Today's Homework

• Daily Maths D & E (not C)
• Abacus workbook p.46-47 (It's 2 pages of subtraction from N19)
  

Today's Homework

• Daily Maths A and B
• Letts p.32-33 q.1, 2, 3, 4a and 6. As we have spent two days in class doing this, there won't be much to do at home. Unless you haven't been concentrating in class of course...
  

Spellings: Week Beginning 16/02/2008

We now have 3 spelling groups so PAY ATTENTION!

Blue Group
millennia
direction
straight
temperature

Main Group
timetable
hours
seconds
minutes

You need to know these words AND their past tense:
know
find
buy
write
teach
break

Yellow Group - Can you spot the pattern?
knee
knife
know
write
wrong
wrist
when
why
what

They Go Together Like A Horse And Carriage

Well, nobody managed to identify the mystery object this week. Maybe I'm making them too hard!

Here it is again:



There's a bit of a link to last week's object because you have to look at the reflection. It's easy to see the word 'Teach' at the top but can you see the word 'Learn' underneath? You can't have one without the other, after all.

We had two guesses but those people only managed to see the first word. Hard luck.

Sports' Day: The Results

As I'm sure we all know by now, the best team won, as predicted by me on the morning of Sports' Day. Noone can stop the mighty Eastern Bloc. :-)

As I was on Soccer Shoot duty all morning I didn't get the chance to wander around looking for photo opportunities but I managed to get a few snaps at the end. If I'm ever able to upload them, I'll stick them on here.

I think everyone enjoyed themselves but I'm not sure if the best bit was doing the activities of coming back to class and playing on the PSPs all afternoon.

Today's Homework

• Er...nothing. I'm sorry to say that I didn't manage to give the kids their homework today. As we missed an ICT lesson on Sports' Day, Mrs Saadi kindly offered to give us another. I had completely forgotten that it was today and so I hadn't given the homework in advance. Don't worry, I'll make it up to them next week.
  

Today's Homework

• Daily Maths C & D
• Time Zone paper - Put Jeddah in the middle. Choose a time for Jeddah and write what you think people in Jeddah might be doing at that time. Choose two other cities and write the times for them. You should also write what you think the people there might be doing.

After seeing some very disappointing writing on Saturday I would like to give a bit of advice about how much writing to do. If you can add more details, please do. If everyone in the whole city is going to be doing the same thing (if it is 4am or something) then you can just write 'Sleeping'. If there might be more than one thing happening (if it is 4 pm), then write as many things as you can think of. What do you do at that time? What does your mum do? What does your dad do? Please do not just stop writing after 3 words.

Mystery Objects!

Well, after a slow start when nobody was able to identify the sundial, we had a winner last week.

Aly recognised a line of symmetry in this picture:



And isn't it a beautiful picture as well? Well done, Aly. One House Point for you.

Make sure you have a look at the new Mystery Object on the right.

One other item of interest last week was the voting. Half of you think that we have too much homework! I'm shocked! I wonder how many of the votes were cast by the parents, and how many by the children?

Today's Homework

• Daily Maths A & B
• Letts p.77 'Sentence' - q. 2, 3 and 4 : We discussed all of this in class so everyone should remember some reasons for and against keeping birds. If not, read p. 77 again. I would like YOUR opinions in the third paragraph, not your parents' opinions. What do you think and why do you disagree with the opposing argument?
  

Today's Homework

• Remember it is SPORTS' DAY tomorrow!
• Come to school in your PE kit.
• Bring a hat and a drink.
• Eat a good breakfast - if you don't, you will feel tired and sick during Sports' Day. Remember, there is no break until 12pm.
• If you want to go home early, you must have a parent with you or a letter from your parents to say that it is ok to go early. You cannot go with a nanny or a driver unless we have a note from your parents.
  

Today's Homework

• Daily Maths 3 - Think about 'past' and 'to'.
  
• Abacus workbook p.40 - Remember to begin with the number on the left every time.
• Make a chart of activities. Read the Geography Success book p.35 question 2 - I would like at least 5 activites for each column of the chart. Remember, some activities might go in more than 1 column. Please stick to real activities that real people can do, not WWF Wrestling. Please think of the activities yourself.
  

I hope that everyone is voting in the box on the right. So far, it seems that people would like MORE homework!

