9 Sep 2016

Year 6 Update WK 4

Wednesday 14, 21, 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

Thursday 15th September – Mid-Autumn Festival Market at school…please bring a small amount of money to spend at our market

Friday 16th September – Mid-Autumn Festival holiday…school closed

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

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

We have been talking to the children about healthy lifestyles and healthy choices. After looking at their snacks we have discussed alternative foods which may be a healthier option. Could you please find some time to discuss this with your child and agree on the types of snacks they are bringing to school.

It is recommended by the National Sleep Foundation that Year 6 children have between 9-11 hours sleep every night.

Research suggests that sleep helps learning and memory in two distinct ways. First, a sleep-deprived person can not focus attention optimally and therefore struggles to learn efficiently. Second, sleep itself has a role in the consolidation of memory, which is essential for learning new information.

We think it is important to teach the children about healthy sleep habits and to continue to emphasise the need for regular and consistent sleep schedules.

Top Tips from the National Sleep Foundation

Make your child’s bedroom conducive to sleep – dark, cool and quiet.

Keep TV and computers out of the bedroom.

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 – Cyrus Chen and Tammy Cheung

6H – Ginny Park

6D – Ronny Yeung

Music – Heather McOmie 6F

A big thank you to our assembly helper…this week it was Kristi Chau in 6F.

We have continued on with our work on I-Time this week. Looking into our own passions and interests, thinking about our own skills and talents and setting up our I-Time journals were our focusses this week. We are still continuing to find some infographics that represent our interests…..so we would love for you to continue searching for those at home so we can stick them in our journal and reflect on them. Our first Y6 ‘Grow Your Mind’ day is coming up here at BHS and we are still keen to have some parents offer a short workshop (3 times repeated) with a group of about 10 interested children. If you think you could offer your services on 23rd September from about 10:30-12:45pm please contact your class teacher or Mr Andy Thompson, our curriculum co-ordinator.

Spelling – We introduced our Spelling Journal homework in class this week and journals were sent home with the children on Monday…..they do need to remember 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

Through drama we have been looking at conflict through freeze frames and role-plays. Children have been focusing on emotions, empathy, non-verbal communication and facial gestures to highlight the many different types of conflict. We will working towards filming these role-plays over the next week or so and then learn how to do some video-editing with Mr Lowe in our Learning Technology sessions.

Here’s some photos of 6F making their films this week….

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Strand Maths – Measurement

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

The children have been using non-standard units to measure a variety of challenging objects and areas. Following this exploration they inquired into how they could convert their results into standard measurement. Here are some photos of the work 6F did at the end of last week! We will be moving on to some other measurement concepts over the next few weeks…..area and perimeter.

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Number Maths – Place Value

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

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Place Value has continued in our Number Maths lessons this week but due to swimming we only could schedule two sessions. We’ve consolidated expanded notation, place v. value, rounding and tried our hand at some place value and number problem solving. Explaining our strategies was an important point discussed in lessons this week.

This week in English we have continued to deconstruct Exposition texts and make notes about all the different features that make up a good example and we also have been continuing to deconstruct the structure. Planning was also a focus and we have thought about the differing ‘for’ and ‘against’ arguments for some different topics. aapencildance

We have also seen some great homework come in after your at home discussions about children and junk food. Hopefully we will then turn those notes into a fully blown Exposition…so thanks for your help on these.

Information Literacy – we were all visited by Ms Jeves who taught us how to formulate interesting and relevant questions that will help us in our learning, especially i-Time. We begun by working on the ‘Disadvantages’ Thinker’s Key and had to think of all the disadvantages of an umbrella and then some creative improvements to it…..some excellent thinking came out here!

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homelearning

Spelling : On Monday we begun our Spelling Journal homework. 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 – Quality of Life : plot your quality of life family discussion on the Graphic Organiser that was sent home….hand written homework this week please!

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.

Thought of the Week : Mistakes are proof that you are trying.

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