Week in Review for 27/01/11

This week was the last of my exams and Book Week! The Arabic and Christian religion was easy but the social studies was extremely hard and complicated. On sunday I basically embarassed myself doing the TinTin dance and then I went home. The next day was the big day (the day of the test) and then I did more graphing with Mr.Boyd for our "project." On Monday night my mom suprised me and got alot of my freinds for a sleep over. Wednesday was the first normal day of the week for me though I didn't really get the Chris White poems and Arabic was fun too we got to draw and write poems in Arabic (not like the stuff we would usually do.) I'm still waiting to see if I passed in the exam but other than that I got alot more tests later!

Thanks M!

Book week was very fun. We dressed up as our favorite character and read lots of books. This week we have no homework if we do our readathon. The only homework we do is reading. On Wednesday Chris White came to our school. He was very funny. In French we are studying clothes. We sometimes go on linguascope. It is very fun. In Guided Reading we are summarizing. We didn't have P.E on Tuesday because there was no school on Tuesday. In English we are doing our Explanatory writing. Book week has been lots of fun.

Thanks F!

Week in Review for the Christmas Break (updated)

Today we arrived in poland, we got here late at night and checked into our hotel and had a big sleep, the following day we had a full day of snowboarding.this morning we woke to a buffet breakfast before meeting our guides who were to teach us how to Snowboard.I was very difficult for me to snowboard, because i wasn't the proper size for my board and i ended up switching to skis near the end of the day. After we went home we headed out to a authentic polish restaurant where me and my mom and brother had a snow fight with a stranger we we were tired, so we headed back to the hotel for bed. Great sleep. we continued to build our skill throughout the week, moving to more difficult slopes. and i was fun because i could start to learn tricks on my skis. we where disappointed to leave, we had made good friends with our guides and they said that they had a ton of fun,we had just as much fun as they did. we then traveled towards Krakow and we stopped of in aushwitz a german concentration camp where the nazis killed over 1.5 million people that were either polish, jewish, gypsies or political prisoners. the whole trip was so much fun and our whole family had a great time.

Thanks M!

My family and I went to India for 1 month. First, we went to Belgium were my father's parents live and I met two old friends who were waiting for me. In the holiday we played in my house and sometimes I went to there house to play. A few days later I went to Pune to attend one of my relatives marriage. I also mate some relatives who I never mate before. I had fun at the marriage ceremony because it was totaly diffrent experience for me. After the marriage I went to my cousin's house. Then I went back to Belgium and stayed for few days and then went to Khanpur were my mother's parents live. We have a dog there, called bobby I also mate some of my old friends. On new years day I with my friends made an old man I enjoyed a lot. Then I and my family with my grandfather came back to Cairo.

Thanks P!

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Trip Reflections - El Alamein

A Commonwealth War Cemetery

The annual trip to El Alamein is the highpoint of our Year 6 outings and children start looking forward to it as early as Year 4. The trip is an important part of our Inquiry Unit on Conflict. It is a unique opportunity in the Primary School calendar for students to demonstrate that they live the Learner Profile characteristics a good learner would be expected to have such as being caring, an inquirer, a thinker, knowledgeable, a communicator and so on. Every year I am impressed by how well our students meet the demands of these characteristics, and this year was no exception.
Below, you will find a variety of reflections on various aspects of the trip and what each pupil learned as a result. I hope you find them informative.

F:
I learned that in the battle at the end it was easier to beat the Italians. I also learned what a Spitfire is. It is a plane. I learned that the Germans didn't have enough money to build a big cementery so they made a small one wich has deep holes. They put all the dead soldiers in the holes.
I enjoyed swimming in the pool and staying in my room with my friends. I also enjoyed going to all the cementarys and the museum. I think I was thinker because I had to think of how to draw the hotel from the top. My favourite monument is the Commonwealth Cementery because it was big and nice and there was a grave for everyone.
I think Year 6 should go there again because it was fun. The most challenging thing was answering the camp booklet quiz questions.

