This week saw the Elementary School come together and perform for our friends and family at the ISS Spring into Music Concert. The children had been working hard with Mr. Tony during their Performing Arts classes and each grade sang and played an instrumental piece. Back in class, we continued learning about what archaeologists do and began our group case-study into Pompeii and the Ancient Romans.
In Maths, we supported our inquiry through investigations and games involving grids and co-ordinates. The children also had practical and relevant experience of division as equal sharing when they worked out their Market Day earnings.
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We explored our new Central Idea this week- "We learn about civilisations from what is left behind". The children initially thought about what we can learn from looking at things left behind- guesses included communities, the past, what people did, time, changes, trade, old ships, old Singapore, choices and the future! They also thought about who the "we", doing the learning, might be- students, scientists, artists, builders, thinkers and people were all suggestions from the children. They were also introduced to the words archaeology and archaeologist. Later, using Google Earth and photo provocations, they noted down their observations or any key words which came to mind. In the Library, the children applied their ability to find relevant sources of information and used a template to cite the books and authors. Later we sorted all of our selected books and noted questions the children had. During our research into what a CIVILISATION is, we used a video resource and our existing knowledge, to visually explain this word using a flow-chart and checklist. In Maths, we began thinking about multiplication and division. We thought about where we see groups of things in our real life and created our own maths problems for the rest of the school to solve. The strategies we looked at included repeated addition (5 x 3 = 5 + 5 + 5), drawing equal groups and finding patterns or rules when skip-counting (x2 products are always even, x5 products end in 0 or 5...). As part of World Maths Day, we spent time solving problems created by other students from K1-G5. As part of our collaborations with other grades, we also enjoyed the interactive performance which the Grade 9 students had written and prepared especially for us. They had come to meet the children a few weeks ago and their performance was all about Christopher Columbus and his discoveries and influence.
Independent Student Action: The class worked together to change the lay-out of the classroom. They added more resources to our Research Area (a work in progress), created a Collaboration or Group area, pair or small-group tables, Quiet Spaces and a Creative Space. To support this, Yuuki brought in her tent from home. |
AuthorGrade 2.1 are a class of 7 and 8 year old students who attend ISS International School in Singapore. We learn together and play together and enjoy sharing our discoveries with you. Archives
June 2019
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