Favorite Field Trips of 2013-2014
What a busy year it has been in Grade 4! Did you know that some of our best learning experiences didn’t even happen in the classroom? Beijing is a wonderful city for museums, parks and experts. If you have been following our blog, you have seen some of these photos and comments before. As we reach the final month of Grade 4, here’s a quick recap of some of our happiest learning moments! What was your favorite field trip? Why? How do field experiences help you...
Read MoreMy Awesome Sports Day
Yesterday, the Elementary School had our Sports Day. At 1pm, Students from the BISS, BSB and the REGO Lions were all warming up excitedly on the track. The first event was 100m dash. Everyone was getting nervous and finally the wistle blew. I sped around the corner and crossed the finish line. I was in two races and got 3rd place on the first run and 1st place on the second run! I was very very proud of myself. The next event was long jump. Every competitor got a warm-up jump. When I warmed up, I thought about the positioning of the yellow line. Every school could have 2 kids in this event. BISS chose Joshua and me from Grade 4. After all the warm-ups, it was my turn to jump. I ran as fast as I could and jumped as far as I could. I got 1st place! I was very happy and I sprinted over to get my ribbon. At long last, it was the race I had been waiting for. It was the relay. In my relay team were Kazuki, Geon Woo, Jack and me. However, Kazuki was badly injured so Syakir replaced him. First Syakir ran and gave the baton to Jack. Then Jack ran and passed it to Geon Woo. Geon Woo ran towards me and as I got the baton I was suddenly very nervous. I took off and ran as fast as I could. But we were losing. I tried my best and started to take over. In the end, I beat them! My team won the relay! We were celebrating with joy! I couldn’t believe it! Overall, I was very proud of all my events. I feel like this was the best day of the year. I think I really improved in running and jumping because in one day, I ran 2 x 100m, 3 x 50m, plus a relay. I got a lot of exercise and had a lot of fun. The highlight was the exact moment that I crossed the finish line in the relay. It was the best day. By Kota Grade 4 What was your highlight from Sports Day? How did you show sportsmanship? Did you make any new...
Read MoreBook Week in Grade 4
Last week was a wonderful week in Grade 4. Guess what? It was Book Week! Book Week’s theme this year was “All the Bookshelf’s a Stage”. The focus was on performing arts. Our class had the special job of representing music, so we dressed up as rockstars. We sang a song called “All the World is a Stage” by a rockband from the 1970s called Slade. For our costumes we wore black t-shirts with BISS written on them in cool fonts. We also spiked our hair using gel. Then we sprayed our hair any color we wanted! We even drew cool symbols on our face like lighting bolts. It was really fun and we looked so cool. During Book Week we also had the Living Library, in which people came to tell us about their lives and jobs. Grade 4 really listened to what each person said and we asked good questions. At the Living Library there was a computer game engineer, a bronze medalist in synchronized swimming, a UN aid worker and many other interesting people. A published illustrator also came to vist us during the week. Her name was Anne Spudvillas and she told us all about the books she has illustrated. Her most famous book is the children’s version of “Mao’s Last Dancer”. She taught us how to draw using charcoal and we drew giant cats. During Book Week we exhibited our recycled book art. In art class, Grade 4 made disaster memorial books as part of our inquiry into natural forces. For this cool project we had to research a famous natural disaster and when, where and how many people died in this disaster. Then we found some symbols representing the disaster and created the number of symbols to match the number of deaths in the disaster. We also painted the book a color to represent the type of disaster (e.g. blue for floods, red for fires) and varnished our books. During SLCs, we showed our artwork to our parents. They were fascinated. It was such a busy and exciting week! What was your favorite part of Book Week? Explain what you learned from one of the Living Library...
Read MoreWriting Super-Stars!
Congratulations to our classmates Sajid and Benedict who won 1st and 2nd places in the Little Star Magazine Short Story Competition this year! From hundreds of entries, all over China, their stories were selected as the major prize winners. 1st Place – Sajid – for his story “Blaze Saves the World”. 2nd Place – Benedict – for his story “Aliens Adventure”. Congratulations also to Chae Yeon in Grade 3 who received an Honorable Mention for her story “A Lucky Year”. BISS writers dominated the 9 years of age category! We are very proud of our talented friends! Read the winning stories below: Blaze’s adventure sajid hassan-under9-beijing biss from grade4biss Aliens adventure benedict eugene lim-under9-beijing biss from grade4biss What is your favorite part of each story? Which writing strategies do you recognise from our...
Read MoreStudent Led Conferences
Thank you to our parents for coming to Student Led Conferences today. We were very proud to share our learning with you! We enjoyed sharing writing samples, videos, assessments and reflections. Thank you for listening, making positive comments and asking questions about our work. We’ve grown so much in Grade 4 and we are having a wonderful year! What were you most proud to show your parents? What advice or feedback did your parents give...
Read MoreGrade 4 Hosts Assembly
Last Friday, our class hosted the Elementary Assembly. We shared many of our learning experiences with the school community. We shared a digital story, our reading contracts and our math pattern investigation. Diana and Hanson did an excellent job reading out their letters to main characters. We also performed a play called Principled Ping and everybody delivered their lines really clearly. We used this play to teach the school about being a principled person. Great job, Geon Woo, who played the part of Ping! The Elementary Choir, the Grade 2 Puppet Show and the Grade 6 dancers were also part of our assembly. The Grade 2 puppet show was really cute and funny. Our favorite part was sharing our new inquiry into Natural Forces. Each person explained one of our experiments or disaster simulations. Then, we did a rap about the weather. It was so fun! Annie was such a fantastic rapper, that Mr Jarman didn’t even get to perform! Congratulations to Hyun Seo and Kota, who were excellent hosts of our assembly! We all practiced really hard and enjoyed sharing our work with the school. If you missed it, you can watch the video below: What did you enjoy about assembly? Why? How have you improved in public speaking this...
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