Monday 22 December 2014

Merry Christmas!!!

The last two weeks have been very busy. We visited the BIS school library to see how they had organised their library as per the needs and requirements of their school. We learnt an interesting thing about the functioning of this school. This school is run and organised by the parents of the school!!!!




We compared the EIS and the BIS school library using a Venn diagram.

As part of our summative assignment for the on going unit we had to plan and organize a small celebration for the children of the Vatsalya foundation orphanage. We had to work as a team and share different responsibilities to plan , organize and arrange for all that would be needed to make it a success.

A small peak into our preparations - 

Presenting their plan to Mick sir and Ms. Pramila for permission 

As rightly said by Ernest Dimnet,' Children have to be educated but they have also to be left to educate themselves.'

The experience of going to Vatsalya Foundation and celebrating Christmas with the children there has made the students of Grades 2 and 3 reflect and be thankful for all that they have been blessed with. We were very proud to see our students mingle and play with the children there without any inhibitions. The enthusiasm and dedication with which they planned and organised the celebration is surely worth a pat on the back! What a way to end the unit !!!!




Our Dance assembly. Thank you to Ms. Abigail for teaching us this lovely dance. This is one of the dances we performed for the children of the Vatsalya foundation.




We took some time to reflect on the learner profiles we developed during this unit.



In Language,  we have been looking at alliteration in poems. We tried to write a few alliterations of our own too...



S.P.E.L.L. time



In Math, we had been working hard on completing out 3 D project. Seeing the 2 D shapes turn into 3 D shapes was quite intriguing.

A peek into the construction of our 3D dream town -





Along with all our other PYP friends we made a Christmas tree. It was a fabulous team effort !!!


As part of the Christmas celebrations we did face painting, made a pop up Christmas tree card, a spiral Christmas tree, and a hand print reindeer. It was a fun afternoon.







Saturday 6 December 2014

Interview time

This week we began by reviewing letter writing and using our knowledge of the same to write emails to the different people in the school to ask for interview appointments.

We compared an email and letter using a T chart.


We thought about what are the questions we would like to ask that will help us understand and connect to the central idea of our UOI. Now, we were ready to interview and find out the different responsibilities of the different people in the Edubridge team. A big Thank you to everyone for giving us your valuable time.


We tried to think and understand how the different people and the jobs they do are interconnected to each other. We tried to understand the same by brainstorming the entire process that took place for planning our first field trip of this year.

This exercise helped us understand how everyone worked together to help achieve the common goal of the Grade 3 field trip.


We spent some more time in the school library to understand a few more things bout organisation of the library. Ms. Nirmala and Ms. Julie showed us how the labels for the spine of the book are printed using the Dewey decimal system. The books were now finally ready to go up on the book shelves in the library.



In Language we looked at different acrostic poems and made a few of our own too!!

We started with a simple one -




We also composed one on together as that is what our UOI is all about.
    Teamwork is a success when
         One stands behind the other
Gives and share ideas
Encourage each other
 Try and solve problems
                Hand in hand and
               Everyone fulfills their
Responsibility on time


We took it further by challenging ourselves and wrote acrostic poems on the different people we interviewed. We looked at our notes that we collected through the interview and made acrostic poems to show what are the different responsibilities of the staff.






In Math we have been learning about 3D shapes. We began by using all the waste material that we had to make something. Voila!!! We created a space robot. Once we were done with that, we identified the shapes we had used for the same. 
We learnt what is a vertex, face and edge



We explored the shapes to find out how many faces, edges and corners they have.



This week, we also started working on a project with our friends from Grade 1 & 5. Stay tuned to see the complete project.









Sunday 30 November 2014

Understanding the organisation of the school

This week we began by understanding what is the common mission that Edubridge International and its team is trying to achieve. We looked at the school mission statement to understand what the school goal is.


We had Ms. Pramila come in as a guest speaker and explain to us what the IB mission statement is and how our school mission is also aligned with the IB mission statement.


  We then looked at the two statements together and tried to highlight the similarities in the two.


While we were looking at the mission statement our inquirers began wondering as to why we have a 'diya' in our school logo. The sparked curiosity got us to invite Mick sir to class to  inquire why we had the 'diya' in our school logo.


Mr. Mick explained that the school wanted to find a symbol that would represent India and education. So they froze on the symbol of  the 'diya' as it spreads light and enlightens its surrounding out of darkness. Similarly, the school envisions to take its students away from ignorance and towards the fountain of knowledge. The wanted a symbol that associates itself with giving light which is knowledge. At Edubridge, we want to enlighten i.e. open the light in the minds of the students.


We then brainstormed of what are the different things that need to be done in order to organize a school.



Taking it forward from there we went on to meet Ms. Nirmala our school librarian to learn how she organised our school library that has made it so easy for all of us to find books we need so easily. We also wanted to know how the library contributes to help attaining the school mission. Thank you for all the time and information you gave us Ms. Nirmala. Thank you to Prashant Sir too to help us go through the process a book is put through before putting it on the shelves of the library.





