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

Our hard work paid off

Upper Primary pupils have shown resilience, they have accepted that experiments does not always work out the way we plan and they have been willing to try again!

We went back to the experiment with the 'spoon necklace' - we tried a different type of string this time and we did the whole experiment one more time and this time it worked! The pupils could hear a clear difference in volume when they compared the sound of the chiming spoons far away from the ear and with the string really close to the ears! We wrote a conclusion that explained what happened. The sound vibrations travel through the spoons and through the string and we directed the sound straight inside the ear, that is way it sounds louder!

Our volume experiment lead us over to our pitch experiment! There is a difference between volume and pitch, and we can explain it! A sound can be soft (low volume) or loud (high volume), but a soft sound can be a high-pitch sound or a low-pitch sound and the same with a loud sound. The pitch has to do with the frequency, how fast a sound wave vibrates.

We now felt lucky and continued with a second experiment. This time we wanted to investigate if the length of string affected the pitch of a sound. We built a set of chimes by using a stick, some spoons (exactly the same size, since we wanted it to be a fair test) and string that we doubled each time we tied a spoon to the stick. We rested the stick across the back of two chairs that we put on two desks of the same height.

When we used a fourth spoon to strike the back of each spoon, we could hear a difference in sound between the shortest and the longest string. The pitch changed. The longer the string, the lower the pitch and the shorter the string, the higher the pitch. Vibrations travel faster alonger the shorter string, so the note is higher.

We continued with more science experiments this week, and you are welcome to ask your child about them. We have built string telephones, compared the sound in empty and almost full bottles and we have worked with acoustics and how to absorb sounds. All the experiments worked out really well and we are happy, because now we could write really good scientific texts. We have explained what we are investigating, what we predict will happen (hypothesis), what we do during the experiment and what the result is (conclusion). We have made labelled drawings in our IPC-books and we have documented our work in a good way. You can see all our photos from this week here!

We had a lot of IPC during this week, but of course have we done lots of other things as well! We started the week reviewing what we have done in numeracy this autumn, and Thursday it was time for a numeracy test! The pupils worked really hard and they all did their best! The pupils have worked with their independent writing samples, grammar, reading and follow-up as well. There are also PE-lessons, swimming classes, music lessons, Dutch and French classes to attend, birthdays to remember and good-bye cards to prepare...

Resilience needed...

We are still working with our IPC-topic 'Turn it up' in different subjects. In Literacy we have worked with useful vocabulary and with texts about sound, noise and silence. In Science we made a long decibel line in our shared room, to show how quiet or how loud different sounds around us are. We also know that there is a pain limit, that sounds start to hurt at a certain level (around 130 dB) and that we can damage our ears if we listen to too loud music or if sounds around us are too loud. We also tried to do another experiment, but since the walls here at the school are really thick, it didn't really work out as planned... again! But, since we are resilient, we will not give up, but try again! There are still many exciting tasks to work with in our unit! More sound experiments will come!

Tuesday afternoon we took a walk down to the Public Library in Ghent. We borrowed many books and we have to confess that the walk back to school was a bit slower than the walk down to Ghent Zuid. But we now have lots of lovely books in our two 'Public LIbrary books' boxes and the pupils are so eager to sit down and read them! It was absolutely worth the hard work!

We have worked with fractions in numeracy, and for the ones working with fractions for the first time, it has been a challenge. Pupils in year 4, 5 and 6 revisited the topic, but now on a more challenging level. We have worked with different strategies and looked at different ways of explaining what a fraction of a thing of a number is, what equivalent fractions are and how we can reduce fractions.

Then we worked hard in literacy as well. Apart from the guided reading, the grammar and the English skills work, we have also been writing recounts. We have looked a model texts and used them to write good recounts. The pupils worked really hard and did their best writing. The whiteboard was full with useful words and facts! Upper Primary pupils wrote about the trip to the Sound Factory or the walk to the Public Library. Miss Jenny and Miss Catherine were impressed!

