My Counter Arguement

by 042694 on February 17, 2012

This week, we have been learning about persuasive writing. We wrote an arguement about the cafeteria in school as a class. Now, we need to write the counter arguement. Here is my persuasive text:

The CDNIS Cafeteria is a Valuable Place in Our School

Where can you find great quality food, quick and efficient staff, clean properties and reasonable prices? Well, you can surely find all of those things in the cafeteria of the Canadian International School of Hong Kong. It is a very valuable place in our school and is doing their best.

Firstly, the cafeteria is always clean. There is never any food left on the trays, utensils, chairs, tables and floors. Even though they clean it, it is dry and is never wet so that we wouldn’t slip. The cafeteria is an important place for students to meet, therefore needs to and is cleaned regularly.

Secondly, although this school has 1600 students, the staff are still able to serve all of us quickly and efficiently. They organize everything so that things can run faster, by using baskets, trays, and the Student Card System. Making sure that everything runs as smoothly as possible is Chartwells is able to cook many meals quickly, and produce many snacks and drinks for all of us to buy. Also, there is enough space, tables and chairs in the cafeteria to serve more than one grade at a time. Even when two grades are seated, there are still some seats left.

In addition, the quality of the food that they serve is good. The meals are always well cooked and are warm when you receive it. It is tasty and healthy at the same time, showing that they can cook enjoyable and nutritious food. There is also always a variety of food everyday, including pasta, rice, pizza, noodles, and a lot more.

Last but not least, all the prices are reasonable. A meal at a restaurant is a lot more expensive even though the quantity may be the same. For example, a hot dog or sandwich at school is $15 but one at a restaurant may be two times the price at school. Also, the price that you have to pay is reasonable to the amount that is served. Furthermore, you can always get seconds or thirds without having to pay more than what you already paid. Some people may think that the snacks, drinks and meals are too expensive, but I think that they are wrong and it is reasonable and cheap.

In conclusion, the cafeteria of the Canadian International School of Hong Kong is a one of the most valuable part of our school.

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Because of Winn-Dixie

by 042694 on February 15, 2012

Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo is about a girl, India Opal Buloni, who finds and adopts a dog from a grocery store called Winn-Dixie that she names Winn-Dixie. She is an only child and only lives with her dad, who is a preacher because her mom left them a long time ago. They have just moved to Naomi, making her leave all her friends behind in Watley, Florida. After a while, she starts to meet new friends – Miss Franny Block (the librarian), Gloria Dump (an old woman with seeing problems), Otis (the pet shop owner), Amanda Wilkinson, Sweetie Pie Thomas (a 5 year-old girl who is turning 6) and Dunlap and Stevie Dewberry (2 brothers). Opal discovers that Winn-Dixie has a pathological fear of thunder and cannot stand to be left only so Opal and her dad has to take care of him carefully.

My favourite character is India Opal Buloni because she is very friendly and has a lot of responsibility by taking care of Winn-Dixie very well. Also, she is a risk-taker because when Winn-Dixie ran into Gloria’s garden, the Dewberry boys said that she was a witch but Opal wasn’t scared and still went in. In the end, she found out that Gloria was a kind and friendly woman, not a witch. I also like Opal because she is caring to all her friends and family.

I liked how Kate DiCamillo used dialogue in Because of Winn-Dixie because it made the story a lot more interesting. Most of the story was dialogue and thought so I thought that was pretty interesting to know what the characters were really thinking and how they were feeling. In my opinion, dialogue makes the story become more alive.

I would recommend you other Kate DiCamillo books as well as this one, such as, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, the well-known Tale of Despereaux, The Tiger Rising, The Mercy Watson Series and many more.

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Year of the Dog

by 042694 on February 9, 2012

Year of the Dog by Grace Lin stars an American-Taiwanese girl, Pacy “Grace” Lin, who lives with her two sisters - Lissy “Beatrice” Lin and Ki-Ki Lin - mom, and dad. She meets a new friend, Melody Ling, and tries to find her talent during the Year of the Dog. She tries out for the school  play – The Wizard of Oz – but doesn’t get the lead role . She competes in the School Science Fair with her best friend Melody but doesn’t win it. Finally, her art and writing teacher’s introduce them to a writing contest, giving her a chance to find her true talent – writing.

After reading this book, I learnt that if you work really hard and never give up, you will achieve what you want to achieve. Also, if you’re scared of something because people will laugh at you, don’t be scared and embarrassed because everyone is unique in their own ways.

I liked the author, Grace Lin’s style of writing because she put in small stories in the middle, giving more “background information” of the story. I like these stories because when I read them, I can know the story of things and experiences by older generations of their lives. Another reason I like her style is because she used interesting words and had an interesting plot in her story. This kept me wanting to know what was going to happen next so I kept on reading it.

