daw.com - November 24

Last week we had Leighanner Yuh come in to the grade and give a presentation on governments and history of North and South Korea.  In her presentation, Professor Yuh shared the history of Korea from Colonial independence to modern democracy. She spoke of the bumpy road to today’s democracy, and the different forms of governments that existed in Korea since the 1950s. She also spoke of the rights citizens have fought to gain, such as the right to free speech, right to vote, and right to assembly.

We hope the experience was beneficial to the students in developing their understanding of important concepts such as democracy, citizenship, needs, rights and leadership.  I am sure you will be hearing more about this as the weeks go on.

We will start our next reading and writing unit this coming week as soon as we complete the last one.  This is a unit on Poetry, its forms, verses and styles.  This is a very neat unit that allows students to really explore how they want to tell a story in verse form.  We will also look at some of the things that make up poetry.

Our next math unit is an introduction to algebra.  The parent letter is attached. We completed the first part of fractions today and I am hoping to have the assessment out to you just after Thanksgiving.  I have report cards to complete first then I will be able to get to the assessments.

I want to thank the parents/students that have already brought in their W10,000 for our classes contribution to the So-Good fund raising happening right now.  There is still time if others want to do this.  I want to have the money turned over to the organizers just after Thanksgiving so up to this coming Wednesday, students will still be able to participate.  I am hoping that everyone sees this as an opportunity to participate in making someone less fortunate happier.

This coming week is a short week with Thursday and Friday school holidays.  Students have swimming on Tuesday no Monday as I told them.  Sorry for the error.  I got mixed up on the school days for next week.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday everyone.

daw.com - November 10

First off, an important change in calendar dates.  Please note this down as it is not on any calendar. Our PYP Coordinator is leaving at Christmas break so we wanted to have our PYP Grade 5 Exhibition Parent meeting prior to her moving on.  The new date and time is as follows;

Grade 5 Exhibition Parent Meeting - December 19th 9:00-10:00 am - place to be determined.

This will work out well since the Holiday Band concert is immediately afterwards starting at 10:30 in the Lyso Theatre.  More on this as we get closer to the time.

Also a reminder that for PE all students will be swimming.  This means they need to bring swim suit, towel, goggles and swim cap on PE days.  Next week this is Thursday.  I have talked to everyone in the class how important I feel this is since the earth is covered 60% with water.  We also discussed some of the options of the future if they are good swimming.  Things like Kayaking, sailing, SCUBA, diving and synchronized swimming will all become available if they already know how to swim.  I also personally feel it is the best long term fitness sport since it is non-weight bearing, aerobics and strength training all rolled into one.

Our writing is coming along quite nicely.  We have now started to look at writing the first draft of our research report.  Lessons last week included more work on the outline, adding in a bibliography, presenting and citing pictures and URL’s.  This week we look at crafting the report in a more formal tone and also making sure that explanations are complete.  I expect that first drafts will be done by Friday.

Reading lessons continue to look at the three step process for summarizing complex nonfiction books; 1) finding main ideas, 2) combining them into a central big idea, 3) finding evidence to support the big idea.  After all that is done then students can write a summary.  We have done this as a class for the first three books in the Scientific Process using them as examples of what this should look like.  Students have also started to use their own books in this process.

On Monday students will bring home the chapter 3 math assessment.  While it was not a surprise to me, I am finding that students are having a great deal of difficulty in interpreting mathematical word problems.  We will continue to work through this in the next unit.  I have added in more math problems to our daily lessons as well in an attempt to strengthen this.  Chapter 4 is the multiplication and division of fractions.  It introduces two models; area model for multiplication and ribbon model for problem solving.  We have just started these and will continue to work with them throughout this unit. I have included the parent letter for this unit with this newsletter.

Next week students have the opportunity to work with Inspired Citizens, listen to a real author talk about the writing process and listen to a band concert with students from all over the Asia-Pacific region.  Should add a lot of interesting learning to their repertoire.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

daw.com - November 2

I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your support of Grade 5 chapel and Korea Days.  These are important events for the school and the class and without your support, they would not be possible.  I have to say that I was very proud of the class during the chapel which went off without a hitch.  We tried very hard to make it a student led event and upon reflection, we did succeed.  I have placed pics in a folder and you can find them here.  Please feel free to download all you want.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/18SE0HTyK8aMIrZMW4kqESgonA9lWyDuO?usp=sharing

We are well along in our research report unit.  This week we took the time to begin looking at outlining our writing and I was very impressed with what the students came up with.  It was more a brainstorming session since the topic of matter is so large, the students cannot possibly cover it all and they are not expected to.  I anticipate that we will complete our research on Monday or Tuesday of next week and then it is on the first draft of their actual report.  We will be using Google Docs to write this report.  It is the first writing they have done this year on the computer and I used this since I want to have lessons on adding in graphs, tables and diagrams.  All of these will need to be properly labeled and also cited.  We will also begin to look at putting our bibliography together from all the research we have done.  While important, it is an abbreviated version we use just to get students use to making sure they cite their sources.

Our reading unit continues to look at complex non-fiction.  We used a special article on the Mantis Shrimp this week to continue our look at main ideas and supporting evidence.  We also started to look at asking questions and giving our own thoughts about the reading as well.  There are articles on deep water lakes, air vents in the ocean floor, historical people and native Americans that will continue to stress these features of complex non-fiction.

We will complete our math unit this coming week with the final math assessment on Tuesday.  While the basic arithmetic does not seem to be a problem, when the math is turned into words, I have noticed that many students continue to struggle.  We will continue to work through this over the next few chapters of the math program.  We have also started to look at the math practices and what they should look like in class.  They are designed to give students a framework to work within as we go through our math studies.  We should complete these next week.  I will also be continuing to have students teach the concept learned on Seesaw each time we finish one.  I am really enjoying this as a way to see what they have really understood about the math concept.

Our UOI unit is still working on explaining the results of an experiment.  Students should be getting close to finishing this and then we will post the completed project on Seesaw.  We also started looking at the Scientific Process this week by reading the first of 6 books.  This will continue next week with the last two books and then integrate with reading as there are two graphic novels on the subject they will read.  This process is what they will use as they design their own experiment based on one that we have completed in class.

Next week we are fortunate to have a reading specialist in the school and I will be attending several reading labs, learning about reading workshop and also active read-a-louds.  This last one really interests me as I fully believe that students learning to read need to be reading out loud.  It is the only way that anyone can really tell if learning its happening and also greatly improves fluency in reading.  These are areas I am looking for in the reading in my class.  We are reading Manic Magee by Jerry Spinelli in class and looking deeply into how it was written and what affect this has on the reader.  Doing it all out loud has really been a good way to see what students are getting out of the book.

If you have any questions, please let me know.