The Glitter Class - Family and Friends Unit

It seems long ago that our journey began together but the reality is only eight full weeks!  Sixteen students and two teachers, connecting for the first time. 

The IPC unit of ‘Family and Friends’ was a fabulous starting point. 

Our entry point was family photographs, firstly looking at the photographs together as a group and sharing different information about our families including how many people were in our families.  This led to our ‘big block’ provocation, students had to find their families on different blocks. It was delightful hearing students shouting “look my family”, but also to observe students handing friends blocks with their brother, sister, mother or father on.  A new level of connection because we did not just know each other we knew who our families were too. 

We also counted and stamped family members into houses and listened carefully to stories about different kinds of family.  We learnt that not all families are the same.

We had lots of fun looking at what we looked like as babies and learned to recognise our friends from their baby photographs. We had all grown in similar ways from drinking milk and not being able to take care of ourselves to walking and talking three, four and five year olds who are more independent but still need love and care from our families.

We are a class with 16 different nationalities. Our home languages reflect this and we embraced our “Mystery Readers’ for their diversity, enjoying stories not just being read in English.  It was always a fun guessing game leading up to ‘Mystery Reader’ as we tried to find out who was coming using the three clues that had been given.  We weren’t always right and this showed on surprised faces as we opened our eyes and smiled at our special guest. ‘Mystery Reader’ will continue throughout the year.  The connection it offers is wonderful and we love to have family and friends visiting us.

We spent time singing ‘hello’ in the different languages of our class members.  Learning how to say ‘hello’ in a student's home language is a wonderful thing and our students have been working hard to remember the different greetings that we can use.  Alongside our different languages we have been excited to make flags and also find our countries on our world map and globe.  “I can drive to you”, said David when we found our homes in Europe.  “I have red, yellow and black too”, said Dylan as he noticed his German flag connected to Finn’s Belgian flag.  Connecting once again through maps and flags.  

We have also been building community at school and are lucky enough to have Upper Primary,  join us as our ‘Reading Buddies’.  Reading to us, with us and also sometimes working with us on special projects.  We even drew our buddies and they drew us!  We haven’t forgotten our Lower Pre-Primary friends who also join us once a week for a session of play, dancing and stories. This offers Glitter Class members an opportunity to be role-models and leaders within our own classroom which is great for our self-confidence.

The unit ended with a wonderful ‘Mystery Reader’ on location trip.  Students were excited to find an invitation from our ‘Mystery Reader’ to their home.  Students wondered who it might be and the guessing game began.  The students were delighted to be going on a trip together, Ms. Mia and Ms. Lily were coming too.  We set off and walked for a long way before finding the house we were looking for.  The door was open, but nobody was home so we called ‘Mystery Reader, where are you?’ and out popped…Ms. Laura!  It was a fantastic surprise.  Ms. Laura read ‘Our Class Is A Family’ by Shannon Olsen and it is quite true that whilst we have been learning about families we too have built a family within our classroom.  The Glitter Class family. 

The trip was our exit point for ‘Family and Friends’, but the children had another surprise. 

Ms. Laura gave a clue about what our next topic would be.  She brought out a tray of croissants…..what did this mean, were we going to learn about croissants?  After a few close guesses the students guessed that we would be learning about food.  We walked back to school in the drizzle but didn’t mind at all because we had been on a trip! 

Connection is important at the beginning of each school year, students finding out about their commonalities and differences and connecting through them.  As teachers we offer students a safe place where they can be curious and interests are sparked each day.   The Glitter Class have a sense of belonging and it is clear that some special relationships are developing on this year-long journey together. 

Have a wonderful break.

With kindest regards.

Ms. Marianne and Ms. Laura