Math trick. Fun math thinking activity.

Class 5-8 was given a "test" to see how united they were as a class. They were asked to take out their calculator and key in any digit they want.

After sensing their "brainwave", I can feel that all pupils are keying in different numbers.
No matter, I decided to ask them to do some computation so that their end result is the same.

You can try it too~ Here's how. You will need a calculator for this.

Step 1) Key in any digit number you want. It doesn't matter if its a very big digit like 99999 or small digit like 1.

Step 2)Times the value by 2.

Step 3) Add 8 to your new value.

Step 4) Divide the result by 2.

Step 5) Subtract the original number from this new value you just accquired.

Your answer should be 4!
Congrats. You are one with class 5-8.

Mr Xie.

One interesting use of the calculator.

Some students of 5-8 keyed this into their calculator today. I thought it was interesting and nice, making use of numbers and letters to form the word. Hence, I decided to post this picture up~


If you still don't get it, it is "Mr Xie"; which happens to be my surname. Thanks!

Mr Xie.

Synthesis Transformation.

The main task of class 5-8 for today is to convert direct speech to reported speech or as we know it, indirect speech. This is a revision for them and I was shocked that many pupils came up and asked me how to do it.

To change a direct speech to indirect/reported speech, there are a few "rules" that you must obey.
For instance, if it's a present tense, you must change it to a past tense and if it's a past tense, you must change it to a perfect tense, vice versa.

Another thing to note is if it says "today", one must change it to "that day", if it's "this", change to "that", if it's "you", change to "me", etc...

There's actually a piece of paper that class 5-8 have that contains the information of words to change. I think that that I should photocopy it and post it here if anyone lost it.

In the meantime, check out the video of direct and indirect speech.




Mr Xie.

Subordinate Clause.

Today, class 5-8 learnt all about subordinate clauses and connectors.

What are subordinate clause and connectors?
An example of a sentence involving subordinate and main clause is;
Rainforests are disappearing fast because of the destruction made by mankind.

The main clause in this case is "Rainforests are disappearing fast." It is a main clause as it can be a sentence on its own.

Now try reading the rest of the sentence without the main clause.
"Of the destruction made by mankind." It sounds wierd right? There seems to be another information either in front or behind this sentence and it doesn't soound like a complete sentence. Hence, it's known as a subordinate clause.

What is a connector then?
A connector is a word/words that join the two sentences together. Words such as because, hence, therefore, in order to, consequently, so, so that, etc...

After which, pupils are shown a story involving a mystery.


They were trapped in this crimson room and the only way to get out is to find out the clues of the hidden 3 categories of subordinate clauses.

Pupils of class 5-8, do you still remember what the 3 categories are? I certainly hope so.
Here's the diagram again to help re-freshen your memory. :| Again....

I hope that this lesson was informative to them although it seems like a game at first glance. I had spent many hours polishing and attaching the pictures to make it a semi-interactive game for them.

Hope they have enjoyed all English lessons I conducted so far.

Mr Xie.

Height, base and area of triangle.

Finally a new blog post for those who waited patiently. (I'm itching to post as well).

Class 5-8 learnt how to identify the height, base as well as finding the area of triangle.
Wait... isn't this 5-8, my english class? So how come I'm teaching mathematics?

It seems like class 5-8 is going too fast for English. The whole 5A workbook is nearly completed! Hence, the "long break" from English for 5-8 students.
Okay, back to today's lesson about triangles.

To us adults, identifying the base and height seems very obvious once we look at the diagram. However, pupils tend to be confused and this is a tricky concept to explain. If one can't "see" where the base is, it is very hard to explain.

So how can I teach effectively to the students? After thinking it through, I realised that a way to find out the base and height easily is to use a common ruler. Use a marker and draw the same thing as I did as shown below.


Now, you have a self-made a height/base identifier tool. How do you use it?
If the diagram tells you base, use the line on the ruler to match the base first. The perpendicular line will then be the height of the triangle at it's highest point.

I hope this "mini-tool' will help students to identify the base and height more easily. It's good because you can bring this into exams! :)

After which, pupils are being taught how to find the area of triangle.
The formula for area of triangle is base x height divide by 2. Or half-base times height. OR....

It all means the same thing! They are then "transformed" into detectives and are to find out the murderer which involves finding the area of triangle room. Hope the pupils have fun into this mini-detective game I created.

Tommorrow will be another English lesson. There's another mystery for pupils to engage in. Hopefully, it works and pupils are engaged in it.

Mr Xie.

Word Power

Class 5-8 learnt about word power for today's lesson. So, what is word power?
It is actually choosing certain words, and by fitting these words into a normal sentence, you can "modify" the sentence to make it more positively or negatively.

For example, "The magician vanished."
We could change it to "The powerful magician vanished completely" to become a more positive sentence.

Or

We could change it to "The evil-looking sorcerer vanished without a trace." to become a more negative sentence.

