Happy Monday from 5TB! Hope you had a relaxing weekend. Not many left before summer holiday starts!
If you haven’t yet heard from your child yet about Friday’s field trip to Jinshan, a Peasant Painting Village, it was a blast! The kids all had a chance to paint their own pieces, which they will take home today, and we even visited a nearby water town and took a little boat ride. FYI, Tracy Lesh and Michael Wang were the guides. Please visit Shanghaiteatreks.com or email Tracy directly at tracy.lesh@gmail.com for more information.
What’s more, after two years with a Mac, I finally learned how to post a photo slideshow with music! Please enjoy, and hope to see you next Wednesday for our Memoir Slam.
Today, we discussed how culture is like an iceberg. In a blog post, explain how so. Also, why is it important to know about the visible and invisible aspects of culture?
Examples of visible aspects–clothing, food, holidays and celebrations, music, games, art, greetings, manners, rituals, outward behaviors
Examples of invisible aspects– views and values related to hospitality, family values, privacy, work ethic, value of education, etiquette, environment, time, action, communication, space, power, individualism, competitiveness, structure and thinking (beliefs)
Thanks, Mrs. Rekate, for sharing this with the parents!
Did you ever wonder who painted the murals in the ES library? Those were done by painters from the Jinshan Peasant Painting Village.
The fifth grade will be heading there on Friday to do some artwork and visit a nearby water town. We are very excited for our trip this Friday.
Please make sure your children bring a snack, lunch and a drink.
Basic Itinerary:
8:15 Buses leave school
9:30 Arrive at Jinshan Painting Village
9:45 to 11:15 a.m. Group 1 tours museum and has painting class, while Group 2 visits Fengling water town
11:15 to 11:30 – Both groups will switch locations. Because we are very tight on time, we will eat lunch on the bus. It is imperative that everyone bring lunch. We will not have the opportunity to buy snacks or drinks.
11:30 to 1 p.m. Group 2 tours museum and has painting class, while Group 1 visits Fengling water town
1:00 Depart for SAS directly from the painting village or water town
Situated in the southwest of Shanghai, Fengjing Ancient Town is 57 kilometers (about 35 miles) from Shanghai City. Encompassing 2.09 square kilometers (about 516 acres), the town has long been known as a typical ancient water town, as well as one of the four most famous towns in the south China. Others which enjoy similar reputations are Nanxun Ancient Town, Wangjiangjing in Zhejiang Province, and Shengze in Jiangsu Province.
Fengjing Ancient Town has a history of over 1,500 years. Demarcated by the boundary river in the center of the town, it was governed separately by Zhejiang and Jiangsu Provinces from 1430 during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).
In the town, one will see many buildings, of which most are of the Ming and Qing style. They are mainly two-story structures of brick and timber with white washed walls and black-tile-covered roofs. Each has wing-rooms, dooryard and walkway. The total area of old residences in the four main streets of the town reaches 48,750 square meters (about 12 acres), and nine locations among these are included in the Shanghai Unmovable Cultural Relics.
With its surrounding water network, the ancient town boasts 52 bridges. Zhihe Bridge, with lichen in crevices of the stones, was built in the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). Standing on the bridge, travelers will have a panoramic view of the trees and old houses. One also can see red lanterns hanging under the back eaves, which add a beautiful scene to the bridge at night. Another famous one is Rainbow Bridge, which is also distinctive.
Today, students were assigned their partners and countries for their United Nations Project, which they will present with their peers in Grade 5 on Friday, 1 June.
After learning which country and partner each student will work on, the students received the rubric, which we discussed a bit more in class:
This morning, students began sharing the contents of their culture boxes and explained why their items symbolize aspects of their cultures. Ask them what they included in their culture boxes!
I came across this quote from Don Quixote a while ago and decided to use it to introduce the Memoir Unit for Writer’s Workshop. In this unit, students have explored who they are, who / what they represent and how they identify themselves. We are using a variety of texts to help guide and inspire the writing, including The House on Mango Street,Marshfield Dreams, Boy, Hey World, Here I Am!, Call Me María and From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun. Students have written a variety of vignettes, which they will compile at the end into their own anthology of memorable moments in their lives.
