English
Elm began the term with a focus on recount writing, using their Christmas holidays as a basis for exploring this broad writing genre. The class discussed about their experiences and mind mapped them before committing them to paper. Elms looked at the different kinds of recounts, from biographies and autobiographies, newspaper articles and diaries to letters, trip reports and witness statements.
French with Joanna
The festivities continued after the New Year in French class this term. Since we are living in the ‘Culinary Capital’ of the world, there’s always an excuse to bake delicious treats linked of course to a specific festivity. We started off the first term of 2024 learning about and celebrating l’Epiphanie and why the French eat the ‘Galette des Rois’ (6/01) which we baked and ate with all Oak & Elms students and then we invited the parents to partake in this delicious feast. After digesting our galette we celebrated ‘La Chandeleur’ (2/02) by making ‘des crêpes’ with our classmates and after flipping them successfully we chose some scrumptious toppings and ate them with the whole school. We finished off the term learning about Le Nouvel An Chinois, Mardi Gras and La Saint Valentin. We also studied the painting ‘Les Quatre Saisons’ d’Arcimboldo and the students made their own posters by describing each season. The students also learned and presented poems on le mois de janvier perfectly and we studied le passé composé with spelling tests and worksheets.
French with Marie
Durant cette troisième période, les élèves ont étudié et approfondi plusieurs notions:
en grammaire: les expansions du nom, la phase simple et la phrase complexe, juxtaposition/coordination/subordination
en conjugaison: les temps simples et les temps composés, le participe passé,
en orthographe: les homophones, le féminin et le pluriel des noms et des adjectifs et 2 dictées préparées et notées.
en vocabulaire: les caractéristiques et le vocabulaire du théâtre.
en mémorisation: apprentissage de 2 poésies “L’hiver” et “
en littérature: 1 roman a été lu et étudié:
- Le Médecin malgré lui de Molière
3 évaluations ont été effectuées.
French Topic with Joanna
This term the Elm students studied ‘La Convention Internationale des Droits de l’Enfant’ (CIDE). We had very interesting class discussions about what the students thought their fundamental rights should be (right to education, an identity, food, clean water, roof over their heads etc.). We discussed how each student comes to school each day (by foot, bus, car…) and then we followed the lives of Mabally in Africa, Erbol in Kyrgyzstan, William in Peru, Niessa in the Philippines and many others in short extracts from the series ‘Les Chemins de l’Ecole’. The students realized that education is a right that all children have but that it’s not easily accessible to all and that many children take extreme risks by just getting to school each day because they want to be educated to improve their lives. The students enjoyed playing an interactive and educational game linked to the theme of the series and we studied various articles of the CIDE and the students made a wall display listing articles from the Convention.
History
Elm remained in the Middle ages this term, and before moving on from pivotal events of the Norman Conquest looked at everyday life for ordinary people at the time, how law was enforced and the economic and social changes that marked the era. Elm also learnt about Matilda of Flanders, Duchess of Normandy Queen Consort of England as William the Conqueror’s wife. The class looked at wars in the Middle ages, discovered who fought them and why. Elm students found out about some of the most famous battles, including the Battle of Agincourt, and reflected on why this battle has a special place in history.
Geography
In Geography, Elm learnt about the continents of North and South America. The students discovered about the different countries that make up these large expanses of land and their geographical characteristics. Elm students learnt about latitude and longitude, different time zones across the continents, as well as different biomes that are spread across the Americas.
Mathematics
In Statistics:
Elm mathematicians constructed and interpreted various data tables, charts and diagrams, including frequency tables, bar charts, pie charts, pictograms, line graphs, stem and leaf charts and scatter graphs (correlation). Elms can clearly distinguish between positive and negative correlation, identify if it is strong, moderate or weak and understand that all outliers are not taken into consideration while drawing the line of the best fit. We then dived deeper into the construction of pie charts and calculated desirable percentage and number of degrees for the specific group of data.
