1. SEPTEMBER 17 2010
W E E K LY U P D A T E
GRADE 5A @ CDNIS
Poetic Wordsmiths and Technological Innovators
Dear Parents,
Another week, another five days of excitement, enthusiasm and learning! This week was
particularly special as I had a chance to meet many of you at our annual Curriculum Night
on Tuesday. It turned out to be a nice evening and I hope it was both informative and
engaging for you. If you did not have an opportunity to make it you can view the slideshow
presentation on the class blog and the video here. If you were there and want to see
pictures of you in the role of a student in the Math classroom, then please click our new tab
Photographs. Other pictures taken throughout the week are there as well. I will try to add
new slideshows as much as possible to provide you with a more visual summary of how
your child is being engaged at CDNIS and in Grade 5Awesome.
We’ve pretty much wrapped up our Place Value unit and the students will be assessed on
Monday. Unfortunately this week turned out to be busier than expected so that particular
assessment did not happen today. As part of our unit of inquiry we’ve also investigated and
negotiated questions that interested us about communication technology and used Google
Documents to create a survey that was both posted on our blog and sent to the Grades 5
and 6 students and teachers. We’re now using this data to form conclusions. We’ve also
agreed that Google Documents is an excellent tool that we can use in the future to collect
and organize data. Check out our Wordle Summary too.
Students have continued “having a go” at writing a variety of poetic structures and using a
variety of literary devices. We’ve engaged in Sharing Circles through which we offered
constructive feedback on each other’s writing. This feedback will inform the editing and
revising process as students begin to publish their poetry. We’ve collaboratively decided
upon the assessment criteria. With some effort, students will be completely published by
the end of next week. We hope to share our final work through the class website, to each
other through a poetry recital and by reading and sharing with our Prep A reading buddies.
Students are beginning to think about their summative task, in which they will create and
present their own communication technology. If you have not seen the TedTalks video
posted on Wednesday, I encourage you to do so. By the end of the video, the students
were standing and clapping. Quite inspiring stuff as we enter into the final phase our our
unit. I can’t wait to see what our Little Innovators produce!
Please note: Thursday is the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday and there will be no school.
Please note: DDD has been changed to September 27 and the theme is PINK, in
remembrance of Alan Dick
Congratulations to Kelly Yeung (1st semester), Cherie Chung (2nd semester) and Nicholas
Spence, who have been elected as our Grade 5A class representatives.
Kind Regards
DJ MacPherson
donaldmacpherson@cdnis.edu.hk
http://sites.cdnis.edu.hk/teachers/donaldmacpherson//