Upper-Primary - Ms Kelsey

What an exciting week!

“We liked burying the time capsule!”

“It was nice being interviewed.”

“It was fun to meet important people.”

“It was lovely getting chocolate!”

“It was really nice to be there!”

Monday the 5th of October is a day we will remember for a very long time. It was a very important day. Upper Primary pupils were invited to a ceremony, the laying of the first stone, at the building site of what will become the new ISG School. Pupils were very excited. They listened to different important members of the ISG community giving a speech, they buried a time capsule in the ground, they were interviewed by journalists and they talked to guests at the ceremony. 50 years from now the time capsule will be dug up and we will again be able to look at all the different drawings of ‘my dream school’. We have done lots of counting to see how old we will be by then…

Both Emma’s father Willy and Zara’s father Marius have visited Upper Primary in connection to our IPC unit ‘Going global’. We have learnt a lot about both transport, export and import during these visits. We are so happy that parents want to contribute with their skills and knowledge during our IPC units. We have also watched parts of a documentary about transport. Upper Primary pupils now know more about land transport and sea transport. They know more about the costs involved in the process of transporting, that customers have to pay for this service. They know that trucks and containers are filled with commodities in every direction they go and that countries often import some things to be able to export other. Without transport world trade would stop.

Pupils are also starting to look more closely at their own responsibilities when buying things. Who made the item? Were they payed enough for their hard work? How was it transported to the shop where we bought it? Did the transport affect the environment? Lots of important concerns were lifted during this discussion. ”To be a global citizen is to become a part of something bigger than ourselves.” (Quote from The Big Idea, Going Global)

During literacy lessons pupils learn more about word classes and sentence structures. They read different text types and work with follow-up to increase their understanding and add more words to their vocabulary. Upper primary pupils now start to learn how to independently write books summaries. Middle and Upper Primary pupils visited the Public Library at Zuid on Thursday afternoon last week. They borrowed lots of different books for pupils in Pre-primary and Primary.

In numeracy pupils are still reviewing skills from the four different operations, to learn what strategies work best when solving different types of problems. Upper Primary pupils are also learning more about learning itself. Pupils become more aware of the fact that there is knowledge we can learn by heart and easily check if we know it, that to learn more practical skills, like using different types of strategies in numeracy or playing an instrument, we often need a lot of practice before we master them, and that understanding something is a process, an always developing and deepening understanding of ideas and concepts.

It is exciting to learn!

Trading, trading, trading

Upper Primary pupils play trading games every now and then these days…

Upper Primary pupils are Going Global. During our Entry Point pupils played a trading game. They all represented different countries and they had a secret list with commodities that they could export and import. Without showing their trading cards, they traded cards with each other and tried to get 6 matching cards. When they did, they could go to Miss Jenny’s ‘bank’ and score 5 points. A tally on the white board kept the results visible to all pupils.

Little did the pupils know that Miss Jenny had prepared very different lists of commodities to export and import. When the pupils evaluated the game their comments were:

Now pupils play trading games every now and then! Our classroom books are sometimes very expensive!

During our Knowledge Harvest, pupils looked at what it means to be a good member of a community. They made a mind map and came up with many ideas on how to be a good member of our own community, the ISG community, and of the world community. They had great ideas. This led us in to thinking about the role we play as global citizens, that what we do affect others in other parts of the world.

Some of the Geography tasks have focused on how our host country Belgium is connected with other countries. By looking at labels, wrappings and manuals, pupils have worked with maps and atlases and they have located links to many countries in other parts of the world. The map looked a bit like a spider web in the end. Pupils have also looked at the top exports and imports in their different countries.

Upper Primary pupils discussed ‘needs’ and ‘wants’ one day, and then participated in a role play where their respective country produced what they needed to cover the needs for the citizens in their country. Upper Primary pupils thought that this is how it should be, that this was ‘the ideal world’, ‘the best of worlds’, ‘the perfect world’…

Then the rules for the game changed, and some pupils got more cards than they needed, and others didn’t have enough to cover the basic needs for their country. They found this very unfair… Hmm, far and unfair trading… Lots of interesting learning is still ahead of us!