In Probability and ratio, Elms used the important vocabulary related to probability and know that Impossible, Unlikely, Even Chance, Likely and Certain relate to 0, 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 and 1, respectively. Students then solved probability problems where we had to find all possible outcomes and calculate the probability of the desirable outcome.
Les Concours Archimède
On the 1st of February, 3 students from Oak and Elm crunched mathematical puzzles that were intend to be solved during Les Concours Archimède. Unfortunately, the competition was cancelled this year due to the organisational issues, but our young mathematicians were keen to put their logical minds to the test. Well done to Roger, Leonard and Stefan! Fantastic results and we are very proud of you!
Les JEUX ÉNIGMES SOLIDAIRES pour collégiens francophones depuis 1989.
These puzzle games allowed children to highlight their knowledge, clearly express their mathematical thoughts and use their sense of observation.
Science
During this unit, Elm students charged themselves with the positive energy while learning about energy. Elms discussed the difference between energy and temperature and know that they are not the same. Elms investigated with the energy transfer by: conduction and convection and discussed how energy is transferred by radiation. Hands on experiments and simulation in the Virtual Lab, enabled the students to make conclusion related to energy transfer via conduction and convection. Students also looked into renewable and non-renewable energy sources and learnt how to calculate electricity bills. We studied the world’s energy needs and have concluded that the demand for electricity is rising and now need to find new energy sources for the future.
Projects
Collaborative Project with Oak Class: Chocolate orangette
Linked to our science topic, we created our own chocolate-dipped orangette. First we made candied orange peels and then dipped them in our pre-tempered chocolate. We tried to master the complex process of tempering chocolate while melting, cooling down and reheating chocolate that gave us a glossy effect.
Celebrating St. Valentine’s day with Pavlova meringaie
ICT
By the beginning of the term, Elm class learned about the basic functions of the micro:bit and how to program it. Then, pupils explored the following projects:
– In the multiplication revision project, they made a program that gave simple maths problems and the answers when needed, to help young students practice their times tables. Two variables were created to represent the two numbers needed for a multiplication problem.
– Created a program that sensed the temperature and used the conditional “if” to make the microbit respond differently to the various temperatures, too cold, just right or too hot.
– The last project of the term was to create a virtual pet that reacted to diverse health levels by displaying different icons.
Spanish
This term in Spanish, Elm class explored and talked about food and food preferences. They enjoyed expressing themselves about the food they like and don’t like, they also used verbs such as like and love. Next, we talked about animals, related adjectives and their personalities, pets and pets’ activities and skills. The animals they prefer and the ones they identified themselves with.
Forest and PE
Forest Challenges and team building activities
During our whole school forest challenges and team building activities, the children were engaged in a variety of physical and logical tasks. Not only that they started to develop a sense of belonging to the team but also tried to overcome frustration when something was not going their way. As a team, they tried to work on these tasks and often agreed on the strategies and techniques that they had to use. The main mission for these challenges is not only to allow children to have fun but also enrich their set of skills that will be useful for the rest of their lives.
The children worked on their Morality, Enquiry, Cooperation, Communication, Thoughtfulness, Respect, Resilience and Determination personal goals.
These skills are vital to acquire from an early age and knowing ‘how to get up when we are knocked down’ is very important.
Team building activities
3D Design and Technology
This term, Elm Class designed a travel game for children to use during a car or aeroplane trip. They made decisions on the size, type of material, rules, among others. They came up with realistic and creative designs.
By the end of the term, they did a Monet/Banksy Art and Technology project in which they had to choose a Monet painting and an object representative of Banksy to put on the painting. They used Microsoft Design and came up with creative projects that would soon be translated to a white canvas to mix printed images with art tools.
Coding and Programming Workshop
This term, Elm Class completed several projects on the micro:bit using Tinkercad:
– They created a dice game to enhance their understanding of how buttons and sensors work in the micro:bit. When the micro:bit detects a shake, it displays a random number on the LED display, simulating the roll of a die.
– They learned how to use the light sensor and the temperature sensor.
– They also added a simple component called the potentiometer to the micro:bit to control the onboard LEDs.
