This was our first full, five day week since we came back from the holiday so we have made the most of our time.
Students started a new Unit of Inquiry and thought about the question, ‘What is a town?’. This was a simple activity, done in pairs and they were asked to draw a town – or city- as some children used this word. The aim is to “tune in” and start thinking about the bigger ideas and concepts, in this case, we are aiming towards an understanding of ‘community’ which will be a new word for most of the students. All children did amazing drawings and each pair or group of three, presented their work to the class, listing everything in their towns. Part of the central idea for this Unit is understanding what a community needs and we saw that many children listed houses, school, shop, park, roads and cars. Some students were thinking hard and even included hospital, airport, museum and zoo. At least two groups had the Burj Khalifa as well!
We will now work towards the idea of a town being a community and explore different communities that we belong to. We will also try to differentiate between needs and wants in our community.
Another new beginning in Maths as we explore what we know about shapes and then build on this. Several children could draw some shapes, some could name them and some were not sure which are all accepted responses and give us our starting point. We immediately use songs and videos to help us name and recognise shapes. Then we explore shapes in our classroom and outside. In the playground, we work in groups to make a tally chart of the different shapes we see, returning to the skill we learnt during our graph lessons. We also share the ipad to document one of each shape that the group identifies. Great initial work on shapes.
Together with a very positive visit from the IB evaluation team, this has been a great week. Happy and enjoyable weekend to all!