Transdisciplinary Theme: Who we are
We are approaching the end of Unit 1. The classes have been busy working on their summative tasks and putting their learning into actions. In conjunction with the upcoming Chinese National Day, the Chinese teachers imparted various aspects of National day around the world in their lessons where students shared and presented their learning during the PYP assembly. Hope everyone would have a good holiday break!
Grade 1:
Central idea:Relationships contribute to our well-being and needs to be nurtured
Line of inquiry 1: Relationships in our lives
Line of inquiry 2:Friendship roles and values
Line of inquiry 3:Thoughts, words and actions affect relationship
We have just finished our 5th week of inquiry into how relationships contribute to our well-being and need to be nurtured. The students explored the idea of a friendship soup. They discussed the “ingredients” they wanted in a friendship soup and things needed to make friendships work. We then added all of these together and “cooked” them into a delicious soup! In Math, we learned more about pictographs and created bar graphs. We also continued practicing our subtraction skills through a BINGO subtraction game and likewise used our computer lab time to explore other subtraction games online. Our phonics element this week was the short sound of “i”. We also reinforced our inquiry on sentence construction.
This is a short week so we will do revision work on what we have covered so far. We will work on our summative tasks and portfolios after the National holidays.
What a busy week!
Grade 2:
Central idea:Culture shapes who we are
Line of inquiry 1: Diversity of cultures around the world
Line of inquiry 2: The ways in which families are connected
Line of inquiry 3: Artefacts that symbolise a culture
We looked at Line of Inquiry 3 and tried to understand artefacts, both from home and our visit to Nantong Museum. Parents supported by discussing artefacts from home and shared the things that are important to their families and their culture. The outing to the museum gave the children the opportunity to interact with me as the teacher, Miss Vivien who accompanied us on the outing and with each other, sharing information and knowledge. The learners also got an opportunity to share their traditional dress for the National Day assembly.
What a busy week!
Grade 3/4:
Central idea:Thinking and learning can help us develop our potential
Line of inquiry 1: Understanding the brain
Line of inquiry 2:Tools and strategies that can help us learn effectively
Line of inquiry 3:We as learners
Last week, students talked about their family members learning styles and compared them with their own learning style. In language, the students discovered different text types and had prepared an interview piece based on what they have learnt about Steve Jobs. We focused on Past Simple while formulating questions. In Math, they created pie charts representing a number of students in our classroom and their favourite learning styles and strategies. We also have learned about fractions and various pie charts using pizza as a teaching aid. The Math lesson ended with a pizza party making students happy and excited. At the end of the week, we have started working on our summative assessment– the play dough brain project. When we return from the holiday, we will prepare and conduct an actual interview with the manager at the local gym.
What a busy week!
Grade 5/6:
Central idea: Interactions can lead to and solve conflict.
Line of inquiry 1: Role of communication plays in conflict
Line of inquiry 2: Resolving conflict between team members and through communication
Line of inquiry 3: Conflict can affect team performance
We have played “human knot” activity to see that we are all connected and practised the various communication and problem-solving skills. We have learnt and practised how to multiply a mixed number by a whole number and solved a few word problems on fractions. We also learnt how the various types of plays are acted out to convey ideas and experiences interactively and study the interrelationship between elements in a play script. We read the poem ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’ again and wrote it as a play script. We have learnt the three states of water and how they are interrelated in the changing of its state.
After the holidays, we are going to present the creative thing we have done with our family members and share some reflections in the process while making it. We will practise word problems on fractions. We will continue to write Act 2 of the play script for the poem ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’. We will also look at what factors affect the rate of evaporation which are closely related with each other.
This week, we feature specialist subject: Art
Students in Grades 1 – 6 worked on all different kinds of projects these past couple of weeks. Grade 1 learned about the concept of foreground and background with their sunflowers project before moving on to colorful cakes to celebrate China’s birthday. Grade 2 finished up with their big superhero identity projects before moving on to designing mixed media pagodas, all with the help of Ms. Maki (Yukino’s mother). Grade 3 and Grade 4 worked on a painting project based on the artist Miró, and then joined in on the pagoda fun with Grade 2. And finally, Grade 5 and Grade 6 kicked off a costuming unit by first learning about the costume designer and illustration artist Marcel Dzama before jumping into African masks. They will be constructing costumes throughout the month of October. We are having a lot of fun in art and learning about all different kinds of materials! Come and join us, if you want to! But prepared to get your hands dirty!
Celebrate National Day @assembly 27th September 2019
Grade 1 presented on significance of country flags
Students of Grade 2 may have come from different countries yet they could appreciate and sing the national anthem of China as class. We learned that every country has its own national anthem.
Grade 3/4 recited a poem about motherland in Chinese. We learned that no matter where we are, our countries will always be our motherland.
Grade 5/6 shared about their national day celebrations of their countries.
Ms. Serena explained etiquettes during ceremony where national anthems are being played.
Even the little ones dressed for the occasion!
