Primary eNews – March 2, 2022

Conferences

On Friday, March 18, you will have the opportunity to participate in a conference for your child. Please note that this is not a regular school day. Students are encouraged to use any extra time following the conferences to complete assigned tasks, catch up and work on learning packs. Students are also encouraged to get away from their devices. Teachers will share any relevant assessment data and review goals set and progress made.

 

Primary Conferences
PS and K/1 parents are invited to a parent-teacher conference. Teachers will share growth and parents will be able to ask questions about the next steps for their child’s learning journey.

Grades 2-5 students will host three-way conferences, involving parents and teachers. To promote student agency, prior to the three-way conference, students will be given an opportunity to share, celebrate and reflect on their learning experiences across the curriculum through their student portfolio. Students will share their portfolios with their parents at home guided by teacher and student-designed questions. Students will reflect on goals set in October and discuss these areas with their parents. This guided discussion prior to the conference will ensure that parents and students come prepared to share and discuss their learning during the conference. Homeroom teachers will share a reflection task with parents the week before the conference to complete either via SeeSaw or email.

There will also be opportunities to meet with Math Enrichment, Music, PE, Library, and Language A and B teachers. You can use the PTC Fast application to sign up for your child’s specialist teachers. This application will be shared next Thursday, March 10 to parents with more than one child & to all parents on Monday, March 14th

We hope that you will be able to attend, engage positively, and gently encourage your child to share, celebrate and reflect on learning. This should be an enjoyable occasion for everyone. Parents are invited to ask questions about their children’s learning experiences. Here are some questions that may help uncover some important thinking during the day.

• Why did you select this piece of work for your portfolio?
• If you could work further on this piece, what would you do?
• How is your work now different from your work at the beginning of the year?
• Can you show me an example of a learner profile or attitude you are developing?
• Is there anything you learned that made you take action? Why?
• Which pieces reflect one of your strengths?
• What are you most proud of? Why?
• What have you found challenging?
• What knowledge or skills have you learned from doing this piece?
• Have you achieved your goals? Explain? Do you have new goals?

Conferences are a great opportunity for us to help your child take responsibility for their learning and to inquire into their thinking. We hope you are able to join us in celebrating their active minds.

 

Accessing the Library during Distance Learning

Just a reminder from the library that, while BIS is in virtual/distance learning mode now and as we transition back to in-person learning soon hopefully, the library is still open and available for use. Please use this scheduling form to make an appointment to ensure the library staff is present and available for your desired appointment time. Additionally, users can request titles online from home for pickup and the books will be prepared and ready for you 

 

Grade 5 PYPx 2022

It is that time of year again when our Grade 5 students begin to tune in to the Primary Years Programme Exhibition (PYPx).

For those of you that are new to PYP, here is a quick summary of what the PYPx is:

• The exhibition is the culminating, collaborative experience in the final year of the PYP.
• The exhibition is an authentic process for students to explore, document, and share their understanding of an issue or opportunity of personal significance.
• All exhibitions are student-initiated, designed, and collaborative.
  The degree to which students are engaged with planning and implementing their exhibition depends on the student’s and schools’ experience with the PYP.

At Bali Island School, students start off by identifying their passions and strengths. These then serve as a jumping-off point as students consider how they can use their unique talents and interests to make the world a better place. Students will use the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to guide their thinking as they move from a local to a global perspective. Students used flipgrid to create a video sharing their passions and strengths ranging from horse riding, drawing, eating, taking care of animals, and looking after family members. This will provide a base for connecting their strengths and passions to global issues.

Students completed reading responses where they tuned in to each of the global goals, considering what they found interesting or surprising.

