Exhibition week 1

We have literally started this years Exhibition with a BANG! Suheda has been pursuing inspiration to create art by exploding paint filled balloons onto paper. She conducted many experiments related to the amount of liquid and air to put into the balloons and methods to puncture them. 

Miray and Sule have been very cooperative whenever she needs extra help. We shared her first product on our class twitter feed:

First exploding paint balloon artwork. #pypexhibition pic.twitter.com/SoIYr2uaNQ
— 'Uniters' JIES Gr5/6 (@JIESgrade6) April 10, 2015

I was impressed that Sule began her project by making a memo book to help keep herself organized.

She struggled to think of a global issue connected to wrecking balls and building demolitions, but she's going to research Public Safety to get started. I expect that her Exhibition will include a lot of building and destroying!

Miray's passion for animals helped her to settle on a global issue quickly: Animal Rights.

For International Children's Day, she will be exploring 'Sharing the planet' by raising awareness for animal rights. 

Raising awareness for #AnimalRights. #pypexhibition pic.twitter.com/zxCWRkDaez
— 'Uniters' JIES Gr5/6 (@JIESgrade6) April 10, 2015

She rushed to make a poster, but decided to start over and take more time to make it look better.

It's very exciting to see the Uniters working independently and I expect that this Exhibition will be a fascinating experience for all of us.

jies.jp

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!

jies.jp

Focus on academics

This was an odd week due to the Wednesday holiday, ISA trial tests, and being after a Celebration of Learning. Considering the International Schools Assessment, we have focused on academic skills, especially in mathematics.

The fifth graders' understanding of division showed that they could use some review of some key concepts. One way to do this is through a 'hands on' activity. By modeling division equations by cutting, drawing, coloring, and labeling, they deepened their understanding through an inquiry approach.

Another way to improve in advanced mathematics is through practice. I have stressed the importance of independent thinking, mental strategies for calculation, and perseverance. 

Of course, people are social learners. After independent work, we always take time to share our results, identify errors, and discuss strategies.

They haven't exactly 'enjoyed' our mathematics practice this week, but seeing how they work problems with increased confidence has shown me that the work was well worth it.

jies.jp

Projects and collaboration

The Art Exhibition with Jinsho has been an inspiring way to motivate ourselves to collaborate on creative projects. Working together toward a goal and with a deadline quickly approaching has tested our time management and organizational skills, as well as the abilities of our project managers.

Suheda is the project manager for our stop motion animation video about global water issues. She did an outstanding job synthesizing each of the student's 'chapters' into a meaningful story. Everyone was excited to see how she tied their stories together.

Miray is in charge of the art exhibit. She enjoyed holding project meetings to discuss our plans and has been open to all of the team members' suggestions.

I've enjoyed seeing the students' concentration this week. After reflecting together on our progress and some stern assessments by their teacher, they seemed to realize the urgency of the projects and were extremely productive at the end of the week.

Most interesting to me were the inquiries required to create their art. For example, Miray and Sule read books from our school library about paper and plastic to learn about how they are made, where they come from, and their consequences.

Today's 'warm up': Open the window and watch the snow fall.

A video posted by Bart Miller (@botofotos) on Jan 29, 2015 at 3:39pm PST

Finally, on Friday, it snowed. The whole class spent the morning meeting time with the window open, quietly enjoying the falling snow and the unique thoughts and feelings that it brings.

We look forward to sharing our learning with you at the Celebration of Learning on Friday, 6 February.

jies.jp

Stories connect us to the past

This week, the Uniters Grade 5/6 class began to focus on stories, specifically, personal histories. During our weekly trip to the Harajuku public library, I introduced them to the English language biography and reference section. Of course, there are many ways in which people share their stories, and our inquiries in the next several weeks will explore many of them.

The students were particularly interested in Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes as a unique perspective on the history of the world in the last two hundred years.

On Parent's Day, we were excited to reunite with Julia, who took a spelling pretest with us. This week was the start of a period of serious academic practice. Each class has a separate mathematics plan to focus on basic skills that will develop their numeracy and help them toward their best achievement on the International Schools Assessment in February.

I have also been impressed by general improvement in writing. All of the students are including more specific details and organizing their ideas in more fluent and understandable ways.

On Friday, the sixth grade class from Jinsho invited us to help them to interview foreign visitors in Japan. They are inquiring into attitudes and ideas about Japan around the world and our multilingual students were happy to help them.

jies.jp

Making, creating, cocreating

This week has been very special for me because I am seeing the students grow closer to our motto for the year, 'Inspired and Independent'. They have started more challenging inquiries by themselves, often finishing their snacks quickly to have more time to work.

Another important goal in the beginning of the school year is to build a sense of team, and they are doing just that. By choosing to inquire, make, and learn together, they are practicing valuable social and communication skills. Just as importantly, they are having fun.

This week, I introduced our Carnival Games Tycoon Probability Challenge:

The goal is to design and build carnival games for the younger students to play, but the challenge is to test the games to ensure that the tycoons (Grade 5/6 students) get back all of their tokens.

It will be a great chance for them to use their mathematical thinking skills, data collection, and perform probability experiments. I suppose, however, that they are more excited about the artistic design elements at the moment!

Bushra thought that the key to getting students excited to pay tokens to play games is having great prizes, so she went to work right away on those.

She also designed and built a magnetic claw hand for her carnival game!

We also started building a token machine. Sule and Miray are planning to play 'junken' to get more tokens from the ticket machine. It's hard to explain in a blog post, so you'd better visit the carnival to see how it works!

The students are also busy working on essay blog posts about human rights. Because expository writing is so important, we will devote a lot of effort to becoming fluent essayists and bloggers this year. I look forward to publishing their major work soon!

For now, please enjoy their journals and other posts on our blog, 'Uniters' JIES Grade 5/6.

Early in the school year, I sent all parents a link to their child's grade sheet. It has been updated regularly with scores for homework completion, spelling tests, reading comprehension quizzes, and math tests. Please find the link in your email and have a look at your child's grades!

jies.jp