Dear Parents,Each week there are students in charge of a current event. I have sent home a reminder with these students but I will also list them here.
Monday - Simon
Tuesday - day 2, no current events
Wednesday - Pablo
Thursday - Norika
Friday - Sabrina
Here are some student friendly sites for Current Events.
Good News Daily
Science News for Kids
Time for Kids
This is the roller coaster of blogs as there are a lot of ups and downs to cover this week.
First off is my thanks to all the parents who offered me best wishes for my new position at International School Beijing. I am really pumped about this.
Next, we had to say goodbye to a classmate this week as she and her family are off to Korea. I have asked her to send pics of her new school and life in Korea. I will be sure to share these with the class.
Following this is the addition of two new students starting Monday. The class seems quite excited to welcome these two new students and I am really looking forward to meeting them. One is coming to us from Australia and the other from the USA. I know the rest of the class joins me in welcoming them to HKIS.
Thanks go out to Claire, Pablo and Trey for the great work they did as the class executive. The past 7-8 weeks have run quite smoothly due to their assistance. A job very well done.Congrats go to Jonas (General Lee), Sabrina (General Grant) and Stephen (telegraph operator) as we begin our look at the Civil War. The rest of the group will be assigned a side on Monday morning and as the week progresses there are even uniforms to make it seem more realistic.
Yes the Civil War study has begun. The first couple of weeks we will look at the causes of the war and throughout the study a focus on the people will be our primary interest. There are lots of
simulations for this study and I will endeavor to make as many as possible a regular part of our class. I am sure you are going to hear much about this at the dinner table these next 10 weeks. Just a reminder that all students need to have their Civil War portfolio journals back at school on Monday.Our writing unit will coincide with the Civil War unit and cover Report Writing, Journal Entries, Letters, Editorials & Persuasive Essays. Most of this will end up on the students website so keep a close eye there for some really neat writing.
Reading will also work hand in hand with the Civil War unit. Students will have several pieces of reading to do and then responses to these will be posted on their reading blogs. There are also some homework pieces for reading that will show up throughout the unit. Many students will also want to read some of the historical fiction pieces we have in the library that are about or involve the Civil War. This is a great way for students to become more familiar with this time in US history.
There are several students who have moved reading groups and as a result, their library day changes. I will inform them of this on Monday and it will start with the new cycle on Monday as well. Luckily there is no one on Monday who changes.We start our next unit in math on Monday and attached to the parent letter is the family letter for this unit. The unit continues with some previous work on Exponents and then moves on to negative numbers. While a lot more theoretical, I think students will have a great time with some of the neat activities in this unit. It starts off with a website look at the powers of 10. You can visit it here. We use debits and credits to look at positive and negative numbers.
This week we have a special speaker on Wednesday from Crossroads. It is someone that the students have heard before and the response was so great we brought him back again. I am sure he will get the same response as before.
For our Chapel this week we will watch the Video of Nic who was the disabled man who spoke to
the middle and high school earlier this year. The video is much more age appropriate for our group of students and has many great points of his life. Should be an eye opening video for the students to view.This letter seems longer than usual but there is so much happening I guess it is bound to be that way. As always, if you have any questions please feel free to contact me.
Regards,
Harold Daw
