Year 3
This week year 3 began learning about pounamu (New Zealand greenstone) and the meaning of the traditional designs used as neck adornments. They have begun the process of making their own based on the traditional designs.
After the success of their simile poems, written to celebrate International Women’s Day, the children were keen to write a poem for the men or boys in their families. Once again they have come up with some lovely and amusing similies.
My favourites include-
My daddy is as strong as Pippy Longstocking
My daddy is as brave as a knight
My dad eats like a horse
My dad snores like a trumpet
My daddy is soft like a pillow
My dad plays Minecraft like an octopus
My dad sings like a peacock
My brother is brave like Superman
My dad is as wise as a teacher
My tata is as funny as a comedian
In our Science unit on Changing States of Matter, our experiments continue. We have made predictions or formed a hypothesis. We have made observations and measurements and recorded our conclusions. The final step is to look at the science behind the changes.
Kindness and giving compliments has been the focus of PHSE or Personal Health and Safety Education. The children drew themselves and surrounded their pictures with words of kindness.
YEAR 4
We read chapter 2 of ‘Sabryna and the River Spirit’ and learnt to identify examples of alliteration, such as ‘Becky's beagle barked and bayed’. We have come to admire Sybrina for obeying the Dia, the River Spirit and being a very brave and determined environmental activist.
In Mathematics, we looked at lines of symmetry. We discovered that a scalene triangle has no lines of symmetry; an isosceles triangle has two; and an equilateral triangle three.
We were pleased to have Ms Marna teach our Science and Topic lessons. In Science, we created a food chain consisting of seven links, beginning with phytoplankton and ending with an orca, the apex predator. In our Topic lesson, we watched a videoclip about the history of ‘The Beautiful Game’. We were surprised to learn that football was declared unsuitable for women from 1921 to 1971. What do you think of that!
In Art, we are busy making our very own Monopoly board game, based on a Harry Potter book. It’s great fun!
YEAR 5
The Year 5's had a more relaxed week than what we previously had. It seems like we needed to slow down the fast pace we got used to, in order to allow time for reflection and revision. We thus spent time revising the Mathematics and getting more practise with Multiplication and Units of Fractions. During our English lessons we learnt about Adverbials and how they tell us more about how, when and where things happened. The students each completed a booklet on Adverbials for homework, and I am pleased to report that everyone understands this topic really well. We further wrote a Book Report about a good book they have recently read. It seems that Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Harry Potter are the all time favourites amongst 10 year olds! Great care was even taken to draw the main characters true to what they look like in "real life".Upon finishing our topic on Mountains, the students started displaying great understanding of how Tourism has positive and negative effects on mountain climates and the inhabitants of the surrounding areas. I witnessed with pride how the students started showing empathy for groups of other people less fortunate than they are. They came to understand that people in poor mountainous regions use the money earned from Tourism to obtain better food supplies and build schools. On Thursday each student made an Advertisement/wrote a Persuasive Letter to their parents, asking them to donate generously to Diema's Fund for children less fortunate than they are. Our topic in PSHE is Relationships, and we looked at reading the emotions behind facial expressions. At EIS we aim to cultivate happy children in healthy relationships!
