Farewell, Bushra.

Although we did our best to remain positive, this has truly been a sad week for the JIES Grade 5/6 Uniters. We must say farewell to Bushra and family as they move to a new city and school. She seemed to enjoy one of her final inquiry activities of building a model of a tower and wrecking ball.

We all certainly enjoyed our trip to Toshimaen! I don't think I have ever seen the students run so much! It was a fun way to spend time with our friend before she leaves.

The trip to Toshimaen was our PYP Exhibition 'Kick Off'! Please enjoy the motivational video I made last year to help set the mood.

The Exhibition is a rite of passage from elementary or primary school into middle school. It is an opportunity for students to reflect on the learning and growth they have engaged in and demonstrate their maturity as internationally minded global citizens.

On Friday, we recorded our first interview reflection videos. Please click on a student's name (Miray, Sule, Suheda) to view.

I can't wait to see what they accomplish over the Spring Break!

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Parents' Day

It was fun to see you at Parents' Day! The Grade 5/6 'Uniters' were thrilled to share their stop motion animation video, Save the Water, with our school community. Please enjoy watching it, too!

I was happy that the Parents' Day visit happened during Independent Inquiry. It was a fantastic chance for parents to see the students pursuing their own interests and collaborating on each others' projects.

Sule enjoyed participating in Bushra's 'make up' project while listening to music. Bushra also recruited her mother to illustrate her sense of beauty and fashion!

Suheda and her mother brainstormed ideas for the PYP Exhibition. Even though their heads were 'empty', they worked together to make many ideas!

Miray used some of her time to master mathematics facts. It's great to see the students improving their time management and taking responsibility for balance in their learning.

I can't believe that next week is the end of the term! We will decide and schedule our Exhibition 'kick off' trip and begin gathering ideas so that the students can start inquiring during Spring Break.

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Japanese map

G5/6 students have been learning Kanji used for place name.

It's from G6 textbook "Kanji wo tadashiku tsukaeruyouni".

They enjoyed learning some Japanese map symbols.

Students also made lots of poems in Japanese class.

They really like to use some onomatopoeia!

Some students got Marathon MVP award from our neighboring school Jinsho.

Congratulations!

Circles & Drama

Miray and Sule had a special challenge this week to divide three circles into four equal parts. I was excited to see their creative strategies. We applied just about twenty minutes per day to the task and both were finished on Friday.

These days, we have had a strong attraction to drama. The students love playing drama games, but I thought it was the right time for them to consider their audience and create some improvised drama that is more serious and emotional.

After organizing our ideas on paper, we designed new drama games to create more meaningful improv skits.

Of course, we also take time to play drama games 'just for fun'.

The students wanted me to share the picture below as an example of them being courageous while playing jenga.

I'm glad they are noticing when they express our IB attitudes and I hope they will transfer that awareness to other areas of learning and living. We are all tired after working hard for our IB PYP verification visit and ready for a restful weekend.

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Science & Numeracy Week

This was a busy and productive week. We started by rearranging the furniture in the classroom. We were all happy with the new arrangement.

Inspired by an activity at Edcamp Tokyo, the students wanted to to try a challenge. They tied ribbon to their wrists so that two people would be stuck together. It is possible to escape, but it takes creativity and cooperation.

Bushra and Suheda even tried staying tied together until they solved the puzzle, but it was a bit too inconvenient.

The Science & Numeracy Week activities were a hit as usual. I was working in the 'volcano balloon' room and captured pictures of Miray and Safiye working together on a fun chemistry experiment.

On Thursday, our class schedule cooperated with the weather, and we took our field trip to Yoyogi Park to conduct the students' Fashion Perception Survey. If you have a few minutes, please complete the survey!

It was inspiring to see all of the students acting with great confidence and enthusiasm! We published the survey online and were excited to see that Julia, from last year's grade 6 class, had responded!

In the next weeks, we will be completing all of our inquiry tasks so that we can 'kick off' the Exhibition. Please visit our Exhibition website for details!

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Kanji day

This week, we reviewed some Kanji we have learned from the last few years.

We made so many small pieces of Kanji and enjoyed making idioms.

It was a great chance to review some easy kanji because students need to learn new kanji every week and couldn't really review the old kanji recently.

They also read the story "Chojugiga o yomu" and "Kono e watashi ha koumiru" from Kokugo textbook.

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