Unit 5 - How the world works

17/04/2015

This week concluded our wonderful unit of learning about Living Things. The children have been highly engaged for the entirety of the unit and this was clear this week as we spent time reflecting on our learning. The children re-visited some questions we asked them in the first week of the unit as well as having the opportunity to share some of the new knowledge that they have gained through the unit.The growth in the children’s thinking and learning was evident in these reflections.

Further to our reflections, the children revised all topics learned in Maths this unit. They also enjoyed using a rubric to self assess the explanation posters that they completed last week. Once again we were lucky to have a visiting teacher in Grade 1 and the children were able to show off their explanation poster writing skills. They first created their ‘banana butterfly’ and then wrote about how they had made them.

The Grade 1 children are loving their involvement in the Clubs program. This week the children looked at the global issue of water access and were asked to think of solutions to help those without access to clean water. In their house groups, the grade 1 children brainstormed and came up with their own creative solutions.

The Grade 6 exhibition was a huge event at school this week and what a fantastic job our student leaders did in presenting their learning to the school community. The Grade 1 children valued having their own time slot at the exhibition and enjoyed the experience greatly.

For Art this week, we again took inspiration from Vincent Van Gogh, and created a sketch of sunflowers in a vase. The children focused on trying to think about the shapes they used to create the different elements of their sketch. Next week, the children will paint their sketches.

10/04/2015

We hope you had a lovely Påskeferie and we welcomed Grade 1 back to school this week to continue with our unit of inquiry on Living Things.

We had a great variety of grassheads return to school with the children. All were very happy with the new set of hair their new friends had grown during the holiday. This week, we continued with this practical approach to learning about life cycles by planting sunflower seeds. The children have explored the Sunflower life cycle in earlier Literacy sessions and were excited to consolidate their understanding in a practical way.

For maths this week, we have continued with our focus on Measurement, this week using rulers to measure different objects to the nearest cm.

The children have worked really hard this week to finish their Summative Assessment task; completing their explanation poster life cycle of a chosen living thing. We are so impressed with the children’s writing capabilities and I am sure this is shared with you.

Further to our normal learning program this week, the children have welcomed new faces into the classroom and enjoyed various lessons from visiting teachers, as part of the school’s process of employing new staff for the upcoming year.

Have a lovely weekend in the Spring sunshine.

27/03/2015

As our living things turned its focus to plants this week, the children launched into practical tasks to aid their inquiry into a plant’s life cycle. Earlier in the week, the children made grass heads, using some leggings, sawdust and grass seeds, as well as other materials for decorating their faces. During Art they also enjoyed creating clothes for their grass head's yoghurt pot. The children are excited to take these home for the holiday and watch the hair (grass) grow. Please remember to send them back with your child on the Tuesday when we return to school.

As grass takes time to sprout, we also planted some cress, which grows a bit quicker. The children took an active role in planting the seeds and keeping them healthy. They enjoyed watching the daily progress and some of them were even brave enough to eat it on Friday.

This week we once again took part in the club sessions on Monday and Tuesday afternoon. It was fantastic to see them positively joining in all the ball games and we saw a number of the IB attitudes on display; such as communication, cooperation, enthusiasm, commitment, and respect, to name just a few.

As part of the Grade 6 Exhibition, we were very lucky to have Isis and Iselin come and speak to both classes about the importance of Animal Welfare. They gave a wonderful presentation to the class, had planned activities for them and the children were even able to stroke Isis' little guinea pig. It was amazing to see the Grade 6 girls taking action into the school community and sharing their exhibition project with the children.

The children have started researching their living thing to help them write their explanation poster on return from the Easter holidays. They continued to learn new ways of locating information including using classroom displays, books and the Google search engine.

Our focus in Maths this week was Length. The children explored non-standard units to measure length and discussed which are best for measuring long objects and for short objects.

On Monday, while we were basking in the blue skies and sunshine, we were envisioning the children to be on the lookout for living things during our Friday forest adventure. The big snow fall on Thursday made this more challenging, but it did not deter us from getting out and enjoying the wonderful landscape that sits behind our school.

We wish you all a wonderful Easter holiday.

20/03/2015

Our unit of inquiry has turned a focus to Mammals and their life cycles. The children all brought in a picture of them as a baby and then we looked at how they changed to now and the future. The children thoroughly enjoyed creating their own timelines and their understanding of how living things go through a process of change has been further developed through this activity.

Continuing with our unit of inquiry, in Literacy this week, the children have all written an explanation poster about the life cycle of a butterfly. This activity is to support the children with their final summative piece of writing, which will be an explanation poster about a living thing of their choice. Next week, they will begin collecting the information that they need to create their final poster once we return from the Easter holiday.

In Technology the children have been using Google search, images and videos to find out some information about living things and using this research time to help them both during unit lessons and when writing their explanation posters. We hope that you can continue to support their curiosity by further research at home.

This week in Maths the children began exploring weight and estimation. They took part in a variety of activities to firstly introduce the key mathematical vocabulary such as heavy, light, grams, kilograms and also to begin to gain an understanding of what is meant by measuring how much something weighs. The children enjoyed using digital scales to explore how much classroom objects weighed and also estimating or making good guesses about objects weight.

