We concluded our series of maths workshops today with the Year 5 and 6 presentation.  Again we had an excellent turn out today  and we estimate that we had close to 150 parents attend the workshops over the 3 days.

As mentioned at the presentation today please click the link below to view the presentation slides.  The attachment is in pdf form so should be available for all to download.

Peak School Maths Presentation Year 5&6

 

I would like to thank all the parents who attended during the week, the staff for opening up their classrooms and a special thanks to Wendy Barrett and John Marwick for co-leading the workshops.

 

We had another terrific turn out this morning with over 40 Year 3 & 4 parents in attendance.

As mentioned at the workshop please find below the workshop presentation.  It is in pdf form.

Peak School – Maths Presentation Year 3 & 4

 

The parents again enjoyed the opportunity to visit the classrooms to see the children during their maths lesson.

Monday, 24 September – we have just held our first Maths workshop this morning for our Year 1 and 2 parents.  We had over 50 parents in attendance which is great and we really appreciate your support.  As mentioned at the workshop the presentation can now be downloaded by clicking the link below.  It is in pdf format as I could not download the presentation from google docs into a ppt!

My thanks to John Marwick (ESF Primary Maths Advisor) and Wendy Barrett (Peak School Maths Coordinator) for presenting the workshop.

The Year 1 and 2 parents also had an opportunity to visit the classes from 9.45 – 10.15 to see how we teach maths to our younger students.

Peak School Maths Presentation – Year 1&2

 

All students in Years 4, 5 and 6 will sit the International Schools’ Assessment (ISA) in early October this year.  The ISA has been developed to help measure skills in Mathematical Literacy, Reading Literacy and Writing of students who attend international schools.  ISA is based on the internationally endorsed Reading Literacy and Mathematical Literacy frameworks of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).  Over 55,000 students do the ISA testing world wide.

Our Year 4-6 children completed the ISA testing last year as well so this will be the second year that our students will be invovled.

Your child will complete a Reading Literacy test; a Mathematical Literacy test; and two Writing tests – each of which takes between 45 minutes and 1 hour to administer. The tests include both multiple choice and open ended tasks.

The ISA tests are externally marked and therefore we will not receive the results until early next term (Jan 2013). However once the tests have been returned we will pass on information about your child in the form of an individual report published on Gateway which was also the case last year. This will give you a detailed record of your child’s performance score within the ISA progress continuum, for each test.

This year we will also be one of two ESF schools trialling the Year 4 ISA tests with our Year 3 students.  We have chosen to do this as it provides the  school an opportunity to analyse the Year 3 data to measure the efficacy of our curriculum programme.  The main aim will be to identify general trends in Reading, Writing and Maths to support further enhancements to teaching and learning between Year 1 and Year 4. The ISA tests change each year so our Year 3 students will not sit the same papers in Year 4.

Owing to the fact that the Year 3 students will be taking assessments that are not age appropriate, we will be using the data collected for internal purposes only and individual results will not be published to parents on Gateway or made available through other means.

For more information please visit the ISA website by clicking HERE.

Last year we introduced Buddy groups and we are pleased to report that they have started again this term.  Basically buddy groups ensure that the younger students have someone in the school they can go to for help/advice and it also ensures the older students play an important leadership role.

The buddy groups are organised as follows;

Year 1 teams up with Year 4

Year 2 teams up with Year 5

Year 3 team up with Year 6

The “buddies” meet most Friday’s for about 30 minutes and we use this time to share work, to reflect on the learner profiles, to learn more about our buddy, to read together and to help each other.

The photo below shows how Audrey (Year 4) and Raf (Year 1) compared how they are the same but also how they are different.  This was an activity that all the Year 1 and 4 children did and it was a great way for the children to learn more about each other.

Please find below a link to download our school calendar overview for the year.  The calendar includes all our holidays, including public holidays, as well as our CPD days throughout the year.

Peak School Calendar for 2012-2013

You can also access our online Google school calendar which has more information by clicking HERE.

We are focusing on place value in Year 3 and 4 in terms of the support I have been offering since my last update.

I have been working with the Year 3 children on number line work as well helping them to become familiar with the 100’s board (unfortunately just the once so far).  One game we have played in Year 3 to help them count foward and back using the 100’s board is “Gold Mine”.  You can download the instructions and the game board by clicking the links below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GoldMine Instructions

GoldMine Gameboard

It will be interesting to see whether or not the Year 3 children are in a position to explain the game to you having played it just the once.  The main thing to remember is that the children have to land on the gold and that simply going past/over it does not count.

In Year 4 we have been working on number lines from 0-100 and 0-1000 as well as working on their ability to read 5-8 digit numbers.  Please talk to your children about how we are now using playing cards to play “Number Rocket” (2 or 3 playing cards) and a game that requires the children to arrange and say 5-8 digit numbers.  These are two games that the Year 4 children should be able to play with you at home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you have a child in Year 6 and were unable to attend the Outward Bound presentation this morning please click on the below link to download the powerpoint presentation.

Outward Bound Presentation ppt

It is a condensed version as I had to take out some of the slides to reduce the file size of the presentation!

A reminder that the Health Forms and money need to be returned to school by the end of September.

 

I am really enjoying working with the Year 4 classrooms at the moment working through number games and activities.  Every Tuesday I go into each of the Year 4 classes to introduce math games as well as a new number strategy or approach to thinking mathematically.  This week we played “horizontal rocket” and I encourage the Year 4 parents to talk to your child about this number line activity and it would be great if they could teach it to you.  To make it harder introduce a third die!

We then looked at place value and how to read and understand large numbers 9-15 digit numbers.  Initially the children were challenged by the activity but by the end we were able to read out numbers up to a trillion.  Again, I encourage our year 4 parents to talk to your child about the place value houses and in particular what the “trend setter house” is as well as the other houses (thousands house, millions house, billions house and trillions house).

I start working with the Year 3 children every Tuesday, again with a focus on maths, starting next week.  I hope to work with all the age groups regularly throughout the year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Students from 4M enjoying the number line game “horizontal rocket”.

 

If you were unable to attend the “whole school” presentation in the hall last Thursday, or you simply want to revisit the persentation, you can download the presentation by clicking the link below.

We were deligthed by the large number of parents attending and we estimate that close to 300 parents attended the two sessions held in the hall on the night of the “Parent Information Evening”.

Parent Information Presentation 2012