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Kowloon Junior School - ESF https://www.kjs.edu.hk/yr6-curriculum-update-30-08-19/ Export date: Thu Apr 25 21:27:38 2024 / +0000 GMT |
Yr6 Curriculum Update - 30/08/19Working together to achieve success for every childThe Year 6 Team   Welcome to the 1st edition of our Year 6 Curriculum Update! In each update, you will be able to see glimpses of the learning journey that our students have been involved in over the previous two weeks. Our Learning Journey is written by teachers and students. In the last two weeks, our students had a number of Opportunities to build Agency, Well-being and Respect across the whole Year group. Kindly read this update along with your child, so they can talk you through all the incredible things that have taken place so far! Would you like to know about our Year 6 teachers? Here is some information and fun facts about the Year 6 teachers! Mr. Anderson is 6A's teacher and he is from the United Kingdom. This is his 5th year teaching Year 6. Mr. Anderson is really passionate about air quality and equality. Mr Panico has been working in KJS for 2 years and is the teacher for 6P. He is from Adelaide, Australia. His hobbies include travelling, hiking, reading, motorcycling, and watching/playing Mrs Gultiano is 6E's teacher and this is her seventh year at KJS. Mrs Gultiano is from the United Kingdom. She has four kids, two of which are studying at KJS. She has been in HK for 16 years. Miss Taylor is 6T's teacher and she loves netball. Miss Taylor is from Hudderfield, in England. Mrs. Gupta is from India. She is 6G's teacher and this is also her seventh year at KJS. Her previous job was fashion designing and her daughter is currently in New York learning fashion designing too. Transdisciplinary Learning – It's all connected! What an awesome start! Our first two weeks of school were all about Well-being at KJS. The focus of teaching and learning was to develop positive relationships not only within the classrooms but also across the entire Year 6. Our first unit of inquiry is a school wide focus with all students exploring the central idea of; “Values and beliefs define individuals and communities.” Throughout this unit they will explore the concepts of perspective, responsibility and change. This term, our Year 6 students had various opportunities to be leaders in different areas, such as Library monitors, playground monitors, Student Council representatives, House captain and Vice House Captain etc. In order to further develop the concept of how to lead self and others, students explored the attributes of successful leaders. They analysed roles and responsibilities associated with different jobs and positions in year 6 and compared the attributes required to lead in these roles successfully. Year 6 also wrote a manifesto for the place of house captain, and those interested in receiving the job did their 1 minute pitch in front of their house teams to persuade them that they would be the best fit for the job. Some classes worked with talk partners from other classes, so they could develop relationships. Some classes did a book review, and then shared it with their buddy so that they could first get feedback, then edit it and changed it. Starting on Monday we will begin our next unit of inquiry under the theme How We Organise Ourselves. We will be inquiring into the central idea: The design and making process can be used to solve problems. We will be investigating how the design process works and why each stage is so important to being a successful designer. We will be exploring the concept of perspective and looking at how empathy and empathising with the user plays such an important part in design. We are very excited about this unit and can't wait to share our new skills and designs with you in the next curriculum update! Year 6 have had a fantastic start to their maths learning this term by finding out how their brains work during the learning of maths. They have experienced collaborating on open ended learning tasks to find out the importance of struggle, taking time and valuing mistakes in developing maths understanding. They have listened to Professor Jo Boaler of Stanford University telling them that there is no such thing as a 'maths person' and that everybody can be successful in maths by being motivated, having deep learning experiences and by believing in themselves. You can find out more about our approach to Maths Learning at KJS and how you can help at home by clicking on this link. Some classes have been learning about the Hailstone Sequence and solving a penny problem to warm up their brains after a long summer holiday. The Hailstone Sequence, also known as the Collatz Conjecture is an unsolved math problem that is a sequence of numbers that represents the patterns of hailstones. There are two rules for this: We start with a number and let us call it x. If x is an even number then divide it by 2 to get the next term. If x is an odd number, then 3x+1 to get the next term. You can learn about this conjecture here. We have tried many starting numbers and each time the sequence ends on 1. Even though this problem has been worked on for a long period of time, the conjecture has never been solved. We also have been getting many different patterns. Other classes have been working on a penny problem where a number when divided by 2, 3, 5, and 6 you get that number minus 1, but when divided by 7, there are no remainders left. Based on the information given above, Year 6 have found two numbers which