It is December and some pupils in Upper Primary can't wait to see some snow here in Ghent. But, so far we haven't seen a single snowflake and today it rained... again!
Luckily we can spend a big part of our days in our classroom and work with interesting things! This week we started off with a Technology task where we had to read and follow instructions and build an instrument. Pupils in Year 3 built a panpipe (or panflute, if you prefer) and pupils in Year 4, 5 and 6 built a rubber band guitar. The pupils were focused and did their best to make nice instruments. They did not only work hard to make them look nice, but they also did their best to make sure they sounded nice as well. Pupils in year 4, 5 and 6 had a real challenge when they tried to tune their guitars - rubber bands are not always co-operating. At the end of the lesson we had a nice jamming session. You can see all the photos from this week, and a little video from our jamming session, here.
We finished off our lino block prints and now they hang in the hallway. If you pass them, take a moment to study them carefully. What you see are soundwave patterns! We also printed a few extra things, small cards that we will donate to Upper Pre-primary's shop. Their IPC topic is 'shopping', their shop is their Exit point and they will donate the money they earn to a good cause, and we of course wanted to support this fantastic initiative.
We have started practicing for the Christmas Fair, we now sing with Mr Simon every Friday to make sure it will sound fantastic! We have also started practicing something with Vedant's and Diya's mothers. We will not tell you what just yet, but we think you will like it!
We spent quite some time this week working with our guided reading. Miss Jackie and Miss Ana help us every week, so that everybody has a chance to read with a teacher. We work with follow up and we do our best to write full sentences, spell everything correct and summarise the texts in a good way. Of course we also focus on grammar in other ways, and this week quite many of us had to walk over to the bookshelf and fetch a dictionary to be able to use words in the right way in a sentence or explain them correctly.
We also want you to know that we are very eager to get a star for a healthy snack on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The pupils get ready for their breaktime, they then come back in to the classroom and enjoy talking to each other and eat their snack before it is time to go out and play. Some pupils wish every day was Healthy Habits's day every day, and the teachers at ISG think this is a lovely idea and support pupils bringing healthy snack every day!
Last, but not least, you will not miss the fact that we had a very special guest visiting us here at ISG today... Saint Nicholas came and he gave gifts to all of us, even to the teachers! Everyone got to hear a nice comment from Saint Nicholas, and also a reminder of something they should try to improve. Look at the lovely photos here! The pupils were happy but exhausted afterwards and the last lesson on Friday, music class with Mr Simon, was a bit difficult for the youngest pupils at ISG. Some pupils in Lower Pre-primary almost fell asleep...
We wish you a lovely weekend! See you next week!