Emi is the Champion of the Japanese Summer Reading Challenge! She read the most Japanese books over the summer.  よくできました！

Student Bloggers Saya and Maya

Saya and Maya H. are the student bloggers for this week. Here is what they had to say:

Thanks to the help of our designers Rin, Yume and Joanne, our class has made a Seisen Learner Profile box, where students write slips about others living the learner profile. For this unit we are focusing on the profiles of religious and global-minded. On Friday, we have a little celebration where we open the box, and congratulate the students who have been spotted.

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World champion percussionist visits Grade 6 students!

Emily Decelles, a talented Navy percussionist from Yokosuka, came to demonstrate for the grade 6 students during the instrument selection week.  Emily has been a member of a percussion ensemble that won the 2014 WGI World Championships, and she has worked her magic with the students! 

Cultural Sharing in Grade Six

It has been really interesting getting started with our first unit of inquiry and building an understanding of what culture is.

Mia A and Tanaya were this week's blog post drafters from 6A. Here's what they had to say:

For the past two weeks, everyone has brought in an item from a culture that they belong in. We shared it with our classmates and set up a cultural table to show the items we brought.

               
                  
                  

In the spirit of Global Mindedness, students decided to translate the Central Idea: Understanding the beliefs and values of others can promote global mindedness, into several languages including Japanese, Hebrew, Korean, Chinese and Irish.

Central Idea and Lines of Inquiry in the languages of 6A.

This unit's Learner Profile Focus is on being Globally Minded. As the students prepare for house their applications for the position of House Captain, they are putting forward plans for  how they will develop and promote Global Mindedness. 

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Breathtaking Beginning to Grade Six

Grade Six teachers have been inspired and rejuvenated by the enthusiasm for learning that the new sixth graders have brought to their classrooms. The buzz and energy in the classrooms has set us off to a sensational start on our learning journey.

Rating ourselves on a continuum. What type of learner profile attributes do I display often?

"I want to work on being a better inquirer by asking more questions"- Tanaya 

Our Learner Profile summary and goals for the beginning of the year.

Our first unit begins the year with the transdisciplinary theme of Who We Are.

Central Idea: Understanding the beliefs and values of others can promote global mindedness.

To begin our exploration of cultures we first need to understand what culture means. Here are some initial ideas on culture from our first activity:

We have some avid readers in Grade Six. Here are some books that we are currently reading. Thank you for bringing them to the first book club this week!

Writer's Workshop kicked off with our Personal Narrative unit this week. The skills that these Sixth Graders have brought with them and the strategies they already know for generating Personal Narrative Topics have set high standards and expectations for writing this year.  Here's a little clip of 6A eagerly sharing their personal writing goals.

                                                   

Working in groups is very important in the PYP and we noticed a lot of communication skills being used during various activities this week. Group decision making was challenging when we started to collect ideas for our Essential Agreement.