Year 5 Update Week 10

Each week we will give you some top tips to help you get your child ready for our upcoming Year 5 Camp…..so watch this space!

• Dinner time!  For most of the children’s meals on camp, they will be sitting in their groups and be expected to serve themselves and help out with serving others.  This can be a skill they practice beforehand with you at home.  Of course also, please remind them to use polite questions to ask for what they want and need at the dinner table and of course to use manners.
• Please encourage your children to be independent. Getting into the habit of doing daily routines independently without prompting eg. showering, brushing teeth, selecting the appropriate clothing for the day ahead and organising themselves at bedtime.
• At camp, students will meet team leaders and be given instructions on what to bring back for the activity. It would be really helpful if you can support this at home by encouraging your child to pack up and take responsibility for their own belonging. We understand the time pressure parents are under and how it is often easier to do the jobs ourselves, but it would be really beneficial for your child to allow them to practise organising themselves.
• Keep working on putting sheets on beds, fixing sheets if they come off beds and putting duvets and pillows into their covers.

Look out for more tips next week on our Year 5 WUP!

Scholastic Book Club

Just wanted to let you all know that the first online Scholastic Book Club of this school year is now live!

If you would like to have a look at the available books then use this link…

http://world-schools.scholastic.co.uk/beacon-hill-1

The more books you buy, the more rewards we earn for BHS (free books!)

Order deadline: Friday 23rd November

Any books your parents order online will be sent to Hong Kong and delivered to your classroom (in time for the Christmas holidays, I hope!)

Happy browsing!

Mrs Fennelly, Ms Jeves and Mrs Dale

BHS English Team

MORE News from the English Team

Please visit the Gateway bhs.tg.esf.edu.hk to sign up for our reading information sessions next week.  The first on Tuesday 6th November at 6 pm is for parents who want ideas about how to read with their children to boost vocabulary, comprehension, develop critical thinking and importantly nurture their child’s love of reading.  The second, on Thursday 8th at 2 pm, is for helpers only and will give ideas of how to support children with their home reading.

We look forward to meeting you there next week.

Mrs Dale, Mrs Fennelly and Ms Jeves

BHS English Team

5C Assembly on Dance!……What an amazing job this morning!!  Congratulations to 5C for all their hard work.

A Plastic Ocean – this week in assembly the children were shown a trailer for A Plastic Ocean a documentary that is currently on Netflix.  If you are able to sit down with your Year 4-6 children to watch and discuss this together as a family….maybe you could come up with an action plan for your household to reduce your plastic usage to help save our planet.  Here’s a link to the trailer…

Big Business Crafts – This week Miss Fearn began her series of Big Business Craft sessions. These sessions are aimed to help the children come up with some interesting craft items that they could make and sell at our business market coming up in UOI 4.  This club runs during lunchtimes and volunteers are asked for throughout the week.  We are trying to give as many children as possible a chance to give their time come along in preparation for Big Business. This week we made scrap paper notebooks! Well done to those who volunteered this week!

Number Maths – Multiplication and Division

In Number Maths this week, our investigations into various multiplication and division strategies continued.  In 5F we looked at a brand new way to calculate short division.  It was really tricky and we are still trying to consolidate this!  Here’s what we did…….why don’t you try it out at home?  We do think it is important that the children are exposed to lots and lots of different ways to solve calculation and problems….and not only the formal written ways that maybe we were taught at school.

And here’s us trying our hand at it at school……

Strand Maths –  Measure

In Strand Maths we have been working on estimating and measuring using a range of measuring tools. This continued this week as some of us continued our practical measuring carousel with Mrs J and Miss Grace and we also headed outside into the playground to try our hand at choosing and using appropriate measuring tools.

We also played some dice games that helped us with our understanding of area.  The children could show you how…all you need is a 10×10 grid and 1/2 dice!

English (Writing) – In writing this week the students have continued exploring Explanation texts.  We worked hard learning and consolidating our note taking skills taking notes about various topics.  How Chocolate is Made and How Bees Make Honey were two that might have been explored by your child this week.  The children will then have the opportunity to write these up into full explanations in the following couple of weeks.

English (Reading) In reading the students have been continuing on with our synthesising and summarising comprehension strategy.  5F has loads of fun running in and out playing our visual summarising game about the water cycle.  Here’s what we came up within our groups….get your child to explain this game!

Technology with Mr. Lowe –  Continuing water filtration and transportation

This week students have continued to develop their understanding of how water is filtered and transported. They explored the idea of using a pump and considered which structures might support the transport of water. They then tried to combine their filtering systems, with their method of transportation. Throughout the process, the students have been encouraged to discuss their design ideas collaboratively, reflect on their success and challenges, and come up with practical solutions to solve and make improvements.

UOI : Some more photos of last week’s trip to Crossroads

The students had a great trip to Crossroads last week. They enjoyed learning, in a practical way, how access to clean drinking water varies between different countries. This has connected nicely with our work with Mr Lowe on designing filtering and transportation systems. In addition to this, we have been exploring the distribution of water across different countries and how countries use water from a fairness and equality perspective.

Transdisiplinary Theme  – Sharing the Planet

Central Idea – Peoples actions can impact our water resources.

• Read the Weekly Update
• Mathletics – continue with the set tasks or feel free to try any others that you feel you want to practice.
• 5F – please continue on with your Prodigy online games.
• Spelling –  The children are sent home their 10 personal words that they need to learn for the week. The will happen on a Monday for 5F, Wednesday for 5D and Friday for 5C. 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.

• Reading –  The children will be choosing leveled readers based on their own ability and are expected to read each night for at least 20mins at home with a parent.  The children need to record their reading in their Reading Journals and parents can you please sign your child’s journal each night? Journals need to be returned to school each morning to be checked and will come home each evening (except Friday).  Children may use Big Universe twice a week (only) as their choice of home reading
• Mandarin Home Learning – All children are encouraged to take a reading book home on the days when they have Mandarin lessons.

WELLNESS THOUGHT OF THE WEEK…