During Art, the children painted the ‘body’ for their butterflies that they created last week and added ‘antennae.’ As you can see the final product is a beautiful representation of symmetrical art and creativity.

For the first time, Grade 1 joined in the club activities on Monday and Tuesday afternoon. During this time, in their houses, they learnt two new ball games; Over and Under and Tunnel Ball. It was fantastic to see the children showing great cooperation and commitment whilst having lots of fun playing these games.

Sadly we said Goodbye to Miss Leila today as she begins her maternity leave from Monday. I am sure you all agree that she has been a true asset to Grade 1 and she will be greatly missed. We wish her all the best as she goes off to have her baby boy and we look forward to her return next year. Luckily Miss Silvia is able to step into her place and will now be supporting Grade 1 in the mornings alongside Miss Kelly. Miss Linda and Miss Renata will then be the main assistants during the afternoons and at SFO.

We hope that you all have an enjoyable weekend, only one more week until the holidays!

13/03/2015

Our unit focus this week was on our second line of inquiry, ‘Living things can be classified into certain groups’. As a part of this, the children were split into groups and given a set of animals. They were then asked to split the animals into different groups, in whatever way they wanted to. This allowed for some fantastic collaboration between the students and it was obvious that they were learning from each other’s thoughts and own knowledge. It also demonstrated a range of different thinking and launched great classroom discussion.

Our Literacy linked to the unit where possible, as we continued to build on the students reading comprehension, sentence construction and the application of their phonics in all aspects of language learning.

You might discover your child has a new-found passion towards watches and clocks. The focus during our mathematics sessions this past week has been on ‘telling the time’, largely o’clock and half past. They participated in a variety of rotating activities over the course of the week to consolidate this new understanding.

The PYP IB attitude, Creativity, was on full show in Art this week, with students painting butterflies whilst trying to achieve symmetry on each wing. We will continue with this Art project next week where we will add the body and antennae to the butterflies.

If we can please remind you for your child to bring in their baby pictures in on Monday.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend.

06/03/2015

We have had another busy week in Grade 1 and the children are thoroughly enjoying our new unit of inquiry into Living Things. The focus of our inquiry this week has been discovering the seven characteristics that classify something as a living thing. The children have completed a number of activities working out if something is living or non-living and even creating their own living things.

In Literacy we have explored a variety of activities developing the children’s skills in their reading and writing. Over the week each group spent time writing their initial understanding of what our central idea means and a chance to discuss and answer some of their questions on our Wonder Wall.

During our Maths rotations this week we have been revisiting subtraction and practising all the different strategies that support taking away. The children have liked having the opportunity to secure their subtraction skills and their understanding of this concept.

Linking to our unit of inquiry, in Art this week the children used different materials and resources to create a flower collage. As the pictures show the children loved the chance to show their creative side and have again created some beautiful pieces of artwork.

Finally our week finished with the wonderful World Book Day Celebrations. It was wonderful to see so many children dress up as their favourite book characters and this day certainly helped further develop their love of stories and reading. We are also sure that the children will share with you how they had lots of fun and enjoyment during the whole school story time where they chose which teacher’s favourite story they would like to go and listen to. It was the perfect ending to another successful week of learning in Grade 1.

27/02/2015

Welcome back, we hope everyone enjoyed their winter holiday. The Grade 1 children have launched into their new topic with great enthusiasm.

As part of establishing the children’s prior knowledge and setting up for our new unit of inquiry, the class utilized the thinking routine - ‘Think, Puzzle, Explore’:

1. What do you think you know about this topic?
2. What questions or puzzles do you have?
3. How can you explore this topic?

For the think section, in class groups, we brainstormed what we thought our central idea meant.

Our central idea: All living things go through a process of change

Puzzle - The children then formulated some questions to aid their inquiry. They wrote these questions down on post-it notes and then added these to the class Wonder Wall. The children will continually be adding to the Wonder Wall over the course of the unit and this will help drive the inquiry.

Explore - The children regrouped and came up with ideas on how they can find out the answers to their questions. They came up with a great list of ideas and we were so happy to see them thinking about the PYP attitudes and Learner Profile Attributes in their suggestions.

Later in the week, the children also enjoyed sorting different objects into the categories living, dead and never lived. This prompted great discussion and gave us great scope on the children’s current understanding.

For Literacy this week, we asked the children to write about their holidays. The children enjoyed reflecting and thinking up their own ideas and then putting these into golden sentences. To see them all do this independently demonstrated the great growth in their learning over the course of the year. We also continued to introduce new sounds and key and tricky words in phonics, as well as completing reading comprehension activities.

For Maths, we re-introduced subtraction and revised our number bond facts to 10 and 20. The children continued to use the 100 square as a support tool for completing activities.

Grade 1B also enjoyed very successful Student-Led Conferences. It was obvious how proud the children were to be able to share their achievements.

It’s certainly been an action packed week and a wonderful start to our new unit of inquiry.