New Class Schedule Starting 29th February

Our new class schedule starting 29th February:

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
	Music
French	French	French	French	French
				Library
				Music
PE		PE	PE
PE
	Library Borrowing		Choir

IB Learner Profile Reflections

This morning we re-examined the IB Learner Profile.

These are key attributes we try to focus on developing in the PYP, MYP and DP as they are deemed to help us become successful in most aspects of life.


We discussed what we thought about the design above:

° Every attribute is connected or interrelated
° You can't have one attribute without the other
° They make a person complete or whole
° You need every piece to complete who you are
° The shape is like the world so maybe the LP makes you globally-minded


Things we didn't like about how it is designed:
° some attributes look more important than others because they are larger
° Thinker and Inquirer are the same colour so we might think they are more connected than others


To refresh and deepen our understanding of these attributes. we watched this YouTube created by PYP students at KIS International School in Bangkok to see how they saw the Learner Profile:

The IB Learner Profile

As part of our Unit of Inquiry reflection, we thought about which two Learner Profile attributes we feel we developed the most and supported our selections by giving examples.

Here are the attributes we felt we developed the most:

Our ideas will be shared with you later this week along with our UOI reflections......

Our Week Ahead 15th Feb

Unit of Inquiry Reflections:

By now you might have noticed that we reflect on our learning a lot in class.  

To help us understand more deeply why we do this, we began our day examining the following quote.  We wrote what we felt it meant and tried to give supporting evidence (examples) to help strengthen our theories.

We shared and discussed some of our thoughts about this quote. 

This then led to our reflections we will be focusing upon this week to help us consolidate what we have learnt during our Unit of Inquiry exploring the central idea: Organisations allow people to come together to take action.

In addition to reflecting on what we have gained from our unit, we have also begun learning how to structure a reflection text:

Introductory Paragraph (Description):

• What did I / we do?
• What was the purpose?

Body Paragraphs ( Impact on my Thinking ):
- Why is it important to know?       - What about it was interesting?

- What did it make me think about?    - What do I understand about it?

- What was easy or challenging about it?

Summing Up Paragraph  ( Outcome / Result ):

• What have I learnt?       -  I used to think……….Now I know…….
• - How did it help me deepen my understanding of our central idea

These reflections in addition to how we feel our Unit has helped us to develop Learner Profile, PYP attitudes and key PYP skills will be shared with you at the end of the week to discuss with your child.

Taking Action:

Enquiring into NGOs and the types of action they take to help make our world a better place inspired us to also want to take action.

To deepen this, we have been enquiring into the PYP action cycle and starting to find out for ourselves how this might work and look:

Some really inspiring ideas for action and how to conduct it successfully are starting to form:

° PAK

Kayla, Ayana, Pavi, Chiara, and Julia were inspired by reading 'I am Malala' in reading partners.  They are planning to create and sell bookmarks with inspired quotes printed on them to help raise funds for the Malala Foundation which amongst other things, helps supply books and stationary etc for children in developing countries. 

° PET PAWS

Layane, Sophie-Marie, Jules and Nadia have created their own NGO called Pet Paws and want to help stray cats in the Lausanne area.  This weekend they are planning to visit a nearby animal shelter to assist in caring for cats there and will be also using this opportunity to find out other ways from the carers there that they could take action with this cause.  This afternoon, they created a 'cat play box' to donate to the shelter for some cats there as part of their action.

° Wildlife Garden Sanctuary

Lewis' passion for animals is leading him to want to create a wildlife sanctuary in his own garden. He is thinking of ways he could raise some money to buy a tree and last week was busily making a wooden bird house to place in his garden to attract and help local birdlife.  We are really excited to see the birdhouse he made!

° Courtesy Campaign in our Cafeteria

Maxi, Andrea and Salim are working on two possible actions.  Firstly, they are hoping to encourage the primary children whilst in our cafeteria to use polite manners amongst each other and to the cafeteria staff serving.  They feel that there is a lack of manners taking place and so want to take action to fix this.

Together with another group (Ryu, Carl and Diego) as their passion is football, they are developing an idea to hold a friendly football tournament amongst ISL children. They are enquiring into supporting a charity such as Charity Ball which was started by a 10 year old boy who raises money to buy footballs for children in Mozambique.  each football costs 25 US dollars so they are wondering if they could encourage children to pay 1.50CHF each to participate in the match to help buy a football to be used in a village there. 

° Inspiring Quotes

Ryu, Carl and Diego were inspired by looking at the website Kind Spring and are planning to create inspiring quotes about learning to display in the hallways around our school.  They are hoping this will raise positivity amongst all of us at ISL to learn to our best ability.

° How Climate Change Impacts Wildlife

Adam and Hugo are taking a unique approach to their action cycle. They are busily researching a personal enquiry into the impacts climate change is and is predicted to have on wildlife in Switzerland.  After their research, they will then think if there is or isn't something they could do that would help with the situation.  Understanding that the most successful action takes place when we are knowledgeable about the situation is definitely being explored here. 

