Shopping in Japanese Class #1

　Intermediate Japanese Class - Shopping Skit 

Group 1
As the current unit in PYP is market place, the intermediate class students learned how to greet people, shop, colors, how to count, how to speak polite Japanese in order to shop in public, using Japanese. The students also thought of the script themselves and enjoyed shopping in class. At the end of the unit, we are all planning to go on a field trip to go shopping outside the school🎀

Next week group 2 will be up so check up on that too💓

Good job everyone✨

Our Very Own Healthy Choices

Healthy choices?  Wow!  The Grade Three students had to make a lot of choices to create a "Healthy Choice Yoga Sequence."

Learning Objectives:
The goal of this unit was to explore a variety of movements that promote personal health.

Explanation of Learning Engagement:
Students learned some basics about yoga, including calming the body during yoga, names of yoga poses, and connecting poses. 

Students choosing poses for their yoga sequence.

To do these yoga poses, students looked at the different types of poses and how each pose helped them in a different way.

We do poses that are:

Standing

Balancing

Twisting

Bending forward

Bending backward

With a partner

Breathing

Time in

Here are two examples of partner poses.

 

They learned how to do a simple "Sun Salutation" which uses a variety of poses and connecting movements. Then they applied what they knew about collaborating with a partner and creating dances to make a new type of yoga sequence.

Here is an example of a partner yoga sequence.  Click to play.

Do you feel relaxed after watching this?

Ask your daughter to teach you some of the poses she learned. Yoga poses can improve your health while you have fun doing something together.

Ms. Kampa

Light Up The Life Of A Refugee Child Charity Concert

On Thursday, November 10, 2016, our Grade 3 students performed at the Light Up The Life Of A Refugee Child charity concert at St. Mary's International School. Their marvelous singing and dancing helped raise money for Refugees International Japan’s educational projects for displaced Syrian refugee children. In addition to their amazing artistic efforts, the Grade 3 girls demonstrated spectacular enthusiasm, confidence, and empathy.

Follow the link below to check out their fantastic performance:

http://www.seisen.com/student-life/live-broadcasting/concert-archive/index.aspx

Japanese Culture Day at Seisen

On Thursday, November 3rd, students at Seisen celebrated Japanese Culture Day through a variety of activities. Here's a quick look at the day:

After warming up in the gym with "radio exercise" and watching a taiko drum performance, the elementary students travelled around the school in their house teams to participate in tea ceremonies, kite making, and kendo. Students also saw performances of singing, koto, and shakuhachi.

A special thanks to the Japanese department for organizing a fantastic day!

Halloween Party Highlights

This past week was one of our busiest yet! One of the highlights of our week was the fantastic Halloween Parties organized by our fabulous parents. 

We would like to thank all the moms who worked so hard to make our classrooms spectacularly spooky, our tummies frighteningly full, and our minds eerily entertained. 

3A Getting Healthy in a Hurry

In PE, 3A recently switched with 3B and started their Health-Related Fitness unit, which is an integrated unit with the Healthy Choices unit of inquiry that they have been working on in their home class. The girls have been discussing a range of issues around health-related fitness, such as:

How exercise affects our body, both short term and long term?

"When I run too much my heart beats so fast and my legs start to hurt!" - Yuna

"I can feel the blood pumping around my body through my veins!" - Lia

"If I exercise a lot, I'll be stronger and healthier so I don't get a heart attack when I'm old!" - Ai

How the choices we make will affect us now and in the future?

"If I eat too much junk, I'll get fat!" - Kaho

"We should take the stairs instead of the elevator." - Yuzuki

One of the many activities the girls have been enjoying is a game called Healthy in a Hurry, where they must collect a range of 'foods' from the 'shops' and sort them out into categories depending how healthy they perceive the foods to be. We had some interesting discussions about foods!

The students will soon start new units of Striking & Fielding and Kicking Skills in PE lessons.

Mr Hawkins

It's Sakura season ... but it's 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.

Music Choices

The grade three students explored the concept of tone color in the Music Choices unit.  They interpreted pictorial symbols to come up with tone colours to match them using orff and percussion instruments.  They worked in a group of four, and one of them was a conductor to decide the tempo and dynamic levels.