S:
My class went on a field trip to a war memorial site. We visited three cemeteries that had soldiers buried in the graves. Someone was buried in the cemetery that had died when they were 17. One of the soldiers had died with his wife and daughter.
We also went to the war museum and saw real tanks and an airplane from the war. We then went to the German cemetery and saw some big monuments (memorials). Looking at the monuments made me feel sad. We also went to see the Italian cemetery. The Italian cemetery had the names of all the people who died on the wall. The monument also had a space on the wall for the unknown.
After we left the Italian cemetery we went back to the hotel to go swimming. We got to swim until it was time for everyone to go to write in our diaries and then have dinner. After dinner we went back to the room to go to bed. The trip was fun and we went to see a lot of things that I had never seen before.
Everyone that I talked to that went on the trip said that they had a lot of fun.  We stayed at a very nice hotel and it was very big and the places that we went to had a lot stuff to look at and learn about. While we were in the hotel we even got to see talent show that was done by the students from our school. After the talent show we ate yellow cake to celebrate one of the teachers birthday. Overall, the trip was fun and was it something that I really enjoyed.

M:
I liked the trip to the memorials. It was a good experience for me to see graves and memorials.This trip made me fearless of graves and memorials. I also felt sorry for the people who died in the war and for their families especially when I saw visitors putting plastic poppys and crosses infront of the headstone.
During the trip I learned alot about the WWII and that people had the courage to die for their country and thats not because they didnt like their family but they did it so even if they didnt survive the others would. I really liked the Italian memorial and the Commonwealth memorial. The German memorial was a completely different style: old and yellow. But its not about the style. I didnt really like the idea of putting the names on a tablet and burying them meters underground with lots of others.
I did not really enjoy the bus ride going and coming but I liked the rest. I think the things that could have been changed into somthing better was the German lid covering the burried people. I know for sure that I did not do very well in the trip booklet we had to finish because there was about a page in total that I didn't complete.
I think I have demonstrated the learner profile characteristic of a risk taker because I was scared to see places where people were burried but I am fine now. I learned alot about general Rommel of the Afrika Korps and about how he was not prepared for war and also alot about conflict, the Desert Rats and their emblem.
I enjoyed swimming the extraordinary hot pools but my favourite part was the talent show where NT and I performed the song "Greedy."

Z:
On the trip we went to the Commonwealth cemetery and there were hundreds of graves but by just looking at it and looking at the field of grave stones gave me the weird feeling that a long time ago people died for victory and for the independence of the safe countries we live in today.
I learned that war is something not neccesary at all and at sometime, someday, war is going to get worse and worse and even that it will destroy he whole planet with nuclear weapons or without, the world could be destroyed. I also learnt that disagreements can be solved by negotiating or war could end up being the result a field of grave stones just as I mentioned earlier.
I mostly enjoyed being with my friends because I am not allowed to go to sleepovers anywhere except at trips, with my friens makes me feel like I'm growing up and being independent. I think I demonstrated three characteristics: the first is being open minded the second was caring and the third was being a risk taker.
I was open minded because i tried to discuss what I've learnt with my my friends and tried to understand what they learnt too. I demonstrated caring by caring for N even though I wanted to sleep in the middle I let her sleep in th middle because she was used to it. I demonstrated being a risk taker too because I didn't get discouraged because I was away from my home.

AK:
When we went on our trip we went to the hotel, swam and then ate dinner. The learner profile characteristic which i demonstrated was principled and that was by not making a lot of noise and listening to my roommates.
The place which i liked was the war museum because there were lots of intresting things to see and write. On this trip, I learned about the battle.
I think year 6 should go again because we had lots of fun this year.I found the map activity challenging because it was kind of hard and tricky. I learned about the Commonwealth, German and Italian soldiers and the war museum.When we went to the memorials we had  much work to do so we were very tired .
When we came back to the hotel we swam, did the mapping activity, ate dinner and saw the talent show and it was funny and nice. Then It was Miss Hala's birthday and we cut the cake then went back to the rooms wrote our diaries ,packed our bags and then went to sleep.
The food in the hotel was very good. The next day we took a shower took our bags down ate breakfast and then played a game and got on the bus and went back home. We stopped for lunch and then went to school. I saw my mum, took my bags aand said bye to my teacher and then went back home.

