Grade 5 Class Blog

G5 BCPG Visitor Center letter to parents

A diverse week

It was so lovely this week welcoming parents in to discuss the learning progress of their children. We hope that you found these meetings as valuable as we did. Discussing learning goals with both parents and students, this week, has enabled us to direct the student’s learning forward, all working together.

The students have been so lucky this week, as when the teachers were talking to the parents, they had focused lessons with Ms Kirsten, where they completed the marshmallow challenge using collaboration and thinking skills, Mr Eric who helped them to practice their communication skills, sending messages digitally in different ways and with Ms Lindsay who gave the students the opportunity to practice their research skills. All great skills which will be needed when the students start work on their exhibition.

Our climate change unit is drawing to a close with the students really understanding the big ideas, helped by our guest speaker on Monday Ms Linn who talked with passion about how she had set up the Bangkok climate change protest.  At her first meeting only a few people arrived and then more and more so that over 300 hundred people arrived at the last protest showing the importance of commitment to a cause and perseverance. Hopefully inspiring grade 5 with her words. Next week we will be moving onto our ‘How the world works’ unit about Energy and Matter.

After some discussion, the teachers have all decided that the main focus for this half term across all lessons is to be reading for understanding. Which means more reading will be taking place in the classrooms with much discussion and answering of questions about this reading. We are also strongly encouraging the students to read more at home and to discuss their reading with their parents, friends or siblings. This will promote their learning throughout the curriculum. Questions they could be asking themselves or having others ask them are linked here.

Books for birthdays

Ms Lindsay and Ms Earth would like parents to donate books to the library instead of having cakes for a child’s birthday. The gift of reading will be passed on by this gift,many times over. Please try to support this initiative.

Persuasive texts are still the focus for Literacy- how to argue convincingly to put across a point of view both verbally and in a written format, this will continue into next week.

In Maths, we are coming to the end of our work on Time, and have been looking at real life problems using timetables and schedules for buses, trains etc to calculate the time it takes for particular journeys. We will soon be moving on to investigate data.

SYTYCD

Eight of our Grade 5 Girls delighted us with their dance moves on Wednesday Morning. So good were they that Dynamix won the primary competition for KIS.  Congratulations should go to Cali, Ninny, Kaede, Chloe, Mikli, Proud, Ishita and Kana.

Residential trip. This is sure to be a rewarding learning experience for all the children. Please return Confirmation letter   and Medical form as soon a possible. Any questions please feel free to contact us.

Influenza update

Upcoming Events

Loy Kratong  11th November. Thai clothes may be worn.

Parent Forum November 11th

KISPA  Meeting 12th November

G5 trip to Sunny Bang Chak 20th November

Residential permission slip to be returned by 4th December

School closed in remembrance HM King Bhumibol’s birthday 5th December

End of term 1 13th December

What a week!

The students have shown so many learner profile attributes this week whilst in preparation for our community Halloween event. They have had to collaborate with members of their teams deciding who would do which tasks and provide certain resources, also negotiating with members of other teams over space and materials.  They had to be caring and considerate to the younger members of the community, explaining their games and sometimes adjusting their rules to suit the individual skills of the players. Their games have shown that they are thinkers, solving the problems of how to create a challenging yet entertaining activity for a range of players. We will be reflecting next week on what the students have learnt from this whole process and how this can help them in their upcoming exhibition. A huge thank you to all the parents who decorated the classrooms and corridors ready for our Halloween event, it looked awesome!

In Maths this week, time and most importantly time management has been the key focus this will continue to the end of next week.

In Literacy, persuasive techniques both verbal in readiness for the Halloween event and also written as arguments have been the major area of study. Next week will see the students writing arguments based upon their unit of inquiry. They are now becoming more aware of the reasons for climate change and have started to think seriously about ways that they could help the situation and will be using their research to make their arguments.

Art competition– we are still looking for entries. Get your poster in now to win those all important house points!

Thank you to all the parents who attended the Residential meeting on Friday. This is sure to be a rewarding learning experience for all the children. Please return Confirmation letter   and Medical form as soon a possible.

We are really looking forward to welcoming  parents to the Audi box to share your child’s learning from 4th November.

Upcoming Events

Parent Teacher Conferences 4th-8th November

Loy Kratong  11th November. Thai clothes may be worn.

