Monthly Archives: December 2015

Happy Holidays

Dear 5R Families,

As I unloaded all of your lovely and thoughtful gifts at home this evening (don’t worry, I got a drive! :), I reflected on how kind and generous you had all been.

This has truly been, as I said this morning, a wonderfully warm welcome to a fantastic community. My thanks go out to you, the parents, to your exceptionally warm, playful and supportive children and, for the organizational efforts today and throughout the year to Catharina and Kathryn. Thank you.

This afternoon we celebrated the publication of our personal narrative stories. These have been a remarkable process of collecting and developing ideas, drafting, revising and editing and each story has been a real journey of growth. We shared our stories, offered each other compliments and enjoyed some (deliciously alcohol-free) celebratory bubbly.

Enjoy the photos:

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These stories will come home, along with a recent math assessment, in January for you to share, comment upon and return.

In the meantime, I wish you all a wonderful holiday season, and a very happy new year.

See you in 2016!

 

Goodbye Junwon

We were sorry to learn some time ago that Junwon would be leaving us at ZIS this December.

Many thanks to Catharina for organizing a lovely goodbye gift. We sat before lunch yesterday, took time to share with Junwon all the things we loved and valued about him, and he unwrapped his gift.

Goodbye Junwon. Keep in touch. We will miss you.

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Reports, Genius Hour, Holidays, Maths and more!

Dear Parents,

What a busy first half of the year it has been! I have felt privileged to watch your children learn and grow over the past months and I greatly look forward to the new semester and to seeing them journey towards becoming sixth graders.

The last two weeks have seen us continue to work with decimals, write personal narratives and put together our PSA films on Digital Citizenship. Busy, fun times!

I wanted to share a few of thoughts with you before the break:

Reports: You will soon be able to access your child’s report card online. For those of you that were at ZIS last year, you will notice some changes in the reporting system. For Literacy and Math there are a greater number of indicators which aim to give you a more detailed picture of how your child is progressing. Students are placed on each indicator according to whether they are ‘exceeding’, ‘secure’, ‘developing’ or ‘beginning’ their skill or understanding in a certain area. Do be sure to read the explanation for each of these descriptors, included at the top of report card. I felt it worth noting that descriptors are given based on expectations for this point in the school year and that it is possible that your child may have a mix of descriptors within a subject area. As learners, we all have strengths and goal areas within a certain subject or discipline, so this is no cause for concern and helps me and your child to finely tune our work together for next semester.

Genius Hour: After the break, we’ll start our second round of Genius Hour projects, however if your child is already excited about starting his/her exploration of a particular subject then this is absolutely fine. I look forward to inviting you in to see our sharing at the end of this round and will let you know the date soon!

Holidays: Your child’s priority for the upcoming break is to rest, spend time with family and to play and have fun. However, I would like to give a little reminder that everyone should be reading, reading, reading! I’ll be asking students to share what they have read when they return from the break, so it would be worth keeping track please.

Maths: This week we are our math assessment on addition and subtraction of decimals and it will be sent home in the first week after the break. We are still waiting for several students to return the Volume assessment which they took home some time ago.

Finally, I want to thank you for all your support and to wish you a restful winter break surrounded by friends and family. May it be a happy and peaceful time.

Warm regards,
Jamie

Please enjoy the 5R PSA videos here:

Anthony updated from ZIS Grade 5 Mr Raskin on Vimeo.

Sabine group most updated from ZIS Grade 5 Mr Raskin on Vimeo.

PSA Balance: Haya, Patricia, Mathilda, David edting, thought-provoking from ZIS Grade 5 Mr Raskin on Vimeo.

Cider Bullies By Leo, Annika, Evelina and Ameli. Most Realistic and convincing PSA. from ZIS Grade 5 Mr Raskin on Vimeo.

online law by Joshua, Junwon, Emanuele, Maxamillian and Krish. best sound track and camara angles. from ZIS Grade 5 Mr Raskin on Vimeo.

Cooking Up a Lower Carbon Footprint

Last week 5R spent some time learning about some environmental aspects of our global food systems, in particular, we explored the idea of a carbon footprint, and food miles. This led to a discussion of how we could reduce the carbon footprint of our food, and one suggestion was to eliminate the transportation carbon by purchasing it locally.

So, on Friday we walked over to a local farm that we knew had a little vegetable stall. On the way we had a look at the llamas and geese that they farmed, as well as the greenhouses and irrigation systems. At the food stall, each student chose an ingredient, we added all the decimal prices and made our purchases.

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Returning to school on Friday, we didn’t have enough time to cook, but we did make and share a big salad. This morning, we booked the kitchen and put together a huge vegetable soup, as well as some delicious roasted pumpkin and squash! Yum!

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What else can we do to reduce the carbon footprint of our food?

Enjoy the photos in this folder.