1. SEPTEMBER 10 2010
W E E K LY U P D A T E
GRADE 5A @ CDNIS
Saving the Tree Octopus, Writing Poetry and
Exploring Changes in Communication Technology
Dear Parents,
It’s amazing that we’ve completed three full weeks of teaching and learning already. Time
does indeed fly when school is in session. We’ve not be short of things to do, concepts to
explore or skills to develop.
Our investigations into the base 10 system such as writing and naming numbers
appropriately as well as rounding and comparing numbers have been accomplished with
success. Students can expect some assessments of their understandings next week.
We’ve tuned-in to poetry, figured out what we know already, explored and revised our
understandings of different literary devices, learned of new resources we can turn to and
started having a go at writing poetry using different poetic structures. The buzz around the
classroom as students were attempting to write was quite awesome and it seems to me
there is a confidence in these young poets. I look forward to posting some of their
published works in the near future.
Your child might have tried convincing you to contribute to the “Save the Tree Octopus”
fund. They felt a bit tricked when I showed them the website. This was used as a means of
teaching critical literacy with regard to what we see online. It was great fun and I
encourage you to read the previous post on this blog. We’ve explored changes in the
technologies we’ve used to communicate and now we’re going to focus on one particular
communication technology of our choosing to see how it can be used to interact with an
audience. We are leading up to our summative task which was sent to you Monday to read
and discuss with your child (and which can also be found under the “Class Programme”
tab).
Please remember that Tuesday evening is Curriculum Night (6.30 - 9.00 pm)
Please note: Thank you for purchasing earphones for you child. It makes a big difference
when many students are accessing different sites/media. If your child does not have
earphones, they will not be permitted to access sites that have sound and the volume of all
videos will need to be muted. This is only fair to the rest of the students in the classroom.
Please note: Monday is a professional development day and dismissal will be at 11am.
Kind Regards
DJ MacPherson
donaldmacpherson@cdnis.edu.hk
http://sites.cdnis.edu.hk/teachers/donaldmacpherson//