It all began during lunch time a few weeks back.  One of the children noticed that the mandarin he was eating had many seeds inside, which led to a discussion about seeds, plants and growth.  We planted seeds into bags one week before the Qing Ming Festival holiday.

Each morning, the children discussed which seeds had grown more than others, using language associated with height and length.   Some children recorded their findings in little handmade books.  After the holidays there was great excitement as our seeds had grown into plants and were beginning to grow out of their bag.

A few children have shown concern for the plants, as they were now too big for the bag.  We have recently been talking about possible locations in the ECE playground where we can move them.  We are hoping that our plants grow as high as Jack’s beanstalk so we can find the goose who lays golden eggs!

Children can learn new skills, have fun, play and develop self-confidence by spending time in the garden tending plants and growing their own food. Most children enjoy being outdoors and love digging in the soil, getting dirty, creating things and watching plants grow.

K4C Co-Teachers – Donné LIDDIARD & Mango WANG

 

Like the K4’s, Year 1 have started a new unit on Plants. As inspiration, we introduced the new unit to the children with a prompt of a trip to the BioFarm in Pudong. This trip was a great opportunity for the children to see plants in their natural habitat, to taste a variety of plants, to plant some mint, pick some vegetables and see the food go from field to plate, as the lunch provided was packed with homegrown goodness from the farm.

Afterwards, back in school, the children explored plants in many different ways and used a range of methods to record information. They studied photos of the plants they encountered at the farm and drew scientific diagrams based on those plants. They investigated what a plant needs to grow and decided to carry out scientific testing. They studied the life cycle of a plant and independently decided how to represent the life cycle of a plant, using pictures, songs, creative dance, playdough and other resources.

The children also had the opportunity to sow their own seeds. We have established a Year 1 garden on one of the playgrounds on the roof. The children are responsible for watering the plants each day and monitoring the amount of water used, so that we can use that in our upcoming data collection unit. We look forward to seeing the plants grow and hopefully harvesting the fruits of our labour.

Y1 Leader & Y1A Co-Teacher – Monica GANNON

The traditional Chinese Qingming Festival was originated from Zhou Dynasty, which has a history of over 2,500 years. Also called the Spring Outing Festival, Qingming is the time for our ancestor worshiping and tomb sweeping. Qingming Festival, together with the Spring Festival, Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-autumn festival, are called the four traditional festivals in China.

In Chinese Studies Classes, Year 5 students began their topic study of Qingming Festival and learned about the origin of the festival and its traditional cuisine. They also studied the customs of kite flying, spring outing, tree planting and tomb sweeping for the festival. With the teachers’ instructions, they appreciated the beautiful poetry about Qingming Festival.
In the practical part, the students used color pens to design their own kites. The students from the mainstream class took great interest in matching the poetry with the picture on the kites.

“In lunar February, the grass was growing and the songbirds were singing everywhere. The willows waved along the dyke and the spring moist was in the air.”

“It kept raining and raining during Qingming Festival. The mind of the people in the street was unhinged.”

“There were several peach blossoms booming outside the bamboo forest. The ducks were the first to feel the warmth of the water as the spring approached.”

The students from the non-mainstream class were also very creative. They added the great Chinese touches to the kites they designed such as different kinds of Fu character, various Peking Opera faces, traditional Chinese food, their own-designs of a door-god.
Holding the kites high, the students ran in the warm spring breeze. Those colorful kites looked like several beautiful butterflies flying in the blue sky with the white clouds. Let us wish our students can have the bright future just like the soaring kites in the vast sky freely.

Y5A Co-Teacher – May MEI

Well-being is critical to our lives and growth as human beings.  This is a key concept underlying everything we do at YCIS.  For us, well-being is all-encompassing.  It includes a person’s physical, emotional and social health. It also includes the well-being of the community as a whole.

Of course, our core business is children’s learning. But we know that people learn best when they are happy, emotionally safe and secure, physically energized, and participate in a thriving, growing community. At YCIS, therefore, our true core business is the growth and development of children in all aspects of their lives.

Our Student Well-being Programme has been developed extensively over the past number of years.  We have a year-long Well-being curriculum with specific focuses such as emotional well-being, friendships, difference and diversity, digital citizenship, bodies and relationships, and resourcefulness.  Children learn about these during Well-being lessons, circle time and class meetings.  But really the learning is in everything we do. We say that every interaction is a Well-being lesson; teachers pay attention during the spontaneous interactions and facilitate learning in the moment.

We run a Mindfulness Programme, with students having instruction and practice with mindfulness techniques in guided lessons, small groups and assemblies. Continued mindfulness training at home is something we often promote when parents ask us how they can help their children, and we provide possible resources which connect with what children have learned in school, such as breathing or meditative exercises.

