Enroute a new journey....

This academic year began with me taking up a new role of an early years coordinator and assistant PYP coordinator with a great partner Sanjeevani Chindarkar at D Y Patil International School.

Thought of recording my new journey as I step out of my comfort zone to take on this new challenge.

As I am trying to figure out how I can help my team to become the best version of themselves, I wondered what could I as leader and mentor of the team bring to the table to enhance my team performance. As I spent more and more time with my team I realized that we could develop our use of technology in our teaching and learning.

Attempt 1 ........using QR codes
Have we explored the use of QR codes in our classroom yet? Do we have technology (I pads, laptops) and WiFi connections in our classrooms?
Q R codes are simple, easy to create, quick to implement and open up a world of independence for our students. This is completely in sync with our school mission and goal of  promoting student agency.

Why QR codes
There are a number of ways QR codes can be used in the classrooms, but at this point the main intention was to automate and pass the onus of responsibility of learning on to our students. QR codes helped us as facilitators to give the site addresses to students taking away the frustration of typing the wrong URL. And of course, which student would not get excited of holding a device and watch it open up into a whole different world.

 Our second graders researching about different land forms. Thank you Ms. Anjali Rajput for the pictures.

This takes me back to when I was a teacher at Edubridge International school, my principal - Mick Purcell motivated and encouraged me to start blogging. I remember how absurd that idea seemed to me when he suggested that, nevertheless I decided to give it a try and there has been no looking back since then.
This made me wonder if I could motivate my teachers to embark on their blogging journey!

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Teachers at D Y Patil International School.........trying heir hand at blogging!!
PD session on blogging

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Proud of my team at DYPIS who so willingly plunged into this. Way to go RISKTAKERS!!

Stay tuned to read my teams blogs soon!!!

Action by Grade 3

 ‘In the PYP it is believed that not only is it possible for students to identify appropriate action, but also that teachers have a responsibility to enable them to choose their action carefully, to facilitate this action, and to encourage them to reflect on the action they undertake.’

~ Making the PYP happen (2009) p. 26.

We are all aware of the rally organised by the farmers of Maharashtra on March on 12^th March 2018, where they marched for more than 180 km over 6 days, with blistered feet, from Nashik to Mumbai  to share their grievances with the government. We discussed this event in class and took some time to reflect on the event using the Blooms Taxonomy.

Our thoughts on the Farmer's March

The dire state of the farmers impacted the students so deeply that they unanimously said, ‘We should help them!' and that was the starting point for a student initiated action. As their teachers our role was to carefully guide and support them through their discussions on why and how they could help the farmers.

It was important for us to let the students know that it was a noble idea. However, they needed to make the idea turn into true action. As there was not much that the children could do in connection with the farmers' demands they thought of how they could help them in the smallest possible way. The children's thoughts and ideas warmed our hearts. 

In small groups they discussed and finally decided to hold an auction of the story books that they were working on and donate the money they would collect to the farmers. 

Budding Authors at Work

We are Ready!

The students invited their parents to  buy the books they wrote through an auction. They read the blurbs of the books and the parent auctioned the books they would want to buy. To keep it fair and open the students read random blurbs, so that the parents would not know who the original author of the book is.

A mini peep into the auction 

Post the auction the origjnal authors sat and read the book to the buyer.

Sharing our journey with our PYP friends and teachers

The money collected was donated to an NGO- Apulkee which works for the welfare of the farmers all over Maharashtra. Its main purpose is to help the farmers in every possible way so that they can reap the benefits by gaining Advanced Knowledge of Farming & receive best price for their farm produce.

Who We Are

Tuning in : Who We Are

Day 1

Group 1: Students were given a body outline and were asked to draw and mark all the body parts they knew.

Group 2: They were given another body outline along with organ cut outs and were asked to stick them where they think they are found and label them

Group 3: The students were given a skeletal structure made from a paper plate. They were asked to create a human skeleton from it.

Day 2

The students were made to run around the ground and were then asked to think back on what were the different parts that helped them complete this action. Post that the students engaged in a thinking routine using the Chalk Talk method. They looked at pictures of different action and thought about which parts make the action possible.

Day 3

The students looked at a coffee maker, the guts of a computer, a cycle and an electrical circuit.

They were encouraged to find ways to compare the human body to these objects. They explored and noted down the similarities and differences between the human body and a group of non- subject related artifacts ( Circuit, Computer parts,Coffee machine,cycle)

As a concluding activity we came up with what is a "system"

Day 4

Students watched a video and identified the different systems that make up the human body. This extended into a discussion into internal and external organs.

Day 5

The students watched an advertisement as a provocation to the 3rd line of inquiry. The students were asked to think of how this video was related to the different body systems.

Finding Out

The students set out to work on their research project on the Human body systems.

