Friday, 28 February 2020

Term 2 Week 8


logo.pngUDIS inspires internationally-minded, balanced learners who thrive and become active, global citizens.



Sharing the Planet


Central idea: Conflict resolution requires patience, compromise and negotiation. 

Concepts:: Peace, Reconciliation, Exploitation

Lines of inquiry 
  • Causes of conflict (local and global)
  • Human rights and equity
  • Strategies used to resolve conflicts
Skills to be developed 
  • Social skills  - Able to build relationships that can withstand conflict. 
  • Communication skills - Exercised through learning how to communicate in times of conflict. 
Learner Profile Attributes 
Knowledgeable about world news
Balanced -listening to various points of view

English


Our Personal Social and Physical Education was connected directly with our unit of inquiry this week. As the central idea uses a lot of challenging words, we spent time confirming the meaning of them and practising how to use them correctly. We are now able to talk about issues related to friendship, peace and conflict resolution with a good amount of clarity now.

English was especially enjoyable this week as we were able to read one another's stories. Students gave a lot of time and attention to these, and so the results are very pleasing. We used a checklist which allowed us to assess the quality of these stories. Ask your child if you would like to read these.





Science -the focus this week has been on researching the different kinds of energy. Student exercised their thinking skills as they considered how to categorise the different forms of energy.  Through reading and discussion, students were able to understand that everyone is now using far more energy than was the case in the past. This huge increase is actually causing conflict in the world. This is an issue that we will build upon next week.


Reading times this week were opportunities to enjoy poetry. We have a lot of wonderful poetry books that students enjoy. Some of these books are traditional collections and others are really funny ones written in a modern style. The aim of reading these was for students to look closely at the way in which poets use words in interesting ways.

Maths



Mother Language Assembly




Sunday, 23 February 2020

Term 2 Week 7


logo.pngUDIS inspires internationally-minded, balanced learners who thrive and become active, global citizens.



Sharing the Planet


Central idea: Conflict resolution requires patience, compromise and negotiation. 

Concepts:: Peace, Reconciliation, Exploitation

Lines of inquiry 
  • Causes of conflict (local and global)
  • Human rights and equity
  • Strategies used to resolve conflicts
Skills to be developed 
  • Social skills  - Able to build relationships that can withstand conflict. 
  • Communication skills - Exercised through learning how to communicate in times of conflict. 
Learner Profile Attributes 
Knowledgeable about world news
Balanced -listening to various points of view


This unit of inquiry involves us in a lot of discussion about various kinds of conflict. We've seen that there is conflict in the world between countries and conflict in our nation in various forms. There is conflict locally and even within our classroom. These discussions are focussing on

English / Reading
We've begun to read a challenging book together. It is challenging both in the ideas it presents and the vocabulary used. It's a book titled "Why do we fight?' It covers conflict at the international level, as well as conflict on a personal level too.

We've also looked into a second book, "Why are you picking on me?" This is focussing on a bully, how to identify it and what to do about it.

English/ Writing
The main part of this has been bringing our extended stories to a conclusion. Everyone was able to incorporate and element of conflict into their story, and of course that added to making them all very engaging. These will be printed next week and shared publically.


Maths

This week, we have been focusing on fractions of amounts and finding equivalent fractions of amounts.

The assessment date of this subtopic will be Wednesday 26th February. After that, we will begin our brand new topic 'Directed Number - operations and equations with the directed number'.

Science 
This week we learned more about the various kinds of energy and talked about the fact that some are renewable and others are non-renewable. We also considered how electrical energy is generated. We will continue with more of this next week. 


Friday, 14 February 2020

Term 2 Week 6



Sharing the Planet


Central idea: Conflict resolution requires patience, compromise and negotiation. 

Concepts:: Peace, Reconciliation, Exploitation

Lines of inquiry 
  • Causes of conflict (local and global)
  • Human rights and equity
  • Strategies used to resolve conflicts
Skills to be developed 
  • Social skills  - Able to build relationships that can withstand conflict. 
  • Communication skills - Exercised through learning how to communicate in times of conflict. 
Learner Profile Attributes 
Knowledgeable about world news
Balanced -listening to various points of view





English

This week, we have been focusing on writing our stories. We got a writing assessment checklist to improve our wonderful stories. For a spelling lesson, we had a chance to see a structured word inquiry matrix. There was a spelling competition for us to work with. This time, we had to build the word "struct". We came up with a lot of words using this method. Please ask your child about it.