Jun-Sik:
I learned about the Commonwealth cemetary and about the German cemetary. There was a difference
between the two cemetaries. The Commonwealth cemetary every soldier has one gravestone but Germans didn't have any money left after WW2 so they buried thier soldiers by what region were they born.
I enjoyed the trip because I got to see lot of places and also we had friends and I got to share the room with my best friend. I demonstrated being caring because i shared my food with my friends and we ate with them. It was very good. My favorite moment was when I was swimming and I liked it because it had an outside and inside pool and also it was heated and it was great.
I think year 6 should go again because it is so much fun and it helped me for our assembly to write scripts and for our play. I found some things challenging about the trip like the booklet questions because i didn't know
lot about WW2. It was also challenging to find the stuff that I didn't know. I saw the Italian cemetary too, they buried thier soldiers in a drawer. There is a thick book and people who visit, write down their thoughts of how war is bad and how they are sorry for soldiers who died in that war. There were lot of signs with the word "Ignoto" which means they don't know who he is. It is really sad because if the family or relatives come and they put flowers and bow but how  about unknown soldiers their family can't say it's him because there
are lot of Ignotos. Also if you go to the Commonwealth cemetary you can see a Unknown on the gravestone and under that it says "known only unto God." 

NS:
When we went to the memorials, we went to the CommonWealth cemetery and we made rubbings which was really fun but hard but I made 6 rubbings, on the same day. After that, we went to the German and Italian memorials and then to the War Museum. When we went to the museum, i learned that Darna and Tobroq were attacked. My favorite part of the trip was the talent show because it was fun to see all different acts being performed which we dont see every day!
During the trip i think I was Open Minded and a Communicator because I made new friends and i was Open Minded because I found out more and more things by the minute. i really enjoyed the swimming because every once in a while H, S and I would change a game instantly. I think the next Year 6 class should not go to the memorials again because I think the kids should go to another place to experience new things around the world and see more things than they think they have seen!!!
My favourite monument was the Italian Memorial because all the shelves are on the wall and you would not have to worry about stepping on them although at the German memorial they are under the ground, so you still have that feeling.
Also, the Italian memorial is my favourite because we got to go upstairs and it was an amazing view to see where most of the fighting was. It was humungous and I was not able to believe my eyes once I saw the beautiful Mediteranian Sea.
As we were going back to the hotel, it was boiling in the bus. Thankfully, we were allowed to swim but the pool was too hot so Hedy and I wanted to go back to the room and have a nice shower, change and meet up in the meeting room and went for dinner. I sat next to my friends. The food was great! I found making rubbings the first time hard.

NT:
At the memorials I learned about the German, Italian and the Comonwelth cimitary and the museam and I learned that they are defferent than each other and I learned how to grave rub. I saw were the battle happened. I enjoyed the talent show and the monuments I think I demonstrated a caring learner profile because I cared about the people I was with in the room with but i did not enjoy the night because me and Z did not know how to sleep. My favourite stop was the musean because it was important and had lots of information.
What I found deffecult was  the camp booklet it had lots of questions wich were hardand the diary because it was hard to write before I went to bed. I enjoyed the games we played and I liked the day we drew the ground floor of the hotel. in the talent show me and M came 2nd and H came 1st he deserved it. Miss hala turned 27.
Miss Tamara said that she will leave the day we come back for ever but she cheered us up with a song. Miss Marwa sang a song to us i really enjoyed the trip I whould like to go again. I think the year 6's should go next year they will enjoy it very much.

