Have a wonderful summer!

 

Wow! What a beautiful end to an eventful year in Lower Primary at ISG!  The children have come so far and learned so much in such a short time and now they are ready to move on to Year 2 and 3!

 

We welcomed 3 new students to Lower Primary after the Easter Break – Mina from Japan, Zlata and Emilia from the Ukraine and in May we welcomed back Daksh after he returned from India. We also had to say goodbye to our fantastic student teacher Ms Sterre who had become such a great part of our Lower Primary team! We wish her every success with her future studies and hope to see her again maybe in the future, who knows?!

 

We started our term with Exit Point for our IPC unit ‘The Earth: Our Home’ at Antwerp Zoo. The children learnt about a variety of the animals and were able to make connections between the plants, biomes and food chains that they had been learning about and actually see the animals in real life! We then moved on to studying famous ‘People from the Past’ as our last unit and with the weather warming up, we were able to take a trip to the inner city of Gent to learn all about a local person from the past, Jacob van Artevelde. The children also enjoyed sharing facts about famous people from the past from their own countries and creating many different art works inspired by Marie Curie, Steve Irwin and Rosa Parks. You can see some of their artwork in the entrance hall and in the lunchroom – they did a great job!

 

For the rest of their studies the children have been busy perfecting their dictionary skills in Year 2 and handwriting in Year 1 and they are all now very proficient in working independently and with partners as part of our Daily 5 literacy time. It’s so nice to see how far they have come, how they are continuing to become better readers and writers and are taking charge of their learning!
In Numeracy, the Year 2s have been preparing for Year 3 and have been practicing using a textbook and solving more and more word problems. Year 1s did a great job hosting a snack shop to practice their money skills and were able to take part in some fun Numeracy rotation games and activities in the last couple of weeks.

 

As we wound down the end of this school year, we had some exciting events like International Festival that we haven’t been able to celebrate for two years. The children worked so well to learn and perform their dance to a song from Colombia. A special thanks to all the parents who helped find shirts for the children to represent the Colombian flag! They had a fantastic time and I’m sure that it will stick in their head for months to come!
In the last weeks we have taken advantage of the great weather and been able to celebrate the end of the school year with a Water Fun Day, whole school Art Day, Fun Run and of course our end of year assembly. What a great way to finish off a long period of not being able to come together and a lovely way to say good luck to those moving on to other countries and other schools.

 

From Ms Julieta and I, it has been an absolute pleasure to work with this wonderful group of Lower Primary students, seeing them grow, develop, make mistakes and cement new and old friendships. We wish everyone a safe, healthy and enjoyable summer! To those of you who are moving on we wish you every success in your new homes and schools and for those joining us back again next year we look forward to another fun filled year of learning! Schools out!

Ms Narissa & Ms Julieta