We have also started printing with our cool sound wave patterns on lino blocks. It looks fantastic and the result will be even more amazing. Once we have finished off the activity we would like to share our beautiful artwork with the rest of the school and hang it up on the wall in the hallway. Keep your eyes open! We hope you will like it! You can see some photos from the art lesson and other lessons here!

During the PE lesson, the pupils really were acrobats this week! They were building human statues and Miss Jenny was impressed when she heard what they had been doing during the lesson, she only saw the warm up...

Science task 3

Numeracy, literacy, IPC and PE... Upper Primary pupils are doing their best to finish off their weekly assignments this week. It is a short school week, and all the routines are a bit upside-down. The spelling test and basic facts test took place on Wednesday instead of Monday, homework went out Thursday instead of Wednesday, the PE lesson started earlier - and the PE lesson is, from this week on, longer than is used to be. Even so, we have tried to work with the things we normally work with during a school week.

The pupils are working with different objectives in numeracy. Pupils in year 3 are learning more about the connection between addition and multiplication, and between multiplication and division. The year 4 focus is counting on in 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, 10s, 25s and 50s as well as recalling multiplication and division facts. Pupils in year 5 and 6 are busy halving and doubling numbers, by identifying near doubles, using known doubles and including decimals, and also learning new strategies doing this.

In literacy we have started looking at the specific text type recount. We started our Thursday morning with reading a recount about a school trip. We studied the text to see if it answered the questions Who? Where? When? What? Why? and How?. A recount should retell a series of events, sequenced in time, and it should also be written in a descripive language. We discussed the text we had read to see if we could tick off that list. We could. We then wrote a recount together. We wrote a draft and then we worked with the text to make it better. We wrote and added details, expressed more feelings and explained some parts of the text in a better way. The plan is that the pupils will be able to write a recount independently, by looking at a model text and writing a recount about something they experienced.

During one of our IPC lessons this week we worked with a science experiment. We were supposed to attach a string to two spoons and hang them on a longer string. So far, so good. The spoons started chiming against each other. We were then supposed to hold the ends of the sting and put it really close to our ears and jangle the spoons. Here the problems started. The string was not strong enough and kept on breaking. The spoons kept on falling down. We looked at each other and asked what the purpose of this activity was. Hmm, there was a great plan... We were supposed to, through this investigation, discover how sound vibrations travel through the spoons and through the string. We will show resilience and not give up - we will try this experiment again, next time with a better string!

Nothrathcha and Rotem holding the two spoons on the string --- before the string broke and the spoons fell on the ground...

Science task 1

This week we have been learning about sound, how every sound is caused by vibrations and how sound waves travel through the air to our ears.

During these IPC lessons we have worked with the topic in different ways. First we watched a movie about how the ear works.

We hear sounds:

Sound waves travel through the air to the ear to bring sounds to us. The sound waves then make the eardrum vibrate.
The ossicles (the hammer, anvil and stirrup) make the fluid and the hair in the cochlea vibrate.

We speak and make sounds. We pressed two fingers against the bony part of the throat and we could feel the vibrations when we were speaking. Our vocal cords vibrate 120-240 times per second when we speak. We watched two movies to learn more about the vocal cords.

We can even feel sounds. We worked in pairs and hummed and talked with our mouths pressed into a balloon while the other person pressed the ear against the balloon. The reaction from the pupils was that it tickled! Correct! It tickles because sound vibrates!

We sang the vibration song, where we learn that motion is vibration and that vibration is what causes sound.

We can even see sounds… We were amazed that we can see the sound waves and the vibrations that a single tone is making. We watched a movie about sound waves, where salt on a metal plate connected to a tone generator vibrated and created geometric patterns. They were beautiful!

We then started working with the different patterns for an art activity where we will print our favourite sound wave pattern. We are learning a new printing technique, lino block relief printing, and we will soon be able to show our new art work in the hallway.