H:
On our trip we went to the Commonwealth cemetery, the war museum, and the German and Italian memorials. I think my favourite memorial was the Common wealth museum. I learned lots of things like how to do a rubbing. It was so much fun. I also learned that each monument was different and special in its own way. At the Italian memorial they burried people in a shelf and put them in a wall. At the German memorial they bury people in a hole then put a cover on and write the region the people come from on the cover. In
the Common wealth cemetery they bury the person and put a grave stone by their head.
I think I was an inquirer on this trip because I think I asked responsible questions. What I thought was challenging on the trip was drawing a map of the hotel. What I really enjoyed was having my friends as roommates. It was nice getting to spend time with my friends we had loads of fun together I wish I could stay longer even though I missed my parents. It was the coolest trip ever! I loved it. I think that year six should go on the trip again so they can experience new things like I did.

S:
When we went on our trip, we learned a lot of things about WW2. It was a very exciting and intersting trip.
We went to the musium, memorials and graves. In the musium, we learned who was very important in the war, and what kind of weapons they used. We found out how they work out when they got hurt. It was very intersting.
I learned when did WW2 start, and we guessed some questions like "what are the bombs called that the Americans dropped on Japan?" We wrote the answers in the booklet. We worked a lot in the booklet. We needed to bring our booklet every time. When we went to the German mnemorials, we did rubbing in our books we thought it was intersting.
I found a 18 year old boy who was killed. He was so young. I felt sad. It was very surprising. The German memorial was made of stone. It was gray and dusty. Also, in front you could see who was killed. But when i went to the Italian Memorial, I was surprised, because it was so different from German one. The italian one was so clean and the name of the monument was written with gold letters. There was also a cross. It was so beautiful. When i went to graves, I saw tonnes of graves. I guess it was more that 100.
Mr.L said, that this was only part of the war dead. It was sad and dreadful. If this was only part of the people that died in the battle, there must be a lots of people that died in the whole war. In the Italian memorial, there was a big book that you can write comments.  It was really nice.
I really enjoyed being with with my friend in the hotel. I was with U and M. It was so, so, so, so much fun and it was exciting. I used my caring skills. I helped my friends in thehotel when we needed to draw a map of the hotel. It was a very, very nice trip.

P:
When we went on our trip we first went to the hotel. The day after we reached the hotel we went to three memorials and  a  museum. I have learned a lot of new things in the trip. I learned how people lived in WW2 and how people suffered in the war. The first memrial we went to was the CommonWealth memorial, the second was the German memorial and the third was the Italian memorial. We also went to the museum.I liked the German memorial because every one asked me to read the letters that were on the walls.

MC:
On the bus to the monuments I was sitting next to my friend S and whewe stoped for snack there were mokeys. they were so cute. Aftera long trip we got to the hotel and we sat down and got are room key and partners and got set up. after a nice swim we got ready for dinner.
For dinner we hade a buffet.dinner was good but i was tierd and so it was time for bed.
(day 2)
Today was a bizzy day we are going to visit three mamorials and one musium so we met up in the meating area for the day plan and we were told we would be tierd. we got ready for the daythe first mamorial we went to was the common welth mamoril.i found a 17 year old and there was a message that said "till the day breaks." after we went to the war musium. they hade guns from the war. next on are list was the german mamorial.it was so nice. i found a five year old.after a nice time at the german mamorial we went to the Italian mamorial. it hade a long walk way but when you get in it its totly worth it.

K:
On the trip I learned about WW2 I enjoyed the swimming pool and the food. My favourite momment there is when we went to the memorial to shade in the names. I think we should go again next year. The booklet was a little chalenging for me. But I had a lot of fun there.
I think i was a communicator on the trip because when i was working on my booklet in the bus I youst to communicate a lot in the bus with everyone and get a lot of answers and I realy want to go again because i had a lot of fun and because i learned a lot about conflict and i think if i go again i might learn a lot more about world war 2.
My favourite monument is the Commonwealth memorial and the museum because there was a lot of interisting information about war. It tells you when it started and when it ended what was the reason for world war 2.
What i liked about the hotel was the room and the pool and the food. What i didnt like is the
room inspection i had to work very, very hard but i had fun.
AdK:
Year 6 had a trip to a war memorial site. The journy took a long time. When we arrived we stayed in a very nice hotel. On the first day we swam in the indoor swimming pool it was hot and fun.Then we had to draw a map of the hotel i found it challenging.We had to sleep by 9 oclok.
The second day was a very busy day. first we had breakfast, then we went to the Common wealth graves where there were lots of buried soldiers with different nationalities. i discovered that i was a thinker because i knew that if more than one buried in a grave they should be from the same family or they died togeter.
We had to do rubbings and it was cool. After that we went to the museum. We saw weapons , tanks,  a Spitfire plane and trucks.
I was caring because i was sencible and i took care of things.Then we went to the German memorial it was like a castel. The grave covers looked like a bed. Next we went to the Italian memorial which was amazing. Soldiers were buried in trays and their names put on a white stone in the wall.
On the third day we packed our bags and went home.