Miss Jenny and Diba had their birthdays in August and celebrated this together in class. (Parents and pupils had prepared a birthday party, with beautiful cards, yummy cupcakes and a wonderful gift for Miss Jenny! Thank you, everybody!) Kaaru’s birthday is on Saturday and we ended the week with a party – again! We like birthdays!

Of course Upper Primary pupils work with lots of different things during these weeks as well. Don’t forget to ask them about their learning. There are so many different things going on in the classroom every day! They have had their first Lego Challenge, they have also read to Upper Pre-primary pupils and they are making a drawing of their dream school.

Upper Primary pupils continue to take good care of their brains, to learn as much as possible, by thinking about healthy snacks and healthy habits. We are active, we play and we dance and from now on we will eat a healthy snack every day! Yey!

And we are back!

Upper Primary pupils are back at ISG and they are ready to learn a lot!

We are all very happy to see each other again! We have welcomed two new pupils in our class, Mieke and Zara. We look forward to a fantastic year together!

We talk about, and miss, pupils that were in Upper Primary last year and we hope that Vedant, Nothrathcha, Besma, Rotem, Bobette, Mai and Roos are all doing fine!

Since school started again last week Tuesday, Upper Primary pupils have already done a lot of different things. Upper Primary pupils have talked about learning and about things that keep their brains healthy and happy – sleep, healthy food, water and exercise. They have discussed feelings that help them learn and feelings that might make it more difficult to learn.

  • I learn well when I feel happy, smart, interested and normal.
  • I learn badly when I feel sad, afraid, tired or hungry.

Our goal is to create a classroom atmosphere that help us learn a lot this year!

In IPC Upper Primary have started looking at the first Personal Goal, Respect. Both dictionaries and a text about a lost wallet helped pupils understand, discuss and agree on some important things to remember about Respect.

In Literacy pupils have read and discussed different types of poems. Words like haiku, syllables, rhyming and repetition have been used. Pupils have also started reviewing grammar, focusing on word classes like nouns, adjectives and verbs.

Upper Primary pupils have also loved listening to and discussing the book “The miraculous journey of Edward Tulane”. It was an amazing story! After reading the book, the class wrote a summary together.

In Numeracy pupils have worked with numbers and number value, addition, subtraction and multiplication. The new Abacus textbooks have just arrived and we are getting to know new routines for the weekly assignments in year 4 and 5.

On Tuesday afternoon Upper Primary pupils had their first Dutch class with Miss Marjolein. It was difficult to stop the lesson in time for home time, pupils were so excited learning!

On Friday morning all Primary pupils went to the Citadel Park for team building activities, play time and lots of fun! The sun was shining and we all had a great time together!

On Friday afternoon it was time for the first School Assembly and Upper Primary pupils ended the week with their first PE lesson with Miss Naomi.

What a great start of the school year! Upper Primary pupils are already looking forward to next week!

Have a nice weekend!

 

That's resilience

Upper Primary pupils have been working hard with their History task, where they have been researching about trading in the past. They have been reading different non-fiction books and taking notes. They now know more about trading in Ancient Sumer, Ancient Egypt and also about how both the Mayans and the Vikings traded. They then connected their new knowledge to a literacy task, where they wrote an advert for something that was used for trading in the past.

In Society, pupils have also looked more at global brands and their logos, they have also designed their own logo for a new company. They knew many logos from different categories.

Since a part of our IPC unit “Going global” is to know about the role we play as consumers we have also looked at economically wealthy countries and economically developing countries. For our International task we have talked about trade, and how it is not always fair when you look at it from a global perspective. We have learnt more about Fair Trade by looking at a video where cocoa beans were harvested by farmers in the Dominican Republic and then exported to other parts of the world. The farmers explained how their lives had changed when they started selling their products through a fair trade organisation. Pupils have also read about other fair trade products and how fair trade helps people in developing countries to get access to clean water, school materials etc.

Upper Primary pupils are also finishing off different Art tasks. They have been working with water colours, trying to shade using water. It is trickier than it sounds. They are also busy preparing all different kinds of things for their special surprise at next week's Halloween party! A lot of co-operation in our classroom!!

