Hello everyone! We started the school week a little earlier than everyone else since we vounteered at the ‘Future Market’ event held at the Shinshu Media Garden. This was another opportunity for us to collaborate with Temariya, the baumkuchen shop we did our job expereince at. It was a chance to share with the public what we have been doing with the local shop while raising money for school supplies. Students found it challenging at first to build the confidence to talk to guests, however by the end of the event, students were being risk takers and taking the initiative to go promote the school and the shop to everyone who came by. Thank you very much to everyone who came to help and also visited us!

This week for mindfulness we focused on gratitude and doing acts of kindness to positively influence our well-being and also others well-being. It was evident that the students were thinking more about the little things in their day that make them feel grateful as well as do the act of kindness they stated in the morning. We are working towards creating a more welcoming, caring, and mindful class.

Grade 5 students were able to finally put their teaching hats on and teach the rest of their class about the countries in their continent and their flags. It was interesting to see different teaching styles as well as a variety of activities such as card matching games, spot the difference, and match the flag with the name of the country. Students reflected that it was difficult to teach because they weren’t sure how much instructions they needed to give. Since they made the activities they understood how to play it, but trying to get someone else to understand the same things were challenging. They found that communicating in a way others can understand requires lots of thinking.

We also started on our second line of inquiry, which is ‘What are the topographical features of Japan?’ Firstly, we discussed what they think topographical features meant. Students guessed different things such as prefectures, things unique to a specific area, location of famous places, etc. Before diving deep into what topographical features mean, we started with a puzzle to create a map of Japan.

For Maths, they have been learning about fractions. To practice their fraction skills, they used their knowledge on how to simplify a fraction by playing a game called ‘Spoon’. To play this game, we had a bunch of cards with different proper fractions on it. In this deck there are 4 cards that equal the same simplified fraction. For example, 1/2, 2/4, 4/8, 5/10. In order to win you need to collect all 4 cards. You can do this by the dealer picking a card from the middle deck and passing around the card they don’t need. Once someone has all 4 cards, they will pick up a stick from the middle of the circle. When you see this happen, even if you don’t yet have all 4 cards you have to pick up a stick. The person who wasn’t able to pick up a stick gets a letter from ‘Spoon’. If they collect all 5 letters they are out from the game. Students really enjoyed this game that they even have started to play this during their break times.

For PE, they have been working on their dance for the sports festival! We are excited to share what we are creating.

Have a fantastic long weekend and see you next week!