Parent Forum November 11th

Residential permission slip to be returned by 4th December

School closed in remembrance HM King Bhumibol’s birthday 5th December

End of term 1 13th December

Welcome back, its hard to believe that we are on the second half term already, so much happened last half term.

In the week before the break the students wrote persuasive letters in Literacy, worked on time problems in Maths and are beginning to have a greater understanding of what climate change is.

This week we are looking forward to learning about the scientific definitions of climate change, working on timetables and extending our knowledge of persuasive texts to include arguments.

Also very importantly we are all looking forward to our Halloween games day on Friday. All the students having been given the task to create an activity for the younger grade levels. It will be very interesting to see what they produce and how they interact when supervising these games. This will provide an extra opportunity to practice collaboration and presentation skills in readiness for exhibition later in the academic year.

From the 4th of November we are looking forward to sharing the students learning and progress with parents in the conferences. Please make sure that you have signed up to one of these sessions.

Want to win points for your house make sure you take part in the poster competition.

So much has happened this week!

We have had the provocation of our new unit on Climate Change. Mr Eric and Ms Lindsay joined the  grade 5 teachers to present 5 different activities to give the students the opportunity f to become more aware of the differing aspects of this very current and emotive topic. We will be investigating more in the coming weeks based upon the central idea of “People have a responsibility to address environmental change’ looking in depth at our lines of inquiry ‘ Causes and effects of environmental change, Responses to environmental change. We will be studying this  through the key concepts of Causation, Responsibility and perspective.

Also this week, many of the children reflected and shared their learning about their Migration unit,with each other, in a variety of ways including posters, videos, quizzes and slide show presentations. The students worked very hard on this and have reflected and discussed how they can improve their presentation skills in readiness for their exhibition later in the school year.

In Literacy we have now moved from diaries to persuasive writing and so will be working on the features of this style of writing for the next few weeks.

In Maths, we are continuing to focus on time and in particular how to measure and calculate time passing between one event and another.

Friday was a very exciting day!

First we listened to some melodious singing in the Thai assembly hosted again by our very own House Captains and Assembly Squad.

Then we had a very exciting visit from two performers who gave us an insight into their lives and the qualities needed to be successful in theatre.

The Handball tournament came next, what an exciting afternoon with all students doing their best to play well and support their houses.

Another way in which the students can gain housepoints is to enter the House Poster Competition based around the six transdisciplinary themes. Create a poster remembering to have a balanced design, creative use of collage, use realistic drawings and a range of hot or cool colours and make sure that the theme of the poster is clearly defined. We will be eagerly waiting to see them.

Next week we have a Primary school book fair.  from 16- 18th. A great opportunity to get holiday reading books.

Map’s test will continue as per the timetable below.

It has been such a busy week in Grade 5. We have been finishing our diary extracts and preparing our end of unit sharing of knowledge. The students have had some choice as to how they want to present this so have chosen to do so in a variety of ways including posters, films, animations, dioramas and slide show presentations. These will be shared throughout the grade in the coming week.

The refugee diary extracts which the students have been writing are now nearing completion. Some of these have been so moving they have even brought a tear to Mrs Carole’s eyes.  This short extract from Fang Fang’s diary will show you why.

When night fell, I waited until my dad and the stranger fell asleep, I wanted to be alone and in a quiet place for sometime, I looked up at the starry sky, it reminded me of how my mom used to cuddle me in my bedroom. The breeze swept on to my face, suddenly, I saw my mom with my sister waving at me. I ran to them crying with my arms opened for a hug, but a force pulled me back, my sister and mom were going further away from me when I suddenly woke up to see my dad’s face, I looked around for a sign of mom and sister, but they were nowhere to be seen, the little hope that was in me was drained out immediately. Sadness overcame me and I stood up, we were on land with nothing but wood on the floor. I knew we had arrived.  by Fang Fang

All diaries will hopefully be completed next week ready to share.

The students have a much clearer understanding of what exponents are now so we are ready to move onto a unit about time in Maths and will be investigating strategies to find elapsed time.

Next week we will be starting our new unit about Climate change based upon the UN’s global goal 13 Climate Action.

Map’s test will continue as per the timetable below.