Thanks everyone for your hardwork!

Photo Credit: G Griffiths

Week in Review for 02/12/10

In school, our inquiry topic is about conflict and peace.
We are learning about WW2 and other conflicts and for our summative task, we needed to choose a conflict that we want to reasearch about and we need to make a nespaper or a video like on the news. I am doing the Korean War and it is very intersting.
For the inquiry unit, we also went on a three day class trip to a war memorial site. We went to see German, Commonwealth and Italian memorials. Each one was very different. The German one was like an ancient old one, and the Italian one is like very clean and white and nice with a big echo. We also went to grave sites at the Commonwealth memorial. There were so many people died in the war. I felt kind of sad.
We also went to the local war museum. It was very intersting. We needed to answer questions in our trip booklet. We needed to treat them like gold so they would not get lost. It was very useful to learn about the conflicts which have happened .
In math, we started to learn about average,like mean, median, range and MODE. MODE stands for... Most Often. We learned that, for example: 1,3,5,7,6,2,2,4,3,3,1,9,8. The number which we see most often is 3. So the mode is 3. We also learned Median and Mean. Median is the number in the middle when you have a group of numbers. EX:2,2,3,5,7. We put them in order smallest to largest and find the middle number. So the midian is 3. But if the group of numbers is an even number, you do like this. EX:2,2,3,5,7,7. 3+5=8. 8 divide 2 =4. so 4 is the midian. The mean is like this. 20,20,20. if you add them, it is 60. 60 divided by 3 is 20. the mean is 20. It was very fun.

Thanks S!
map credit: HowStuffWorks/CC

Our early attempts at Personification Poetry

Here are some examples of our early attempts at Personificationand other forms of Poetry:

The Pen

Cars

Bob

Desk

My House

4 Leaf Clovers

Stars

Dreamland

Inky

Summer

Cars

Looking for a children's autrhor to skype with

We are looking for authors of children's books to Skype with in January.

Are you a children's author? Do you know someone who would be able to help us get in conact with a children's author? If you've answered yest to either of these two questions please send us a message in the comments.

Please help!

Starting a new unit - Biographies

Recently, the class started discussing autobiographies and biographies, which we will be using and learning about over the next few weeks. Here is our mind-map about what we already know about biographies:

Week in Review for 28/10/10

In school our inquiry topic was about traditions and we researched three traditions each and we had to make a presentation with the information that we had. I researched three traditions that were Ramadan,Christmas and Chinese New Year. I worked with KM on it and I thuoght we did very well and i thought it was very good that we did the presentation because it made me know muh more about each of the traditions. Also this week we focused on fractions ,decimals and percent. We had to practise very hard and that made me feel confident. And we also worked on word problems and we learned a method called RUCSAC which stands for Read,Underline,Calculate,Solve,Answer,Check and that made word problems very easy. This week I thought I was open minded.

Thanks KH!

Week in Review 21/10/10

Last Tuesday Year 6 went on a trip to old Cairo. As soon as we got to school we met in Ms.Lowis class and Mr.W's class and we got ready for the trip.
When we arrived we ate a snack then we went to the mosque,we had to take our shoes off.
The mosque was big it had a water fountain.
Later we went to a very old and small church, it had lots of pictures and it had lots of candles.
After that we went to the synagogue, it had two places to pray the men pray downstairs and the women pray upstairs.
Finally we went to the hanging church, it is called hanging church because it was hanging up and we could see that through the glass floor and through the windows .
Then we walked back to the buses , I did not enjoy all the walking.

