We’re back from camp!
It was the BEST week! We went to a beautiful village and had perfect weather. We planted our team flags, built tents from sticks and completed a set of challenges over 3 days. In each challenge, we tried to demonstrate trust, cooperation, communication and encouragement to succeed. The challenges included rock climbing, tree planting, nature hunting, kayaking, river swimming, hiking…and many more! Our favorite part was the campfire each night. We cooked chocolate-filled bananas and marshmallows. We sang songs and gazed at millions of stars. See a summary of our camp in the slideshow below: What was your favorite part of camp? What did you find challenging? (difficult) What did you learn about teamwork? What else did you learn? (about nature, new games, making friends...
Read MoreWhat makes a great team?
Activity Week is finally here! Our theme is teamwork. Today we formed teams and created: team names cheers symbols flags Then, we played lots of games to understand how teams work. We discovered that successful teams have members who: TRUST COOPERATE COMMUNICATE and ENCOURAGE each other. Here we are exploring these concepts through games: Tomorrow we are off to camp! Hooray! We will carry our flags proudly and put our teams to the test. We will try to trust, cooperate, communicate and encourage each other when we are faced with even bigger challenges! We are looking forward to rock climbing, hiking, kayaking and tree-planting. From the Grade 4 Campers What else did you learn about working in a team? Why is teamwork...
Read MoreGrade 4 hosts assembly
Grade 4 enjoyed hosting Elementary Assembly this week. Every person played a part, spoke into the microphone and performed with great enthusiasm. We shared our How We Learn UOI, a Maths inquiry and poetry examples. We also encouraged the whole school to be risk-takers at Activity Week. What fun it is to perform on stage! A very big thank you to the parents who came to support us. If you missed the assembly, you are welcome to watch the video below. (China residents, turn off your VPN for better results.) Do you enjoy speaking to an audience? Why/why not? Which of the Learner Profile traits did you demonstrate during...
Read MoreAwesome Artwork
Last week, Diana painted this fantastic portrait of a classmate. She worked on the painting for 4 days, with some frustration and lots of persistence. She used these strategies to achieve success: – drawing basic shapes – researching face proportions – observing and photographing the person – adding details and outlines – asking Miss Davies for advice – adding shadows and highights – mixing colors and tones – using different brushstrokes Congratulations Diana! What do you like about this painting? Can you recognise a famous artist’s style...
Read MoreTaking Over as Teachers
For two weeks, we are taking over as teachers! We have each made a plan to improve in one area of strength and one area of weakness. We set goals, planned strategies and gathered equipment. We are now putting our plans into action for 1 lesson per day, for 8 days in a row. We are pre-testing ourselves, using strategies and trying to stay committed to our goals. Each day, we are reflecting on challenges, writing about strategies that worked and planning different strategies for the next day. It’s really fun to be independent but sometimes it’s frustrating, too. It takes a lot of commitment. We are glad our teachers and friends are there when we face challenges or need new strategies. Here are some people working on their action plans: What challenges are you facing? Are you improving? How do you...
Read MoreAverage Adam – Our Imaginary Friend
UPDATE! Today we finished our data investigation called Who Are We? After collecting lots of data about the people in our class, we could finally answer the question: Who is the average Grade 4 student? It was a little tricky to give a final answer. We had to organise our data and think carefully about whether to use the mean, median or mode for each category. Would you like to meet the average student? It turns out that no-one in our class fits the profile. We created Average Adam to be our imaginary friend and represent us all. Read about his features below. Average Adam Average Adam is a boy. He is 9 years and 6 months old and his birthday is in December. He is 137.5cm tall and he can jump a distance of 126.5cm. Adam has been at BISS for 1 year and he travels to school by bus. He loves Maths and his strength is logical intelligence. Adam’s favorite colour is blue. How do you compare with Adam? How are you similar? How are you...
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