to get Reading Journals signed every night and children should be reading every night.
Spelling – each Monday the children are sent home their 10 personal words that they need to learn for the week. Please, can a parent (or responsible adult) support the children by...testing them (written or oral), getting them to put their words into interesting sentences (written or oral), discussing the meanings of the words, thinking about synonyms and antonyms of that word, discussing words with a similar meaning etc.
UOI – Over this coming week, children should have a good idea of the product they are going to be making. In their teams they should have organised any items they need to buy to make a prototype and should have discussed who is going to buy it. We would also like the children to be on the lookout for advertising campaigns and commercials and would encourage them to discuss this with you.