29 January, 2014

Chinese New Year Poem

Chinese New Year!


Chinese New Year, fun and games,
dragon's coming blowing flames.
Lanterns hanging here and there,
fireworks exploding everywhere!
Dumplings, noodles, rice and meat,
all together, let's go eat!
Chinese New Year has come around,
come on kids, let's not frown.
Drums bashing, symbols crashing,
come on, let's crowd around.
The Chinese New Year dragon's coming!
Come on people, lets start running!

Happy Chinese New Year everyone!

Thanks to A, E & D for this great poem :)

Chinese New Year (CNY)

We've had a great few days in preparation for Chinese New Year. We have started to write poems and enjoyed the festivities put on around school such as assemblies and performances. The senior school entertained us with games from China and we watched the traditional lion dance.
Here is an example of the Chinese New Year poems we are writing which has been made into a poster. We are continuing our poem writing with the use of similes and metaphors in rhyming couplets which will be turned into performance poems.
We've really enjoyed the festivities as we welcome in the Year of the Horse! Do you celebrate Chinese New Year, also called Lunar New Year? What are you celebrating around this time of year? What is your favourite poem? Do you have some poems you'd like to share with us?








Tessellating Patterns

This week, we started looking at tessellations and how to make them. We learned that they made with polygons which may be regular or irregular. We also discussed whether circles can create a tessellating pattern. It seems that there are lots of people who say they can and lots who say they cannot.
A tessellation is made with a polygon which is copied and repeated so that it creates a pattern. Tessellations use shapes which have sides which can touch exactly so there is no empty space. Here are some of our tessellations we've done in class recently.


26 January, 2014

Year 5 Sports Day





24 January, 2014

Sports Day!

Sports Day was fabulous this year! Everyone had a great time and in our class, the children beat the adults ion tug-o-war. We participated in 8 super fun activities which got us jumping, throwing and running just to name a few. We don't know which house won yet, but there were great performances by learners in every team!
Here are some pictures Mr. Lowe took of the events...







































We Love the Library!

Our library visit is every Friday and we just love the time to sit quietly and read for enjoyment our favorite books or to have Mr Shaun's help in discovering something new. Reading is such an important skill because it helps us to be lifelong learners, finding out information when we want on any number of topics! Some of us enjoy reading magazines, novels, graphic novels or nonfiction. What is your favorite book?

21 January, 2014

Learning to Blog

This year's group of Year 5s are learning to blog, many for the first time. Blogging is a great way to share our learning and to investigate the world around us. It helps to create connectons with new friends and extend our opportunities for learning.

To begin with though, we are looking at what makes a great comment. So, we've begun by creating paper blog posts about our holidays. We'll then be commenting on the posts using postit notes.
We've already covered the guidelines about what makes a great blog comment, which are:
  1. Thank the writer for sharing their post.
  2. Read the post carefully and try to find a connection with the writer or the post.
  3. Always make sure you add to the conversation, by contributing what you know about the topic.
  4. Ask the writer a question about the topic.
  5. Edit your work carefully for spelling, punctuation and grammar.
  6. End your comment with a thank you.
  7. Write your first name
  8. Click publish.
We've started our journey! :)

What other advice would you give for a good comment?
Do you have a class blog you'd like us to visit?



15 January, 2014

Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper

This week, Year 5 began reading the story of Melody, a girl who is wheelchair-bound with Cerebral Palsy, as part of our Unit of Inquiry. The Central Idea being "People have unique ways to express their feelings."

We are really enjoying the story so far and have just finished chapter 3!