Monday 16th was a very dotty day, from dots on our clothes to dots in our art pieces.  The book ‘The dot’ by Peter H. Reynolds which encourages its readers to exhibit the learner profile attributes of being caring, a risk-taker and open-minded to new experiences was the focus of the day and led to an activity  based around aboriginal symbolic dot paintings. Take a look at the slides above to see how a few of these turned out. The students also brought in bottle caps so that these could be recycled into reusable products such as cups and trays.

Our work on diary writing is continuing with the students now learning about the impact famous diaries have had  on the wider community.  Diaries by Anne Frank, Robert Falcon Scott and Samuel Pepys have helped their readers to understand the time periods they were writing in and the conditions in which they lived.

In Maths we will be undertaking a short unit on prime numbers and powers of numbers before skipping onto time.

We have been so lucky! First we had Mr Tri last week to talk about his life as a child refugee and this week we had both Mr Darin(Brendan’s dad) and Ms Koong talking about their own experiences. All of this first hand information really helps the students to understand the real lives of many refugees.

Upcoming Events

• G3-G5 Map Testing: September 30th-October 11th
• School Closed in remembrance of HM King Bhumibol 14th October
• School Closed October Break 21st -25th October

Week 9th-13th September

Grade 5 have had another busy week researching the reasons for migration in order to understand why people would leave their homes for an unknown and in some cases very uncertain future.  Mr Tri’s visit on, Wednesday, to share his experiences as a child refugee encouraged the students to think about the learning they had been doing in a real life context and to empathise with the situations they had been studying and brought about lots more questions to inquire into. We thank him for his time and bravery in sharing his story!

The film the students watched on Friday gave further insights into the lives of refugees and helped them to understand the realities of life in a new and unknown place. As can be seen our first two lines of inquiry ‘Migration Journeys’ and ‘Reasons for migration’ are well and truly being developed, shortly we will move onto our last line of inquiry ‘Impacts of migration’ and investigate not only the impact on the migrant but also the societies they enter into.

We are continuing our work on diary writing and encouraging the students to think from another’s perspective putting themselves  into another persons life to help them understand the choices which people make, linking this to our migration unit.

In Maths the focus has been place value and the four operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division using both practical strategies and learning written methods. Shortly we will be moving onto a unit on time.

We have again been discussing the great need to read consistently both inside and out of school. It would be really helpful if you could spare some time to talk to your children about what they are reading. If you are unsure of how to start here are a few questions.

• What is the main idea? What happened at the end of the story?
• What do you know about the main character that you were not told?
• What does this book remind you off?
• What books have you read which have a similar theme or message?
• What background knowledge do you have which relates to this text?
• Did you reread sections which were difficult?
• What message does the author want the reader to know?
• Why did the author write this piece?
• What background knowledge do you have which relates to this text?
• Did you reread sections which were difficult?
• What questions do you have about what you read?
• What else would you like to know?
• what do you think was the most important part?
• Would you read a similar book again? Why?

Upcoming Events

• Dot day. Please allow students to wear dotty clothes and bring in plastic bottle tops. September 16th 
• Professional Development Day (School Closed): September 19th

• September break (School Closed): September 20th

• G3-G5 Map Testing: September 30th-October 11th

This week

The students have been developing an understanding of the vocabulary surrounding our migration unit. Try asking them about ‘forced migration’, ‘rural-urban migration’, or the difference between an ‘emigrant’ and an ‘immigrant.’ As a connection to our work in Maths, they have also investigated the vast numbers which are associated with refugee camps around the world.

The skill of diary writing has been the focus in the student’s language learning , reading the diaries of famous people, identifying the features in these and then writing their own extracts. 

The house captains did a great job today, not only leading the assembly but also by directing students where to sit, in their houses, at lunch today. This is to promote a greater house feeling. The assembly squad led by Santi organised the proceedings very well and the film created by Mr Nic and Namo which encouraged all of the students to understand the dos and don’ts of how to play on the new playgrounds was very informative and wonderfully created.

Thank you to all the parents who attended our coffee morning on Friday 30th. For any parents who could not join us,  this is the link to the powerpoint we shared. Do not hesitate to ask your class teacher any questions which arise from this.

Upcoming Events

• Dot day. Please allow students to wear dotty clothes and bring in plastic bottle tops. September 16th 
• Professional Development Day (School Closed): September 19th

• September break (School Closed): September 20th

• G3-G5 Map Testing: September 30th-October 11th