November, Already!

Wow! Time is flying. Two months have passed and grade 5 keeps moving along in their learning. With that said, we have one more week of the Unit of Inquiry Unit, Global Food Production before moving on to our third unit of Growth and Development. This week, Grade 5 focused on inquiring sustainable practices in good food production, consumption, and waste.

Unit 2 - Unit of Inquiry

How We Organize Ourselves

Global Food Production

Central Idea: People have developed systems for producing and distributing food around the world

Lines of Inquiry:
Sustainable practice in food production
Sustainable Practices and Non-sustainable Practices

Success Criteria: 

List sustainable and unsustainable practices in agriculture methods.

After learning about sustainable practices, groups discussed and listed practices that are sustainable practices and unsustainable practices. Some students compared the practices to their groupś agriculture method of focus.

Agriculture Method Presentations

Success Criteria:

Using the SOLO Taxonomy, groups present their agriculture method to the class.

Groups spent two weeks investigating their chosen agriculture method. Together, they were able to make connections to other agriculture methods, and evaluate the pros and cons. Groups organized Google Slide presentations to educate their audience.

Sustainable Practices in Food Consumption and Waste

Success Criteria:

Research and collect data on the possible issue of food waste in the cafeteria

Question on the issue of Seisenś cafeteria food waste

Draw a conclusion and reflect on the amount of food waste in cafeteria

Plan an action to spread awareness of the issue on food waste

Grade 5 developed a curiosity of the amount of food wasted in the cafeteria after lunch period. Students used a Science Lab Report handout to organize their two-day research and data collection. Before the research, they estimated that the cafeteria collected 7kg~21 kg of food waste.

After two days of data collecting, students discovered that grades 1 to high school has thrown away a total of 17.5 kilograms of food in the garbage. We were shocked by the amount of food that is wasted.

Students wondered and guessed possible reasons why students would throw away the food. Each student listed possible reasons for wasting food, and interviewed Seisen students. We learned that the most common reasons students would throw away the food are: feeling full, wants to go to recess, or they did not like the food.

In our class discussions, students posted their wonders and questions as a response to the reasons.

Each student used menti.com to post their brainstorm of the possible action plan to spread the awareness of food wasting.

Science in the PYP

Grade 5 have spent the past few weeks investigating the different ways food is produced around the world. After learning about the key characteristics of each mode of production, students shifted their focus to issues of sustainability. Although students had a general idea of what sustainable meant, we pushed our understanding to include what is known as the 3 pillars of sustainability- the economic, social, and environmental impact. The following 2 images were used to help unpack this idea.       

                           

Students were then given 16 characteristics of food production that were previously investigated and asked to place them on a continuum from very sustainable to non-sustainable. Students worked in pairs to share their ideas and build their continuum. A lot of interesting discussions took place around the idea of balancing social justice, economic prosperity and environmental damage. 

We came together as a class to discuss where on the continuum the prompt "Using fertiliser to increase yields" should be placed. Once again, a lively debate ensued with students pointing out the social and economic benefit of increased yields, especially for struggling populations, but at the same time, noting the environmental damage caused by fertiliser. Here are a few students discussing this topic.


This led to the question, 

" Does fertiliser damage the environment?
If so, how"

It was the perfect time to bring science into our inquiry. 

Students were shown the following image and were told the red dots represented Dead Zones. These are places were fish cannot live. We used this as a provocation and a starting point of our investigation. With the help of Se-Eun's explanation, the class looked at the Mississippi river network in the United States and the surrounding farmland. Students noted that applying fertiliser to big farms by crop-dusters, or erosion from rainfall can lead to fertiliser ending up in the river network and eventually draining into the sea. 

The red circles are places that experience Dead Zones-area with low oxygen levels that can't support marine life. As you can see they are in costal regions with dense populations. What causes these Dead Zones? Students will investigate.

An experiment was set up to see what might happen to coastal regions if excessive fertiliser entered the water, and how dead zones form.

For our experiment, 3 beakers were set up per group. One was a control with regular tap water in it, one had lake water, and one had lake water with fertiliser added to it. Each day students will observe the jars and measure the amount of oxygen in the water using a Vernier Dissolved Oxygen Probe.

Unfortunately, the fertilizer we used was blue. I hope we can still see any algae growth that might happen.

Using the probe to measure the amount of oxygen in the water.

Stayed tuned to see the results of this experiment. We think it will take about 2 weeks for the fertiliser to cause an algae bloom, the bloom to die, and the decomposition process to use up all the oxygen in the water.  What was once the lovely water of Senzoku Ike will become a hypoxic dead zone, incapable of supporting marine life. In the meantime, enjoy a nice photo of Senzoku Ike at sundown, before its demise.

       Students grapple with the very real question of how do we feed our growing population, protect the beauty of our planet, and provide a fair, equitable life for all?

It's Sakura season ...but its winter?

The Sakura Medal program brings together students from the international schools across Japan each year to vote for their favourite books. Each year, librarians from various international schools meet and select 10-20 books in each of the Sakura Medal categories. Only students are eligible to vote for this prestigious award, but they need to read the minimum number of books to vote.

