5A Last day of PE! Enjoy your summer and stay active!!

Marketplace

Grade 5 is wrapping up the year with a unit on marketplaces. Students explored concepts such as:     

-supply and demand

-distribution of goods and services

-our role as responsible consumers. 

To study the distribution of goods and services, student tracked a banana from the farm to the local market. Students were surprised to see the different steps involved in getting the banana from the Philippines to Tokyo.  Students were broken into different groups along the supply chain and had to argue for their fair share of the profit from the sale of a banana. Students were very surprised to learn that farmers received the lowest percent of the profit.

Students discussing who should get what share of the sale of a banana

5A Wrapping up the year while demonstrating futsal skills!!

Bring Your Own Device in Grade Six

This week we held two information sessions about the new Grade Six 'Bring Your Own Device' initiative we will be starting in August 2017.  Next year we are asking students to bring their own laptops to school as we continue to enhance teaching and learning through technology at Seisen.  We had an excellent turnout of current Grade Five mums and dads, who discussed the advantages and possible concerns of a BYOD programme.  We finished the sessions by exploring some of the resources Grade Six students will be accessing next year and viewed the current Grade Six's Exhibition ePortfolios to get an idea of how the girls will be organising their very own electronic portfolios next year.  The slideshow from the sessions can be downloaded by clicking below.

Parents exploring the resources that will be used in Grade Six. 

Introducing BYOD to parents.

Analyzing Artefacts

Grade 5 is wrapping up their investigation into ancient civilisations and have been looking into how evidence is collected, analysed and validated.

As part of this investigation, we took a trip to the Tokyo National Museum to view artefacts from various places around Asia.  Students were asked to choose 3 artefacts to analyse in more detail. Students speculated on the artefacts' origin and evolution, and its use in everyday life. Student's used what they previously knew about the civilisations to support their claims.

After visiting the museum and seeing lots of old artefacts, students were posed the question,
"How do scientists date artefacts?"

Student research focused on radiometric dating. As a class we watched a short a clip from the PBS documentary Hunting The Elements.
Through this, students learned the basics of Carbon Dating and saw a scientist at work using this method to date trees and study periods of drought.

Students then spent time investigating this process through a classroom simulation. After creating a graph to plot the half-life of Carbon-14, students used M&Ms to simulate the decay of Carbon-14 atoms.  In this activity, an M&M with the M showing represents a Carbon-14 atom. After shaking up the sample and pouring them onto a plate, a portion of the M&Ms (Carbon-14) will decay and no longer show the M. Students used this information to calculate the date of the sample.

As a next step, another simulation was conducted. This time, students were asked to date an "Ancient Egyptian Pancake."  Each pancake had two different fillings, one acting as the Carbon-14 atoms and another, acting as Nitrogen. Once students carefully separated the two types of atoms they were able to use the knowledge and skills from the previous activity to accurately date their sample.

Separating the Carbon and Nitrogen atoms. Aka corn and raisins.

What's happening in 5A PE!! Central idea: Learning the fundamentalskills and techniques of badminton such as serving, movement, strikingthe shuttle and game strategy.