° Kindness Campaign

Neha is busily thinking of creating a kindness campaign where she will leave surprise gifts for students at ISL with a message of passing that act of kindness on to others. She is coming up with some very interesting ideas and now focusing on how to make it achievable.  

Maths

In maths this week, we are continuing to explore our central idea:

When angles co-exist, connections and relationships are formed.

All of us have chosen areas related to angles and shapes that interest us and have been making our own investigations to share with our peers later this week.

Some amazing mathematical discoveries are being made and all student-led and owned.

Our maths reflective summative will be shared with you also at the end of the week.

Literacy

Our focus this week is how to write reflection texts and continuing with our reading partner discussions using key reading strategies we have been exploring this year: inferring, connecting, determining importance and questioning.


Visual Arts

In visual arts, we are continuing to explore an art-form called Zentangle. It is a creative meditation where we are problem solving with design elements and being inspired by each other with different design ideas. Whilst drawing our designs, we practise mindfulness by listening to meditation music.


Some samples from Pavi:

Enquiry into the Action Cycle

Organisations allow people to come together to take action.

The past week and a bit, we have been enquiring into ways people take positive action and why they might choose to do that.

This sparked excitement amongst us to also take some action so that is what we have been focusing upon.

To help us think about what we could do, we began brainstorming ideas of different ways we can take action that makes impacts on own lives, our family, our classmates, our school community, our local community and globally:

We then explored types of action cycles and created our own by using an example of different steps and why they need to be taken.

After organising the steps into our own action cycles, we shared and discussed these with our peers:

We continued finding out different ways we might feel passionate about taking action and have started forming groups and creating ideas.

For this learning experience, our key focus will be understanding how an action cycle works particularly focusing on the elements of CHOOSE  ACT  REFLECT.

ISA & Three Way Conferences

Next week is another interesting and busy week for us in 6A.

On Tuesday, we have a our Three-Way Conferences.

Please note that your child still comes to school on Tuesday.  They will be doing interactive activities that day together.

The purpose behind these is to allow an honest and positive discussion to take place between parents, the student and the teacher.

Sometimes goals will be set during our discussion, but only if it is authentic.

If we force children to set goals for themselves, they are seldom achieved.

We have been reflecting this week on how we perceive ourselves as:

- mathematicians
- readers
- writers

and how we are developing our self-management skills.

These will be shared with you next week during our conference and may bring out some goals your child might have identified in wanting to achieve.


In case you missed it in the ISL newsletter, here is the link should you want some more information about it:  www.isl.ch/3wayconference


_______________________________________________________________________


International School Assessment

Next week, we will be doing the ISAs.   

These are a snapshot assessment of where your child may be at in terms of their literacy and numeracy understandings and skills.


Just so you know, our schedule in Year 6 is as follows:


Monday

Writing A- Story

Maths Part 1



Wednesday

Reading
Maths Part 2


Thursday

Writing B - Persuasive



Please try not to put any pressure on your child about these.  

Your child should see them as they really are - a learning experience and not a 'test' they will be judged upon.


It is recommended that your child has a relaxed home life and gets plenty of sleep so that they can feel positive as they do them.

You will receive the results of the ISA in May.   The reason is they are posted to Australia and the writing sections are assessed by person and not computer. (Glad its not my job!)



Should you have any questions about these, please don't hesitate to ask.

Maths is play- Creating the worst mental strategy!

Maths is play is our underlining theme this week.

It's an important concept for children to understand and appreciate about maths.

Maths is about playing.  We play with numbers, shapes etc to find patterns or connections.

Mathematical thinking is also creative thinking. 

To help us understand this a bit more and to tie in with our enquiries into multiplication strategies, we were presented with this question:

We had a minute or so to write down the best strategy we could think of and then we were invited to share with the class.  Here were some of our thoughts:

After we shared and explained our mental strategies, we voted on which we felt is the easiest to do mentally.  

We had a tie:

      

To play with numbers, we then changed the question to the WORST mental strategy:

Either individually, in partners or trios the kids had an amazingly fun time trying to create the most complex, maddest, brain-popping way to mentally calculate.

Play with the numbers was the simple instruction.

It's an interesting word to use- play.

It relaxes the mind to enjoy.

The discussions we were having with each other were rich in number understandings. Odd-even, decimals, square roots place values etc were being heard amongst the excited chatter.

We were all beaming with pride of how incredibly complex they were able to play with the numbers.


We published our strategy and gave it a name.  We used these to teach each other how it worked.  

Some really CREATIVE mathematical thinking took place:

         

      

        

        

Slowly, but surely we are finding out how maths is about playing......

Motivation

What do we know about motivation?

We spent a few minutes writing what we knew or thought it might mean and then shared our ideas.

Some of our thoughts:

We then enquired into the differences between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and shared some of our findings together:

We also looked at the expression 'dangling a carrot' and how, when it comes to learning, we have experienced this often.  

I shared how whilst in Year 6, I have been trying different strategies over the year to help them build intrinsic motivation towards their learning rather than holding 'carrots' of rewards or consequences.  

We are continuing to find out more about how these two different forms of motivation differ this week.

We are doing this to help build a stronger self-awareness of our responsibilities to our own learning and what we should do to take action towards our learning.