EY Assembly

Well done, EY'er's! You were all fabulous!

All the practice before was worth it. 

Throughout the week the children were thinkers as they reflected on our practice performances and found one thing they could improve on. They did a super job on Friday and were confident and clear communicators!

Video will follow soon!

Earth Day and more dots

Thank you, everyone, for participating in Earth Day and wearing something green today! 

All in green we practised the 'Dot' song by Emily Arrow, for the upcoming assembly. We practised being a good audience and reflecting on what we thought went well as we sang the song. 

Did we sing too softly? too loudly? too fast? too slow? did we use actions? Did we sing all the way to the end or did we get distracted part way? 

What do you think? - click the link to listen 

Linking with The Dot Story, by Peter H. Reynolds, the children read the Ten Black Dots, by Donald Crews with Ms. Karyn.

We then played with dots and pictures thinking of the different things we could make using our imagination. We talked to a friend and decided what we would like to create with dots. We were challenged to make a decision on how many dots we would use for our creative pictures. 

Here a peek at their results. 

Further conversations revolved around numbers bigger or smaller than ten. After creating our pictures, we recounted our dots to make sure we used the amount we had predicted we would to use. 

Here is a link to the story

Welcome back!

Dear parents,

Welcome back to school. I trust you have all had a wonderful break and ready for the everyday routines to be back in place. 

The following poem made me think of a few conversations I have had with some of you during the school year. And thought it would be nice to share. 

I look forward to seeing so all on Thursday morning! 

Student Led Conferences (SLC)

It was so great to see you all at the Student Led Conferences on Friday. Thank you all for making it to such an important school visit for your children. 

Thank you all in advance for taking time to complete and return your feedback by the end of the week. 

Prior to the SLC the children all engaged in a mini inquiry into the purpose of this event using the ABCDE as a guide.

A = Ask a question
B = Brainstorm ideasC = ChooseD = Do itE = Evaluation

A fortnight before the conference I wrote on the board SLC and told the children it's going to be very special. That all - then waited for them to respond.

After they had shared their initial questions, I explained that they had just completed the first step in our inquiry into the SLC.

For 'B' I worked with three separate small groups of children at different times to talk about the three key concepts of form, responsibility and function.

Each group illustrated their understanding from our animated talks and I documented their words.

Since we refer to the learner profile almost daily, the children are familiar with the words and most of the meanings. I gave and example of what an inquirer might do at the SLC and that prompted Anna (communicator), Sohyun (risk-taker) and Bella (caring) to share what they thought.

Finally the day came and we go to just do it!

The final step for the students was to evaluate themselves on how they felt they did in regards to being a communicator, knowledgeable and a rist-taker at the actual conference. They are familiar with the traffic lights or thumbs up, middle and down strategy and it was pleasurable to see how acurately most of them could judge themselves.

Thank you all once again, you made the inquiry all worth it!