I think I can connect to this story a lot because I am Chinese and my family celebrates Chinese New Year in a very similar way. Also, I have participated in a writing competition like the one that Pacy joined. The one I joined is called Kids4Kids.

My favourite character is Pacy because no matter what she keeps on trying to find her talent. Because of all her hard work and commitment, in the end she found out that she was a good writer and illustrator. She is a hard-working girl that doesn’t let bad results bother her enthusiasm. I should try to have an attitude like her.

I would recommend you Grace Lin’s books because all of them are interesting and they all have short little stories in them.

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My Learning this Week

by 042694 on February 3, 2012

On Wednesday, when we came back to school from the Chinese New Year break, we went to the Hong Kong Eco Park to learn about how waste was managed. In the Eco Park, one of the things that I learnt was that when trash goes into the landfill, a machine compresses it down so that there is space for more rubbish. I also learnt that in landfills, there are many layers of different things, one reason is so that the there wouldn’t be a lot of rain going in there. Before I learnt about this, I thought that landfills were just full of rubbish and that they didn’t have things like soil. Later on, we were able to go to the Yan Oi Recycling Plant to see how plastic was recycled. The workers there have to separate all the different types of plastic, shred them up and then turn them into little plastic pellets. To make things easier for them, one thing that we can do is if you use plastic bottles, afterwards you should rip off the plastic label and separate the cap because they are all different types of plastic. Altogether, there are actually seven kinds of plastic. Also, when you shop, you create rubbish by throwing away your old things and packaging. Actually, only 1% of the products produced is kept after six months. A lot of domestic waste (waste from your home) is now being created because of all the things that we throw away at home.

Yesterday, we started the new unit of inquiry – How We Organize Ourselves. This new unit is about how we manage our waste. The central idea is “Societal decisions made about waste management affect communities and the environment.” After we broke it up, I learnt that this meant what decisions that government and us make about what to do with the waste that we produce can affect the nature and our neighborhood. For example, if someone built an incinerator right beside a small village, and we decided to put most of our trash there, the people living there would not be as healthy anymore because when you incinerate something, you are releasing off dioxin, which is a very strong kind of toxic. There are many different ways of dealing with our rubbish, such as, putting it in the landfill, composting rotten food so that it can be used as fertilizer, recycling, reusing, putting it in the incinerator, etc. Because of how we treat the environment and what we do with our waste, a bunch of plastic as big as an island is starting to form in the pacific ocean, know as the Plastic Vortex. We should stop throwing our rubbish in the streets and ocean and recycle them instead because once the rubbish gets into the ocean, the sea creatures and birds will think it is food, eat it, and then die.

Today, we started learning about the six thinking hats that Dr. Edward de Bono created. This is what the six colours mean.


Blue – You think about what you are going to do and think about.

Red – Your emotions and feelings about something.

Green – Creativity.

White – Facts and information about the event.

Black – The disadvantages or negatives about something.

Yellow – The advantages or positives about something.

To practice these skills, we did an activity and had to think about the topic using the six thinking hats. After doing this event, I learnt how to use these hats and more detail about them. I think they will be very useful later on in the unit when we do other tasks. I also learnt that if you use these hats, you will be able to focus more on what you are doing and what you are thinking about because the thinking hats only let you think about one thing so if you don’t use them, you might not be able to think about one specific thing in a lot of detail.

Although this was a short week, I still think I learnt a lot about this new unit.

 

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Spelling Words

by 042694 on February 3, 2012

These are all the spelling words that I have checked off three times during the first half of the school year.

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The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey

by 042694 on February 2, 2012

The Mysterious Benedict Society is a group of 4 extremely smart kids – Constance Contraire, Kate Wetherall, Reynie Muldoon and George “Sticky” Washington – who met each other and became very close friends because of Mr. Nicholas Benedict’s test and an ad in the newspaper. One year after encountering one of Mr. Ledroptha Curtain’s crimes, they met again, and went on a Scavenger Hunt together that Mr. Benedict left them. This book is the second book of the series, and is called The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey.

I think these 4 kids work really well together because they all have different talents and strategies so when they work together, all their talents get mixed up together, making them an even stronger team. I should learn from them and start cooperating better in groups. Even though, you are different from everybody else, your special gift may still be useful to the group.

Because of the interesting words and sentences that the author, Trenton Lee Stewart used, I was always interested in the book. I was also interested because there was always a problem and a lot of action going on. Even though I am not finished the book, my favourite part was when they met each other again and started the Scavenger Hunt because they meet each other again for 1 year and the whole adventure starts.

