Middle-Primary - Ms. Kelsey and Ms. Anelda | International School Ghent

Exciting times in Upper Primary

Middle-Primary - Ms. Kelsey and Ms. Anelda

Upper Primary pupils have done many things these last few days of the autumn term. They have worked hard to finish off many tasks in different subjects. Some of the pupils have worked with Lego WeDo during the Lego Challenge. All pupils have practised their songs and other exciting surprises for the Christmas Fair on Thursday.

There has been a lot of glitter on the floor in the classroom as well, as pupils have worked on their multi-material box. They have chosen materials and made beautiful boxes for different purposes. Their individual taste and style clearly showed during this project. Upper Primary pupils, and Miss Jenny, are proud over the final result!

This Monday parents were invited to our Exit Point. Pupils guided parents around in the classrooms and out in the hallway and told them about the different things they had learned during our IPC unit. ‘Making new materials’ was a fun science based unit and pupils learnt many things - about how to conduct fair tests, how to write a science report and how to use scientific vocabulary. They also presented some of the art work they have produced here in class, the multi-material boxes, ‘Kensuke’s kingdom’ drawings etc. Pupils were excited the whole day and did a terrific job when parents were here. They ended the Exit Point by sharing one of their favourite experiments – “What happens when you mix milk with baking powder?” Some brave people dared to taste the mixture!

Upper Primary pupils went ice-skating this Wednesday. It was +14° and rainy, so the ice was not in a perfect state, but pupils still had lots of fun on the ice. Some of them have been skating for years, others tried it for the first time in their lives. It was a nice end-of-term activity!

ISG had lots of visitors during the Christmas Fair and Upper Primary pupils sang "Happy New Year (nananana"). They did a great job during the show!

Next time we see each other it will be 2016! We wish the whole ISG-community a lovely holiday and a Happy New Year!

From solid to liquid, from liquid to gas...

Middle-Primary - Ms. Kelsey and Ms. Anelda

Upper Primary pupils are learning a lot about the properties of materials. Different science experiments are helping them think critically and learn. They have now turned solids into liquids by melting them. And then pupils have tried to think whether these liquids can be turned into solids again or not. Pupils have also mixed solids with liquid and observed carefully. They have noted chemical reactions as well as physical reactions. They have started to use words like reversible and irreversible when discussing the changes they see. Words are added to their Marvellous Materials Glossary the whole time.

The best experiment, according to Upper Primary pupils, was when we spent a whole morning in the school kitchen. Like we said in our last blog “Baking is science for hungry people”. So, we made muffins and pupils observed with scientific eyes to be able to comment on what happened when we mixed different solids and liquids and then what happened to the mixture when we put it in the oven. Pupils drew illustrations and wrote comments about the muffin-making process.

“The sugar dissolved in the butter.” (Mieke)

“(Beating the sugar, butter and eggs) introduced air into the mixture. I could see the bubbles.” (Kaaru)

“The molecules in the mixture will start to move about.” (Stefan)

“It rises because we put baking powder in it.” (Diba)

Upper Primary pupils are also learning how to independently work with experiments and then write up a science report. Fair testing is important, they know that, but it is still difficult for them to explain in words what steps are taken and what the results are. The pupils enjoy experimenting and hopefully they tell about these experiments at home as well, sharing their learning.

Pupils are now finishing off their art work connected to Kensuke’s kingdom. They now know how the book ended… I had just put the book down when pupils asked what book I would start reading next! Upper Primary pupils love books.

Two more weeks of school, and then it is Christmas Holidays. Upper Primary pupils are working on many small projects that need to be finished off before then, so every day is important in our classroom! Pupils are writing, counting, calculating, reading, taking notes, thinking, learning, dancing, singing… It is busy, busy, busy! Luckily we ended this week with a nice surprise when Saint Nicholas came to visit us!

Making new materials

Middle-Primary - Ms. Kelsey and Ms. Anelda

Upper Primary pupils are now exploring the wonderful world of science! They are learning specific vocabulary for this unit and regularly add words and explanations to their Marvellous Materials Glossary. During this unit Upper Primary will learn about the properties of different material, and use their enquiring minds to ask good scientific questions. They will also learn how to write a science report, using words like hypothesis, procedure and result.

We started our unit with an Entry Point and a Knowledge Harvest and the pupils are now eager to learn more about solids, liquids and gases. Our unit display says “baking is science for hungry people”, so the pupils are quite sure they will get the chance to bake during this unit. Exciting…

Our IPC personal goal for November is Co-operation. Upper Primary pupils showed excellent co-operation skills when organising the library books for the trip down to the library the other day. I was happy to see and hear the team work going on! Since then, Upper Primary pupils have shown in many different situations how they can co-operate, help and support each other, and together as a team reach the best result.

Our class book at the moment is “Kensuke’s kingdom”. It is an adventure book, about a boy that ends up on a small island, together with his dog. He thinks he is all alone on the island. After a while he meets an old man called Kensuke. We still don’t know how Kensuke ended up on the island. It is a very exciting book!

Adding words to our Marvellous Materials Glossary.

Healthy Upper Primary pupils, ready for PE with Miss Naomi.

What an exciting week!

Middle-Primary - Ms. Kelsey and Ms. Anelda

“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

Middle-Primary - Ms. Kelsey and Ms. Anelda

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!

Middle-Primary - Ms. Kelsey and Ms. Anelda

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

Middle-Primary - Ms. Kelsey and Ms. Anelda

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 !

Middle-Primary - Ms. Kelsey and Ms. Anelda

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!

Middle-Primary - Ms. Kelsey and Ms. Anelda

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!

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!

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!

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!