We had a fun and busy week full of activities! This week especially we continued to focus on the concept of time! Students were asked: "Sally arrives at school at 8:00. She also goes to sleep at 8:00. Is this possible?" There were a lot of great discussions! From this we explored AM and PM, sorted items by duration (1 second, 1 minute, and 1 hour) and explored clocks further! The children also took action to remake the classroom schedule using clocks they created themselves! This helped us to understand what lessons/activities in the day take an hour or less!
0 Comments
We are reflective! Thank you for all your support during the student led conferences! The children spend time throughout the year reflecting on their work, setting goals and learning about how they learn and grow! This week however we focused on this more! Spending time with the children looking through their portfolios and reflecting on all the times we showed learner profile attributes or developed ATL skills really showcased how much they've grown. Hari Raya Celebrations To celebrate Hari Raya, we listened to stories from children who celebrate Hari Raya and asked questions to adults in our school who also celebrate, such as Ms Su! We practised our fine motor skills by cutting out stars and crescent moons to make decorations, wrote cards and had fun! Sharing our stories After all our hard work writing a fractured fairy tale, we discussed how we want to share our stories, after all the central idea is that stories are shared in many ways. We explored all the various ways we've seen stories shared (puppets, books, miming/acting, kamishibai) and chose our own. Most of us chose puppets or Kaimisibai cards! We practiced sharing these for our friends, then brought it home to share with our families as well.
Unit of Inquiry and Literacy Over the last couple weeks the students have been making their own fractured fairy tales based on the story of The Three Little Pigs! This week they planned and prepared how they want to tell the story, after inquiring into "How stories are told." We looked at the many ways to tell stories such as through puppets, Kamishibai cards, books, miming and using toys! They all chose how they want to tell their story and have been working hard on creating it. Exploring ways of telling stories Creating their fractured fairytales Wake up! Shake up! This week we tuned into Wake up! Shake up! by Singapore Repertory Theatre. This fun virtual session led by professionals had our students doing activities relating to drama, song and dance. We heard various stories that we recognised from class, learned how to mime and dance from different cultures. Students made connections to our central idea that "Stories can be shared in many ways." Mathematics This week we continued to dive deeper into various strategies we can use to help us subtract such as using our fingers, drawing pictures, counting backwards and using a number line! We also had some fun playing subtraction bowling. We also explored ways to measure time! We learned that seconds, minutes and hours can be measured on clocks. While we use calendars for days, weeks, months and years. We explored how long is a second and a minute and recorded our ideas. Later in the week we read "The Very Grouchy Ladybug" by Eric Carle and tracked his day using our clocks. This helped us to understand that one full circle of the clock for the minute hand makes 1 hour!
Unit of Inquiry This week during our Unit of Inquiry we looked at Fractured Fairytales! These are fairy tales told from a different perspective. One of our key concepts is perspective. We learned that perspective is when we look at something from a different point of view or when we have different feelings and opinions about something. We read the story "What Really Happened to Little Red Riding Hood, The Wolf's Story" by Toby Forward and Izhar Cohen and "The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig" by Eugene Trivizas. We discussed the similarities and differences between the story and the different perspectives the characters had. We also acted out some of our favourite stories. Math We also learned we had different perspectives/opinions on a lot of things! Each morning our question of the day asked us our opinion on something to do with fairy tales, we graphed our answers and then showed the data in tally marks. We practiced how to write tally marks more throughout the week. We also started learning different strategies for subtraction - or taking away, we will continue building these number skills through to the end of the year. Earth Day Thursday, 22nd April was Earth Day! Our celebrations lasted throughout the week when we made a play healthy restaurant with vegetarian food, read stories about the Earth and created posters out of recycled paper to help remind ourselves and our friends about what we can do to take care of the Earth everyday!
Unit of Inquiry - What is a fairy tale? We all know our favourite fairy tales, from Cinderella to The Three Little Pigs. But what makes a fairy tale, a fairy tale? First we looked at Fairy Tales from the concept of form. We learned that fairy tales have: - Good Characters & Evil Characters - A Setting - Magic - Problems & Solutions After, we sorted characters, settings and magic props that we commonly found in fairy tales and stories. While reading the fairy tales, we realised we have some stick puppets/felt puppets with the characters and settings of the fairy tales! This is a way to share/tell a story! Our first line of inquiry is: how stories are told. We learned they can be told in a book, but they can also be told in different ways, such as through puppets! We took action to make a puppet theatre for our class! A puppet theatre was made for us, and we started painting it ourselves this week. Literacy This week we started introducing Literacy Choice Time. We have been practising these skills all year. Now we are ready to independently choose to work on them during this time! We get to choose to independently work on our writing or independently completing word work activities. Next week we'll introduce Reading Routines to our choice. Math As we continue to develop our Data Handling skills, we also are continuously developing our numeracy and number skills! This week we reviewed the many ways to add and combine numbers, focusing on using a number line as a strategy. We made our own interactive number line and used this to practice adding numbers.
