This week, we started our new unit, “Passion Projects,” and, as suspected, K2BeM have revealed themselves to be a very passionate bunch! Over the next few weeks, the children will have the opportunity to explore a particular passion of their own that showcases the UWCSEA Profile skills of critical thinker, creative, communicator and self-manager.
We started by thinking about what a passion is and what it is that makes something a passion. We decided, amongst other things, that a passion is something you enjoy doing, something you do all the time, something you might already be good at and something that you would enjoy sharing with others. However, we also agreed that not everyone shares the same passions, although they can. Once we identified our own wide-ranging passions...
Our newlook Pod, hopefully, reflects some of our passions and the children have the opportunity to paint, draw, listen to music, dance, play with balls and hoops, act on the stage, explore the puppet theatre, build with the large blocks etc. Of course, it is not possible to include everyone’s passion (sorry no horses, Hana and Coco!) but everyone seems to be enjoying the new experiences on offer.
In Writing Workshop, we have been exploring a variety of poems as we began our mini-unit on “Poetry.” We have not started composing our own poems yet but, instead, have taken the time to explore what poetry is and what makes a poem a poem. Working in pairs, we looked closely at a number of poems and recorded our observations. We noticed that poems are very different to stories and they look a little bit like lists. Poems can sound a lot like singing and use powerful and descriptive language that can make you feel differently. The rules of punctuation do not seem to apply to poems in the same way and, on the whole, poems are a lot shorter than stories. We have discovered that poets often look at the world in a unique way and use all of their senses to describe things. We tried our hand at describing familiar objects using poetic language and expressive language. At the end of the week, we composed our first poems about our passions, using all of our senses and the finished pieces are INCREDIBLE! Please come and read them...you will be amazed.
In Reading Workshop, we started our third unit, “Readers Think and Talk About Books.” This unit encourages the children to look at fiction and non-fiction books in a new way, making sure they understand what is happening in the text rather than concentrating solely on the act of decoding. We have concentrated on stopping periodically as we are reading to think about and absorb the text. Partners play a hugely important role in reading for understanding and we have spent time this week reminding each other about what makes a “good partner.” We have even gone so far as to create “Partnership Contracts” to make sure we are all doing our best to help and support each other’s reading.
In Mathematics, we have moved on to “Counting and Comparing." In this unit, the children will compare quantities, compose and decompose numbers to 10 or beyond and solve addition and subtraction story problems by representing the action in an appropriate way. We started by exploring how quantities can be compared without assigning numerical values to them through games such as “Build It” and “Grab and Count.” The children are also becoming more proficient and automatic in their use of the Ten and Twenty Frames as a way of representing numbers and exploring the different ways to compose a given quantity. We have been focusing on Ten and Twenty Frames in Number Talks and on Dreambox on the MacBooks.
Lastly, the video of our wonderful UN Day performance has now been uploaded to the UWCSEA Music Site. The easiest way to access each class page is via this veryBlog! There is a Music tab at the top of the page...just click on that and scroll down until you find it! In addition, the video of Matt Glover's presentation on encouraging young writer's can be accessed through this link.
Reminders
Staff Professional Development-Friday 24th January-School closed for students
Student Led Conferences-Friday 14th February
Have a great weekend
We started by thinking about what a passion is and what it is that makes something a passion. We decided, amongst other things, that a passion is something you enjoy doing, something you do all the time, something you might already be good at and something that you would enjoy sharing with others. However, we also agreed that not everyone shares the same passions, although they can. Once we identified our own wide-ranging passions...
Sama-"Building Lego"
Kayna-"
Griffin-"Exploring iPads"
Georgie-"Painting"
Sebastian-"Star Wars"
Coco-"Horse riding"
Brandon-"Swimming"
Ananya-"Gymnastics"
Saanvi-"Cooking"
David-"Painting"
Hana-"Horse riding"
Toby-"Dinosaurs"
Myra-"Drawing"
Jaisimh-"Soccer"
Devangi-"Reading"
Ashwin-"Drawing"
Aditya-"All sports"
Gitanjali-"Painting animals"
Ansel-"Drawing"
Miguel-"Star Wars"
Finnley-"Star Wars"
Maggie-"Drawing"
...we started to explore why they are important to us and how we might share them with our friends. We have started filling in a “Passion Projects Map,” recording our thoughts and feelings about our particular passions, including what we already know about it and, at this stage, what we want to find out.
Our newlook Pod, hopefully, reflects some of our passions and the children have the opportunity to paint, draw, listen to music, dance, play with balls and hoops, act on the stage, explore the puppet theatre, build with the large blocks etc. Of course, it is not possible to include everyone’s passion (sorry no horses, Hana and Coco!) but everyone seems to be enjoying the new experiences on offer.
In Writing Workshop, we have been exploring a variety of poems as we began our mini-unit on “Poetry.” We have not started composing our own poems yet but, instead, have taken the time to explore what poetry is and what makes a poem a poem. Working in pairs, we looked closely at a number of poems and recorded our observations. We noticed that poems are very different to stories and they look a little bit like lists. Poems can sound a lot like singing and use powerful and descriptive language that can make you feel differently. The rules of punctuation do not seem to apply to poems in the same way and, on the whole, poems are a lot shorter than stories. We have discovered that poets often look at the world in a unique way and use all of their senses to describe things. We tried our hand at describing familiar objects using poetic language and expressive language. At the end of the week, we composed our first poems about our passions, using all of our senses and the finished pieces are INCREDIBLE! Please come and read them...you will be amazed.
In Reading Workshop, we started our third unit, “Readers Think and Talk About Books.” This unit encourages the children to look at fiction and non-fiction books in a new way, making sure they understand what is happening in the text rather than concentrating solely on the act of decoding. We have concentrated on stopping periodically as we are reading to think about and absorb the text. Partners play a hugely important role in reading for understanding and we have spent time this week reminding each other about what makes a “good partner.” We have even gone so far as to create “Partnership Contracts” to make sure we are all doing our best to help and support each other’s reading.
In Mathematics, we have moved on to “Counting and Comparing." In this unit, the children will compare quantities, compose and decompose numbers to 10 or beyond and solve addition and subtraction story problems by representing the action in an appropriate way. We started by exploring how quantities can be compared without assigning numerical values to them through games such as “Build It” and “Grab and Count.” The children are also becoming more proficient and automatic in their use of the Ten and Twenty Frames as a way of representing numbers and exploring the different ways to compose a given quantity. We have been focusing on Ten and Twenty Frames in Number Talks and on Dreambox on the MacBooks.
Lastly, the video of our wonderful UN Day performance has now been uploaded to the UWCSEA Music Site. The easiest way to access each class page is via this veryBlog! There is a Music tab at the top of the page...just click on that and scroll down until you find it! In addition, the video of Matt Glover's presentation on encouraging young writer's can be accessed through this link.
Reminders
Staff Professional Development-Friday 24th January-School closed for students
Student Led Conferences-Friday 14th February
Have a great weekend
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