I hope you all had a relaxing holiday. My wife and I had a lovely week in Istanbul, Turkey. I now feel fully rested and I am energized and excited to push on in term 2!
We have certainly hit the ground running with an action packed week 10 in Grade 6 with so much going on. It was also wonderful to spend time with so many of you during the ‘3 Way Conferences’. It was excellent to catch up (or meet you for the first time in some cases), celebrate the wins so far and to work out ways in which we can work together to make the remaining time in Grade 6 an amazing experience for all students. Please look on this week’s Seesaw to see your child’s vision board that guided their conference preparation.
This Week
Literacy
It has been a busy week, as we have been working on two different literacy projects. The first was our personal narratives and to try and add the finishing editing touches to our stories. The second was beginning our new inquiry into non-fiction texts. We looked at the features of non-fiction texts. Then we moved on to begin to look at academic honesty and how we create citations to show where we have collected information from when researching. The students have been using a new tool to do their citations – Bib Guru – this will be a vital tool when we start our PYP Exhibition in a few weeks.
Mathematics
We began the week by reflecting on our mini stand alone fraction unit and all the skills that we have acquired so far. We then moved into looking at how to divide a whole number by a fraction and even extending ourselves to also look at how to divide a fraction by a whole number. After that we moved on to applying our skills in a series of multi-step worded fractions problems, which allowed the students the opportunity to apply some of their new knowledge in real life situations. We also spent some time analysing the US election as the results were coming through on Wednesday morning (Oman time). This was a ‘live’ opportunity to look at data, patterns and trends in a big moment in global politics etc.
The vision board that hopefully inspired a positive and reflective 3 Way Conference experience for all parties.
The rubric that helped the students reflect on their own ATL progress so far and to develop targets and strategies that may assist them moving forwards
Without being political or taking sides, watching the US Presidential results come in live (the time zones allowed for this perfectly) was a very engaging experience that allowed the children to react to live data, predictions, percentages, patterns and trends in a real life context
Next Week
Unit of Inquiry
- Exploring conflicts in our own lives
- Exploring conflicts in our community
- Exploring conflicts around the world
Literacy
- Understanding how to create accurate and useful notes
- The skill of paraphrasing
- Evaluating different kid friendly search engines
Maths
- Final fractions assessment
- Comparing fractions, decimals and percentages
- Beginning our new stand alone unit about chance and probability
Have a great weekend,
Matt