Resilience

We started by making a sketch of our favourite pattern on a piece of scrap paper. We then copied the pattern onto the piece of linoleum and used gouges to cut out the pattern. This was a bit tricky and we had to remind ourselves several times that the personal goal for this month is resilience.

Resilience, according to our brainstorming session, means that we should never give up, even when we face challenges. Pupils in Upper Primary explained the word resilience this way:

‘Try your best at challenges.’

‘Always try again. Never give up.’

‘Bounce back up on your feet.’

‘Be brave!’

‘Never say “I cannot learn this!” or “I can never do it!”.’

‘Help others when they find something really hard.’

‘Practice a lot. Practice for a long time. One day you will succeed!’

Entry point 'Turn it up!'

And what an Entry point it was! We came back to ISG feeling really excited about our new unit!

We walked around in the beautiful concert hall in Bruges, together with our guide, and saw how the windows and walls were specially designed to suit a concert hall. We learned a lot already during our walk. We used words as acoustics, echo and reverb. We also explored the fantastic Sound Factory, where Primary pupils for one hour were both composers, conductors and musicians.

See (and listen to) our photo album here...

Now we start working with this new unit and today it is time for the Knowledge harvest. Sound and light is all around us – from the sound of thunder and the flash of lightning in a storm, to a mobile phone ringing and flashing when someone calls us, to the billions of different sounds and lights leaping into life on the TV when we switch it on. In this unit, we are going to explore the many sounds and lights that are part of our everyday lives. This unit of work is part of the International Primary Curriculum. This curriculum sets out very clearly what children will learn in three different areas:

1. The subjects of the curriculum

2. Personal development

3. International understanding

Children will be reading, researching, writing, illustrating, working on their own and working in groups. We will be checking to see how well your child has learned through particular activities and asking children to explain their work and their learning, perhaps to you. If you can, please discuss with your child the work they have done as the term progresses and let them teach you. Talk with your child about different forms of sound and light (natural and manmade) and what makes them happen. Your child could create sounds from everyday objects and, if possible, learn to play a simple tune on a musical instrument. By the end of the unit, we hope your child has achieved all of the learning targets.

Learning by doing

We have worked with the IPC unit "How humans work" for four weeks now and today it was time to share what we have learned.

We started off the unit with an Entry point and a Knowledge harvest. Back then we asked questions and thought about things that we wanted to learn during the unit. We also talked about the personal goal Enquiry, what the word means and how we can work in a scientific way. Then we started working...

We have studied the eye, the ear, the teeth, the digestive system, the heart, the brain, healthy food and exercise. We have had many interesting discussions, we have read texts and researched, we have tried to find answers to all our questions and we have tried to share what we have learned, since we know that sharing the results is a very important part of enquiry.

The children knew the parents were coming to look at all the work we have done, so we wanted to prepare nice presentations!

We have spent the week preparing for this important event! Wednesday we started working with our big surprise. We spent the whole school day in the school kitchen! The pupils were fantastic, they supported each other and they were co-operating the whole day long. It was so much fun to bake that some pupils in the class even said that it did not feel like a school day, even though we worked with several different objectives in different subjects during the day. Measuring the ingredients = numeracy. Reading and understanding a recipe = literacy. Using tools with accuracy = technology. Designing and making products that meet specific needs = technology.

We then spent Thursday afternoon in the school kitchen again, this time preparing a healthy meal. That was our technology task! We prepared yummy pumpkin soup together with lower primary!

Today was the big day! And a very special day, since we combined our Exit point with a Halloween party! The pupils looked different than normal...

When the parents came visiting us today, the pupils were prepared to show what they have learned. There were many interesting things going on in the Primary classrooms and out in the hallway at the same time. Lots of learning was shared and the pupils could go home, feeling very proud of what they had achieved! You can see all our photos in our album, but here are some examples of what happened in our classroom today!

Have a great Autumn break everyone!

We are learning...

