Primary eNews – Aug 27, 2021

Grade 2’s UOI Who We Are: Homes, Values and Culture
“Homes reflect family values and culture”. This is our first central idea and Grade 2 has been busy unpacking its vocabulary and meaning.  We tuned into this unit by exploring those things in our homes that are special and unique to us. We also took note of objects that represent where the students come from, as well as those that connect them to Bali.  Students displayed their research as an informational chart. In Zoom we shared our information and discussed the similarities and differences between our chosen objects.

This discovery of the special things from within our homes started us on a journey sparking student’s thinking about what is valuable and cherished in our personal spaces. Following this, Grade 2 photographed and labeled some of these objects to create a visual gallery to share.

Using these visual galleries, children wrote stories to reflect on their learning. This two-part process became the basis of our writing workshop, where the students made a draft copy of their work, edited it, and published it on a Google Document. What an amazing accomplishment for Grade 2, creating and sharing in digital format!  I am so proud of their tech skills. As we are still completing our task, the final products will be shared later. 

Our next inquiry steps are Sorting Out and Going Further. Grade 2 explored the question of what is culture?  We read stories and created our own unique Culture Quilts to represent who we are.  

It can be challenging to assess student thinking online, so to make this visible, we did a short brain dump. Students were asked to chat in Zoom, what comes into their mind when thinking of the word CULTURE. Here are their wonderful connections clearly representing their understanding. You are awesome, Grade 2!

 

Learning how to Listen in Grade 4
Our current unit, Sharing the Planet, is an inquiry into rights and responsibilities, equal opportunities, and peace and conflict resolution. The experiences in this unit are designed to promote student voice and agency.

Student’s voice is building skills to give feedback to themselves, others and teachers. Student agency is giving students responsibility and ownership of their learning. 

How does this look in Grade 4? Our aim is to take action to establish a Class Essential Agreement based on what it is that we value, know and respect about ourselves and each other. We will do this together, through discussion and feedback.

We have started with voice. Discussion is two-way, sharing and listening to each other. This week, G4 has been tuning into the key concept “perspective” and the related feeling “empathy” in connection to our unit.

Supported by the library, students learned about Malala and Iqbal. They discussed images and listened to texts. They used the question words: Who? What? When? Why? Where? to guide their listening. The purpose of their listening was to write short summaries based on the question words. Students used coloured pencils to self-assess, matching details with question words.  Have I included all the questions in my summary? They also had the opportunity to revisit the group to ask direct questions to find out any missing information. Grade 4 is learning how to use keywords and question prompts to listen actively and with purpose. Our first steps to developing our student voices. 

In our Zooms, next week, we will hold some partner and small group listening activities to practise listening to summarise and listening to identify feelings and values. 

 

From the Counselor corner 

Visit this website weekly for new counseling information.

I have updated the site this week with Digital Citizenship resources for families. There are links for different age groups. Starting from Kindergarten to G12.

All these resources are from CommonSense Media

See you there!