News of the Moment

Mark your calendars!
The much anticipated dance showcase is just around the corner!  Please join us for an afternoon of amazing performances featuring ES, MS and HS students.  Be prepared to be wowed with broadway, jazz, lyrical, hip hop, reggae, k-pop, ballet, contemporary and more!

Mark your calendars!

The much anticipated dance showcase is just around the corner!  Please join us for an afternoon of amazing performances featuring ES, MS and HS students.  Be prepared to be wowed with broadway, jazz, lyrical, hip hop, reggae, k-pop, ballet, contemporary and more! Two of our 5KP students and my own daughter Hannah are involved in this performance, I am looking forward to encouraging our students to live their dreams.

Screen shot 2012-05-08 at 9.48.24 AM

Yearbooks are selling like hotcakes!
To avoid disappointment, we would like to stress that we only are selling 300 Yearbooks. Once this figure is reached, Yearbook sales will close.
If you did not receive a yearbook form, you are able to pay directly to the cashier so just give the cash to me, and I will make sure you get your yearbook.

Important Dates and Events
• Band and Orchestra concert – Friday, May 11th at 1:15 p.m.
• All Day Field trip to Jinshan Peasant Painting Village – Friday, May 18th
• Memoir publishing party – Tuesday, May 22nd at 8:15 a.m.
• Grade 5 Soccer Day – Tuesday, May 22nd
• China Alive all-day field trip – Thursday, May 31st
• Fifth Grade United Nations Day – Friday, June 1st at 10:30 a.m. (parents are welcome)
• Step Up Day – Friday, June 1st
• The Wonder Years: Puberty Week – June 4 to June 8
• Summer Sizzler – Thursday, June 7th
• Moving Up Day – Friday, June 8th
• Last Day of School – Tuesday, June 12th – School closes at 11:30 a.m.

We’ve started looking at Unit 12 in Math which focuses on rations and factorization. We will complete this unit and work on selected skills that the Middle School Math Department have said would benefit our students before they transition to sixth grade.

In Social Studies we are loving our Cultural Studies Unit. If you have a vpn, try and watch this video at home.

Our Memoirs Unit is going well in Writer’s Workshop, the kids are trying out many different ideas to stimulate their thinking for writing their own Memoir, which we will present to you on May 22nd, I hope to see you here.

yb poster

Ouch! Talk about a bad hair day!

Hello Wonderful Students of mine… I miss you more than you miss me, I promise!
I started writing on your blogs just now to give some encouragement on your projects and then I started freaking out that there were no projects! Some of you haven’t added to your draft page since October 21st? What’s Up???

Here are your lessons for Thursday and Friday with Mr. Bromley, I promise to do my best to be back next Monday, it has been a pretty awful week for me but I have a great small moment story to share with you about an MRI I had today… very spooky but a GREAT SEED MOMENT was created.

This is how I look right now. It really really really hurts to use the computer. I can’t read anything… My head is sore. My eyes burn, my sinuses are all messed up and I feel sick and achy will all the medicine I am on. So if I CAN TYPE THIS… you can get moving with some of the work below! Make me proud 5KP.

Photo on 2010-11-10 at 20.47

Thursday and Friday Period 1 and Period 2 (borrow laptops from another teacher for one of these periods or use a lab in the library if no laptops are available)

Writer’s and Reader’s Workshop
Spend one of these two period’s typing up your second personal narrative (depending on when laptops are available) Spend the other period working on your own personal reading. As you read your book over these two days, use sticky notes to ask questions about things you don’t understand or wonder about. Keep the notes in your novels, we will be discussing them next week. The notes might be lists of words you don’t know, examples of similes you like or things that don’t make sense, use the yellow sheet of reader’s notebook questions on the wall to guide your thinking as you read.