In Numeracy pupils have been working more with fractions, but also with halving and doubling 3-digit numbers, multiplying and dividing 3-digit numbers and measuring time. Some things are easier to learn than others. Fractions are still challenging for many pupils in Upper Primary.  Luckily Upper Primary pupils have been able to connect this to the IPC Personal Goal of the month; “Resilience”.

To be resilient is to bounce back up, to try again, to not give up and to try a bit more if something is challenging. We have also talked about the word “yet”.

“I don’t know this… yet!”

“I can’t to this… yet!”

Upper Primary pupils talked about the word “yet” and explained the word like this:

“Not now, but soon, in the future, I will be able to do this or I will know this!”

That is resilience!

Going Global !

Upper Primary pupils play trading games every now and then these days…

Upper Primary pupils are Going Global. During our Entry Point pupils played a trading game. They all represented different countries and they had a secret list with commodities that they could export and import. Without showing their trading cards, they traded cards with each other and tried to get 6 matching cards. When they did, they could go to Miss Jenny’s ‘bank’ and score 5 points. A tally on the white board kept the results visible to all pupils.
Little did the pupils know that Miss Jenny had prepared very different lists of commodities to export and import. When the pupils evaluated the game their comments were:
Now pupils play trading games every now and then! Our classroom books are sometimes very expensive!
During our Knowledge Harvest, pupils looked at what it means to be a good member of a community. They made a mind map and came up with many ideas on how to be a good member of our own community, the ISG community, and of the world community. They had great ideas. This led us in to thinking about the role we play as global citizens, that what we do affect others in other parts of the world.

Some of the Geography tasks have focused on how our host country Belgium is connected with other countries. By looking at labels, wrappings and manuals, pupils have worked with maps and atlases and they have located links to many countries in other parts of the world. The map looked a bit like a spider web in the end. Pupils have also looked at the top exports and imports in their different countries.
Upper Primary pupils discussed ‘needs’ and ‘wants’ one day, and then participated in a role play where their respective country produced what they needed to cover the needs for the citizens in their country. Upper Primary pupils thought that this is how it should be, that this was ‘the ideal world’, ‘the best of worlds’, ‘the perfect world’…
Then the rules for the game changed, and some pupils got more cards than they needed, and others didn’t have enough to cover the basic needs for their country. They found this very unfair… We will learn more about fair and unfair trading during this unit.

Miss Jenny and Diba had their birthdays in August and celebrated this together in class. (Parents and pupils had prepared a birthday party, with beautiful cards, yummy cupcakes and a wonderful gift for Miss Jenny! Thank you, everybody!) Kaaru’s birthday is on Saturday and we ended the week with a party – again! We like birthdays!
Of course Upper Primary pupils work with lots of different things during these weeks as well. Don’t forget to ask them about their learning. There are so many different things going on in the classroom every day! They have had their first Lego Challenge, they have also read to Upper Pre-primary pupils and they are making a drawing of their dream school.
Upper Primary pupils continue to take good care of their brains, to learn as much as possible, by thinking about healthy snacks and healthy habits. We are active, we play and we dance and from now on we will eat a healthy snack every day! Yey!

And we are back!

We are all very happy to see each other again! We have welcomed two new pupils in our class, Mieke and Zara. Both Miss Ana and Miss Yana have helped out in the class. We are looking forward to a fantastic year together!

We talk about, and miss, pupils that were in Upper Primary last year and we hope that Vedant, Nothrathcha, Besma, Rotem, Bobette, Mai and Roos are all doing fine!

Since school started again last week Tuesday, Upper Primary pupils have already done a lot of different things. Upper Primary pupils have talked about learning and about things that keep their brains healthy and happy – sleep, healthy food, water and exercise. They have discussed feelings that help them learn and feelings that might make it more difficult to learn.

  • I learn well when I feel happy, smart, interested and normal.
  • I learn badly when I feel sad, afraid, tired or hungry.

Our goal is to create a classroom atmosphere that help us learn a lot this year! We continue with our healthy habits on Tuesdays and Thursdays!

 

In IPC Upper Primary have started looking at the first Personal Goal, Respect. Both dictionaries and a text about a lost wallet helped pupils understand, discuss and agree on some important things to remember about Respect.

In Literacy pupils have read and discussed different types of poems. Words like haiku, syllables, rhyming and repetition have been used. Pupils have also started reviewing grammar, focusing on word classes like nouns, adjectives and verbs.

