SEPTEMBER 10 2010 W E E K L Y U P D A T E

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 RegardsDJ MacPherson

donaldmacpherson@cdnis.edu.hk

http://sites.cdnis.edu.hk/teachers/donaldmacpherson//

Saving the Tree Octopus, Writing Poetry and Exploring Changes in Communication Technology

GRADE 5A @ CDNIS