Greetings to the ABIS community. My name is Sarah Larsen and I will be the Grade 6 homeroom teacher. I will be teaching the Units of Inquiry, our literacy program, coordinating our buddy activities with the K 3 teachers, helping students coordinate weekly assemblies, organizing the Literacy Hub in the LC 1 library space and running our weekly Trust Circle (similar to a class meeting).
My family and I arrived from Vancouver, Canada at the beginning of August. My husband, Eric, teaches Grade 3 here at ABIS. Our children are also lucky to be attending the school: Nate is in Grade 3 and Sam is in Grade 1.
I have almost 20 years experience teaching in Canada as well as a PYP teacher at the United Nations School in Hanoi, Vietnam.
I am very much looking forward to working with the Grade 6s this year. I have heard nothing but good things about the group and think that the three new students will make a great addition to the Grade 6 community. They were excited to see one another again and were very inclusive of our new students.
We were getting back into the swing of things this week and students were quite well prepared. Make sure that they are ready to change for PE next week on Sundays and Wednesdays. They will have band on Sundays, Tuesdays and Wednesday, so they should have their instruments ready.
Each week I will be asking the Grade 6s to come up with ideas for our Braodcaster posts. Here is what they wanted to share with you this week:
Many student enjoy expressing ideas visually, so they showed their creative side in their new sketch books.
We worked on creating our Grade 6 essential agreements. We found connections between digital citizenship and our essential agreements.
In preparation for writing our essential agreements, students had a lot of fun participating in skits to review all the ways “not to behave” in various areas of the school.
Students were challenged by Mr. Taylor’s Math riddles and are looking forward to having him as their Math teacher this year.
As we create a classroom community, we learned about one another. Students have some things that they share with friends, family and teacher and some things they hide about themselves.
Student worked on a “Who do I admire” project, featuring someone from one of their home countries. They reviewed the PYP attitudes and learner profile words, discussed project criteria, provided excellent peer suggestions and feedback and made a plan to be prepared for their presentation to the class next week. We reflected on our time management and organizational skills which can help and or hinder our success. We will continue to work on personal strategies to build our transdisciplinary Self Management Skills.
