Our final week of our Who We Are Unit of Inquiry, but the highlight was definitely seeing the final biographies in print! For many students this was the first time they had used Book Creator, and this was chosen as another tool to add to our “How We Express Ourselves” Unit of Inquiry which lasts throughout the year.
Learning in the PYP is a process of developing skills, and in Grade 5 our particular focus is on the Approaches To Learning Skills (ATLs): Thinking Skills; Research Skills; Communication Skills; Self-Management Skills; and Social Skills. These are skills that are taught to stay with our students throughout their lives. One of our greatest tools for learning is reflection. While students got very excited about the writing of these biographies, and are rightly very proud of what they achieved, our end of unit reflection showed that many of them had lost the main focus of what the biography should be about!
Our Central Idea for this unit was: “Communities can advocate for their own and others rights and responsibilities.” The biographies were to be used as a tool to explain which human right their activist had been an advocate for, and which actions they had taken to advocate for themselves and/or others. In the excitement of writing about their chosen activist, some of the students had lost focus on this, which is okay, as reflection is one of the most powerful tools we have for learning, and hopefully next time, they will remember to stay focused on the ‘why’ of what they are doing. Please ask your child to share their biography with you in the Book Creator App on their iPad, and congratulate them on what they have accomplished.
This week in maths, students have been using what they have learned so far about using place value systems when multiplying or diving by multiples of ten, and using exponents when writing equations, (we are learning that mathematicians are lazy and will always use a shortcut for writing mathematical terms when they can!) and they have been using exponents to denote powers of 10 with application to metric conversions. We have been looking at converting millimeters, centimeters and meters, and they can practise these skills in this weeks homework, using the photos they have taken in class to help them. This is due in on Sunday to be seen by us, then students can take it home to mark it by themselves to see how they did. Thanks as always for your support.
We wish you a great weekend. Team G5.
Students continue to do UNICEF Kids Power Ups to earn food packs for those children who are not as lucky as we are. They can also do these at home: UNICEF Kids Power Ups