Every Monday we start up the new week with looking at the new weekly focus in Numeracy. This week we are learning how to organise and read data. We are learning about tally charts, frequency tables, pictograms, bar graphs, bar line graphs and grouped data. There are different learning targets for the different year groups, and all pupils are working hard with their weekly assignment.

We also look at the weekly spelling focus. All Upper Primary pupils work through a worksheet to understand and recognise the spelling rule, before homework is handed out on Wednesday.

We work with Literacy in different ways. Every week we read a book or text together with a teacher and then work with follow-up questions or write a short summary. We practice grammar and vocabulary, both by working in our books and every time we write with a special focus. We have been reading, answering questions and writing about the things we learn in IPC the last few weeks, but we also know that we can share our learning and knowledge in other ways.

The learning targets are important when we work with IPC. Some of these learning targets are:

Children will be able to carry out simple investigations.
They will be able to test ideas using evidence from observation and measurement.
They will be able to use evidence to draw conclusions.
They will be able to record and communicate their observations and findings in a variety of ways.
They will be able to explain their observations and findings...

Besma shared her 'eye-reseach' with the pupils in Lower Primary. They listened with great interest and asked many questions about the eye and how the eye works! A presentation is a great way to share knowledge, but also to make it clear to yourself how much you actually know about something. Besma did a good job!

After our lesson about the ear and how the ear works, Emma wanted to share a game on her Nintendo with us. She said that it had to do with our learning. During the lesson we drew and labelled the different parts of the ear. To understand how the ear works, we also needed to understand what sound is. We read a text and we saw a short movie about soundwaves. Emma brought her game the day after that lesson and showed us that we could see soundwaves... It was a great opportunity to make lots of noise, just to see the soundwave meter move. Soft sounds and loud screams looked completely different on the meter. Thank you, Emma!

We co-operated during the IPC lesson where our focus was the digestive system. We worked in groups and tried to show how food moves through the body and then out again. We had just had lunch, so it was easy to imagine the food traveling through the body while we talked. We then checked our work by watching a short movie and reading about the digestive system. After that it was time to look at our drawing again and make necessary changes. There were many things to think about, the food travels a long way through our body and many important organs work together to digest the food we eat.

Did you know that a grown-up's small intestine is 6,7 meters? We cut a piece of string this long, just to understand what 6,7 meters mean. That was a looooong piece of string! You can check this at home, if you don't believe us!

Vedant, Diba, Emma and Bobette worked hard to add organs that they had forgotten to draw. Rotem, Nothrathcha and Kaaru had to fix a few things to make the digestive system look OK, but we were really impressed when they shared the result. Well done, all Upper Primary pupils!

We have learned more about the digestive system today, how the food brings nutrients into our blood and how nutrient-rich blood is pumped to every part of our body. We discussed the homework from last week, where we tried to find out what a 'healthy diet' means. We also discussed how exercise can help the digestive system. We agreed that a healthy diet is good, that we should eat less unhealthy things and exercise to stay healthy!

We then talked about how the blood is pumped through the body and we talked about the ever so important heart. We checked our heart rates and saw that there was a difference between the heart rate when we are resting and when we are exercising. It was tricky for some of us to measure the pulse and some of the results were not reliable, but when we looked at the results from all the pupils in the group, we could see that the heart beats faster and pumps more blood to increase the supply of nutrients and oxygen to our body when we exercise.

We exercised for 3 minutes and then we recorded the result. 6 minutes after exercise, the heart rate was not yet back to normal. Our hearts had been working hard during our exercise!

We now will use Wednesday to rest, eat helthy and do lots of sports activites, so that we can come back to school on Thursday again -- full of energy!

IPC personal goal "Cooperation"

We have discussed the word cooperation and now we are trying to see how and when we cooperate in our class.

This is what we said about cooperation when we tried to define the word:

- We cooperate when we work together, share things and give support to each others.

