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.