Math Class
You will be tested on Unit 4 on either Monday or Tuesday depending on how well I believe you have comprehended the skills in this unit. So, work on the next section of the journal, use your math buddy to help you and complete the accompanying skills links for each section. I think you should have one more study link to complete on Thursday night… perfect! Don’t waste your time, if I hear you have, the test will be Monday for sure. The unit is brief, use your time to revise your skills. Make up questions for each other to test your knowledge and remember, the test will be covering the content you have covered in the study links…

Social Studies
Again, you will need to either use another 5th grade classes laptops or use the library downstairs. IF these options aren’t available for both periods each day, then spend the remaining time looking through the box of cultural studies books on the sofa and take notes (as wonderful Claire did last time) in your reader’s notebook.

I’m impressed with an idea Mr. Neill had on his blog recently. Go to this post and complete exactly the same task Mr. Neill has asked his students to do. BUT ALSO go to one student in Mr. Neill’s class and comment on their post. So, have you got it? Can you follow instructions? You’ll have:

*Your own post
*A comment on a 5KP student’s post
*A comment on a 5DN student’s post
This should all be done on the CULTURAL STUDIES draft page which sadly, so far, is NOT LOOKING GOOD!

Now, go to Ms. Yick’s Cultural Studies example again, and continue working on your own draft page. Before you go onto the tasks below, you need to make sure you have completed at least:
*3 of the features of culture (two paragraphs minimum for each feature, eg, 2 for education, 2 for recreation and 2 for life as a kid)
*2 of the big idea questions (again, two paragraphs minimum for each feature)

When you have finished these tasks AND ONLY THEN, whether it be on Thursday or Friday, you can then do the following, as always, IN ORDER.
*Go to your blog, how ever many widgets you have… HALVE THEM! I am serious, students, some of you crashed my computer tonight, and I am not in the mood for that. Some of you have over 20 widgets, GET RID OF half of THEM or Mr. Power and I will enjoy getting rid of ALL OF THEM over the weekend.

*Go to the next four people in the class (look at the names on the cubbies, you know the routine) and go to their cultural studies draft blog page and leave a comment telling them how you think they are going. I expect everyone to have done 3 features of culture and 2 big idea questions by the end of Friday’s class.

Those two tasks are homework for the weekend if you don’t get them done Thursday and Friday.

Ingrid and Patricia, please clean out Ash’s cage on Friday at recess and make sure he has enough food and water for the weekend and please please please make sure he can’t get out!

Boys and Girls, I am counting on you to be well behaved and respectful to Mr. Bromley as he is doing me a big favour looking after you so well this week. I do miss you, and I look forward to rewarding you next week with some extra special treats and coffee bar passes. We have a great session with visiting author Margriet Ruurs coming up.

Ask Mr. B to start thinking on Thursday about who he will give Student of the Week to tomorrow as well as a few coffee passes to those of you that have gone out of your way to work hard and do your best!

Our Cultural Studies Snap Shots

Here are the first of our Cultural Studies snap shots with Sabrina, Safeen, Sam and Whitney. See their blogs to read more about their learning journeys.  Please leave comments on student’s blogs as you look at them to show how impressed you are with their efforts. Below are the rest of the class, you can find Misha, Nick, Nicole and Rosa by clicking here. Gen, Kevin, Matthew and Miranda are hiding here. Here are Daniel, Erin, Emily and Emma. Last but of course not least, you will find Albert, Ale, Bobby and Da Eun here.

Students you are able to copy and embed the video of yourself into your own blog and I expect this done by Friday November 20th. You click on the word embed at the bottom of your video and copy that code directly into your blog when you are writing in the back end under your html tab. However…do NOT JUST COPY IT, I want one paragraph with it telling me one thing you learned during the project, about yourself, your culture or even another person’s culture. I wonder who will be the first one to get this done…

Sabrina

http://portal.saschina.org/video/flv_player/Main.swf

Safeen

http://portal.saschina.org/video/flv_player/Main.swf

Sam

http://portal.saschina.org/video/flv_player/Main.swf

Whitney

http://portal.saschina.org/video/flv_player/Main.swf

Super Snap Shots of Culture

Here are four of our Cultural Studies snap shots with Misha, Nick, Nicole and Rosa. See their blogs to read more about their learning journeys. Please leave comments on student’s blogs as you look at them to show how impressed you are with their efforts.