Please leave open Wednesday, 30 May on your calendars. We invite you to attend our Memoir Slam, where the students will share some of their favorite pieces, starting at 8:30 a.m. Some parents will organize refreshments, so if you are interested in helping out, please contact Abbie <abbiepumarejo@yahoo.com>.
Recalling memories and understanding oneself ties in perfectly with our Cultural Studies Unit, which we started a few weeks ago. We have discussed inside and out, frontwards and backwards, what culture is and how it is formed. This week, students are bringing in “Culture Boxes”, which will represent aspects of their culture.
Also this week, we have mapped out the rest of the school year– five weeks!– and all the upcoming events leading up to the last day of school.
Speaking of the last day, if you have not turned in your money for a yearbook, please do so immediately. There will only be 300 yearbooks sold!
Also, please check out the upcoming ES, MS & HS dance show!
Hope to see you THIS FRIDAY @ 1:15 for the GRADE 5 MUSIC CONCERT!
We missed you today. Eagle Leaders, we hoped you had fun being role models for Pudong Elementary! Here’s what we did:
1) Write and post a blog entry about yesterday’s baking activity. WHY DID MS. BUI HAVE US BAKE!? Please use some of the science vocabulary that you learned in the Mixtures & Solutions Unit. Include pictures (from my flickr site), which are large files. Choose the smallest file OR link using the URL. (Remember how to do that? Ask a friend if you forgot!)
2) Math Journal pgs. 398-399 and Study Link 12.2
3) In SSNB (or on a blank sheet of paper if you don’t have it!), DEFINE CULTURE.
4) Over the weekend, look around your home and find significant items that symbolize YOUR culture. Collect them in a shoebox. This will be your Culture Box.
Here are some ideas we’ve brainstormed about Culture:
We’ve had a busy few weeks following spring break, and with the extended weekend coming up, we near our final or end-of-the-year units in all our subject areas. Even though we have finished our Mixtures & Solutions unit in science, I am planning a “mixtures & solutions” extended activity next Thursday after lunch– the students will be baking cookies, brownies and cupcakes. If you are free to help out, please let me or Abbie know!
Of all the units in Writing and Reading, the one I am most excited about is our last study: Memoir. This unit is strategically planned for the end of the year, as the students near the end of elementary school and look ahead to their futures– in middle school, a new school or new country. This unit inspires students to think deeply about themselves, their identities, their memories. They tap into all the writing strategies they’ve learned, including new ones. They will try out symbolism, vignette-style writing and self-reflection. Since the fall, they have matured into young ladies and gentlemen, and this will be reflected in their writing. Yesterday, some read their drafts aloud that they had written spontaneously for 15 minutes in class, and I was honestly blown away. Their sharing of their pieces inspired me to host a memoir slam– like a poetry slam, they will share one or two of their vignettes aloud to an audience… SO PLEASE LEAVE MAY 28-30 OPEN and join us for our Memoir Slam! (Exact date to be determined.)
Speaking of Identity, students will explore the identity of their cultures in Social Studies: Cultural Studies. Here, students will discover what culture means, and the role they play in their culture and in their community. We will also study other cultures as well!
In Mathematics, we are wrapping up Unit 10: Data and Algebra, where students will be tested next week, and enter Unit 11: Volume. I am confident students will perform well in this chapter, as we have discussed the idea of volume in our previous unit. What they have also discovered in math is the Four 4s. This enrichment activity challenges them to discover different ways of coming up with different values using only four 4s. Ask your child about it!
Just a reminder: on Friday, 18 May, the Grade 5 will attend a field trip to Jinshan Peasant Painting Village. We have three parent chaperones who have volunteered to attend. Please make sure your child has a packed lunch that day for the trip!
If you have any questions, please let me know. Have a great extended holiday!
Cameron as Tintin (and Beanz as Millou!)
Student Led Conferences (with my camera running out of battery…)
Phil Bildner & Kevin Lewis: Visiting Authors!
SAS Alumni Visit
Kathryn Lasky & Christopher Knight: Visiting Authors!
Today, we finished Marshfield Dreams. On your blog, I want you to list why this is a prime example for writing memoirs. What makes this book a great mentor text for you? Please list, include pictures if you can, and make connections!