satisfy these conditions, and also narrowed the pool of numbers to these, the number is a multiple of 70 and when added 21, results in a possible satisfaction. Those are only a few patterns that we found, can you find any more? To summarise Maths in Year 6, we are studying interesting patterns using equations and conditions. In Mandarin, some classes wrote about their summer holiday and got to know more about their new mandarin teachers. They were used 5 words that described them best, so the teachers could get a better idea of who they are, and what their personality resembled as. Some classes were watching mandarin educational videos so that their vocabulary would improve. In Music, classes have been having tempo exercises, this is when the music teacher will play a beat and we have to clap or do something following the beat. But if we clap or do something at the wrong time, you will be out of the game! These exercises help the students learned about how to stay on time with the beat and it helps them learn about tempo.Trivia question games were also played by our new music teachers to learn about what we know about all forms of music such as music techniques, instruments, music artists etc. We have also been listening to music patterns and trying to play our given instruments to the music piece shown on the board, and rotating instruments so that everyone gets to play the patterns with different instruments. This teaches the students learn when to start playing and when to play. In PE, students in Year 6 have recently participated in an event called “The Amazing Race'. Each house team had to complete a series of activities during the event, in order to move on to the next task, completing all 12 tasks. The purpose of this event was to get us started on knowing each other better and collaborating together as a group. Most teams only completed around 5-10 tasks out of the 12, it was truly a great experience for the students to get to know each other better! Also, some classes recently started a unit about movement,and about B.E.S.T. BEST stands for Body, Energy, Space, and Time Library Monitor Applications:  The Year 5's and 6's have been encouraged to apply for the role of either a Library Monitor or Co-captain, this year's teacher librarian, Ms. Lau, sent the applications out on the 16th of August. The students who have been chosen as successful applicants for the job will be informed on the 30th of August.Battle of the books: An exciting tournament against other ESF schools, battling on their knowledge of this year's 2019-2020 book list, this year's book list can be found on the official junior booklist online or on the school's library search ware, also known as Orbit. Students who haven't been given the chance and were on last year's waiting list were given the priority to apply earlier this week. Meetings will take place every Friday after lunch at the Library for the students to prepare for the big battle. There will be tryouts for a place at this year's official KJS BOB team, only those who have read all the books, memorized all the names of the books and their authors, will have a chance of getting into this year's team. Lunchtime: Students are also permitted to visit the library during lunch plays to do some reading, returning and borrowing of library books, as well as to relax with their friends and enjoy the use of games available for use at the library! However, they are only allowed to visit their library on their designated days, shown on the schedule below Library Lunchtime Schedule Monday- Years 2, 4, and 5 Tuesday-Years 1, 3, and 6 Wednesday- Years 2, 3, and 5 Thursday-Years 1, 4, and 6 Friday-Closed (Battle of the Books Meetings) How you can help at home? Please talk to the students about the different attributes that they will need in order to lead themselves and others. Reading some books at home about popular leaders and not so popular leaders can help children to analyse the different attributes that leaders need to be able to lead successfully. Leading at home… what would that look like? Please have a discussion with your child about how they can lead at home and what attributes they will need to be successful leaders. Action  ACTION is a key element of the Primary Years Programme. We are always looking to see how children take their learning and apply it independently. This can take many forms - from a discussion about the unit of inquiry at home initiated by your child, or even a request to bring a book or artifact in to school because it relates to the work we have been doing in school.Important dates   Monday 2 September ‘You Tell Us' Meetings – No school Friday 6 September PTA AGM and Mid Autumn Festival Evening Thursday 12 September CPD – No school Monday 30 September CPD – No school We Need Your Help!  As one of our sustainability goals for Year 2019/2020, we are going to replant and propagate our plants from the last year. We believe in partnering with parents to boost our students learning. As part of the process to develop the shared area, our students would like to set up a nursery to help them with the repotting process. We will need soil packs, planters, big clean yoghurt tubs, or any other big clean plastic containers. In case you have any of the above items at home, kindly send them to the school.OUR LEARNING JOURNEY      Kind regards, Year 6 Teachers and Students Editors and Photographers ( Claire So 6A, Anya Motiwala 6A, Natasha Lai 6P, Brandon Wong 6E, Shaila Aswani 6G, Scotter Wong 6A, Jolly Law 6G,Chesney Yim 6T, Praneel Melwani 6P) |