- We cooperate when we do our part and do our best and when we encourage others to do their best.

- We cooperate when we include others.

- We cooperate when we listen to each other and hear when someone asks for help.

We have been cooperation during lessons:

This is what it looked like when we designed an eye test during one of our Science lessons. We gave each other feedback, we worked side by side and we have two different eye test charts now, one for children and one for adults. We will show these during the exit point and we hope that some parents and pupils here at ISG will come and test their eyes in our 'optician corner'. We like to share what we learn with others!

We have been cooperating during our choosing time:

A few weeks ago we started building something with our Quick Construction blocks and we built together. We cooperated and we helped each other! We talked nicely to each other. We listened to each other and we compromised. We built a robot! The whole class was involved and we had lots of fun during the process.

We are so proud of our hard work and the result! Now we are dreaming of making a movie where the robot is the bad guy, who destroys the Lego village and the Skeleton is the hero, who saves all the Lego people...

On our classroom door, where we have our "personal goal display', we gather evidence of cooperation in our class. There are already four post-its with examples of cooperation in Upper Primary. We want to add more!

IPC topic "How humans work"

How humans work

Every time we start up a new IPC unit, we start with something called an Entry Point. Our Entry Point for our new IPC unit was a visit to the museum "De Wereld van Kina".

We looked at their exhibition of the human body...

We all started thinking about our bodies and how they work. It was interesting and we realised that there are things that we really would like to know! Our Entry Point got us excited about our new IPC topic!

We walked back to ISG and started the Knowledge Harvest, where we share the things we already know about our new IPC topic, and also ask questions. Our IPC wall is full with questions, here are some of them:

How does the body know how to walk and jump, for example? Where does hair come from and how come it grows? How can we remember so many things and how can the brain work so fast?

There are many things we would like to know...

We started talking about one of the Personal Goals in IPC, 'enquiry', and how we can practice this during our science lessons.

Enquiry:

We know that enquiry is about asking questions, about searching for answers in different ways and also sharing the result of our hard work. When it comes to enquiry it is good to be curious about the world around us. It is good to know how to ask questions, and how to ask good questions.

We know that we can also look at models, like we did when we came back from our visit to the museum. We have a small human torso in our Primary classroom, where we can see what we are like inside. We can take out the main organs (heart, lungs, liver, stomach, intestines etc) and see exactly where they are in our body and how they are connected to each other. It was easier to take the organs out than putting them back in the right place, though!

We know that we should use our scientific eyes and search for patterns. We can also test and experiment to learn and understand. We talked about fair testing, what it means and what we need to think about to make a test fair to all participants.

We can make observations and we can search for answers in books and on the internet when we are busy doing research. And of course, we can visit interesting places and we can interview people with great knowledge within a certain area!

Wow, this fits our IPC unit perfectly! We will absolutely learn more about enquiry during this unit! We have already started our first Science task, where we focus on the eye. We will do our best to learn more about the eye so that we can use all our knowledge in our first challenge, where we have to think like opticians and design an eye test. We know some things about the eye and how it works already, but we will learn more and we will share our knowledge with pupils here at ISG and with parents.

Art, art, art...

Our slideshow will show your more.

Printing techniques on PhotoPeach

We have really tried to use our own ideas, we have created designs and we have not been afraid to make changes. We started out our Styrofoam printing experiment with a test, where we made a simple design and made a first print. Hmmm, it was not easy! The text was printed in reverse and letters had to be formed in a different way, too many details made the print blurry and not enough details made the print less interesting. We needed support to know how to make improvements!

To know how to give feedback in a good way, we watched "Austin's butterfly" on YouTube. That is a really interesting video, take a look at it if you have the time. We learned a lot about giving feedback in a respectful and helpful way. We could also connect the video to one of the personal goals in IPC, 'resilience', since Austin did not give up, but tried six times before he reached a result he was proud of. We wanted to be as patient as he was, so we started working again and we tried to support each other throughout the whole activity.