Final week

Our last week as the 'Uniters' class focused on reflection and preparing to celebrate our learning for the entire school year at the Year End Show, School Awards, and Graduation Ceremony.

The grade five and six students wait with patience for younger classes to rehearse their stage entrances and exits.

You can't hide on stage. Our rehearsals were a unique opportunity to learn and practice stage presence and other performing arts and presentation skills.

One of my favorite types of photographs is the 'preshow', taken moments before a performing group takes the stage.

The students' show, being totally student created and collaborative, was a very authentic product of their understandings of 'How we organize ourselves'. It was our summative assessment task for the unit, and a valuable artifact of learning across disciplines and elements of the PYP.

This has been a rewarding school year for all of us. I truly appreciate the opportunity to learn and grow together and wish everyone the best for their future endeavors.

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Preparing a musical

This week, we have been applying our new understandings of how people organize themselves to collaborate with the Grade 4 students to produce a mini musical.

With Suheda serving as Producer and Miray as Musical Director, the students have written a script, organized music, and choreographed original dances.

They have enjoyed working together and practicing their social and communication skills.

I was very impressed the first time I saw the 'dance battle' and recorded the time lapse video above to give you a preview of what to look forward to at the Yearend Performance.

This week has also been the final chance for a few activities, such as visiting the Harajuku Public Library. We will have more of these closure activities next week, particularly the Yearend Performance, Graduation, and Student Led Conferences. I look forward to seeing you there!

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compound words

Grade5/6 students have been learning about some compound words in Japanese.
Since they have already learned about Wago which is known as Yamato kotoba , Kango, words imported from China long time ago, Gairaigo, words mainly from Western countries, they all enjoyed looking for the compound words.

Inquiring into How we organize ourselves

Now that Exhibition and Undokai are fond memories, the Grade 5/6 'Uniters' have returned to more structured inquiry.

One of my personal goals in this final unit is to help the students to see that the Internet is not necessarily the best, and certainly not the only, resource for research. We spent some time in the library this week using books to help formulate questions about our inquiry with the central idea of 'Government systems and citizens are interdependent.'

Vocabulary is critical to inquiry learning, and this warm up on the concept of 'authority' was particularly stimulating. I was impressed with the variety of examples that the students shared, as well as their willingness to listen to and respond to each other.

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5kinds of Hakaru

Grade5 students were experts with Japanese dictionary this week.

They learned when we use 図る、測る、計る、量る、謀る.

Those words are all pronounced Hakaru which means check,measure,weigh,but they are used in different situations.

Some students still didn't finish making their own story(fantasy!)  so they kept writing.