Of course, physical fitness is just as important as social and emotional well-being.  We take a lot of pride in our fitness programme. We have our regular PE lessons.  These focus on basic movement skills and functional body strength and flexibility as well as beginning to develop the hand-eye coordination and ball skills needed for specific sports. As in all of our lessons, good teamwork and collaboration as a means for success is continuously reinforced. Ours is the only Primary school in Shanghai to give our students opportunities to compete in all the Junior-level CISSA sports, from Touch Rugby to Badminton, from Table Tennis to Cross-Country Running.

With our own competition-ready swimming pool at Ronghua Campus, our swim programme has developed rapidly. We now give lessons to all Primary students, and next year these will expand even more.  Our swim team has grown massively, both in size and skill.  We are competing in ACAMIS and local meets, and our swimmers are smashing personal bests at each meet with many medals and race placements as well. Most importantly, they are learning about determination and perseverance in their training.

Just before the Qing Ming holiday, students and teachers organized a Well-being Week. Each day had a focus: Mindful Monday, with mindfulness activities; Talking Tuesday, with opportunities to talk with children in and outside normal peer groups; WiFi-free Wednesday, encouraging everyone to go tech-free for the day; Thoughtful Thursday, with activities meant to inspire thoughtfulness; and Fitness Friday, with hourly fitness activities.  Then the week after this was followed by three days of Sports Days. Children participated in their four Houses to compete, but also to communicate and collaborate, to cheer each other on, develop team spirit, and of course have fun with fitness.

Primary Vice Principal – Jim WILCOX

2018‐2019 Puxi Primary CCAs Session Two will be finished on 3rd May except the following activities:

6^th May:
Monday Multisport Swimming

 7^th May: 
Y3-Y6 Skate Class
Y3-Y6 Children’s creative art
Entrepreneurs Hub
Table Top Gaming

 9^th May:
Cooking with Dan
Lego Senior Tech
Lego Robotics
Y4-6 Mad Science
Y3-Y6 Chess Club

15^th May:
Wednesday Multisport Swimming

 6^th June: 
Junior Choir

11^th June:
Y1-Y2 Pop Dance
Y1-Y2 Ballet
Imusical
Cello

13^rd June:
Y1-Y2 Chinese Dance
Y3-Y6 Ballet Dance
Y3-Y6 Chinese Dance
Y3-Y6 Pop Dance

14^th June:
Y1-Y2 Hip Hop Dance
Y1-Y2 Drum Kit
Y3-Y6 Hip Hop Dance
Primary Orchestra

18^th June:
Senior Choir

19^th June:
Ensemble

The 3rd Annual Father Daughter Dance on March 22nd had almost 100 families turned out. Many fathers made special effort to come with the girls for a night of fun. Some changed their travel schedule and a few came directly from the airport. The duos dressed to the nines matching the theme this year “Golden Glamour” had a portrait taken for them. Then they danced till late to a playlist of songs chosen by the families. Many dads and daughters showed off their impressive moves! Our youngest dancers were only 2 years old, but they enjoyed the buzz of the night and stayed till the last minute! Each girl also received a gift to commemorate this special time. It was wonderful to see everyone having a great time! A big thank you to the volunteer mothers who worked hard behind the scene to make it happen.

Puxi Parent Relations Officer – Carol MAO

As a part of language study, the annual Chinese Role Play Competition is very popular among the CAL (Chinese as an Additional Language) students of secondary school. At Chinese class time,  on 26 March our 3 Chinese Role Play Competitions successfully came to the ends as scheduled, running in the hall of Gubei Campus. The winners are as below.

The Best Role Play
Y7&8 : CAL-5 《MULAN 》
By: Y8A KIM Jinho(Steve),  Y7B TUOMELA Sara Aleksandra jiayi(Sara), Y7B Son Sang-Woo, Y7B YIP Fong-Wai, Y7B HARRISON Oscar Maurice Holden
Y9：CAL-2《Do you have a good ability of speaking Chinese?》
By: Y9C KIM Hongchan, Y9D KIM Gangmin, Y9C KIM Jina
Y10 ：Level-3 《The exchange student 》
By: Y10B CHOI,Yongwoo, Y10A FIORANELLI Marcela Scaranello, Y10A KIMURA Kentaro, Y10A KUSNENWAR Siya Suchant库雅, Y10A PHONGSAVANH Nathalie

 The Best Actor/Actress

• Y7：Y7C TURE Noemie Gabrielle Marie
• Y9：Y9C KIM Hongchan
• Y10：Y10A PHONGSAVANH Nathalie

 Special Jury Prize

• Y7：Y7C KIM Minju
• Y7：Y7A OLA Ifeayo
• Y10： Y10C PARK Se Min

 Congregations to these winners and of course their Chinese teachers! Thank you to the following hosts of these competitions:

• Y7&8：Y7A VAN ZYL Gerrit Reinier、Y8C WOO Hyejeong
• Y9：Y9C EOM Ji U、Y9D  CALAQUIAN Pincess Jheissy
• Y10：Y10C BEAK Seungwon、Y10B DIAZ Paula

Freya Hua  CAL Group Leader

Students’ words…

For this year’s role play competition, CAL5 decided to perform Mulan, as the original movie takes place in China, so we thought it was pretty perfect.