Thanks S!

Here are some pictures of the places we visited taken by JB. Some places did not allow flash photography:

Snack before starting our journey

Our first stop

Inside the mosque

The fountains

On the approach to the church

On the approach to the church

The Hanging Church

Thanks for the great pictures J! They will be part of our virtual tour as well! :)
Mr.L

Week in Review 14/10/10

Last week people that went to Old Cairo told me that they went to a church and that they went to a mosque and a synangogue and that they had to take notes. In inquiry we are learning about traditions and I learnt about ramadan and christmas and bullfighting.In english we were doing poems about issues in the world mine was pollution and after we finished we had to say our poem out loud to every one in the class.

Thanks,
KM

Week in Review for 7/10/10

This week in English we were learning about issue poetry.We had to write three poems if for example someone wanted to do an acrostic poem you would have to write 8 letters or more.

This week in math we have experienced many fun math games that include Multiplication , percentage , decimals , division and fractions.It was also optional that we could use the textbook or this wonderful math website called : http://mathletics.com/ this website has lots of educational assignements that we have been assigned by our class teacher.There are also lots of exciting games , It also has LIVE mathletics which is a competition between us and anyone in any school around the world. This is fun because we get to know other students difficulties and different levels and they get to know ours without any contact.

In inquiry we are still learning about cultures and traditions and we are summarising the pieces of information that we have collected in week 3 and 4.

Thanks H

Week in Review for 30/9/10

In math we were learning about long division and we went past remainders. Mr Lowe told that there are many ways to get answers in division or basically in every sums like: addition, subraction, division and multiplication. We have a website called Mathletics and our teacher gives us 9 or 10 tasks to practice on. In our inquiry we have new system called Epals it means we can ask questions and answer other students somewhere in world about traditions and cultures and we have two parteners one in our school in Year 6 and one in somewhere in world. In English, we had to write poems and we went down to the library and recorded one of our best poems that we wrote and we had homework about poems and they were called webquests and they was fun I mean very fun. In Guided Reading our teacher was Mrs L and Mrs H. We were reading different books from each other. Our english teacher is sometimes Mr Lowe and sometimes Mrs H. when we are doing with Mr Lowe we learn about poems but if we are doing with Mrs H we are reading a book a called Call of the Shelkie.

Thanks for the big effort J!

Week in Review for 23/9/10

Lets start with math , this week we concentrated more on multiplication and division and we used something called (BODMAS).

e.g the sum is (4 x 2) + 5 - 3
first you have to write bodmas vertically
then you have to look at the part in brackets e.g (4 x 2)
then do the sum and follow the bodmas rules .
I am going to give an example of a sum i would get.

e.g :
( 7 x 4 ) divided by 2 + 3 - 5
B  7 x 4 = 28
O --------------
D  28 divided by 2 = 14
M we already did the multiplication sum
A  14 + 3 = 17
S  17 - 5 = 12

Bracket  Always do the part in the brackets first
O---------------------------------------------
Division - do the division and join the answer to the first one
Multiplication - do the multiplication sum and join the answer to the answer in the sum before it
Addition - do the addition sum and join the answer to the answer in the sum before it
Subtraction - do the subtraction sum and join it to the last answer to make the total


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In english we were doing poetry , every different kind of poetry free verse , diamante and many more.
we had to write more than 7 poems for homework and then Mr .lowe told us to practice saying them so that we could record them with no hesitation. Some people might be asking why we are recording them. We are recording them so the poems could be spread on the internet.
most of us are embarrassed but we'll get over it soon.
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in music we are looking at an african song.But before that we were looking at the song called under the sea we had to sing it to the beat and keep up the tune.Then we played this very nice game that has something to do with croches and cuavers every time miss lala pointed at us we had to clap our name in the correct musical beats.
i enjoyed this week and i hope others did too.
Thanks Z!