Unit of Inquiry - How We Express Ourselves Central Idea: Stories can be shared in many ways
This week we tuned into our central idea of our new unit by looking at the central idea and choosing which words we thought were important. Afterwards we recorded our thoughts about the meanings of the words. We found out the prior knowledge we had by looking our favourite stories and why they are our favourites. Throughout this week and continuing next, we will be reading our favourite stories. Literacy - Reading as a reader This week we investigated what it meant to read a book as a reader! We learned that some of the ways readers read books is to gain information about that book! We can do this by: Questioning: asking questions about anything Inferring: sometimes the authors leave us clues about what is happening in the story without writing them! We can find out lots of information by being detectives and looking for clues to see what the author is trying to tell us. We practised these skills when reading the Gruffalo then we sequenced the story, developed fine motor skills with Gruffalo playdough mats and used natural materials to make houses for the characters of the Gruffalo. Some fun pictures of the children exploring the new areas in the classroom!
Happy Spring Break! See you on the 5th of April! STEAM Week!
Unit of Inquiry - World Without the Sense of Sight We continued our inquiry into world without the sense of sight. Our teacher gave us a provocation where she asked us to read a book with a blindfold on. We were unable to do it! We started using our thinking skills to try and solve the problem. Some of our thoughts were: "Someone can read to you if you cannot see the words" "Maybe if the words were raised and bumpy you could feel the letters" What a wonderful idea! We made 3D bumpy letters of our names and then tried to guess the names we were feeling with blindfolds on. After that, we learned about a real system called "braille" that helps people read through the sense of touch. We also discussed other ways for people who were blind could get around Singapore, such as following the bumpy paths on the ground and listening to the sounds at the crosswalk so they knew when it was safe to walk.
We went for a walk around our school to see if we could find anything to help people get around without the sense of sight and we couldn't find much. This made us want to take action in case someone who was blind visited our campus, so we created a braille sign for our Kindergarten classroom.
Trip to Hort Park We really enjoyed our trip to Hort Park this week! We had so much fun exploring, playing and interacting with the different sensory gardens, at the nature playground and other playground! We used our 4 senses (5 if you include when we tasted our snacks) to inquire into our surroundings and explore our environment! Unit of Inquiry - World Without Senses This week we dove into our final line of inquiry - world without senses. We tried to draw and build blocks without our sense of sight! It was quite tricky, and many of us found it uncomfortable to continue working without being able to see what we were doing. We continued extending this learning to the outdoors, when we played 'Marco Polo' and Duck Duck Goose with a blindfold on. Many of us used our sense of touch or sense of hearing to play, even if we couldn't see! Assembly This week we practiced our Viewing and Presenting literacy skills by presenting at the assembly! We walked the grades through a 5 Senses Mindfulness exercise. Everybody really enjoyed it! Well done, Kindergarten!
UOI - Using Multiple Senses This week we continued to explore the combination of our senses. By only hearing and smelling Easter eggs, we had to guess what was inside. It was so hard not to peek! We gave good guesses and came up with some very creative answers. Later, we shared our thoughts on things that use multiple senses. "Fried rice can be smelled and tasted" "Shakers can be heard and touched" Concept of Change In both Mandarin and homeroom classes, we have been exploring the concept of change. We read the book "Perfect Square" where a perfect square changes by being torn, crumpled, etc. and turns into something new! We all made our own Perfect Square changing pictures afterwards. Literacy - Acting it out This week we have been listening to a lot of stories. Our new favourite is "The Wonderful Fluffy Little Squishy" by Beatrice Alemagna. We enjoyed making connections to this story through our senses (fluffy, squishy) and acted it out! Growing Patterns We have been dipping in and out of repeating patterns over the last few weeks. Some of our friends have been making growing patterns out of materials and we didn't even know it! Once we identified that these are also types of patterns, we spent some time exploring growing patterns.
Literacy Week We have enjoyed a very literacy filled week! The children started the week with performing the Pete the Cat book for their friends. They also joined in many activities to do with books, a visit from a professional storyteller, wrote poems and on Friday they enjoyed their Book Character Parade and DEAR time (Drop Everything And Read!). We ended our week with a Book Character Hide and Seek game. Pete The Cat Visit from Roger Jenkins, storyteller 5 Senses Poems Book Character Hide and Seek
|
AuthorWe are a class of 4, 5 and 6 year olds at an international school in Singapore! We learn by playing, inquiring and having fun. Our teacher is Ms Bustamante, and this is our learning journey! Archives
May 2021
Categories |