Today's Homework

• Daily Maths 2 (NOT 1)
• Learn spellings - it is different this week. Which group are you in?
• Prepare a 1 minute talk about an animal - Give the talk on Tuesday.
  

The Votes Are In...

...and democracy is the winner! Well, not really but it's interesting to see what people use the blog for. It helps me decide what to focus my time on. (Goodness, all these prepositions at the end of sentences!)

Anyway, this week's vote. As you know, we have just changed our homework routine. We can now have reading every day of the week, Arabic and English. Saturday, Monday and Tuesday remain the days on which I can give my written homework. What do you think about the amount of homework altogether? Should there be less? More? What kind of homework would you like? Is there too much of one kind? Don't forget, you can leave comments after each post if you want to say more.

Let's see what happens by Wednesday and remember, parents only please!

How to do your homework

I thought I'd take this opportunity to make a quick point about homework, research and the best way to do it.



If you have to do some writing (like the planet presentation)
Look in books or the internet. See if you can find anything which well give you the information you need. Read the information. If you don't understand it, don't use it. If you do understand it, keep it. Carry on looking to see if there is anything better or anything extra. When you have found all that you need, read it, choose the bits that you want and REWRITE it in your own words. DO NOT copy everything from a book or website.

If you are finding a small amount of data or some very brief facts
In this case, where only a few words are needed (like the weather homework), it is ok to copy straight from a book or website because there is only one correct answer. You do not need to use your words because you are only using two or three words anyway.

I know that this will take time to learn and it is a hard thing to do, but too many people are copying things directly from books or websites and they just don't understand what they've written. Understanding is the most important part of learning, and without it all you can do is repeat things you have been told like a parrot.



If you have a little bit of information that you really understand, that is much better than 10 pages of printing that you cannot read or explain properly.

So Mums and Dads, thank you for all the support you are giving your children with their research. They have found a lot of interesting and useful stuff but you must make sure that they are doing the work and that they understand what they have found.

Today's Homework

• Daily Maths 3
• Abacus workbook p.32 - Adding and subtracting multiples of 10
• Abacus Shape, Data and Measurement workbook p.125 - bar charts

Some people have some corrections to do from the fractions homework in the Abacus workbook. If you are one of them, please do the corrections at home as well.

Today's Homework

• Daily Maths 2
• Weather worksheet - choose a country, choose a city and then find out the information required to complete the sheet. If you are having problems finding the information, use the BBC Weather website. A link is provided in the previous message.
  

Take The Weather With You

Today's homework requires some research about the weather in different parts of the world. If you click on this link, you will be taken to the BBC Weather site and you can choose a country. From there you can choose a city in that country and it will tell you all the information you need to know. You need to remember which hemisphere you are researching.

If you want to use another source for your research, you can. Remember to write the name of the country and the city.

A Shocking Problem

For some reason, our classroom has become the favourite hang out of mosquitoes and every morning we have to swat away a cloud of them from the dark coloured places where they have settled. We even found two that had landed in our science experiment and got stuck! Mrs Ward was given a fly killer which is shaped like a tennis racket but the strings are made of metal and they electrocute the flies, thus avoiding the use of poisonous spray. If anyone could tell me where I might be able to buy one, I'd be most grateful. Someone mentioned Sawary Superstores but I don't know where that is.

I promise not to use it on the children, even when they don't listen.

Vote Early. Vote Often.

As you may have noticed, there is a new addition to the blog! As a brief glimpse of democracy, I have added a voting section. This week, the question is about what you use this blog for. Voting is open until Wednesday tea-time. Thanks to those who have voted already and I'm glad to see that nobody has gone for the last option. Yet.

Next week there will be a question about homework! Parents only for that one. I shall be restricting the franchise to those over 18.

Today's Homework

Sorry for the delay. I've been having trouble with the blog today and changes that I've made at school didn't seem to get saved. Anyway, here's the update:

• Daily Maths 1
• Letts p.53 Word and Sentence boxes only, along with question 5 from the Text box, as requested by the class :-)

You may have noticed that there is Arabic homework today. As explained in a letter, which many of the kids have left in their trays, there will now be the possibility of Arabic reading homework every day of the week. There should be no written work given, except on Sunday and Wednesday.

I also have the option of giving English reading homework on Arabic homework days. However, you should be reading every day, even if I don't give reading homework so I won't be writing it down but it should still be done.