News from Primary school

Dear Parents, Guardians and Friends of Open Gate Primary School,

what a fun week we’ve had, that’s fun F-U-N fun, here at Open Gate. On Thursday we had our annual School Spelling Bee in the theatre where 20 of the Primary School’s best spellers competed to secure a spot in the District Spelling Bee at Sunny Canadian International School. The event was fun, tense, exciting, disappointing for some and exhilarating for others. There was a wide range of emotions throughout as we went through six rounds and a Spell-off to find our top five spellers. At the end of the event, the five who were still standing were Mia, Zoya, Kačka, David and Arina. So congratulations to them for a wonderful performance and we wish them the best of luck moving forward in the District Round. I wanted to give a special shout out to Amelia and Adéla, two of our bright spellers from Class 2 and 3 respectively, who made it into the final round and into a Spell-off trying to make it to the final 5. Unfortunately, they were defeated, but in great spirits, they cheered on the winners and vowed to study hard to make it back to the stage next year. That’s the OG Spirit I love to see in our students- even in defeat they show great sportsmanship, honor and resilience to bounce back and prove their abilities again. I already can’t wait to see what next year brings. And of course a big thank you to our Class 1 Helper Bees who presented each round with a sign, cheers and some words of encouragement for the spellers. They also decorated and made badges that adorned the shirts of all of our contestants, helping them look the part as they battled through the rounds of the Spelling Bee. Thanks a lot, Class 1 Helper Bees!

In other news, Spring appears to have sprung here at OG with a week full of sunshine behind us, and another one in front of us. It’s still quite cold, so please make sure we are dressed appropriately at school, but soon will be the days when we are shedding the coats and hats, donning our light jackets and enjoying outdoor activities more and more. I am sure it will be a welcome change for all of us.

We look forward to seeing you all around the halls of the Primary School in the coming weeks as we move into the final few months of the school year. Have a wonderful weekend full of fun, good health, bright sunshine and great memories with family and friends.

Now let’s take a look at what the classes have been up to this week:

In class 1 this week, we continued working with our brand new Incredible English book! We met some of the characters like Flo, Titch and Mr. Fixit and we also drew lovely pictures of our school bags. On Thursday we prepared badges for the Spelling Bee and we did a wonderful job introducing the different rounds.

On Friday, we had lots of phonics fun with Luke. We learnt about the OR sound and learnt some interesting new words too. We compared it with our recent phonic, AR to make sure we remembered that, and could tell the difference between the two sounds! We also had great fun at the Spelling Bee and really enjoyed supporting some of our classmates!

These Animorphs tried their hand in the English kitchen this week, thinking up their favorite dishes and trying to write out the recipe for all to enjoy. We wrote the ingredients, the steps of how to make it and even drew some pictures of the finished project. Next week they will present to the class their dish and teach everyone something special from one kitchen to another.

In class 4 this week, we created our own Cartouches. Cartouches are visual representations of Egyptian hieroglyphs to show the name of a royal person, sort of like a family crest. They came up with some very interesting names and ideas! We also learnt about how plurals can work in different ways in English and we learnt about the different types of words that we use. (LR)

In class 5 this week, we went futuristic, learning about the difference between WILL and GOING TO for the future in English. We also did some great practice for PET. We finalized our surveys for the Statistics and Probability project and have started sending them out to the survey groups. We are looking forward to seeing if our expectations are correct! (LR)

All the best