Year 5 Newsletter

Dear Year 5 Parents,

The first two weeks back after the half term have been an excellent start, in spite of some T8 adversity! It has been an action-packed few weeks with nature walks, Diwali, Fun-o-ween and Open Afternoon to name a few!

The children have had a few new starts, including games and our new unit, Sharing the Planet. We've had guest speakers such as Paul Melsom, prepping us for our Eco Hike to Lantau. Thank you to all the parents who have volunteered to help out with that.

It was also so fantastic to have parents in again for our open afternoons. It was wonderful to see the students so excited to show their learning to the wider community.

Apologies for the postponed beach trips, we look forward to those next week.

Have a great weekend.

Just a reminder that we are currently taking the InCAS standardised tests. If your child doesn't already have them, can you please make sure they bring to school some earbud headphones that they can keep at school. They will need them during the online tests. Thanks.

We are currently working through our Sharing the Planet unit of inquiry.

Central Idea:

Biodiversity relies on maintaining the interdependent balance within systems.

Lines of Inquiry:

• Ecosystems, biomes and environments
• Ways in which organisms are connected in nature
• How human interaction with the environment can affect the balance of systems
  
  

Key Concepts:

• Causation, responsibility, perspective

If you have any links to relevant organisations or have knowledge about this unit that you could share, please do get in touch with your child's class teacher.

Data Handling

We are nearing the end of our data handling unit. We covered the following:

- Collect, organize and represent data (including bar and line graphs, 3-ring Venn diagrams, pie charts, Carroll diagrams and tree diagrams) where one object or symbol can represent many data values

- Interpret and draw conclusions from data using range, scale and mode on graphs - Describe the advantages and disadvantages of data representation from answering and suggesting questions that can be answered

We will be moving onto covering time, multiplication and division before the end of Term 1.

Writing to inform - Reports and Articles

This unit, we are learning about informative writing in the form of reports and articles, and thinking about the audience we are directing at. There are may things to consider, but some of the main areas are:

• Organisation: Planning choosing an appropriate template, with specific detail for the text type
• Convention: Varying sentence structure, leads, and endings by using grammatical structures
• Mastery: Integrating information on a topic from a variety of sources independently.

As I'm sure you're glad to hear, several sporting tournaments and matches between schools in Hong Kong are finally resuming. After more than three years without school competition, we are extremely pleased to see this.

In light of this, it is crucial that the PE Department at Kennedy School has a deeper grasp of what our kids are up to in terms of their extracurricular sporting activities. This information is crucial and will allow us to provide our students with opportunities to represent Kennedy School in their preferred/strongest sport.

To assist us in making more informed decisions on the selection of sports teams, especially so early in the school year, we would appreciate it if you could offer a brief description of any current sporting activities your child participates in outside of Kennedy School.

If you have more than one child at Kennedy School please fill in the form separately for each of your children.

Extra Curricular Sports Form

Our Games programme is now well underway. Please remember that Year 5 games day is MONDAY. Please remember that your child should wear PE kit on their PE and Games day unless it is a special school event.

Year 5 are currently doing the following activities:

Dragons - Rugby
Lions - Football
Phoenix - Pickleball

Unicorns - Netball

Those children that don't currently meet the vaccination requirements for Stanley Ho Sports Ground will be supervised and partake in Games at school.

Parent Volunteers are needed for our wonderful Library! If you are interested in helping Ms. Chan and Ms. Nina, please get in touch. The library is having a makeover this year, therefore we hope to have as many volunteers as possible.

• Uniform - please ensure that your child is wearing appropriate school uniform. A reminder that no jewellery is to be worn to school, except for watches. Smart watches that can receive phone calls are not permitted.

• Snacks - as per EDB guidelines stated in the school newsletter, please ensure your child's snacks can be eaten with their hands. Please do not send utensils into school.

• 9th Nov - Coastal Exploration Day - 5D
• 10th Nov - Coastal Exploration Day - 5B, 5T
• 11th Nov - Coastal Exploration Day - 5K, 5P
• 11th Nov - Chinese-a-thon
• 11th Nov - Box of Hope deadline to school
• 15th Nov - Year 5 Camp information session on Zoom
• 18th Nov - Year 5 Chinese assembly (Parents invited from Tsang Laoshi and Lee Laoshi's classes)
• 18th Nov - PTA Quiz Night (7-10 pm. Register HERE)
• 23rd Nov - Year 5 Chinese assembly (Parents invited from Zeng Laoshi, Ma Laoshi and Cai Laoshi's classes)
• 28th Nov to 2 Dec- Year 5 Camp
• 1st Dec - Year 5 Parent consultation with Chinese teachers
• 18th Dec - End of Term 1

The full listing of PTA events is also available at the school website at https://www.kennedy.edu.hk/pta/