This week, we have had an EGGcellent time in K2BeM! At the start of the week, the children were presented with a challenge, namely to work in groups to design and create a device that would protect an egg when it was dropped from the top of a ladder. Over the course of the week, they sourced the appropriate materials, agreed on a design and worked together to bring the idea to life. There was a great deal of collaboration and constructive thinking on display and some ingenious creations emerged.
When it came to "The Drop," there were lots of cheers of joy as another egg survived and words of solace and encouragement for the unlucky eggs. The children recorded the whole process on a ‘design map,’ including their predictions and, more importantly, their reflections.
Next week, we will begin to think about how materials can change under certain conditions. We are very excited about visiting our friends in the High School Science and Design Technology Departments, who have kindly invited us to observe a number of demonstrations involving (dramatically!) changing materials.
In Reading Workshop, the children have been learning how our classroom libraries work. Together, the children have decided on ways to sort their books into groups according to content in order to allow everybody to select books based on his or her interests. We have also concentrated on the importance of taking our time when we read and not zooming through books..."Do not zoom in this room!" Our reading muscles are getting a good workout every day as our stamina slowly starts to increase.
In Writing Workshop, we have focused on ways of generating ideas to write. We have discovered that writers write about topics they know and love. They think of something that they can do or are an ‘expert’ at, get a picture in their minds and then draw or write the story on paper...or both. We have also started thinking about how writers are constantly looking for ways to improve their writing…”When I’m done, I’ve only just begun.” With this in mind, the children have been thinking of ways to enhance their work such as adding to the illustrations, adding more words, checking and changing words, including speech bubbles or labels and so on. This is something we will continue to explore over the coming weeks.
Lastly, we spent a lovely morning with our Buddies in 3AnH. The Grade 3 children interviewed us to find out all about our likes and dislikes...and then we took some crazy photos of each other in Photo Booth! It was a lot of fun.
It was great to have the opportunity to sit down and talk to you all this week at the Settling-In Conferences. Once again, please do contact me if you have any questions or concerns at any stage throughout the year.
*Do not forget that we start swimming next week (thank you to everyone who has volunteered to help out over the next few weeks)
Have a great weekend.
When it came to "The Drop," there were lots of cheers of joy as another egg survived and words of solace and encouragement for the unlucky eggs. The children recorded the whole process on a ‘design map,’ including their predictions and, more importantly, their reflections.
Next week, we will begin to think about how materials can change under certain conditions. We are very excited about visiting our friends in the High School Science and Design Technology Departments, who have kindly invited us to observe a number of demonstrations involving (dramatically!) changing materials.
In Reading Workshop, the children have been learning how our classroom libraries work. Together, the children have decided on ways to sort their books into groups according to content in order to allow everybody to select books based on his or her interests. We have also concentrated on the importance of taking our time when we read and not zooming through books..."Do not zoom in this room!" Our reading muscles are getting a good workout every day as our stamina slowly starts to increase.
In Writing Workshop, we have focused on ways of generating ideas to write. We have discovered that writers write about topics they know and love. They think of something that they can do or are an ‘expert’ at, get a picture in their minds and then draw or write the story on paper...or both. We have also started thinking about how writers are constantly looking for ways to improve their writing…”When I’m done, I’ve only just begun.” With this in mind, the children have been thinking of ways to enhance their work such as adding to the illustrations, adding more words, checking and changing words, including speech bubbles or labels and so on. This is something we will continue to explore over the coming weeks.
We have also focused on Classroom Routines with a mathematical element this week, such as attendance, calendar and daily questions. These daily experiences provide plenty of opportunities for the children to develop their mathematical thinking in a meaningful and purposeful way. From here, we will move on to Counting and Comparing, developing strategies for accurately counting and comparing a set of objects and articulating the process. We will then go on to compare the lengths of different objects.
Lastly, we spent a lovely morning with our Buddies in 3AnH. The Grade 3 children interviewed us to find out all about our likes and dislikes...and then we took some crazy photos of each other in Photo Booth! It was a lot of fun.
It was great to have the opportunity to sit down and talk to you all this week at the Settling-In Conferences. Once again, please do contact me if you have any questions or concerns at any stage throughout the year.
*Do not forget that we start swimming next week (thank you to everyone who has volunteered to help out over the next few weeks)
Have a great weekend.
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