9 Feb 2018

Yr5 Curriculum Update – 09/02/18

Working together to achieve success for every child

 

 

Our  Transdisciplinary Unit of Inquiry: Where we are in place and time: “Humans continue to migrate for many reasons”

 

 

Dear Parents

What an unusual situation we find ourselves in!

Below you will find learning options for your child for the next week. We are aware that there will be a wide rage of home situations for our students, some will have access to technology, play equipment, the kitchen and adult help and others will not have this access or support. We are also aware some families have taken advantage of the closure to extend their Chinese New Year holiday. Considering these variables we have created a range of learning experiences your child can choose from which provide opportunity for reading, writing, maths hands on challenges, continuation of units of inquiry together with physical activity. Please support your child to take up the challenges and continue with their learning during this closure.

Please also reassure your child we will be continuing with book week activities (28 Feb and 1 March) and our Chinese New Year celebrations (2 March). As previously advise you can contact myself or your child’s teacher by email if you have specific questions.

We do hope you and your children stay well and that you can make the most of this break from formal schooling.

Suggested activities for home learning:

 

Online Learning – please visit the blendspace here for a range of online learning resources, including games, videos, and stories

 

Reading – have a look at Big Universe to see what you can find out about Migration, or another topic you are interested in. Check out TumbleBooks (username: kowloonjs, password: books) for some great stories and another place to search for information on migration.

 

Maths Fluency Activities  – Please go to your MyMaths page for some number activities to practise. If students haven’t already received their passwords, they will get an email from their teacher this week.

 

Practical Activities – Have a look at this google document for some great activities to try at home

 

Social Interactions – Our unit on Migration gives us the opportunity to interview people in our families and communities who have migrated at some point and collect some data first hand. An interview can be conducted face-to-face or via telephone/skype/facetime/email. We think it’s a really nice opportunity for students to interact with a family member they might not usually have the chance to speak to,  or to find out more about someone they think they already know. We have prepared a basic interview process and a set of sample questions to use below. Students should record the data in some way, and it might be helpful to have a partner to help them do this. They can then share that data with their class after the holidays.

Finally, after the break we will have some speakers from Christian Action to give classes first-hand stories of the experience of being refugees. Do some finding out about the work that Christian Action does to help some of the worlds most vulnerable people.

Please click this link for Chinese learning experiences, and check SPLAT for some music activities to try.

 

Our new Unit of Inquiry on Migration is well underway. We have tuned into the causes and effects of different types of migration through picture book stories such as Tea with Milk and Painted Words. Stories are a great way to introduce the sometimes difficult concepts and circumstances that this subject can involve and help students develop empathy through hearing about the experiences of children of a similar age to them.

We have learned that there are PUSH and PULL Factors for migration and that they can also be categorised simply by how positive or negative they might be for the individuals and communities involved.

Most importantly, perhaps, is that there are multiple perspectives involved and that it is important for us to understand how these are different.

We also conducted a migration provocation where students moved to a different year group at short notice. Their comments included insights like:

I learned that other people don’t like it when new people move in.

I think you asked us to migrate to show how it feels. I felt unhappy and I wasn’t sure what was going on but it made me understand the point of view of other people who migrate.

This was like the book where the girl’s dad was forced to leave and what a sad life it was without your dad.

I understand how it feels to move to another country or place.

This explains how people run away from a country and how it affects them

I thought the experience was good because we were treated like refugees and we got a chance to feel what it would be like.

 

Our unit on Multiplication and Division finished with some ‘rich’ problem solving tasks which have allowed students to transfer their understanding of the concepts to real life applications. Our Pumpkin Pie challenge was an extended problem that has proved challenging for all our students.

 

We are COLLECTING DATA as one of our skills in this unit and students have begun to design interview or survey questions to see what information they can collect about migration from people they know. The types of questions that we ask dictate the type of data we collect and we need to know how to get the data we want for a particular purpose. See the page above for the opportunity to be involved in our unit through being interviewed…

 

We have been focusing on VISUALISING as a reading comprehension strategy. Seeing the story unfold in our minds is a great way for us to understand the feelings and nuances of what we are reading. It is closely linked with the skill of INFERRING, or ‘reading between the lines’, which we are also beginning to cover.  The linked site INTO THE BOOK is a good resource for games and information about specific reading comprehension strategies (click ‘skip login’ to access without signing up).

 

Students have written an extended narrative story this week about a migration context. The teachers will use these to identify to focus on  over the next few weeks in terms of improving writing in the different 6 Traits of Writing.

These are

  • Ideas—the main message.
  • Organization—the internal structure of the piece.
  • Voice—the personal tone and flavor of the author’s message.
  • Word Choice—the vocabulary a writer chooses to convey meaning.
  • Sentence Fluency—the rhythm and flow of the language.
  • Conventions—the mechanical correctness.

 

Upcoming dates for your diary:

CNY half day 15 February

Christian Action Refugee In-School  Visits Tuesday 27 February

Marcus’ Dad came in to talk to 5D about his migration experiences

 

 

Stuart Reid – Author visit

 

 

Sorting and categorising different migration factors