                                         

Our aim is not only to encourage students to read a variety of high quality books but to give a real life opportunity to set a meaningful goal.  The program will run from November to April. Students will decide how many books they realistically hope to read. This forms the basis of their Sakura reading goal.  An important part of goal setting is to think about how to achieve a goal. Students are required to write down two things that they can do to achieve this goal. They had some good ideas:

"Try not to buy new books." --Student in 4B

"I will stop by the library every morning before class and look for Sakura Medal books." --Student in 4A

Equally important is considering what 'road blocks' might get in the way of success. Students had many idea:

"I forget to take the books home to read."

" I don't check out Sakura books."

"I don't have time with all my other homework."

"Other people have the books I want to read."

Both homeroom teacher and parents must sign the goal setting sheet. Please look out for this over the next few days. Forms are already being returned. Once the form has been returned they will be able to start the exciting process of checking out the books and reading them to achieve their goal.

Here are some of the girls in Grade 4 setting their goals for this year. They have reflected on last years experience and are setting realistic and achievable goals.

Feeding a Hungry World

Grade 5 took a field trip to central Tokyo to visit the Pasona office building. Tokyo is filled with office buildings, but Pasona is special-they grow all their own food in the building!

Students have been exploring the various ways people produce food around the world, and got a first hand look at what the future may hold.

Have a look at some photos from the day.

Grade 5 would like to thank the parent volunteers, Ms Carnright, and our translator- my lovely wife, Miki.  Thank you!

Located just minutes from Tokyo station, it is well worth a visit. Here is a link to their website:
Pasona Vertical Farm

October in Grade Five

We are now at the middle of October month, and approaching the 4th week of our Global Food Production unit. This week, Grade 5 focused on inquiring food production and distribution. Each student chose the following farming method groups: aquaculture, industrial farming, subsistence agriculture, and organic agriculture. Each group investigated how food was produced using the farming method. 

Unit 2 - Unit of Inquiry

How We Organize Ourselves

Global Food Production

Central Idea: People have developed systems for producing and distributing food around the world 

Lines of Inquiry: 

Food production and distribution 

Success Criteria: 

List and describe how food is produced using a farming method. 

Each student completed the given investigation note-taking handout to focus on how food is produced using their chosen farming method. 

Members of groups met with other groups to compare and contrast farming method. 

Afterward, students joined their groups to share and describe the farming method.

Quotes from students:

Gopika: “We were studying about Global Food Production. In this activity we were in groups and investigating about specific farming methods. The groups were industrial agriculture, subsistence agriculture, organic farming, and aquaculture. Within our groups we investigated and we compared our notes to each other.”

Kate: “Well, I think it went successfully since we were showing every graphic organizer.”

Mathematics

Grade 5 is just wrapping up a unit in mathematics exploring the idea that:

Fractions, decimals and percentages are ways of representing whole-part relationships.

Students started off the unit with a pre-assessment to help answer the questions:

How am I doing?

Where to next?

Students used the information from the pre-assessment to set goals for the unit, and the teachers used this information when planning learning activities.

As a tuning in activity and discussion starter, students briefly reflected on the question of “What is a fractional part, and what isn’t a fractional part?" 

Students used the image below to decide which shapes were divided into fractional parts and which weren't.

Which shapes are divided into fourths? Why are the others not considered to be fourths?

Throughout the unit, students had many opportunities to work both independently and collaboratively to construct meaning on a variety of concepts related to fractions.  Here are students constructing a fraction strip to help investigate fractional relationships.

After students had opportunities to sort out ideas and construct meaning, they were given more challenging problems to apply what they had learned.  Here are a few students discussing their problem solving strategies.

              

                                   

Below, Amy, Rosa and Limie use all they know about fractions, angles, measurement and ratio to follow a detailed set of blueprints to construct a house of precise dimensions. 

A few of the details:

-The length of the front wall of the house is 9/16 of the length of the paper.

-The roof angles in at 40 degrees from each top corner of the house. The top of the roof is parallel to the top of the front wall.

Applying what they know. Perhaps they should join the school renovation meetings.

We finished the unit with an assessment to check student progress and note areas we still need to work on. Students plotted their score and progress on our

Growth Mindset Graph. 

As you can see, most students land in the top-right quadrant, which is the high growth-high achievement quadrant-exactly where we want to be!

Ask your daughter which dot is hers.

Students discussed which dot represented the "best" score. It was a lively discussion with the verdict split between the far right dots and the dots at the top.  In fact, it inspired Limie to coin a new phrase:

"Improving makes good learning." -Limie Sanada 2016

Grade 5 Blog

By.  Kate Kamikubo  and Sanskriti Sinha

October has started and so Grade 5 is aiming to start our second Unit of Inquiry, Global Food Production on October 4th. Please refer to Seisen Website to view the details of our Unit of Inquiries.

Unit 2 - Unit of Inquiry

How We Organize Ourselves

Global Food Production

Central Idea:  People have developed systems for producing and distributing food around the world

Lines of Inquiry:

• Varying diets around the world
• Food production and distribution
• Sustainable practices in food production

Unit of Inquiry

Learning Intention:

• Tuning into the unit about varying diets around the world
• Food production and distribution

All students tuned in by doing an activity named Banana-Split in which all students got in groups and in each group divided 30 pences according to the job they were pretending to be.

Another way they tuned in was by making a mind map in which they were telling their balanced diet.

They did another activity to tune in to our unit by guessing and writing origin countries on post-it note. Then they stuck it on each fruit and vegetable sheet.