Primary eNews – November 5, 2021

Primary StuCo – Spirit Week
Dear Students, Parents, and Teachers, 

Thank you so much for your participation, support, and positive spirit for the Spirit Week event this year. Most of the students were participating each day and it was wonderful to see them coming to school dressed up in different costumes. Here are the students who get the best costume for each day and the overall most creative costume of the week;

  1. Opposite Day – Sophie and Evie 
  2. Spooky Day – McKinley 
  3. Sport Day – Juna 
  4. Crazy Hair Day – Benjamin 
  5. Pyjama Day – Rita 

The Most Creative Costume -Jasmine  (Spooky Day) & Lael (Opposite Day). 

For our students, thank you so much once again for participating and don’t worry if you don’t get the best costume for Spirit Week this year because your participation is really important for your house group. Here is the recap for our House Group Point for Spirit Week this year;

  • Saraswati: 102 points
  • Dewi Sri: 106 points 
  • Ganesha: 100 points
  • Baruna: 109 points 

We will see you in the next event or program that will be planned or run by our Primary STUCO!

 

Expressing Feelings in Indonesian Class
It is very important to develop the vocabulary of feelings or emotions in class. Students can use the vocabulary of feelings and emotions to express themselves and to gain confidence when they are speaking in front of the class. In Bahasa Indonesia class, it becomes a daily routine at the beginning of the lesson to ask and respond ‘Apa Kabar?’ to each other. They are always challenged to respond to the question using the vocabulary of various feelings or emotions. They are also visualizing their feelings on a piece of paper by drawing the feeling emojis and writing sentences.

Grade 4 Indonesian B students are learning the impact of lifestyle choices on their bodies. Students are identifying healthy and unhealthy foods, drinks, and activities. They developed their writing skills by writing a diary to tell about their lifestyle choices and also to tell about their feelings or emotions that they have on those days. Here are examples of students’ diaries.

Ibu Martina – Indonesian B teacher

 

Persuasive Writing in Grade 4
During our previous unit of inquiry, Sharing the Planet: children worldwide face risk, challenges, and opportunities, students identified the power of voice to advocate for themselves and others. A key concept of this unit was perspective, sharing points of view while valuing others and acknowledging that viewpoints of others may differ from our own and that is ok. 

What better way to explore perspectives than through persuasive writing and debate. With the support of Mr. Marshall and the library, Grade 4 began the involved process of delivering an argument. They began with identifying the differences between fact and opinion using a range of visual prompts. Next, they developed skills in research, becoming familiar with child-friendly search engines, keywords, and advanced search strategies to locate relevant information. Following this, they explored the relevance of information “how does the information support my opinion?”

In their writing, students explored powerful words and persuasive language and followed the writing process to brainstorm ideas and possible arguments, grouping and creating four key arguments.

Graphic organizers guided student research and the development of these key arguments. Peer and teacher conferences encouraged editing and rewriting to enhance and clarify the points being made.

Following the writing process, our persuasive arguments were ready to be presented in the form of a simple debate, where each side was able to present their key points supporting their position.

Here is the link to their Live Debate demonstration “Should students get paid to attend school.” Please note that it may need a few minutes for the video to be playable from the browser directly, without needing to download it.

Following are links to student debate transcripts:

PRO team

CON team

Key feedback was collected from the audience and highlighted our strengths: good volume and clarity of voice, good supporting evidence and confidence, and areas to improve for next time: eye contact and body language. We are excited to learn from our debate process to continue developing our skills in communication and presentation. 

Way to go Grade 4, a fantastic display and celebration of your learning! Oh, yeah…wondering about results? PRO team 11, CON team 11 – a draw!!