This week has been a load of rubbish in K2BeM...literally! On Tuesday, we asked our wonderful K2 Aunty not to empty our bins at the end of the day as she usually does...and the same again on Wednesday! By Thursday, our classroom was quite "stinky." Together, we emptied our rubbish out onto plastic sheets to see just what was inside.
In Monday’s assembly, a group of older children from the LEAP Service group came to talk to the Infants about compost. They explained what compost is for and how we might be able to start collecting food waste in our classrooms that might then be turned into compost. We now have our very own compost bin in the K2 Pod and all the classes are starting to collect their banana skins, apple cores and so on...but not orange peel. We have also had LOTS of children bringing in stuff from home for our compost bin!!
In art, we have been exploring the use of symbols to tell stories and share ideas. We looked at Aboriginal art, Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and Native American Indian totem poles as ways of telling stories and keeping ideas and cultures alive over the generations. We then created individual totem poles to represent who we are, what is important to us and what we enjoy doing. This has been the perfect follow up to our Passion Projects as we have been talking a lot about how knowing each other’s likes and passions can only make our classroom a happier place to be. As a class, we came up with a set of symbols that could represent different things, such as a musical note if you like music or a heart if you are a caring person, and the children used and adapted these in their own designs.
In Reading Workshop, we have continued to focus on reading beyond the text, predicting, inferring and making connections. We have also been testing our reading super powers by reading our poems out loud to our partners...and, even, the whole class. Next Tuesday, we are going to visit our friends in Grade 4PBa to share our poems with them as they have been exploring poetry in their Writing Workshop sessions too. Before then, we will need to revise and edit one or two (or more!) of our favourite poems before publishing them. Remember, we might share some of our poems with you at the Student-Led Conferences next Friday.
In Mathematics, we have moved onto subtraction and the inverse relationship between addition and subtraction. At this early stage, we are exploring the idea of subtraction meaning taking something away and have started to investigate “Subtraction Stories” as a way of contextualising this understanding. At the same time, we have adapted some of our familiar classroom games so that we can practice and consolidate our developing skills, for example, “Race to 20,” an addition game, has now become “Race to 0.” We will be focusing on “Addition and Subtraction” in far more detail in our next Mathematics unit which begins in Week 7.
We are all looking forward to seeing you at the Student-Led Conferences next Friday. Please try and arrive promptly and come armed with an open-mind and lots of questions. Miss Ida and I are there to hold the door open and take photos...the rest is down to the children!
Lastly, we welcomed the residents of Happy Lodge to our assembly on Monday. Happy Lodge is a home for the elderly in Tampines and the Grade 1 children visit them regularly. This year, we are hoping to arrange some K2/Grade 1 combined visits in Term 3. This was the first time we had met the residents and we think they enjoyed our CNY songs.
Have a great weekend
We discussed our observations and, using Doodlecast on the iPads, recorded our thoughts and feelings about it. To provoke our thinking, we were asked to consider three questions:
*What materials do you see?
*What do you think happens to this rubbish after it leaves our classroom?
*How does this make you feel?
After we had all had the chance to create a Doodlecast, we helped Aunty put all the rubbish into a black bag...I think she is our friend again (and, don't worry, we washed our hands!)! Now, we know how much rubbish we produce in just two days in K2BeM, we want to find out just what happens to our waste when Aunty takes it out of the classroom. Watch this space...
The children's thoughts and feelings were fascinating and a great starting point for our “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” unit. In this unit, we will investigate how systems can be put into place to care for our environment and community and how our actions can make a difference through reducing, reusing and recycling resources.
*What materials do you see?
*What do you think happens to this rubbish after it leaves our classroom?
*How does this make you feel?
After we had all had the chance to create a Doodlecast, we helped Aunty put all the rubbish into a black bag...I think she is our friend again (and, don't worry, we washed our hands!)! Now, we know how much rubbish we produce in just two days in K2BeM, we want to find out just what happens to our waste when Aunty takes it out of the classroom. Watch this space...
The children's thoughts and feelings were fascinating and a great starting point for our “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” unit. In this unit, we will investigate how systems can be put into place to care for our environment and community and how our actions can make a difference through reducing, reusing and recycling resources.
In Monday’s assembly, a group of older children from the LEAP Service group came to talk to the Infants about compost. They explained what compost is for and how we might be able to start collecting food waste in our classrooms that might then be turned into compost. We now have our very own compost bin in the K2 Pod and all the classes are starting to collect their banana skins, apple cores and so on...but not orange peel. We have also had LOTS of children bringing in stuff from home for our compost bin!!
In art, we have been exploring the use of symbols to tell stories and share ideas. We looked at Aboriginal art, Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and Native American Indian totem poles as ways of telling stories and keeping ideas and cultures alive over the generations. We then created individual totem poles to represent who we are, what is important to us and what we enjoy doing. This has been the perfect follow up to our Passion Projects as we have been talking a lot about how knowing each other’s likes and passions can only make our classroom a happier place to be. As a class, we came up with a set of symbols that could represent different things, such as a musical note if you like music or a heart if you are a caring person, and the children used and adapted these in their own designs.
In Reading Workshop, we have continued to focus on reading beyond the text, predicting, inferring and making connections. We have also been testing our reading super powers by reading our poems out loud to our partners...and, even, the whole class. Next Tuesday, we are going to visit our friends in Grade 4PBa to share our poems with them as they have been exploring poetry in their Writing Workshop sessions too. Before then, we will need to revise and edit one or two (or more!) of our favourite poems before publishing them. Remember, we might share some of our poems with you at the Student-Led Conferences next Friday.
In Mathematics, we have moved onto subtraction and the inverse relationship between addition and subtraction. At this early stage, we are exploring the idea of subtraction meaning taking something away and have started to investigate “Subtraction Stories” as a way of contextualising this understanding. At the same time, we have adapted some of our familiar classroom games so that we can practice and consolidate our developing skills, for example, “Race to 20,” an addition game, has now become “Race to 0.” We will be focusing on “Addition and Subtraction” in far more detail in our next Mathematics unit which begins in Week 7.
We are all looking forward to seeing you at the Student-Led Conferences next Friday. Please try and arrive promptly and come armed with an open-mind and lots of questions. Miss Ida and I are there to hold the door open and take photos...the rest is down to the children!
Lastly, we welcomed the residents of Happy Lodge to our assembly on Monday. Happy Lodge is a home for the elderly in Tampines and the Grade 1 children visit them regularly. This year, we are hoping to arrange some K2/Grade 1 combined visits in Term 3. This was the first time we had met the residents and we think they enjoyed our CNY songs.
Have a great weekend
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