Thanks to all of you for meeting with me last week. It was a pleasure to put faces to the names of the people my students talk about all the time. I am happy that overall, we seem to share similar philosophies when it comes to teaching and raising children. I was pleased to hear that although some parents thought their child could apply themselves more to the homework they were given, no one said “my child needs a lot more homework.”Everyone agreed that their child’s happiness is what is most important and having them engaged, challenged and socially active were also high on the priority list; I agree.

This week we are spending our last week working on the unit ‘Space’ in class. The children have really enjoyed this and their knowledge of Space and questions about Space have been fascinating.  Next week our class will begin one of the big 5th grade projects for the year, our Global Natives Project which Mr Hossack is fine tuning as we speak. This project will take the class right through to the end of the second quarter and will involve them working hard to manage their time. There will be strict guidelines for research and presentations throughout the project and it is important they use their time well or they may fall behind.

In Math we are about to do our unit 4 test on Division. The students seem ok at dividing in their own style but some have had trouble using the partial quotients method. Overall I think they will do fine on this test if they revise over their work at home.

In Language Arts we are having a great time exploring ways to get the most out of our writing. We have been asking lots of questions about what makes a good story and we have been looking at a lot of examples of good writing. The class have been amazing at pondering ‘small seed ideas’ and we have been using the Ralph Fletcher book ‘A Writer’s Notebook‘ about ‘Unlocking the Writer Within You’.

A reminder  that this Thursday is treat day, send in 5 rmb for you child to buy a treat if you wish.

Gifts are starting to come in for the Giving Tree. Please see this post for details and your child should have written about who they are buying for in their diary also.