I was puzzled at the part when Kate’s father, Milligan, comes and helps them because he was able to disguise himself really well. I never knew that a person could disguise themselves so well because it is hard and you need a lot of effort. I think Milligan is a hard working person, and is very protective to the kids. He never gives up and is always prepared for anything that might happen. I think I should also try to learn from him and always prepare myself well.

I like this series a lot and I would like to recommend you to read it also.

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Historical Fiction

by 042694 on January 17, 2012

 

Part of the summative assessment for this unit was to write historical fiction based on our research. I researched about 9/11 so I wrote about it. Hope you enjoyed!

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Our Third Unit: Where We Are in Place and Time

by 042694 on January 13, 2012

“Different interpretations of the past can be discovered by investigating historical events.”

This week we finished our third unit  - Where We Are in Place and Time – on the different perspectives of history. We learned and researched about many different perspectives. During this unit I learned many things.

I realized that history can be looked at in many different ways and that it is more than just facts. I mostly learned about 9/11 because my group chose that topic for the Let’s Make It Happen Celebration. During the Let’s Make It Happen Celebration, I watched other people’s performance to learn about their historical event. I also learned about the different sources that show history, like cemeteries or museums.

I liked this unit because I realized how it can be looked at and learned about other historical events in a fun and interesting way. I also like this unit because I learned how to use Garageband better and how to use my research skills better. It was also fun because I got even more familiar with working in groups with other classmates.

For our summative assessment, we had to prepare for the Let’s Make It Happen Celebration and create a small presentation about our knowledge, skills and understanding of this unit. I presented it as a mind map. For writing, we had to write historical fiction based on our research, so I wrote about 9/11.

Below is the mind map I created:

Where We Are In Place and Time Summative Assessment

 

View more documents from grade5a.


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Fractions…with Decimals and Percentages

by 042694 on January 12, 2012

Fractions, Decimals and Percentages
View more presentations from grade5a

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Let’s Make It Happen Celebration Reflection

by 042694 on January 6, 2012

These past weeks, our grade has been researching and performing about a historical events. We started the whole process with the central idea ‘Different interpretations of the past can be discovered by investigating historical events.’ We then broke it down and got into groups to choose a historical event to focus on for the unit. My group – Alpha-Adventurer 9, Alpha-Adventurer 22 and me – decided to research about September 11.

Through many weeks of researching about the event and perspective, we were finally able to prepare, rehearse and perform the skit. When researching, I was scared that we weren’t going to be able to finish it. My group’s performance was a slideshow

showing different pictures and us taking turns to say the different perspectives of different people. Alpha-Adventurer 9 was in charge of the script, Alpha-Adventurer 22 was in charge of the slideshow and I was in charge of the music.

Alpha-Adventurer 9 said the perspectives of the rescuers; Alpha-Adventurer 22 said the perspectives of the New York Citizens and I said the perspectives of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. The perspective of the rescuers is that they didn’t feel like heroes because everyone was helping everyone, so everyone should be a hero. The perspective of the New York Citizens is that they lost their families and friends and they are really sad. The largely unanswered still remains unanswered to them: ‘Why would they do this to us?‘ Finally, the perspective of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden is: they think they have right and freedom to do this because we also have right and freedom. They do not think it is wrong and do not feel guilty about doing this act because America has been attacking them for many years.

On January 5th, when grade 5 had their performance, I felt nervous while watching other people’s skit, but when it was my turn, I felt even more scared. Alpha-Adventurer 22 spoke first, then Alpha-Adventurer 9, and then me. When I spoke, I was worried and excited because I didn’t know if I would forget my lines or mess up. I was excited because I could show the audience my group’s hard work. When my group finished, I felt excited because I finished the performance and did well. I think the whole performance went really well, but I tipped the box a little when I was walking down. After everyone’s performance, the whole grade went on stage and sang ‘A Different Point of View’. My family felt happy about it and liked it a lot.

During the whole process, I learned that when working in groups, it will be a waste of time if the whole group does the same job, so in my group, we all did different things, and we ended up being able to finish things faster. I also learnt more about September 11, and realized all the different perspectives it had. While watching other people’s performance, I learnt more about their event and the perspectives, too. For example: SARS, The Vietnam War, Korean War, Battle of Britian, The Berlin Wall, etc. Now I know how to find good sources when researching and I know how to do public speaking better. I understand the central idea more and know how history can be looked at in different ways.

I enjoyed this performance and it’s whole process a lot because I learnt a lot from it and realized how to work in groups more effectively. January 5th was also the day that I learnt the most about historical event.

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