Image result for Structured Word Inquiry pictures

Maths

The students have been working very this week, especially with short and long division. This week, we continued with our subtopic 'Problem Solving with Multiplication and Division', focusing on:
  • Calculating areas of rectangles, parallelograms, triangles and trapeziums. 
  • Solving problems involving mean.
Reminder - I have strongly advised the students to do some practice with this at home in preparation for their assessment. hit-the-button

Next week. we will complete our 'Multiplication and Division' assessment on Wednesday 19th February 2020. This is the first day back after the long weekend break. Please ensure that your child is revising at home in preparation for this assessment. If you would like me to email the Term 2 Revision List again, please contact me: charlotte.r@udoninternationalschool.com.

Our next focus, starting on Thursday 20th February, is going to be 'fractions and percentages of amounts'. On Thursday and Friday's lessons, we will focus on:


  • Fractions of amounts
  • Finding equivalent fractions of amounts
This sub-topic is very short meaning the assessment date will be Wednesday 26th February. After that, we will begin our brand new topic 'Directed Number - operations and equations with directed number'.

Science - we have started an inquiry into energy and considered what we already know and what we need to find out. This 'finding out' will be the focus for next week. 

Sport Day
What fun we had today as enjoyed the culmination of our Thriving Week . Please see the school newsletter for photogarphs. 



Friday, 7 February 2020

Term 2 Week 5


Sharing the Planet
This week we started a new unit of inquiry: 

Central idea: Conflict resolution requires patience, compromise and negotiation. 

Concepts:: Peace, Reconciliation, Exploitation



Lines of inquiry 
  • Causes of conflict (local and global)
  • Human rights and equity
  • Strategies used to resolve conflicts
We began this by thinking about three kinds of conflict. 1: Personal conflict, the things that we struggle with. 2: Conflict in our community. Do we know what is going on around us? 3: Conflict in Thailand. What are the big news stories and issues. This was was a warming up exercise to see how much the students know. Next week we'll come back to this and think about issues even in the wider world. We will move into the issue of conflicts caused of sharing of natural resources.

This unit is going to have a strong link with both science, as well as Personal, Social Education: 

Science - Sharing of energy sources can be a source of conflict

• identify and describe different forms of energy
• demonstrate how energy can be stored and transformed from one form to another 
• explain the impact of diet in providing the body with energy
• assess renewable and sustainable energy sources
• local community improvement in relation to conservation of energy.

 Personal & Social Education

Techniques of mediation and negotiation within the class and/or school community 
Comment on examples of conflict (local and global) and identify the causes 
Reflect on his or her own strategies in dealing with situations of personal conflict




English 

We were very lucky to  be visited by a professional author, Mr. Paul Shepherd. He has recently had a book published, and so he was the perfect person to teach us how to create a story. We learned about how to create strong characters, settings and a climax for the story. 




 After we had written the plan with him, there was time during the week to develop the story into something quite special. Next week we will continue writing these so that there is a complete product to share.  




Speaking and listening 
On Tuesday everyone was required to stand up and talk for one minute about what they had learned during the previous science unit. This was quite a challenge, but everyone did a great job!

Maths

The students have been working very this week, especially with short and long division. This week, we continued with our subtopic 'Problem Solving with Multiplication and Division', focusing on:
  • Formal methods to multiply and divide integers and decimals
  • The order of operations (BIDMAS)
*Originally we had planned to also focus on calculating areas of rectangles and parallelograms, but this has now been moved to next week due to students needing additional time on division with integers and decimals. I have strongly advised the students to do some practice with this at home in preparation for their assessment. hit-the-button

Next week. we will focus on:
  • Calculating areas of rectangles, parallelograms, triangles and trapeziums. 
  • Solving problems involving mean.
Please remind your child that the date of the next assessment is Wednesday 19th February 2020. This is the first day back after the long weekend break. Please ensure that your child is revising at home in preparation for this assessment. If you would like me to email the Term 2 Revision List again, please contact me: charlotte.r@udoninternationalschool.com.

Our next focus, starting on Thursday 20th February, is going to be 'fractions and percentages of amounts'.

Exhibition
Please work wih your child on their exhibition journal. You might discuss the issues with them and extend their thinking.  Encourage them to keep the journal going. 

Global Play Day