Upper Primary 1 – Taking A Walk on the Wild Side

Welcome to the first Upper Primary 1 blog for the year! And what a fantastic start to the year it has been. The students have been on two field trips, learnt about each other, the natural world and have made new friends.

In September we were able to explore a bit of Gent city together on a scavenger hunt – learning more about the city and sharing the knowledge that they already had. In October, the students brought the new IPC unit into focus with a trip to the Antwerp Zoo – discovering animals they hadn’t seen before and marveling at those that they always wanted to see. Special highlights were the penguins, sharks, lions and small primates.

The students have carried this interest into their IPC unit ‘Existing, endangered, extinct’, as they delve deeper into studying biomes, animal classification, invertebrates and vertebrates and the 7 characteristics of living things.

In literacy they have been exploring poetry based on works from a book called “Poems from a green and blue planet”. They have been studying poetry about Snow Leopards, Elephants on the River Thames and the ocean and it’s vulnerability.  They have written poetry about animals out of place and practiced describing various fruits.

In Numeracy Year 5 have been honing their times table skills and looking at measurement, 2 decimal point places among other subtraction and addition practices. Year 6 have been exploring place value, algebra and multiplication.

In September we celebrated Chihiro’s birthday and unfortunately on the day before the holidays we have to say goodbye to Taeyoon who we will miss very much! We wish you and your family Taeyoon a safe and pleasant journey and many happy returns for your next step!

So, this is Ms Narissa – signing off for the Autumn break – enjoy the falling leaves, some pumpkin spice and some cozy time away from the elements. See you in November!

And here’s an update from Mr Francis.

Students in the bilingual program have started off well. They got used to the routine where they come to the Dutch classroom four times a week during morning break and lunch break, and they are all doing really well with communicating only in Dutch in the classroom! Apart from our inquiries into biomes, animal classifications, food webs and human impact (part of IPC), students have also set up good routines to study Dutch language skills in two different groups – thanks to ms. Adinda for her support in teaching reading and spelling! Finally, we are really glad to see that many pupils are active in Dutch outside school as well (clubs, reading, watching TV, etc.) Our class has also visited the public library recently, so everyone definitely has some books they can read at home. Dankjewel iedereen voor de fijne sfeer in de klas en fijne vakantie gewenst aan iedereen!!