Here are a few of their responses so far:

What I found surprising was that people provide information about sex education and mental health. I’m also really curious about gender equality and how women build up so much courage to stand up for their rights and end discrimination. According to the author: “By 2030 extreme poverty will be a thing of the past for everyone all over the world”. In my opinion, we can not just put poverty which has been a problem for years now in our past. Just because people are helping to reduce this problem does it mean that it will permanently go away? And also don’t we want to tell our next generation how horrible this is and tell the stories of how it went away. – Elizabeth

As I read about the first six global goals set by the United Nations, I learned and was surprised by several things. (I learned that these sustainable goals are super important because there are a lot of problems in this world like climate change). The first goal of the United Nations is No Poverty, right now “people are living on under 1 dollar per day”. – Gibran

I am curious about the way people can educate themselves about staying healthy and how to avoid not getting sick. It is surprising to look at all of these because we do not see our world like this we are teaching kids that the world is happy and fun but we are not teaching them that humans suffer everyday and we need to teach them how to help this cause.) one thing tht stood out is that we need to “end all practices and traditions damage a girls physical, mental and sexual health, like underaged marriage etc.” – Evie

Ok so anyway one that I like was clean water and sanitation because unlike Korea in Bali, we can’t drink the water from the kitchen, because we drink from water bottles,it causes plastic waste problems too. – Lael

In my opinion, we should stop all the traditions that can damage a girl’s physical, mental and sexual health like underage marriage. Girls have a right to be free, this includes, being able to be heard and have a choice in their life and not being directed ect. Girls should be able to be heard and participate in all political, economic, and public areas. – India

What found me surprising was that the US and other countries have clean tap water that YOU CAN DRINK! And we don’t have it absolutely mental and outrageous. What I’m curious about is why do we have tap water that we can’t drink? – Kobe

 

Grade 4: Tuning in and Piquing Curiosity.

Our new unit, Where we are in Place and Time, has a history and science focus linking the development of technologies with our modern societies. This unit is packed with opportunities to explore knowledge, connect understandings and develop skills.

Grade 4 kicked things off with a virtual field trip to the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum. You can take your tour here.

This provocation aimed to pique curiosity and tune students into the keywords of our central idea: historical figures, civilizations and their technologies continue to impact modern-day society. These will be the four areas of our guided inquiry. So where do we start? What do we already know about these four areas and where do we want our learning to take us? 

Our provocation and pre-assessment task not only establishes our individual and collective Grade 4 understanding,

• Ancient artifacts are interesting, like old computers.
• Wheels are important discoveries because they helped us do things faster
• Albert Einstein is a historical figure.
• History can be about anything like lightbulbs and Mozart.
• Ancient Egyptian civilization had interesting things like pictures, masks, clay pots, mummies, and lots of statues.
• China made the Great Wall, which is historical and old.
• Australian aboriginals are examples of ancient civilizations. Some historical figures are Rosa Parks and Isaac Newton.
• Some discoveries like iron we still use today and inventions too like the wheel. These are important discoveries.
• These are some historical civilizations: Aztecs, Inca, Egyptians, Chinese Dynasties and Mesopotamia.
• Some historical figures are Julius Caesar, Hannibal and Alexander the Great.
• A well is an important invention, it is still used a lot today. It is simple but works well.
• Historical people and civilizations could be Lewis and Clarke, the Romans, the Greeks, the Soviet Union maybe.
• We use artifacts to find out history and history books and Google.

It also highlights misconceptions and areas to clarify further.

• Technology is manmade
• Technology is iPads, phones, computers and devices
• Pulley is an old technology
• Technology is things that work with electricity
• A civilization is a town where people work. Civilization has a religion. It has people and structures.

And sparks curiosity,

• How do people come up with ideas like the wheel?
• How long is history and if it’s a long time ago, how do we know it’s real?
• What makes people invent things?
• What inventions have improved?
• Are all man-made objects a technology or an invention?
• It’s interesting looking at old things, but what do we learn from it?

Hmmm, some interesting thinking and springboards for our new inquiry. If you are passionate or expert about technologies over time, connecting our past with today, let Grade 4 know. We love to have guest speakers.