September / October Newsletter

Dear Parents,
We have been hard at work over the past couple of weeks, learning many new things and sharing new experiences. Please allow us to illustrate a quick summary of what we have been doing in each of the core subject areas.
Prior to the upcoming break, we will be finishing some interesting, and very involved units. Please take the time to look over some of the creative work that your child has been busily working on, along with any awards they might have received.

Math
We are coming to the end of our 1st large Math unit (Whole Numbers & Decimals) and on our return to school after the Idul Fitri break, we will be starting to work on our second Math unit, Algebra, Data and Graphing. At the conclusion of this unit, Math awards will be presented.

Social Studies
We are currently involved in a fascinating Geography simulation which will continue on for a few weeks after the holiday. Each class member has been assigned to a traveling Caravan in order to seek out treasures as quickly as possible from designated locations around the globe and return them to Big Buck Billionolla in exchange for gold pieces. To traverse the globe, they have to earn valuable travel dots by completing numerous country research projects, oral presentations, and geography related tasks.

Along the way, their caravans might become beset with problems and obstacles from their daily Fate Cards which might leave them stranded in the Sahara Desert with few supplies, attacked by cannibalistic pirates or sailing headfirst into the Bermuda Triangle!

This fun and exciting simulation has infused excitement, interest and a growing understanding in world geography amongst the Grade 5 students. The project will enable the students to give you the location of a country using longitude and latitude, locate countries, capitals, major features and some very obscure sites in every continent, and divulge to you some interesting country facts.

Science
After our Social Studies unit, we will be starting our first Science unit, Biomes, which naturally progresses from our ‘Caravans’ Geography unit. In this unit, students will learn how living things interact and how to protect fragile ecosystems. Our culminating activities will include chapter tests, nature story, and a mobile.

Novel Study
In novel study class, we have started with Bridge to Terabithia, a story set in the fifth grade.

Students have been: designing and writing about their imaginary secret hiding places; creating fantasy animals; discussing, reporting and writing about bullying, acts of revenge and what the essential ingredients of friendship and family values are; and they have acted out role-plays linked to a variety of themes within the novel. Students are also completing vocabulary exercises, questions for discussion and quizzes to gain a deeper understanding the novel.

Writing
So far, students have studied and practised how to write a research report, integrating the knowledge they have learned in IT lessons, to produce power point presentations. We have refined our research and note-taking skills, reviewed effective paragraph writing and learned how to logically organize a research essay.
Our ongoing task will be writing personal narratives and infusing our writing with juicy vocabulary and a stronger, more personal voice.
After break we will also begin to focus on sentence fluency and word choice to create more interesting and creative pieces of writing.

There will not be any homework assignments to complete over the upcoming break, however, students are expected to continue reading and completing their reading logs and if they haven’t already, to finish their country research PowerPoint presentations. (Remember: a minimum of 25 minutes of reading a day keeps your child’s grades improving and Mrs. Beck smiling!)

Birthdays in October
Over the space of 10 days, we have 6 students in 5B who will be celebrating their birthdays. (David, Jin Hee, Joel, Lennart, Hee Won and Jaya).
I suggest rather than having separate parties in school time each day for each student, that we have just one large celebration for all 6 of the students on Friday 24th October from 11.10 – 12.00pm. I will send out more information to the parents of the students whose birthdays we will be celebrating, but this is just a ‘heads up’ about the date and to make sure that this is OK with you all.
I will make sure that on the actual birthday days we make the day special for them, but we will have just one party for all of them together in school time. Of course, this is separate from any celebrations or parties you choose to have for your child outside of school time!

On another personal note, we are really in need of a class parent to help us out. Please read the letter from Mr. Cook and if you can spare the time, please volunteer to be 5B’s support parent. We are one of the few classes in lower school without one!

Have a wonderful holiday!
Sincerely,
Mrs. Kathryn Beck
Grade 5B
kbeck@njis.or.id

“Shoot for the moon! Even if you miss you will land among the stars!”-Les Brown