Writer’s Workshop

The students have all been paired up with another student in the class who will be their writing buddy for the year. This will continue to be a very important relationship for the students as they will share work, conference, draft and edit writing together. Students will now choose from the small moment stories they have been generating  and turn that into their best piece of writing. I have been impressed with the writing that students have come up with and can’t wait for them to publish their writing on their blogs. Talk to your child about their writing and ask them questions about it. We have just focused on paragraphing and structure after originally looking at generating ideas.

Reader’s Workshop

We are continuing with Readers’ Workshop. Students have focused on choosing ‘just right’ books to improve their reading. Students have really been encouraged to think about their reading and write their thoughts about their reading. Students have started to write responses about their reading so ask your child to share some of their responses with you. Incorporated into our Reader’s Workshop has been our interactive read aloud time with the book Nicholas. The children are really enjoying this book and are using it to make text connections with other books they have read and other real-life experiences they have had. Here is some information about the book and why it is such a hit with the children.

Le petit Nicolas (Little Nicholas) was created by René Goscinny and illustrated by Jean-Jacques Sempé and it was published for the first time in 1959. Nicholas is an illustration of an ideal childhood and a nostalgic memory of the 1950s.

The humor of the books derives from their unique story-telling style: the adventures of Little Nicolas are told in the first person by Nicolas himself. On the one hand, the books are a parody of the story-telling habits of little children; for example, the author makes frequent use of stylistic features such as run-on sentences and employs an egocentric, naive point of view. On the other hand, adults are the targets of the books’ humor when the straightforward and uncomplicated worldview of the child narrator exposes the flaws of adult perception. The subversive element in the Petit Nicolas thus made it an early example of modern children’s literature that is centered around the experience of the child, rather than an adult interpretation of the world.

As I know your child really enjoys this book, here is a list of other books that amazon.com recommends they may also enjoy.

* The Caliph’s Vacation: Iznogoud 2
* The Wicked Wiles of Iznogoud: Iznogoud 1
* Iznogoud and the Day of Misrule: Iznogoud 3
* The Daltons in the Blizzard: Lucky Luke 15 (Lucky Luke Adventure)
* Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw
* Wiggens Learns His Manners at the Four Seasons Restaurant
* Sempe: Nothing is Simple
* Brave Story

Math

We are well under way on unit 2 focused on Estimation and Computation. The skills that will be assessed for unit are:

*write and solve open sentences for number stories
*round numbers to designated places
*make magnitude estimates
*find the product of multi-digit whole numbers and decimals
*know place value to billions
*find the sum and difference of multi-digit whole numbers and decimals
*identify the maximum, minimum, median, mode, and mean for a data set

We will be doing this test before the October Break.

Unit Study

The students recently finished our science unit, Mixtures & Solutions and enjoyed the experiments very much. Today we will start our new unit on Cultural Studies which promises to be relevant to each and every student and encourage lots of interesting conversation and thought so stay tuned.

Open House

Thank you to those of you who attended Open House. It was great to meet many of you face to face. If you didn’t attend Open House, don’t worry too much because I’m sure we will get to meet at the parent conferences coming up in November. It was a chance for parents to see where their child spends eight hours of their day and also to hear about the expectations of fifth grade and curriculum that will be covered over the year.

After School Activities

Your child may have started ASA’s (After School Activities) yesterday, these will continue over the next 6 weeks on either Monday, Tuesday or Thursday after school depending on the activity your child has chosen.

Soccer Day

The Grade 5 Soccer Day will be held on Thursday 24 September. Come out and enjoy a fun day here at SAS Pudong. Our main goal is to meet other fifth graders from Shanghai but most of all FUN! Please remember to pack a nutritious and filling lunch for your child as they will not be going to the cafeteria that day and also…NO cleats please.

House Shirts

Mr Thornbury will be selling house shirts starting this Wednesday Starting this Wednesday at lunch and continuing until Friday. He will be selling House shirts for returning students only who have worn out, lost or grown out of their existing House shirt. Could you please tell your child that they must bring 50rmb and he will be situated by the playground.

All new students will be getting their House shirts during the Pre-Spirit Walk Assembly next Wednesday at 1pm.