As you have seen from the example above, you noticed that I have changed the word magician into sorcerer. The meaning is somewhat the same and when we can change some of the words in a sentence to another word, yet retaining its meaning.,it is also known as synonyms.
Synonyms are different words, but they retain the same meaning. Some examples of synonyms are, 'beautiful', 'gorgeous', which both mean the same thing, "pretty".

Here's a video clip from sesame street, teaching you what synonyms are.



Pupils should be able to use this "word power" to make their composition or an exposition text more interesting from now on. I hope. =|

Mr Xie.

Save the Pandas!

Class 5-8 learnt about the characteristics of Pandas as well as how we can save them from extinction. Here's a short clip about "saving pandas".



After students read the passage, we played a small activity called hot-seating.
A student was picked randomly and invited to seat at the front of the class. (in this case, he's Daniel). He is then "transformed" into a panda expert and pupils are free to ask him any questions they liked. During this lesson, I "controlled" the questions by only limiting students to ask relevant information that can be found in the text.

If there is enough time, maybe I could let the class ask any questions they want, so long as they know how to keep their volumes down and not get too excited...

Sidenote: A lot of pupils asked me for another detective case again. (It's hard to generate a good story okay?) Hmmmz...I better start cracking my brains now. Any good ideas from class 5-8?

Mr Xie.

Saving the Earth

New unit and new topic today for Class 5-8!
Their new topic for this unit is Saving the Earth.

How do we save the Earth?
One step at a time.
First, we have to explore the kinds of damage we have already been "doing" to the earth. Such examples listed by pupils are,
- pollution
- deforestation
- etc...


To make it interesting, a video of "Captain planet and the Planeeters" were shown to the class. This cartoon series is very popular in the 80s and the whole storyline is about fighting people that are polluting or harming the earth. Not a bad series actually, with the theme revolving around saving the earth.

Unfortuantely, japanese animation and all sorts of cartoons have "wired" the children's thinking. So, this cartoon, which was once a big hit, was now a flop in front of them.
Oh well...
Here's the lame video intro again.



We decided to venture into saving the rainforests first. Hence, pupils were tasked to do another KWL chart. I like doing the KWL chart because firstly, it's easy to do and secondly, the effort and the work art of the end product by the pupils' are simply amazing.

Here are a few samples of students' work.

Hopefully, they have learnt something informative at the end of this lesson (they should!).

Mr Xie.

Structure of an information report.

Class 5-8 was taught the structure of an information report today.

Before I explain the structure, let me pose this question first, "What is an information report?"
Basically, it is a text that presents information about a topic. It can be on any topic, usually on living or non-living things.

The structure of an information report is as follows.
1) The title.
2) An opening statement in the first paragraph.
3) Subheadings.
4) Topic sentence.
5)A series of paragraphs/sections (mainly about comparing and contrasting)
6) Conclusion

It would be good if there are pictures, diagrams or illustrations that can be used to explain the text better.

After which, Class 5-8 did an "information brochure"; comparing two biomes, the tundra and grasslands. As there is not enough time, they were tasked to complete the brochure as homework.

I will try to post the pictures of their product as soon as possible once I received them.

Mr Xie.

Tundra.

Pupils of class 5-8 ventured into a super extreme very cold place.
This place is called the Tundra.
They are being "appointed" to be explorers and they are to determine whether breed 'X' (X as in Xie X) is suitable to live in the tundra.




As I did not have time to take pictures of groups sharing information, I decided to put in this youtube video about Tundra. I believe that most information from this video can be found in the textbooks which pupils should already read of.
Group work was better than the last time and pupils are more organised this time round. Most were able to focus on their task and all of them were able to 'solve' the case.
A job well done. *Give yourselves a pat on the back, class 5-8.*

Mr Xie.

Grasslands Biomes.

Today's lesson is about pupils researching on what grasslands biomes are.
A detective case was created specially for them to "play" and take on a role.

Personally, I enjoyed teaching this lesson as pupils were co-operative and were quite focused on their task on hand. Each one of them had created their personalised KWL chart and I must say it was a job well-done.

Here are some samples of a KWL chart that pupils created.


What is a KWL chart? To answer that question, a KWL chart consists of three main questions.
K = What I know,
W= What we want to know,
L= What have we learnt.

Pupils were first asked what they want to know about the grasslands biomes. Several questions included "What type of animals can be found in grasslands biomes", "How is the climate like in grasslands biomes," etc etc...

These questions were then copied down into the W column. (What they wanted to know)
Afterwhich, pupils were grouped to read only a certain passage and I'm pleased that they were able to answer the questions that I asked even when they have closed their book.

Pupils are then tasked to complete the 'K' and 'L' column of their KWL chart by filling up what they know from the passage and what they learned from their friends respectively.

The lesson ends with a story that was shared to them during the last 10 minutes of the lesson. Its called "The DOT" by Peter.H.Reynolds.



I hope that this story has inspired them to make their mark wherever they go and not be afraid of trying as one will never know how far they can go. Sometimes, insignificant things go a long way.

