Category Archives: Life in 5R

5R Update!

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Hello 5R families,

5R students seem well settled on our return from Torgon. I am sure you heard wonderful stories of the fun they had last week. They were such a pleasure to take on this trip. My favorite part of each day was gathering together with the class in the evening to hear the highlights of their day and to read a story to them.

First off, unfortunately we have a case of head lice in fifth grade. Please follow this link for details on how to search for and treat this.

This week we’ll spend some time reflecting on the Torgon trip. During writing workshop, the students will write a short narrative about one memorable time in Torgon. Then, we’ll wrap up the open-genre unit by editing and publishing the work the students have been doing. Later this week, we’ll launch our Personal Narrative unit.

We’ll wrap up our volume unit in math. This week, the kids will build 3-D robots out of blocks and measure the volume of these robots. This project will serve as the unit assessment, and will soon come home in their assessment folders for you to celebrate with them.

In our unit time, we will continue to explore the idea of community membership and delve into our rights, responsibilities, and spheres of influence as members of various communities.

PHOTOS!

Individual photos will be Thursday afternoon.  Class photos will be taken on Friday. As Tuesday is a PE day, if you’d like your child’s photo to be in different clothing, please send them in their PE clothes as usual, but send along a change for afterwards.

Lastly, this coming weekend will be the third instalment of Zurich’s fantastic Maker Faire. ZIS will be well featured, with several G5 students sharing their work, as well as talks and workshops from various members of the ZIS community. This is a very student-friendly event and would make a great day out! Some workshops are pre-registration based, and others are walk-ins. If you’ve the time to come on out, it will be a great day!

Family Homework – Digital Dilemmas

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Those of you who attended the Meet the Teacher night some weeks ago will remember this topic, but today we brought it to life in class.

Mr Kirkwood came into 5R to prompt an exploration of the Digital Dilemmas website this afternoon. Reflecting on his experiences as a parent, an educator and a digital user he walked the class through a discussion on the topic of disconnecting. Drawing on resources from the site, particularly the amazing photography of Eric Pickersgill, we discussed the way being on our devices can often make us feel “alone, together”.

The following text is from Mr Kirkwood, explaining your “family homework”, and introducing the Digital Dilemmas project.

While the digital world is a wonderful source of information, navigating the social and emotional implications of this online world can be challenging. We believe the best way to address the questions and concerns we all have about the digital world is by working together.

So, we are launching a new initiative with our Grade 5 students and their families. This initiative will involve conversations about the digital world in classrooms, in the library, and most importantly, at home.

Here’s how it works:

  • We’ve developed a website to guide these important conversations. This website is the hub of this initiative (click here to access) and presents a number of “Digital Dilemmas” which many of us have faced.
  • Beginning next week, we are asking each family to “work through” at least three dilemmas found on the website.
  • After each section you’ve explored, there are a few questions for you to answer.

Our goal is to open this discussion, generate ideas, and share strategies. Your input will enable us to do this. Please plan to complete the work before the October Break.

Together, as a community, we can find ways to successfully manage our online world.

Let us know if you have any questions

New Alert: Return Time Update & Torgon Friday

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We’ve left Torgon and are rolling down to the valley on our way home. Our buses have all left Torgon, and all classes are on schedule to arrive together. At the moment, we anticipate that all classes will arrive at the Wadenswil campus at 4:30. This is an update to the times outlined in the earlier email from the Lower School. 

We look forward to seeing you in a few hours! In the meantime, a final few photos from today’s adventures…

Torgon – Thursday, Sept 6

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A final full day of activities in Torgon!

Today the drizzle continued on and off, but fifth grade put on our waterproofs and persevered with all of our planned activities, right up to and including our full grade bbq cook-out! At the end of the cook-out, each activity group performed a short skit they’d put together over the course of the week.

We’re looking forward to a final activity session tomorrow morning, before hopping on the bus back to Wadenswil. Our expected arrival time is 4pm. If we will be any later, we’ll post a quick update to these classroom blogs with our estimated arrival time.

In the meantime, enjoy this final batch of photos from today’s adventures!

Torgon – Monday, September 3

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After a traffic-prolonged drive, and a long switchback climb into the mountains, we arrived safely in Torgon. Students received their room and activity groups, met their counsellors for the week, and went straight to lunch.

An afternoon of team-building games followed, in the lush grassy field under a bowl of peaks. Tomorrow, the activity rotation begins!

For today, please enjoy the linked folder of images. We’ll endeavour to post another folder each day, through the week. Each will be linked through a post like this one on the class blog.

Sausage cook-out :)

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This event is being organized by: Dayna Gadzhieva,Yara Salem and Laia Sitjes Sole.

This blog post was written by: Dayna, Yara,Laia.

 

This Friday, 31 of August, we will be having a sausage cook-out to celebrate the beginning of the year together!

On Friday this week, we will head into the woods at 11:30. We will start the cook-out right away, so your child is able to have time to cook their sausages. After that, we will share some desserts and play a couple of games like capture the flag, fort-building and more…

FOOD

  1. If your child gets cafeteria food every day, the staff have agreed to prepare sausages and bread rolls for your child.
  2. If your child gets home lunch every day, please give  a sausage or two to them.(if your child cannot eat a type of meat, please organize them their own type of sausages.)
  3. If you would like to bring extra snacks: chips, ketchup and mayo, marshmallows, easy vegetables (baby tomatoes, carrot sticks) desserts like muffins or fruits, graham crackers and chocolate (for s’mores).
  4. if you would like to sign up to bring food here is the link
  5. Please do not get anything other than sausages to cook over the fire.We are not able to cook chicken legs or steak

you do not have to bring anything but it would be nice if you do.

WEATHER

Currently, the weather is looking rainy for Friday so please keep your eye on the blog, if we need to cancel, we will inform you on Thursday evening.

We are very excited for our year together!

 

1st Weeks, Torgon Trip, Class Parents and More!

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Dear 5R Community,

What an absolutely lovely first two weeks we’ve had. From the first days, when I challenged students to design ways to get to know each other and our learning environment, the 5R class has worked together to build community. Through a review of types of government, they decided that a direct democracy would be the ideal type of decision-making organizational structure for us. They’re now moving forward in creating and evaluating Class Agreements that work with our school’s Learn, Care, Challenge, Lead mission statement, and that we can all agree on. We’re setting the stage for a year of student agency, ownership and voice in learning.

Torgon

Please be sure to read last week’s post on the Grade Five newsfeed for all the pertinent details for our upcoming Torgon trip. Don’t miss the packing list and schedule details please!

Class Parents

5R is looking for a generous parent (or two!) to work with other class parents in the grade in running several events throughout the year. Please let me know if you’re interested in supporting us! And thank you.

Snapshot Conferences

If you haven’t yet planned a Snapshot conference, to meet with me to discuss your child and ask any questions about fifth grade, please get in touch. I’d be very happy to book a time together.

And finally, please enjoy the photo gallery below! We’re off to a great start!