11 Feb 2015 (Wednesday)

Dear children,

We had our first fire drill together this morning. Although the timing taken for the whole school to assemble at the Assembly Point was a short one, I was not impressed at all by our class's attitude towards the fire drill. Many of you did not show an attitude of seriousness and were slow to queue up in an orderly manner. Some of you were talking and laughing. Some were even taking your time to keep your things before you started queuing up. You know very well from my instructions two days ago that that is not acceptable. I expect you to treat future fire drills seriously.

We spent more time on science today. After looking at some of the sticky notes that your friends had put up on our animals research Padlet wall, we began the next topic on plants. We discussed where plants can be found, why they are important, and how they can be classified into flowering and non-flowering plants. Then, we compared and contrasted flowering plants with non-flowering plants and looked at the similarities and differences.

Without looking at your notes, try testing yourself with the following 10 questions to see if you can recall some of the important facts that we discussed:

1) What do plants need to stay alive?
2) Where can we find plants?
3) Why are plants important for other living things?
4) What are flowering plants? What are non-flowering plants? Can you give an example for each of them?
5) How do flowering plants reproduce? What about non-flowering plants?
6) What are the 5 parts of a flowering plant that we talked about?
7) What plant parts do flowering plants have but non-flowering plants do not?
8) Can you give an example of a plant with its roots found above ground?
9) Can you give an example of a plant with its stem found underground?
10) Do non-flowering plants bear fruits?

(You can refer to your notes to check your answers after you have tested yourself.)

I have made arrangements for us to visit the garden at St. Hilda's Secondary School on Friday morning to observe some of the plants there. We will spend our first two periods doing that.

During English lesson, we had an enriching discussion about the article that you read in Little Red Dot yesterday. I was very impressed that some of you had discussed your reading with your parents at home and that they had shared with you their experiences during the SARS period. Because of that, we had such a fruitful discussion today! I am looking forward to our future N.I.C.E discussions.

These are today's reminders:

1) Complete the following exercises in your orange "Revised Primary English" book.

Pages 11 and 12

-Exercises 8f, 8g and 8h

Pages 32 and 33

-Exercises 28, 29, 30, 31

Pages 78 and 79

-Exercises 74, 75 and 76

Pages 89 and 90

-Exercises 83a and 83b

You do not have to write out the sentences. Simply fill in the blanks or circle the answers in your book.

Bring the book tomorrow.

2) If you or your parents would like to make some Chinese New Year decorations to add to those already put up in our classroom, please bring them tomorrow or on Friday. Mdm Liew, the Chinese teacher in charge of decorating our classroom, is requesting for contributions from you. So far, I have received two decoration pieces from Kaedee. Since the classroom is ours to enjoy, I think it would be good if you could contribute too.

3) Prepare for Friday's Spelling Test. We will have it after your Mother Tongue period on Friday at 11.45 a.m..

4) Review your Maths Unit 1 booklets. We will be having the Maths Practice Test on Friday.

5) It was very disappointing that more than half the class had to spend time working on re-corrections in your Unit 2 Maths booklets today. Please put in more effort in your corrections and check before submitting.

6) Learn from one another's research about different animals by visiting the Padlet wall that our class has put together:

http://padlet.com/wongbengyu/i8ls7zp6fq9i

Write a comment on this post to share with me three interesting things that you have learnt from your friend's sharing.

7) One of the grasshoppers that Matthew brought to our classroom moulted today. If you are interested to watch again the 38-second video about grasshoppers moulting, click on this link:

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/media/18448/A-grasshopper-molts-shedding-its-outer-layer-and-leaving-a


Have a pleasant evening with your family. See you tomorrow! :)