Hope the class have enjoyed today's lesson as much as I enjoyed teaching them.

Mr Xie.

Adjectival Phrases

Today's lesson is on adjectival phrases.To know what adjectival phrases are, one must understand what are adjectives.

Why learn adjectives?

Adjectives are used to describe people, places, animals and things. Different kinds of adjectives provide different information about a noun.
For example, if I were to say out a hat, the kind of hat that I had imagined and the hat that you had visualised would probably be very different. Hence, adjectives are needed to create more visualisation about the hat that I am describing to you.

Now, if I were to say out, " A large, smelly, blue hat."
Does this describes the hat more?
Are you able to visualise more clearly what the hat looks like now?

Hence, adjectives are important to provide more details about the topic.
For adjectival phrases, there are several kinds of adjectival phrases.

1) Pointing words/ demonstrative adjectives.
2) Possessive adjectives
3) Adjectives of quantity
4) Adjectives of quality
5) Comparing adjectives


Are you able to make out sentences using adjectival phrases? This is the question that I asked the students before their activity. Students are then grouped into fours to play a simple "game". Each pupil will have a paper like this,

Each slip of paper consists of lost items and their partners are to use adjectival phrases to tell them where the items are.

Students at "work", finding lost items.

I hope the students liked this activity that I created for them.

Mr Xie.

Last day of Term 1.

As half of the class is not back from Beijing yet, I can't really embark on teaching English language. Guess I really have to wait till term 2 to start teaching... Hmmmz...

Anyway, seeing it's the last day of the term, I decided to print out a maze for them to do. Here's the preview.
So what is special about this maze? If you complete and shade in the lines, you will get a picture, like this....Obviously, I have a lot of mazes with different kind of pictures. Hope they enjoyed this short activity.

Mr Xie.

Two days.

Class 5-8 is officially down to less than 20 pupils. (I think). Most of them went for Beijing for a shool exchange programme.
Pupils were tasked to attempt on their English assessment books test 1,2,3,4 and some pupils are constantly asking me to conduct the lesson with the detective "case" part 2.

Well, It's just not possible as I would have preferred the whole class to enjoy the activity. So I guess the next detective "case" will have to be in term 2.

However, what I can do is that I can look/create some fun activities for the rest of the class if all of them managed to complete the tasks that are assigned to them. One more day before class 5-8 ventures into the March holidays!

Homework for you guys? Hmmmmz......( let me think about it....)

Mr Xie.

Hydroponics

Hydroponics (from the Greek words hydro water and ponos labour) is a method of growing plants using mineral nutrient solutions, without soil.

One might wonder what is an English teacher doing at the students' science lesson?
Well..for starters, it happened to be my time slot when the activity for hydroponics lesson is beginning.
Secondly, Catherine (Sci HOD) has tasked me to help her take pictures.
Thirdly, I don't mind the extra lessons to gain more knowledge.

Without further ado, Here's the pictures of the students having fun...


















Hope you all enjoyed informative and exciting lesson on hydroponics.

Mr. Xie.

Forest Biome.

Today, Class 5-8 was transformed into well-renowed Mr and Miss detectives. They worked together to solve a case to find out where in the world is this important person.

This is my first time I'm using jigsaw as a group strategy. As my main objective is looking out whether pupils are able to execute this group strategy and work in a group and share ideas, I was glad that this class has managed it well. (Except for the few who did not bother..you know who you are...)

Here are some of the groups at work... busy taking down notes and sharing information with one another.

At the end of this lesson, pupils should be at least be familiar on what forest biomes are.
(Can you?)

On the next lesson, another case will be waiting for them... Will they be able to acomplish their mission? Only time will tell....

Mr Xie.

Mathe-magic

For this 15 minute activity with the class, I used this opportunity that was given to me to show some math magic to this class even though I'm not teaching them mathematics.

This "magic" begins by having a pupil select a month of their choice.
In this case, a student named Germaine(Did i spell it out right?) was picked and she selected the month of October.

She proceeded to choose a 4 x 4 dates on the calender and I wrote them down on the whiteboard.
I began my prediction and input the 'prediction' on the calculator which happens to be the value of 68.

Germaine then chose 4 numbers of her choice. For every number that she chose, the numbers of the same row and column will be striked out and she can't chose those numbers again. The end result looked like this....


Let me remind you again that the numbers Germaine chose were of her own free will. Add up the numbers that she chose and guess what?

The sum of all numbers is 68.

Thinking Activity for students of 5-8.

Is it true that all numbers will result in 68? Can you try it on other months and other numbers see if the result is still 68?

Mr Xie.

Introduction

This blog is especially created for pupils in 5-8 of Mee Toh School (2009) to review and reflect on what they have learnt during their English Language lessons. It is also created so that as a teacher, I can reflect and think of better ideas to improve on the particular lesson in the event that I should be teaching the same primary level in the future.

I will try to update constantly by posting pictures and describing what are the objectives of this lesson. Constructive comments are certainly welcome by students of 5-8.

Mr. Xie.