Year 5 Update Week 17
Tuesday 15th January – Year 5 Bake Sale….please bake some goodies for our bake sale to support our PTA (no nuts please!)
Thursday 24th January – Friendship Workshop for parents
Action in the PYP at BHS
It has been great celebrating the talents and achievements of our students through the ’Student Achievement’ section in the newsletter. We would like to do something similar with Student Action. Action in the PYP is when students are inspired through their learning and their experiences to make a difference to their lives or the community connected to real life issues and opportunities. We would like to celebrate our students taking action outside of school.
Please could you email examples to me, andy.thompson@bhs.edu.hk and I will share through our newsletter.
There are different types of Action. We would like to start with a focus on Participation. See below for a definition and examples
| Type of Action | Examples |
| Participation
Being actively involved in their learning and contributing as an individual or a group |
Getting involved with community projects
Making appropriate choices and taking responsibility to help people Taking on different roles e.g. being a leader, completing my chores, working in a group, looking after my pet Taking part in any decision making process Joining a new club |
Learning Centre – On days where the children visit the Learning Centre with their class, they will need to bring their book bags if they wish to borrow books. These days are as follows. The children also have access to our Learning Centre before school – so if they happen to forget their LC book on their specific day they can always pop up there and exchange it in the mornings after they unpack their school bag.
5D – Monday
5F – Tuesday
5C – Thursday
PE – please note that some PE lessons might have changed days. Can you please take a look at when your child’s PE days will be for this new UOI? Full PE kit must be worn on these days…thank you.
5D – Monday and Friday
5F – Wednesday and Thursday
5C – Wednesday and Friday
Big Business Begins!
We were delighted to have Heather Quinn in this week, who is a former BHS teacher and a regular supply teacher here at BHS. Heather spends a lot of her time doing charity work to raise money for the Immanuel Kindergarten and Primary School in Sudan. We have been supporting this charity by donating the funds raised from our Big Business unit for the last three years. These funds have been invaluable and our donations have made a significant improvement to the school. Money raised from the class of 2015- 2016 enabled the school to build a well so the children have access to clean water whilst at school. Our 2016 – 2017 classes raised enough money to complete the school hall, which gives the school extra teaching space and an area children can go to during break times if it is wet. Last year our money was used to upgrade the schools playground equipment. This year we are hoping to raise enough money to help install solar panels for the school so they can have enough electricity to power a computer, printer, photocopier and perhaps even a fan in the classrooms.
The students thoroughly enjoyed hearing about our efforts to support this charity and it was a terrific example to lead into our Big Business Unit next week.
Congratulations to Abby from 5D who played the piano so well at the beginning of this week’s assembly.
Unit of Inquiry
We explored, different migrations which have occurred over history. This provided students the opportunity to continue to develop their inquiry skills as well as practise their note taking. We worked both independently and collaboratively to gather and share our findings.
Maths
In maths this week we revisited our learning from before the holidays on fractions decimals and percentages by playing bingo, where the children had to convert either a fraction, decimal or percentage into another form. We learned how to find fractions of a quantity and considered when this would be used in the real world. We will continue to work on using fraction decimals and percentages in real life and will consider these in the context of money as a way of preparing the students for our upcoming Big Business Unit.
In strand maths we have continued our work on measuring and drawing angles using a protractor. Students have been encouraged to make estimates as a means of checking the validity of their answers. They have used these skills to create a picture which had to include specific angles. We will move onto data handling next week in preparation for the Big Business unit.
English
In writing this week students completed their migration stories which they wrote with a partner. Students were then given another story to mark independently and discuss with their partner who was marking the same piece. They then were asked to give specific feedback to the pair who wrote the piece. This gave students the opportunity to develop their proofreading skills, as well as analyse the piece of work against success criteria which they can apply to their own work.
In reading, we have been continuing to work on our inference skills using our background knowledge coupled with the information from the text to make inferences. This was done through the use of a migration story titled ‘Paper Son’.
Transdisiplinary Theme – Where We Are In Place and Time
Central Idea – Migration has an impact on people and society.
- the reasons why people migrate
- the challenges and opportunities of migration
- the impact of migration on people and communities
An inquiry into.
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- the relationship between common fractions and decimal fractions.
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- relationships between fractions, decimals, percentages.
- problems involving ratios and proportion.
An inquiry into…
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- how tools and procedures can be used to measure accurately
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- how tools and procedures can be used to solve measurement problems
- the connection between measurements and other units of maths (conversion)
Writing Focus – Narrative
Narratives are a popular genre for students as it provides the writer with an opportunity to share their imagination, creativity, skill and understanding of nearly all elements of writing. On occasion, we refer to a narrative as ‘creative writing’ or story writing.
The purpose of a narrative is simple, to tell the audience a story. It can be written to motivate, educate or most commonly entertain. Narratives can be both fact or fiction.
The challenge in writing a good narrative is to captivate the audience and keep them engaged as the story is told.
Reading Focus – Connecting and Inferring
Connecting – We want our learners to be actively engaged while they are reading. This means they are interacting with what they read, not just saying words on a page. One effective way we can do this is making connections to the text. There are three kinds of connections readers make before, during, or after reading:
1. text to self, which could sound like:
This reminds me of my own life…
I can relate to this character because…
If it was me, I would…
2. text to text, which could sound like:
This reminds me of another book I’ve read/movie I’ve watched…
This is different from the other book because…
This is the same as the other book because…
3. text to world, which could sound like:
This reminds me of _______ in history…
This reminds me of ________ going on in the world right now…
This is similar to _________ that’s happening in the news…
This is different to _______ that’s happening in the news…
Inferring – Observations occur when we can see something happening. In contrast, inferences are what we figure out based on an experience. Helping students understand when information is implied, or not directly stated, will improve their skill in drawing conclusions and making inferences. These skills will be needed for all sorts of school assignments, including reading, science and social studies. Inferential thinking is a complex skill that will develop over time and with experience.
5C – Aaron Wang
- Read the Weekly Update
- Mathletics – continue with the set tasks or feel free to try any others that you feel you want to practice.
- Prodigy – please continue on with your Prodigy online games.
- 5F – please continue to use Quizlet to help you learn your spelling words and meanings.
- 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 levelled 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.
- Ms Lynn – Please complete home learning assigned in Mandarin Matrix.
