Greetings from the Class of 1999-2000
Here is a welcome page with some photographs of Ms Hos-McGrane's newest grade five students.Our projects this year include: drawings from a Navajo Creation Story, Myth Monsters and Holidays and Festivals Project for social studies, our Flight Project and Tessellations for maths and Bookshare, "Flat Stanley" in Amsterdam and Book Buddies Project for language arts. We participated in an EU project on Butterflies in our science class and an international project called The Day I Was Born. On Wednesday, 13 October we had a Grade 5 open house for our family and friends.

Projects from the Class of 1998-1999
Here is a welcome page with some photographs of Ms Hos-McGrane's 1998-99 grade five students and information on their Book Share Activities , Puppet Projects, Mythological Monsters, Flight Simulation and Class Trip, Tessellation projects, African Masks, Designing Spaces and Chance Encounters from the Class of 98-99 . Read about an exciting award given to our math class from Math Forum Project.

IRA Conference: San Diego, California
April 30 is Queensday in the Netherlands, an official holiday. Unfortunately, our teacher, Ms Hos-McGrane missed the festivities this year as she was traveling to San Diego, California to give a presentation with our webmaster, Ms Swanson, at the 1999 International Reading Association, preconference institute Teaching with the Internet: Preparing Children for their Literacy Futures. Here is a report of their visit to San Diego.

ECIS Maths Quest '99: Maths Trail around the Zuiderzee Museum
In April 1999 our school hosted the 3rd annual Primary Mathematics Quest sponsored by the European Council of International Schools. On Friday the 16th we participated in a Maths Trail around the Zuiderzee museum. If you would like to view more photos taken during the Trail and the Quest, follow the link above.

Pole to Pole
For this assignment students worked in pairs or in groups of threes. Like the popular television program of the same name , they were assigned a line of longitude and had to travel along it from the North Pole to the South Pole, visiting countries on the way. They marked the line of longitude onto a world map and coloured and named the countries traveled through. Finally they wrote a short report on each country they visited.

Ancient Civilizations and their Number Systems
This project was a joint social studies and maths activity. To begin with students had to research into the number systems of several ancient civilizations and explain how the systems are similar and how they differ. Following on from this, students had to create their own number systems explaining the advantages and disadvantages of their systems. 

Flight Simulation
Throughout the first quarter of Grade 5 students work on map skills. At the end of the quarter, to reinforce these skills, students did the Flight Simulation from Interact. Here are reports from four of the flight simulation teams as well as photos from our class trip to the Amsterdam aviodrome & a project with paper aeroplanes.

Designing Spaces:
Our maths activities during the second quarter of Grade 5 have revolved entirely around Geometry. Students worked on tiling, symmetry and tessellations and we finished the quarter with our second maths project of the year called "Designing Spaces" which involved visualizing, planning and building. Students used geometry to analyse buildings from around the world, to design and build their own house models, and to create plans for their designs. Rather than studying mathematics, the students became mathematicians, engaging in a form of mathematical thinking that is applied in all societies to design living spaces to meet people's needs and to make sense of the physical environment. 

Butterfly Research Projects
The International School of Amsterdam is one of several European schools monitoring butterflies and sharing this information via the Internet. The project has been running for 2 years and the Grade 5 class has been recording butterfly numbers around the school grounds since spring of this year. Twelve butterflies with a wide European distribution are monitored using the Pollard method, along with information about weather conditions and vegetation. Here are seven research projects which the grade 5 students have published in conjunction with their field studies. (more)

The Ancient Maya
In preparation for our student research projects on the Ancient Mayas we have prepared a list of web-based resources. The students have designed a Maya Mask Project and have completed their presentations and their Maya research projects and student designed Maya stela have been published on our web site. In January 1998 our webmaster visited several Maya cities, including A Visit to Chichen Itza and Tulum, and has published her photographs and other materials relating to history and culture of the Mayas. 

Holidays & Festivals Around the World
Grade 5 students completed nine projects showcasing holidays and festivals from their countries of origin. Our special thanks to Lin Donn for encouraging us to do this project and for providing an excellent website on the subject. External link: Ancient Roots Modern Holidays.

Tessellation Projects:
As part of their second quarter unit on geometry students have been exploring tessellations and the work of Dutch artist M.C. Escher. They then created their own tessellations using the MECC Tesselmania.software program. 

Navajo Creation Story
We read the Navajo story about the creation of their world. The traditional boundaries of the Navajo region were marked by four sacred mountains. Members of the class created illustrations of these sacred mountains and some have been published on our pages. 

Mythological Monsters
Many of the Middle Eastern and Greek myths we have read have included mythological creatures. Students have designed their own mythological monsters and here you will find six examples of their work.

Descriptive Writing Projects
Students worked on a number of descriptive writing projects. First we described our classroom, then the students own rooms. This was followed by essays describing a special person and an item which they they treasured and events in their lives which they remembered. 

Chance Encounters
We held a maths probability fair "Chance Encounters" on Wednesday 13 May. 1998 and was a great success. Here are some photos and descriptions of the various games the students designed and of other students playing them. In May 1999 we held a second probability fair and here is a report of our Chance Encounters from the Class of 98-99.

Art/Music/Drama Project: African Masks and Play
We did two projects in art class to design and construct African masks. Our second project, based on our visit to the Escher exhibition in Rotterdam in November 1998, is a display of our African Masks. From our 1997 project here are some photos of our work in progress.

Report and Photographs of our Webmaster's Visit to Amsterdam
At the end of the 1997-98 school year our webmaster paid a visit to our school. On holiday from her home in California, one of the first places she visited was Ms Hos-McGrane's Grade Five classroom where she met with the students and exchanged information about their web projects. Here is a report of that visit.