Upper Primary pupils have also loved listening to and discussing the book “The miraculous journey of Edward Tulane”. It was an amazing story! After reading the book, the class wrote a summary together.

In Numeracy pupils have worked with numbers and number value, addition, subtraction and multiplication. The new Abacus textbooks have just arrived and we are getting to know new routines for the weekly assignments in year 4 and 5.

 

On Tuesday afternoon Upper Primary pupils had their first Dutch class with Miss Marjolein. It was difficult to stop the lesson in time for home time, pupils were so excited learning!

On Friday morning all Primary pupils went to the Citadel Park for team building activities, play time and lots of fun! The sun was shining and we all had a great time together!

On Friday afternoon it was time for the first School Assembly and Upper Primary pupils ended the week with their first PE lesson with Miss Naomi.

What a great start of the school year! Upper Primary pupils are already looking forward to next week!

Have a nice weekend!

 

 

Look I found a bean !
Very happy to be back
Working hard

We are researching

 

Research, research, research...

We have been researching, reading books and searching on the internet, to be able to answer questions about 'Ancient Egyptian family life'. During our Knowledge Harvest, we asked a lot of questions: How did they construct their houses? How did they start farming? How did they make their clothes? What did they learn in school? etc. Now we are finding answers!

We are working individually, but we are always helpful and kind if someone needs support.

There are many learning targets, both in History, ICT and Art, but we take it step by step and we show our teacher that we are learning new and interesting things the whole time. This IPC unit will also be connected to writing activities in Literacy, since we are reading both fiction and non-fiction, and we are writing and talking a lot about Ancient Egypt. At the moment we write non-fiction texts, reports, but we will also write adventurous stories. You will have lots to read when we are done!

           

We have also looked at the written language in Ancient Egypt and learned how to write our names in hieroglyphs. During an art lesson we made a name tag in clay. We hope you can read our names when you see them. It might be a bit tricky... You need to know hieroglyphs to be able to read them!

     

To prepare our next art activity, we have also made papyrus. That was both tricky and a bit messy. But now the papers are dry and we can continue working with them next week! That will be very exciting!

During the whole week we have had lots of fun during break time. We practice dancing almost every break and today we showed what we have learnt so far. There are still pupils here at ISG that get inspired and say that they want to join 'Dance for fun'. That's excellent! We will continue next week!

 

Ancient Egypt - here we come!

We started our new unit with an excursion to an 'ancient tomb' (Miss Jenny had built it during the break, so it wasn't that old...), where we had to pretend to be archeologists. We used a torch and crawled around in the tomb and sketched what we saw. We saw lots of beautiful things. We made nice sketches of our findings.

We shared our information and together we could make a map of the tomb and tell where all the different artefacts were. We then continued with our Knowledge Harvest and shared information and asked questions. There are many things we already know, or think we know, but we are also curious, there are still many things we would like to know! We will be Enquirers and we will find out as much as possible about life in Ancient Egypt.

We started by talking about when, where and how it all started. We start to know some parts of what happened back then. To understand when it happened we have started making a timeline. We will fill our timeline with more information as soon as we learn new things!

This week we have also talked about many things (languages, culture, traditions and holidays) and shared important things about ourselves with each other. We know that that is what International Mindedness is about, sharing and learning new things about each other! We also continue to gather evidence of how we can see the 8 Personal Goals in action here in our class. There are more post-its about Respect, Morality and Thoughtfulness than before the holiday! We like to show that we don't only know these words, but that we can show them in our daily life here in Upper Primary!

We would also like to share a nice moment here in Primary, where Upper and Lower Primary pupils together prepared and performed a dance in the hallway. We think they were really brave - they just started practising and still they danced in front of all of us!

 

Have a lovely weekend, dear parents, and see you next week again!

Have a lovely holiday

We have focused a lot on geography during this IPC unit. Atlases and maps are now familiar objects in the classroom and we know how to use the key to understand the map. During our lessons we have designed airports and airline logos, so we know that we have to think about layout and colours when we design things. We have learned more about making adverts and how to use persuasive language. We were supposed to have our Exit Point this Monday, but sadly enough Miss Jenny was ill, so we had to cancel that. Our countries, adverts and airline logos still hang in the hallway though, so you can come and look more closely at them after the holiday. You can also take a look at our 'good global traveler', to learn more how to prepare your own journeys in the future!