Misha

http://portal.saschina.org/video/flv_player/Main.swf

Nick

http://portal.saschina.org/video/flv_player/Main.swf

Nicole

http://portal.saschina.org/video/flv_player/Main.swf

Rosa

http://portal.saschina.org/video/flv_player/Main.swf

Amazing Cultural Studies Snap Shots

Here are four of our Cultural Studies snap shots with Gen, Kevin, Matthew and Miranda. See their blogs to read more about their learning journeys. Please leave comments on student’s blogs as you look at them to show how impressed you are with their efforts.

Gen

http://portal.saschina.org/video/flv_player/Main.swf

Kevin

http://portal.saschina.org/video/flv_player/Main.swf

Matthew

http://portal.saschina.org/video/flv_player/Main.swf

Miranda

http://portal.saschina.org/video/flv_player/Main.swf

More Cultural Studies Snap Shots

Here are some more of our Cultural Studies snap shots with Daniel, Emily, Emma and Erin. See their blogs to read more about their learning journeys. Please leave comments on student’s blogs as you look at them to show how impressed you are with their efforts.

Daniel

http://portal.saschina.org/video/flv_player/Main.swf

Emily

http://portal.saschina.org/video/flv_player/Main.swf

Emma

http://portal.saschina.org/video/flv_player/Main.swf

Erin

http://portal.saschina.org/video/flv_player/Main.swf

Our cultural studies snap-shots

Here are four more of our Cultural Studies snap shots with Albert Shyong , Ale Turner , Bobby Chow and Da Eun Kim. See their blogs to read more about their learning journeys. Please leave comments on student’s blogs as you look at them to show how impressed you are with their efforts.

Albert

http://portal.saschina.org/video/flv_player/Main.swf

Ale

http://portal.saschina.org/video/flv_player/Main.swf

Bobby

http://portal.saschina.org/video/flv_player/Main.swf

Da Eun

http://portal.saschina.org/video/flv_player/Main.swf

Mid-October already

Well folks, the break has come and gone! I hope you had a pleasant vacation, I have enjoyed hearing about what you got up to from your children and am happy to see them all safe and sound back in class ready for the next couple of months of study before the Winter Break.

Some reminders about the rest of the month…

Treat Day is tomorrow, Thursday, October 15th. Please bring in 5 RMB if you want to purchase a delicious treat!  Popcorn will also be available for you to buy and all treats will be available free of nuts.

Please see the PTSA blog for information about Saturday’s Fall BBQ. I will be there and I would love to see you there too.

In Math we are working on geometry and the students seem to be grasping everything well so far. They have had a study link to complete for homework each night this week as well as some revision of this new topic. As we are about half way through this short unit already, I anticipate the end of unit test being before the end of next week, that is, around October 23rd.

In Writers Workshop, most of the students have submitted their personal narratives with the remaining students set to hand theirs in by Friday. We started looking at more writing ideas in class today and have also reviewed what makes a good writer’s notebook.

Reader’s Workshop will resume tomorrow morning with the students looking at ways to reflect upon their writing without merely summarizing what they have just read. The students all have a reading buddy within the classroom that they workshop ideas with and the aim is that they will gain greater understanding of their reading through learning various techniques to help them comprehend deeper meanings within the text.

The class have had some great discussions during our Social Studies Cultural unit and I am enjoying being a part of their journey. It would be great if you could take some time to talk to your child about the work we are doing in class. Today we discussed the differences between Chinese Culture and the culture that the students identify with the most. Of course this is difficult for some students who strongly identify with China as their own culture and then the class spent some time discussing issues such as the culture in Taiwan and Hong Kong and how ‘Chinese’ these places were…your students are very aware and involved in world politics but of course there was some confusion too.

http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=71649

Some of the questions we have been exploring in our cultural studies unit include:

How does culture shape the way we see the world, ourselves, and others?
How does my culture shape me?
Why is it important to understand culture?
How does one retain their cultural identity?

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The final assessment will be presented on their blog and I look forward to it being something they are proud of and can share with their family and friends around the world. This task will be completed in time for the parent/teacher conferences on November 5th and 6th.