Happy Halloween

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The class had a great time today being dressed up and parading around the school. There was a lot of school spirit to be had and a big congratulations to the Pumas who are coming first in the Elementary House Awards for spirit so far. Thanks to the parents who came in and enjoyed watching the kids shouting and cheering their way around the corridors. It was a fun assembly in the middle school gym and I wish everyone good luck tonight with their trick or treating. Don’t forget to BRUSH YOUR TEETH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Apologies for hardly any photos of the students in the slide show on the right….It was Mimi’s first Halloween and I got a little carried away with the cuteness so please humor me. Have a great weekend, only 7 more of them til the winter break!

Writer’s Workshop Conference

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This is a small flip camera video we made with students Jackie and Byron today in our Writer’s Workshop session. We are doing this in preparation of Mr Power coming in tomorrow as he will be working with the students on a mini-project on this. The students are working in pairs to conference about the latest small-seed idea they have been working on.

Hooray, we have just uploaded our conferences to the portal and to the student’s blogs so now you can all hear what we have been up to. Check out student blogs to hear some of our interviews.

Book Fair is on next week

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If your child is a book-worm like mine, then you will be happy to know that you may be able to purchase some new books for them next week at our SAS Pudong Book Fair.
It is being held in what we refer to as the ‘Orange Grove Room’ (between the 5th grade cafeteria and the middle/high school library) and our class are going over as a group to look at and buy books between 9.00 and 9.30 on Tuesday the 4th.

You can also buy books yourself anytime during the week and they will still be on sale when you come in for conferences on Thursday and Friday.  I am sending home e mails today with your conference times listed so I look forward to seeing you next week.

Math Success

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Welcome to the second quarter of 5th grade!

Congratulations to 5KP on the results from the latest math test. The class earned a median score of 95% and 15 out of 18 students showed improvement (with one student maintaining his previous high score). Four of the students that showed improvement actually earned their first 100% score for the year.

In the classroom we will keep two charts for math; one of which I have had in previous years; the 100% chart and another which I believe is more relevant for most of the class and achievable for all students; an improvement chart. This will be based on the results of their last test only encouraging the student to try and better their previous score. Of course, students should not feel discouraged if they cannot better their score and it is already in the 90th percentile anyway, this could be due to a number of factors and you cannot improve on 100%! This chart is mainly for the students who are often earning in the 70%-90% range and just need a bit of encouragement.

Well done 5KP for doing so well in our geometry unit.

Good luck with our next unit. Remember that starting today, you are all on the 100% chart, you start with a ‘4’…it is up to you what you do from here but by revising over each lesson at home you have a better chance of success next time around.

Unit 4 is on Division and the skills covered in unit four include:

*divide decimal numbers by whole numbers with no remainders

*write and solve number sentences with variables for division number stories

*find the quotient and remainder of a whole number divided by a 1-digit whole number

* find the quotient and remainder of a whole number divided by a 2-digit whole number

*make magnitude estimates for quotients of whole and decimal numbers divided by whole numbers

*interpret the remainder in division number stories

*determine the value of a variable; use this value to complete a number sentence

*know place value to hundredths

Halloween Preparations

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Dear Parents and Students

Please note the following schedule for the morning of Oct. 31:

Students are invited to come to school in costume on Oct. 31 with a change of clothes if necessary for a successful day at school. You are welcome to attend if you wish however rest assured I will take plenty of photos.

We will “parade” to the MS Gym at 8:30 for a Halloween themed assembly.  Please note approximate parade times:

  • Pre-K 3 & 4 & K will start walking out the doors to the large ES playground at 8:30.  They will be our leaders this year to ensure a slow walk to the MS gym
  • 8:35 First grade will line up behind the kinder classes
  • 8:37 Second
  • 8:40 Third
  • 8:42 Fourth
  • 8:45 Fifth

9:00 ES Assembly

9:30 Back to classes

Reading Buddies Science Lesson

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Last Friday during reading buddies Mrs Speece asked us if we would like to come along and help 2JS with their science work. They are learning about air so we made some kites and the kids took them outside to see how well they would fly. It was a great collaborative effort where students learned about patience, teamwork and perseverence.

Calendar

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I have recently added the google calendar function to my blog. It appears to the right of this post and should be a useful tool for parents and students. Please keep an eye on events in the near future and add them to your diary or your own calendar.

I can’t believe it is nearly the end of the first quarter of your child’s fifth grade. As I have said earlier, the group have really gelled well. We have 9 boys and 9 girls and I really hope we can maintain the class for the whole school year. So often in the international school system changes occur that mean families have to move away suddenly and it is always difficult for those involved. When you have a class that get along as well as 5KP do, you really want to keep things just the way they are.

The students are encouraged to wear their house shirts tomorrow as it is the start of the A.P.A.C. (Asia Pacific Activities Conference) tournament in the morning and we will be taking a break from our IOWA schedule and going along to cheer for S.A.S.

Iowa Tests of Basic Skills

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Hi Parents and Students,

The students are testing for IOWA as I write this and they are all here and look to be feeling calm and confident. Good Luck 5KP.

 

STANDARDIZED TESTING INFORMATION FOR PARENTS

Students in grades 3 – 8 will be taking the Iowa Test of Basic Skills during the week of October 20th-24th. (Friday the 24th is also United Nations Day here at school and we will be using that day as a make-up day for any students who may have missed a day during the week.)

Shanghai American School provides many different sources of assessment throughout the year. One source of information is our program of standardized achievement testing. The test series we use, the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, is a norm-referenced test. This means that a student’s scores indicate how he/she compares with a representative sample of peers (the norm group). This gives us an idea of how our students’ academic achievement compares to students at public and private schools from the United States and other international schools.

The following is a list of subject areas students are evaluated in:

· Vocabulary

· Reading Comprehension

· Language: Spelling, Capitalization, Punctuation, Usage and Expression

· Mathematics: Math Concepts and Estimation, Math Problem Solving and Data Interpretation, Math Computation

Reading comprehension includes: understanding factual information; drawing conclusions; inferring feelings of characters; and determining topic, viewpoint, attitude, structure, and style.

Math Concepts and Estimation includes: numeration and operations; measurement; fractions, decimals, and percents; and equations and inequalities.

Math Problem Solving and Data Interpretation includes: single step addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division problems; multiple step problem solving strategies; reading amounts; comparing quantities; and interpreting relationships.

Important Suggestions and Reminders:

· Students should get a good night’s sleep and eat breakfast before coming to school. There will not be a great deal of homework given out during this week.

· It is important to remember that any individual’s test score is only a measure of how well he/she performed on a single assessment on a given day. The score may be different another day due to testing conditions and the physical and/or emotional state of the individual student.

· The IOWA is only one source of data the School uses to measure student achievement.