15 Sep 2016

Year 6 Update WK 5

Wednesday 21st & 28th September – Year 6 Swimming lessons…6D to leave school as close to 8:30 as possible, 6H leave at 9:30 and 6F to leave at 10:30am

Wednesday 21st September – International Day of Peace

Monday 26th September to Friday 30th September – ISA testing for Year 6….please make sure all children are at school this week.

Tuesday 27th September – Parent Consultations 3-Way Conference…book via The Gateway soon

Thursday 29th September – Parent Consultations 3-Way Conference...book via The Gateway soon

Wednesday 5th October – Camp Information Evening 7pm…in the hall

Thursday 6th October – BHS staff training, school closed

Friday 7th October – BHS staff training, school closed

Saturday 8th October to Sunday 16th October – half-term holiday

Monday 17th October – ESF staff training, school closed

Monday 24th October – School photos

Tuesday 25th October – School photos

Secondary Transfer Arrangements

Secondary School Applications for our Year 6 Children

If you wish for your child(ren) to attend an ESF secondary school you will need to complete the secondary transfer application procedure on Gateway. This can only be accessed from Monday, 5th September until Friday, 16th September.

An instructional guide has been published to our website to help you with the process. It can be found the ‘Admissions’ tag in the ‘Year 7 Applications’ link.

All places for secondary school are determined by residential address and are allocated centrally, not by Beacon Hill School.

If you have any difficulties accessing Gateway then please email Mr. Pheasant
chad.pheasant@bhs.edu.hk

For more information please click below:
http://www.esf.edu.hk/node/5470

For zoning information please click below:
http://www.esf.edu.hk/esf-zones

Healthy Food

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Please keep reminding your children of the importance of healthy snacks. It would be great to see the children eating more fruit and vegetables, rather than tucking in to a pot of pringles in the morning. We work hard in school to promote a healthy lifestyle so your help would be much appreciated.

Click here for some ideas to make fruit more fun!

Hygiene at school

We have had a number of children off school recently, please help to keep Beacon Hill to stay a hygienic place and limit the amount of illness by reminding your children to sanitise and wash their hands regularly.

Stationery – Most of the children in Year 6 have shown that they are ready to learn by bringing all of the relevant stationery to school. However, some children are still missing some vital pieces of equipment. Here is a reminder of what to bring.

Black/blue ballpoint pens
HB pencils
Pencil sharpener
Eraser
Transparent 30cm ruler
Coloured pencils
Felt tip pens/coloured markers
highlighters (different colours)
Scissors
2 glue sticks
2 black/blue whiteboard markers and a cloth eraser
Calculator
Geometry set
Inexpensive headphones (on-ear or in-ear)

Please label all of the above items if possible. Any of the items can be bought at the school office, except the headphones. It really makes our lives easier if all of the children have the correct stationery at school.

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Please note that many of the children’s glue sticks are already needing to be replenished.

Printing – It is also important for the children to have access to a working printer at home. There will be times throughout the year when the children will need to print their home learning tasks at home so they need to be able to rely on their facilities at home…this is very good preparation for secondary school.

The golden book awards are as follows:

6F – Michelle Lee

6H – Jeffrey Chan

6D – Anupransh Sharma

Mandarin – Chloe Wong

Music – Hogan Wong

Swimming

We are continuing to swim on a Wednesday morning, there are only two sessions left, please encourage your children to make the effort to swim. Last week we had a lot of children making excuses not to attend, if your child is not well enough to swim then they should not be at school. Of course there will be some exceptions to this rule, but we do not want children regularly missing swimming to become a trend.

Here are a couple of pictures of potential future gold medallists.

Grow Your Mind…This week we were told all about “Grow Your Mind Day” and we cannot wait to try some new things, expand our minds and get inspired for our personal inquiries. There are a number of activities that are available to us, from drumming to baking. Stay tuned for pictures next week.

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Spelling – Our spelling tests took place on Thursday this week, just before the long weekend. Please help the children to bring them in to school each day ready to complete some of the investigations.

Home Reading and Reading Levels – we have continued on with the testing on all children on their reading levels. This assessment is quite lengthy and if the children’s comprehension was spot on they then need to be tested on the next level up….so this testing is taking us quite a while. At the moment the children should be choosing books that are appropriate for their last reading levels tested in Year 5 but relly most children should be independent borrowers and borrowing from the Learning Centre each morning between 8:30-9am. If your child is not a library level reader we would imagine that they will be moved up in the next few months. New levels from the the assessments that we are currently doing will be shared with the children and parents when they are completed.

Year 6 Unit of Inquiry 1

Transdisciplinary Theme : Sharing the Planet

Central Idea : Peoples response to conflict may impact the quality of human life.

Lines of Inquiry – We will inquire into…

causes of conflict
conflict resolution and management
consequences of resolutions

Concepts : causation, perspective, responsibility

Learner Profile : open-minded, communicator, caring

Attitudes : co-operation, tolerance, empathy

We have continued with our role plays this week and are enjoying editing our conflict scenarios on the iPads. We have been using iMovie and Explain Everything to help us to edit and polish our videos. In class we have been learning more about how to deal with conflict, as well as this we have been recording new conflict information and research in a shared Google Doc.

Strand Maths – Measurement

Central Idea – Conversion of units and measurements allows us to make sense of the world we live in.

We have continued with our investigations into measure and started to work on area and perimeter. We have been looking at how are and perimeter is used in the real world and using formulas to help us solve problems more quickly.

Number Maths – Place Value

Central Idea – The base 10 place value system extends infinitely in two directions.

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As with last week we have only had two number maths sessions, due to swimming. We have continued to inquire in to place value. Mr Hoskins’ class investigated how long it would actually take to count to a million – a lot longer than you would think. They also found out how many days a million seconds is, ask your children to see what they found out.

We are really enjoying writing our exposition texts in Year 6. We have planned and talked about many issues that we could use to create an interesting and informative discussion text. In 6H we have been looking into whether zoos are a prison or a sanctuary. What do you think? Here are some pictures of 6H in their paired writing session, getting stuck into the pros and cons of zoos.

homelearning

Spelling : Please keep up with the buddy spelling tests. A responsible adult should be testing their words at home 3 times per week ready for our buddy test on Friday. Any words that the children go incorrect during the buddy test on Friday get carried over to next week’s ‘Words I need to learn…’ All children please need to remember to bring back the Spelling Journals each day during the week as we will periodically complete some of the investigations at that back of the book during our Word and Sentence lessons at school.

Reading : Formal home reading and reading reflections are due to start soon...but each child should be reading for at least 20mins each night.

UOI – Collaborative Conflict Journal : each child has been put into a groups to collaborate on a Conflict Journal. This work is to be continued until the end of this UOI and will need to access their Google drive from home on a regular basis. This work does not need to be printed out.

Number Maths :

Miss Fearn – Mathletics
Ms Davis – Mathletics
Mr Hoskins – Mathletics
Mr Hubbard – Mathletics

Over the next four weeks we will only have two Number Maths sessions due to our swimming program. When swimming concludes and we return to our normal schedule we will start sending home Number Maths Homework.

Enjoy the long weekend – please enjoy the long weekend, go on nice walks, eat dinner together, take in the environment and have fun!

Thought of the Week : We is in Dream Country, the BFG said. “This is where all dreams is beginning.”