Researching about the systems

Working on 2D/ 3D model of the system

Presenting about the systems

Working on the animation/working model

Going Further

Interdependence of the body systemsAfter researching body systems we made a display on which we showed each of them and, as a result of class discussion, added many strips showing cooperation between systems.

How we Express Ourselves - Unit 5

We began our inquiry into the unit - "Sounds help us understand and express our world," under the theme - How we express ourselves.

Tuning In 

Kinesthetic Pre- Assessment Activities

As a warm up we were made aware that the vibrations of the vocal cords are responsible for our voice.

Post that we went into an action coordinated activity tap,clap snap to understand sounds are produced through simple actions

Post that one of us then had to mime like any character/ animal/ object produce the required sound. We engaged in improvised movement activities that included walking, stomping.

Synchronized movement

We worked in 2 groups. Each group was given a prop. We were given 20 seconds to create a simple coordinated performance with the props. Through this activity we focused on peer coordination, time and Space and sound.

The next day our music teachers Mr Madhav and Mr Ronnie, brought along with them various musical instruments. We were given a chance to play whatever we wanted with them (unorganized sound)

When we reflected on this we realized the sounds we were creating were unpleasant and was just
 " noise"

We went back a second time to explore the instruments, only this time we had the task to create organised sound. We worked with our team members and presented the sounds to our classmates. 

Each team was given feedback from the other teams.

We then compared between "noise" and "music" using a Venn diagram

Unfolding the Central idea
In groups we brainstormed to come up with a central idea of the unit. Once we had shared our thoughts and looked at the central idea we realized we had come very close. 

Student's voice 

 Brainstorming the possible Summative tasks
We then got into our groups and thought about what could be the summative task for this unit that twill help our teachers assess our understanding of the central idea.
These are the summative assessments we came up with - 

Finding out 

We began to dig deeper through an activity - Onomatopoeia

We were given different sound words on pieces of paper and were asked to create a movement sequence with the words (Sitting and standing)

Sound and Volume in Drama
Loud/Soft
We had to create 2 different sized word bubbles  and write words or phrases that use the appropriate volume(Loud or Soft)
The words were placed in front of the students. Each one of us had to dramatize any one word or phrase. We completed their explanation of the word bubble chart.

We heard music of different moods and drew what each music made us feel.


Post a discussion we then created a small tune without any instrument. Our peers tried to identify the mood we were trying to create.

Going Further
To understand instruments deeper, we researched about different families of musical instruments.

Presentation time
We presented our findings through Google slides

Voice Volume and Voice projection

The story,'Horton Hears a Who!' was explained to the students to further develop their understanding of voice projection through characters in a story.

Voice,Volume, Movement and Tempo

The students participated in a teacher and student led improvised movement activity that focused on responding to different sounds and understanding contrast.

Sound, Image Collage 
We were then given some pictures and we had to create a sound effect for them.

We were given random newspaper pictures. Each of us had to write the appropriate sound for that picture

Further to the above different picture books were placed around the room. We had move around the room and write a sentence and sound words matching that sentence.

We moved on to understand the creation cycle in

Brainstorming what we want to express about....

Creating our music to represent our mood......

Recording our sounds......

Creating our movies on I movie to express our thoughts, feelings and ideas

Our final presentations ...

We are proud of our achievement sin Taekwondo

We are feeling sorry about the state of farmers in our country

We are nostalgic about our Panchgani trip

\We are super excited of the upcoming Spring break

Language

We explored how a sentence can be made interesting for the reader to read. We understood how important it is to help the reader form an image in their mind through the descriptive writing.We then began learning about stories. We began by understanding the elements of a story

Character study

We read different stories and identified different character traits.  

We put ourselves in the characters shoes and tried to think of what he /she would say as per their trait.

Show not Tell

We looked at how a writer describes the feeling or expression of the character through his words, actions, reactions etc. We learnt how to make our stories more exiting by adding a lot of details.

We are now working on creating our own stories.

Stay tuned to know what we are going to do with these mystery...fantasy.... adventure stories we  creating!

Math

We have been busy learning about time and calculating elapsed time

We also explored the concept of Area and Perimeter. 

We began by reading the story - 

We read the book till the part the guest started moving the tables around. We decided to help Mrs Comfort set the tables so that all the guests would be happy. Each group was given 32 small squares to represent the chairs and 8 big squares to be put as tables. We worked around different permutations and combinations and finally realized that the only way to get 32 tables is that way Mrs Comfort had originally set the tables.

Going further we worked on different sums to strengthen our understanding of the concept.

We were challenged with designing a farm and then calculating the perimeter and area of the same. We also calculated the cost of the fencing.

We would like to say a big THANK YOU to our art teacher Ms. Delnaz, for the awesome display of our art work.