We really liked this IPC unit, we have learned so much and we have tried to use our knowledge - we have discussed a lot of things, we have read and written texts and we have created a lot of beautiful things (countries, logos, adverts, airports etc.). We hope that you at home have noticed that we know more now as well!

We have also talked about two important personal goals during this IPC unit. We talked about adaptability last week, and now we know what thoughtfulness means. Thoughtfulness is the schoolwide focus this month, and we thougth that it was a good personal goal to work with, both with Valentine's Day is coming up, but also because it is such a beautiful quality. Someone who is thoughtful thinks a lot about others. He or she is warmhearted and kind. He or she helps others and shares love. Someone who is thoughtful understands a lot and shows that in his or her actions. We have prepared beautiful art work this week to share with people we love, so we hope that you like your gifts!

We ended our week with Carnival. Primary pupils went swimming in the morning and only put their costumes on in the afternoon, but we think we looked lovely! We had a very cosy afternoon up here in our classroom, we finished off our gifts and then we had an extra long choosing time. Upper Primary pupils were happy the whole afternoon. After the last break it was time for music class with Mr Simon and then it was home time! Now we have one week of holiday! We wish you a lovely half-term holiday!

International mindedness

Oh, we have interesting discussions in Upper Primary. We have talked about moving to a new country and about going on a holiday somewhere. We tried to find similarities and differences between our experiences. We all agreed that moving somewhere made us feel something different than what we felt when we were going on a holiday for a few weeks. Going on a holiday is exciting, while moving somewhere can be more of a sad experience. It is difficult to leave people you love behind.

 

We talked about preparing a move or a holiday trip somewhere. Upper Primary pupils had so many great ideas. We know about booking and paying for the ticket and we know about packing clothes and belongings. We then said that we might have to check the weather and climate at the destination, to be able to pack the right things. We also said, after thinking for a while, that it might be useful to contact friends and family at the destination, or to find a map and make a list of attractions and things one should see or do in the new country. Then we realised that we might have to check if we knew the language at the destination, or if it might be useful to learn some words and phrases in the new language. It is nice to be able to greet others, to say hello, goodbye, please and thank you. And what about food at the destination? And culture and traditions? All the do’s and don’ts and the laws and the rules in the country. Is it safe to go there? Are there any dangerous animals or plants one should know of? And what currency is used at the destination? And what if… Finally we realised that all the things we were talking about was indeed International Mindedness – to have a global mindset and be aware of other countries, languages, cultures and traditions! We agreed that a good global traveler would prepare him- or herself for a journey this way. It is important to be open, respectful and adaptable!

  

The discussion about moving to a new country lead us in to yet another Personal Goal in IPC, Adaptability. Adaptability is about being able to deal with changes and challenges in a way where one is willing to change, adjust and adapt to different conditions. It is about the process where one is willing to be flexible and learn new things and to change oneself. Here at ISG we show our adaptability in many different ways. Some have learnt a new language. Some are learning to learn in a different way than they are used to from previous schools. We have all moved to a new country and learnt many things about languages, culture and traditions. We have all made new friends.  Adaptability is about changing oneself to fit all the new things around. We think that we all have shown adaptability when adjusting to our new lives here in Belgium.

       

We have added more evidence of the Personal Goals that we see here in our class! We write post-it’s with comments about ourselves or others whenever we see Respect, Co-operation, Morality, Resilience, Enquiry and Adaptability in Upper Primary. As you can see we can find evidence every now and then!

We are now preparing all the things we would like to show the parents during our Exit Point. We want to share our learning with you again! An invitation will come soon!

We also had a visit from Lower Primary pupils. Ivan, Chinmay and Luka came and gave us a nice challenge. Lower Primary wants all of us to be aware of the connections between healthy body/healthy air and the way we travel to and from school. We are challenged to come to school by public transport or by foot tomorrow! If we come from far and have to come by car, we are kindly asked to park a bit further away from school and walk the last part to ISG. We like challenges! We will do our best!

 

Have a lovely weekend!