As you may know, your children have been busily planning what to sell at their market. Some companies have nominated you to do their shopping with them in the holidays! We will not be buying perishables in the holidays.

Children who have nominated themselves (and you) to shop will have a list and a strict budget to keep to. Next term they will bring their shopping and receipts to school and will be reimbursed. They have priced the items online, but please, if you think there is a more suitable or less expensive product, talk to your child about it to see if that would suit their needs.

If you are not able to do this don’t stress. I can sort it out next term and help them with it. If you have any questions feel free to email me in the holidays on juli.bryan629@schools.sa.edu.au

This morning the year 5 students conducted market research with their target audience, (the year 3 and 4s.) This capitalised on their learning in our previous unit on Advertising and gave students a chance to try  out what they had learnt. It also gave them an opportunity to practice communicating with large groups of people, a skill that they will require for Exhibition.

Our students were quite surprised at the results they got and are now busy planning for the 2 things that they will be selling at their market in week 3 next term.

As part of this inquiry we are learning all about writing a procedural text. Today we wrote a practice text about how to make a toasted cheese sandwich. Hmmmmm…. it was certainly enlightening and we had a lot of laughs. I was tempted to  set homework for them to follow their instructions to the letter! – but I didn’t want to wreck your kitchens…or your toasters for that matter! 🙂

The next step is to write a procedure for the things they are planning for their stall, after thoroughly researching and practicing the best way to go about it. Then we’ll make shopping lists and purchase the materials we need ready to make them early next term.

The focus of this unit is to develop understanding of the way companies function, and not on fundraising. The market is just the ‘vehicle’ we are using to explore this. Hopefully though, we will be in a position to repay all of our investors 🙂

Our first unit of inquiry is a history and geography based unit. It is centred around significant events in history. To provoke the student’s interest we took them to Frank Smith to go ‘panning’ for ‘gold’. We are so lucky to have this lovely resource so close by.

Many treasures were found and we all had a great time. Only one student got really wet feet so Tanya and I are calling it a success 🙂

We have been busy exploring many aspects of Sharing the Planet.

Over the weekend I came across a global initiative that the UN will be voting on this Friday. Did you know there are 17 Global Goals? They all happen to relate to Sharing the Planet. Read more about them here.

Today we spent some time exploring them and narrowed down our interests to three issues. Students began writing letters to persuade their teachers of the things they would like to explore, and tonight they should be sharing them with you for feedback and ideas.

We hope to be able to allocate students to groups before the holidays.

We also looked at several important documents related to our Exhibition. They can be accessed below.

Exhibition Timeline 2015

Checkpoint #1

Checkpoint #2

Checkpoint #3

Exhibition single point rubric 2015

For homework over the next 2 weeks, students have been asked to research a local company, or a company they have connections to. To help with this we have provided a scaffold, (below,) for this task. We are asking students to interview people, (primary source,) rather than hand over the sheet for an adult to fill in, in preparation for Exhibition. This task will be due via Showbie by Monday 8th June 2015.

Company research sheet

We learnt loads today! Foremost, we learnt how well behaved our students are in comparison to those from some other schools. The other adults and I were so impressed.

Students learnt that primary colours for art are different to those involved in making white light. See if you can work out which colours are needed from the photos.

We also learnt what makes a great exhibition. We talked about the need for well organised activities with all the equipment ready for each participant, how crowds make some activities too dangerous, how colour is important and how the time an acitivity takes to complete should be considered in planning.

Thanks SciWorld for organising this. If you are interested in going along it is also on this evening and tomorrow in the Adelaide Convention Centre. It’s free!

Next Tuesday, 24th February, you are invited to come along to an information session on PYP and MYP.

It will be held from 6-7 in the library.

Some of the thinngs that will be addressed include the Year 5 PYP Exhibition which students in my class will be participating in this year; the Year 6-7 Student Initiated Project (SIP); and how the PYP and MYP are structured.

As you know, this is the last year that your year 5 student will be involved in PYP, as they will be MYP students next year, so it may be worth coming along to hear how the two programmes differ.

Check out this online resource to learn heaps about the Australian Gold Rush.

http://www.myplace.edu.au/TLF_resources/L702/description.html

Exhibition-links pdf

Mrs Robertson has been very kind to us and put together some weblinks and other ideas for our Exhibition. Access them from the link above.

We are well underway with our exhibition now.
So far we have unpacked the theme sharing the Planet; used QR codes to view some clips to get us thinking; written a letter of application; explored teamwork through games; worked out what makes a team run smoothly; brainstormed all our questions, affinity grouped them to work out the guiding questions, mapped them against the concepts, identified lines of inquiry; and met with 2 teachers to work out our central ideas, ideas for primary resources and ideas for presentation. We’ve also begun researching, remembering to correctly site all resources.
Phew!! That’s a lot, but no time to rest yet. Next term we’ll have only 2 and a half weeks to complete our research in order to become experts. It’s going to be important to keep working on our research even through the holidays.
The students are handling it really well and, when I looked through their journals yesterday,I was very impressed with the work they are putting in.