We started practice very early on, we first chose our cast, then the script, and then costume and props, and finally additional touches like backgrounds and music.

For the final performance, we were all very scared, but very excited! We had put o lot of effect into this, and hoped it went well. Turns out, our had work paid off, because we ended up winning the competition! We were all very proud and excited! We can’t wait for next year’s competition!

NUNES Luiza Leiria( Luiza) – Y8D

The Chinese classes in Year 9, ranging from CAL 2 to CAL 5 all participated in a role play competition, in which each class was responsible for creating a performance completely in Chinese.

The four classes took different approaches to the competition. The performance from CAL 2 featured a dinner with a boy and a girl who struggled to communicate because of a language barrier, causing many misunderstandings to ensue. CAL 3 depicted the tragic story of an abandoned dog, who failed to find a home. CAL 4 portrayed the arrival and transition of a new girl at school, how she was bullied, then overcame the people making fun of her. CAL 5 showed an orange juice drinking competition between Harry Potter and a classmate, which ended with Harry’s arch nemesis showing up, murdering a student, and ultimately being defeated by Harry.

After each class performed, a winning class was announced. This year’s winner was CAL 2, their performance was found very entertaining by the audience, and it was obvious that they put a lot of effort and passion into it. Although there could only be one winner, all the students spent much class time working on their performance, and each class tried their best to do well. This year’s role play competition was very successful, and the performances were very entertaining.

Emily Sawires – Y9C

The Chinese Role Play Competition was a really fun experience and it really allowed us to use our creative and acting skills to present a play that we have produced, which gives us a sense of achievement. In addition, this competition allows us to talk more within out class, but also with different levels and other classes. It allows us to expand on our creative Chinese knowledge, but also use some other inventive ideas to create our play.

This year, my class and I chose to do Doraemon. This was a good play for us, because it allowed each of my classmates to show their Chinese speaking skills as well as their acting. We all had relatively even parts, the boys were acting, and I worked on the powerpoint and the sound effects.

Personally, I enjoyed working on this competition, because it allowed us to take a break from working on the textbook and put effort on something that we created ourselves. This was nice because it allowed us as students to create a play that we truly liked and work harder since it was a competition and we all wanted to win.

Clara Girod – Y10B

There are thousands of books, websites and articles written to provide practical guidance and tips on time management. Numerous apps have also been invented to address the increasing needs of improving time management skills. Living in a fast-paced world, time management has become a success indicator and a survival skill for the modern generation. It is a set of skills that can be taught and learned but it requires determination and practice. People who have good time management skills work according to personal priority and goals, being realistic with their time and talents, using an effective scheduling system, managing distractions and making use of time efficiently. If there is a specific area in time management skills that requires a bit of work, below are some apps that served as innovative ways to raise your attention to time and tasks completion.

Prioritization and Goal Setting
Remember The Milk is a free tool that is compatible with most devices, both online and offline. It enables users to create to-do lists and get reminders via email, text message and more. The function of attaching documents to individual task can be handy and useful.

Stride is an easy to use app for setting up reminders to maintain daily habits that lead to goal achievement. It helps you to track your goals by day, week, month, year or even on a rolling average. The data can be synced and accessible from the web or a phone device.

Being Realistic with Time and Talents
Trello is a free project management web-based application that gives a bird’s eye view of your projects, both for personal to-dos and team projects. It gets the inspiration from the Kanban which is a system that organizes workflow visually.

2Do is designed to meet the need for speed. It has a simple-to-use interface and features that you can add quick thoughts and ideas before you forget them. It can be simple or complex, it offers unique approaches to managing tasks.

Effective Scheduling System
Todoist is a free to fee based app that helps organizing and prioritizing your tasks and projects. It is a straightforward and user-friendly to-do list app that can label tasks, assign a due date or assign it to someone else and marked with a special priority.

Managing Distractions
RescueTime is a free to fee based app that provides a detailed report uncovering the time wasted on certain websites and an overview of how you spend your day. It is a digital distraction-reduction aid app that helps tracking your time.

Be Focused Timer is a timer that sets blocks of work time and allows you to track your goals and work history. It combines the Pomodoro Techniques by breaking up work into focused time blocks (25 minutes) separated by a short, generally five-minute break.

Overcoming Procrastination
30/30 is a free app that helps create a list of tasks and assign an amount of time required for each task. Users can customize tab with a title and an icon with specific length of time for each task. Once the time is up for a specific task, it will move on to the next task in queue.

EpicWin is an iPhone app that brings adventurous role-playing game into mundane to-do tasks. It builds up motivation for completing chores and tasks by improving and developing animated avatars in the app.

Carolyn Lee
Learning Resource Coordinator