In Language,  we continued to look at rhyming poems. We read a number of rhyming poems and identified the rhyming words in them. 

One of the poems we read was  - 

"TEAMWORK"



 One little ant in such a good mood,                    
Came outside to search for the food,                
  She had to get some food to store,
Got a little bit and wanted some more,

 Little ant found a big piece of bread,  
Tried so hard to push it by head,                                                    
  But she left it in the mid way,      
Poor thing turned back and ran away,

Little ant could not make it up?
Did she lose it and gave up ?
  Oh no! she is back with a bang,
Look , she comes with big ants' gang,                                                 

Task that  looked so hard and tricky,
Effort and teamwork made it easy.                             

http://easyway1234.blogspot.in/2013/10/team-workrhyme.html


Once we were confident we understood rhyme in poems, we began writing a rhyming poem as a class. We went through the steps that a good writer goes through . We brainstormed words for the chosen topic. Then we planned our writing. Once we were done we finally got to writing our poem.

Here is a peek at the process and the poem that we wrote -

We attempted to write poems on 2D shapes after reading a few. This is what we wrote -


Classroomclipart.com
I am Penny Pentagon 
 Subtract 5 sides
        And I’m gone                 
 I’m your house,
           in which no one can hide.


I am Howard the Hexagon,
Make me up with sides six
Join 2 triangles and a rectangle
and me you will fix.


Harry Heptagon is my name
I have seven sides to tame
Happy Shapes_Maroon Octagon.png Don't get confused
because hexagon and I look the same!!
 
 
When you see an octagon
     You stop and then go on
the shape of a stop sign is the same
I’m the 8 sided,Olive the Octagon





After working as a class we got to writing a rhyming poem independently. 
It was challenging but we came through with rhyming colors!!!!




In Math, we began with reviewing the properties and names of 2D shapes. We made a poster for the same.



We moved on to look at symmetry in 2D shapes. We began by understanding what a line of symmetry is. We understood that symmetry is when both sides are exactly  the same when split in half. The two sides are the mirror images of each other.

To explore the same we used mirrors to understand symmetry and line of symmetry better.



As our understanding got stronger we went on to explore how many lines of symmetry can a shape have. We folded and unfolded shapes to see how many lines of symmetry we could find.



Here is a glimpse into how we found out how many lines of symmetry does a square have -


                                     
We then built symmetrical figures using tangrams. We kept in mind that whatever we put on one side of the line, we had to put in the other side to so that the figure was symmetrical.



B.U.I.L.D. time



This week our little friends from Skg put up an assembly on friends and family. They taught us how our harsh words can hurt a heart and no matter what a crushed heart cannot be restored to its original condition. You have truly inspired us to use our kind words. Thank you Skg , Ms.Tapaswini and Ms. Saloni for the lovely message.








Saturday 22 November 2014

How we organise ourselves

We began our week with a team game. We were given a ring tied with four strings. Our team of 4 had to carry the ball on the ring from one end of the ground to the other end.

Phew! It is not as easy as it sounds.....
Take a look at how we fared....


Post the game, we came back to class and reflected on our performance. We penned our thoughts down and then shared our thoughts with our friends. Together we identified the key words that helped us achieve our tasks successfully.



The story of the hare and the tortoise has a lot to teach us. 



This is what we took away from the story....



The next day, when we entered class and found these disassembled things on our tables, our curious minds set to work to put them together. We soon realized that they are not working as they should. The torch didn't have the battery and the spring pen didn't have the spring. When we found the missing parts and put it together we realized how important every part was in order for things to work.



We reflected on this activity and this is what we thought......




We brainstormed where we had seen teams working together. From that we identified what are the workplaces of these teams.



Lastly, we sat with our friends and tried to come up with a statement that showed what they thought they would be learning over the next five weeks. 

The key words that they were given were....group members, share, work together, workplace, towards, common task.



In the story 'The Hare and the Tortoise', we came across a  new word ...'trundled'. We looked it up in the dictionary and learnt that it means to move and roll slowly.


Taking our learning forward we read a poem  - Walking woes.

http://www.instantdisplay.co.uk/walkedpoem.jpg

We identified all the synonyms of walk from the poem and added the new words to our synonyms word wall.
We also identified that this was a rhyming poem. We identified that the last word of every other sentence sounded the same.

 Soon, we got engrossed in searching for synonyms of walk. We came up with quite a few words and added them to our synonym wall.



S.P.E.L.L. time



In Math , we are exploring 2D shapes. We began by making a robot with the given shapes cutouts and then identifying which ones we already knew.





We went on to learn the names of the different shapes.




B.U.I.L.D. time



This week Grades 1 and 5 shared their learning of their previous units with us. It was truly amazing to see how they had learnt about self history and the history of others. They explained to us how a persons life changes when faced with risks, challenges and opportunities. Thank you Ms Jessica and Ms, Cecilia for inviting us for the lovely exhibition . Grades 1 and 5 awesome show !!!!!