This week started off with a trip to the Maritime Museum, where students continued to research the Silk Road. We 'travelled' through different ports, which gave many students a better understanding of the various items traded, depending on the city or country. We saw examples of the ships, how things were packed, and videos to demonstrate the effectiveness of ship travel vs. caravan. Students recorded information while at the museum. They have then spent this week transferring their understanding of the research process and what was learned into their Google slide presentation. We will finish up this unit next week, finalising slide shows, reflecting and concluding with our Silk Road assembly. Again, you are all welcome to attend at 1pm in the MPR on Friday, 3 March.
We began math this week looking at our ideas about luck. Does luck exist? We had a discussion about lucky symbols and the concept of perspective was brought up, as students realised that some people believe in luck, and some do not. On a continuum, students placed their name in order to show how much or little they believe in luck. Students noted that some people who are more religious might believe in luck, if they pray to certain things or gods. We then began investigating probability, because instead of luck, mathematicians think of probability. We began thinking about the vocabulary 'likely, unlikely, certain and impossible'. We will continue to wrap up our math unit next week with some probability stations involving coin toss, rock/paper/scissors and tossing a die. In literacy, we have been reviewing past tense verbs, especially related to the Silk Road. We had a mini lesson and identified many past tense verbs have the -ed ending, but some 'irregular verbs' are just very different. Students then applied their knowledge when writing about the field trip and Silk Road. We are also trying to finish up our 'What if?' stories this week. Although creativity is encouraged and we love to have students write about a variety of topics, I am encouraging the class to write about other things than Pokemon. Once in a while is okay, but this has been a constant theme with some students, and they are encouraged to write about other topics. Students have been brainstorming, organising, writing a script and preparing materials for the assembly next Friday. I am very impressed at how well they have collaborated so far and organised themselves with very little help from me. It's going to be a fantastic presentation and a great end to this unit. We hope to see you there! Just a reminder that the Fun Fair is this Sunday!
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We continued exploring the different words in our new central idea: Exchange systems help our community. Mr. Gallagher came into to help students set up their Google slides for this unit. We will be documenting our learning and reflecting via Google slides, which will soon be uploaded into the online portfolios. We also began a 'Book Walk', where we explored different books to identify the types of exchange and the causation in various books. Students received new words this week, and will be working with these words for one more week. Author, Dave Lowe, spoke to our class about writing, and gave us some great ideas. He told us that he edits his books up to 30 times! We came back to class after listening to him and began making edits to our own writing. We also made a list of "What if?" ideas to help us in our next story writing task. On Tuesday, some students met with Grade 8 students to listen to stories in different languages. Friday concluded our Literacy Week with a book character dress up and parade! What a fun week listening to stories, reading, and writing.
Our math unit continues to be integrated into much of our Unit of Inquiry, and after exploring currency from around the world, we began looking closely at Singapore currency. After examining different coins and recording our observations on paper, we started looking at how many cents make a dollar, and different combinations of coins to make the same amount. We will continue our work with adding coins next week, up to and beyond $1/100 cents. Next week, we will also start preparing for three way conferences. Please make sure you sign up for a time slot from the link that has been emailed out on Thursday. We started Thursday with reflecting on our last unit, How we express ourselves. Students began typing a reflection in their online portfolio and will finish this up, along with adding photos, next week.
Our new Unit of Inquiry, How we organize ourselves, began this week, along with our integrated math unit involving money and exchange. Students began thinking about the questions 'What do you think you know about money?' and 'What questions do you have about money?' Several students brought in currency from different countries and we used our observation skills to see what we noticed and thinking skills to compare and contrast. This also helped generate more questions and wonderings. Next week, we will begin to explore our central idea and the concept of exchange. We ended Friday with the Lion Dance on the playground and look forward to Literacy Week next week. |
AuthorWe are 7 and 8 year old students who live in Singapore. Our teacher, Ms. Luttrell, will be helping us write blog posts throughout the year! Archives
June 2017
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