Student Led Conferences - Tomorrow

Dear Parents,

The Early Years students are so excited about sharing their class and their learning with you tomorrow during the Student Led Conference.

The children are going to share what is in their class and how they use it to learn new ideas and skills. They are also going to invite you to join in with the activities. The children will lead the discussions and tasks, but if they get stuck, there are some questions in the class to help you. You do not have to ask any or all of these questions; they are just there to help if needed.  The purpose is for the children to SHINE and share with you their learning.

The learner attributes and attitudes you will be sharing with your child tomorrow are:

INQUIRER

Your child has been inquiring into ideas in their classes and wants to share them with you.

You have the chance to inquire into the ideas and skills your child has been developing.

KNOWLEDGEABLE

Your child is going to share his/her knowledge of things they have been learning about.

You have the chance to share this knowledge and celebrate it with your child.

COMMUNICATOR

Your child is going to communicate how she/he is feeling, what she/he is learning and what she/he is most proud of.

You have the chance to communicate what you think about his/her ideas, feelings and progress.

RESPECT

Your child is being respectful of the others sharing the SLC time with them.

You have the chance to be respectful of all your child has achieved.

APPRECIATION

Your child has been appreciating the learning and she/he has been doing.

You have the chance to appreciate the work he/she has been doing and the ideas he/she is sharing with you.

INDEPENDENCE

Your child has been working hard to independently show and share with you all his/her learning.

You have the chance to support this independence by asking some questions (if needed) to your child to support them as they explain things to you.

See you tomorrow,

Early Years Team

What's on in April?

Looking forward to a busy month :)

THINK BIG

What a great field trip! Thank you to our class volunteers for chaperoning the children. It was interesting to see the children experienced play and learning in this new environment. It was also a great opportunity for their teachers to observe their growth in self-management and particularly how they demonstrated the attributes and attitudes of the IBPYP learner profile. 

The children showed their knowledge and skills in creativity and construction, they demonstrated an understanding of matching and identifying same and different, they showed how they could focus and pay attention to detail. Most of them could follow the step by step instructions independently and experience the reward of feeling accomplished - "look Ms. Elaine! Look what I made. I did it by myself!" was what I heard multiple times during the morning.

Let's reflect!

With the understanding that 'an activity is just and activity without reflection' we engaged our Grade 3 buddies to find out what the children had learned during this hands-on experience. Using an adapted Frayer model to help the children organise their thinking, they talked to their buddies about the prompts. The buddies documented the EY'ers words and helped to illustrate what they recalled before the EY'ers took the pencils to add their final touches. 

Thank you, Grade 3 Buddies!

Information - Student Led Conferences

The following message was posted to parents last week - here again for your review. 

_________________________________

Paula Baxter has posted the following message in ISPP Parents: Dear Parents, Re: Student-Led Conferences What is the ISPP and PYP definition of student-led conferences?  A student-led conference is an opportunity for children to share pre-selected work from various subject areas using a variety of media with their parents.  The purpose of the student-led conference is to:  Promote home and school partnership  Increase students’ responsibility for their learning and promote reflection  Demonstrate the PYP learner profile and attitudes  Give the parents a taste of the diversity of the school week at ISPP  Inform parents about what and how their child is learning  Show progress made  Encourage two-way interaction  As with the three-way conferences, there are three important parts to a conference: before, during and after. You as a parent have a very important role in all three parts.  1. BEFORE the student-led conference  In class, with the homeroom teacher, children will:  Select pieces of work from their portfolio to share  Talk to teachers and peers about the work selected  Practice the conference through role-playing Be encouraged to talk to you about the conference, at home  At home, please:  Read all the information sent to you about the student-led conferences  Talk to your child about the student-led conference before the actual day  Organise your daily schedule so as to be free for the conference (including childcare for siblings as necessary)  Ensure you arrive on time (and switch your mobile phone off!)  2. DURING the student-led conference  Your child will:  Have asked you to sign in on the list outside the homeroom  Welcome you to the conference  Explain each piece of work and discuss it with you  Answer your questions  And hopefully, communicate effectively and be confident  You will please:  Be on time  Listen to your child  Ask questions  Be positive and actively encourage your child  3. AFTER the student-led conference  Your child will:  Thank you (you, the parents)  Reflect on the student-led conference  Discuss the conference with peers in class next week  We look forward to seeing you at school for your child’s student-led conference on Friday 1 April. ON THURSDAY, your child will bring a letter home from school with the time of your student-led conference.  Warm regards,  Paula Sincerely,  International School of Phnom Penh

The Dot

You may have noticed the children singing or humming throughout their day... "Make, make, make a mark, all you got to do is start. Make a dot and watch it splatter..."

The song is based on the story The Dot by Peter Reynolds, a story we have begun to look at a little more closely while making connections to our concurrent units of inquiries - Who we are and How we express ourselves. 

The children have begun to create artwork to support their thinking. 



You can find the lyrics to the song and the actions at the links below. 

http://static1.squarespace.com/static/54a08126e4b038053fec29c3/54efa24ae4b08ccdab7e2df4/54efa258e4b08ccdab7e3473/1409163949000/fablevision_the_dot_song.pdf?format=original

It would be great if you could encourage your child to listen to and sing the words of the song in preparation for our upcoming assembly on April 29th.

Another song they are working on is the Material Song in connection to our unit How the world works.

Thank you in advance!

Wacky Friday

What a fun Wacky Day - Thank you to our Student Council for organising this event!

Solar Eclipse - "The sun is broken"

This morning, we were lucky enough to witness the solar eclipse! Huge thank you to Jessica - Lang Lang's mummy for letting us know, it was an exceptional moment that would have been a shame to miss. some students commented, "Ms. Elaine! the sun is broken".

A nice teachable moment to talk about the Earth, the moon, and what we think we know about them. 

EY Rotations

Ms. Elaine's Classroom

For EY rotations this week our class offered the opportunity to explore marble runners. We looked at the toy marble runner, then some of us showed how to be a risk-take and made their own. 



After our own attempts, we viewed this short clip for more inspiration on how we might improve our work next time.

Some groups watched this one - just for fun.

This website offers some ideas if you want to try at home. 

Ms. Henny's Classroom

Ms Henny's rotation was to make a catapult using a piece of card, a hole puncher, split pins, elastic band and various objects for testing.

The children were given a card with holes in it. They then had to push the pins through and open them on the back putting an elastic band around them.

Ms Henny demonstrated how to put an object on the card, pull back the elastic band and let it go. It took a few tries, but the children were able to manipulate the card, elastic and object to make it move.

Ms. Karyn's Classroom

Can you build a STRONG house of sticks?

We watched a short song to remind us about the Three Little Pigs Story. We then thought about how we would start to construct a house of sticks for our little piggy. 

We started by building a base for our house and thought about what shapes might work well. 

We then attempted to build walls and a roof for our house to keep our piggy safe from the big bad wolf. 

Once we had finished building our house we tested it out to find out if the big bad wolf could indeed blow our piggy’s house down!

Materials and their properties

We have been taking a closer look at materials - what are materials anyway? We gathered things from around the classroom into a pile and in small groups we then took a closer look. 

We brainstormed all the material words that came to our mind as we used our sense of touch, sight, and smell to explore.

Later we compared our words to see how may different words we had find. 




As we played we were encouraged to think about the materials we were engaging with to learn new descriptive words.