Upper-Primary - Ms Kelsey

First school days in Upper Primary

        

Since we started school on Monday, we have been busy! First of all, we are starting to get to know each other better. We have played name games, we have talked about ourselves and we have shared the flags that represent "our countries".

We have a completely new classroom and we really like it! It is a beautiful room, with lots of light coming through the windows and with lots of space. It is really a perfect Upper Primary classroom, we think. The atmosphere in our classroom is open, warm and friendly and we all dare to share thoughts, questions and ideas.

Of course, since we all have new desks, we have made name tags for our desks. Not all books have been handed out yet, Miss Jenny takes it step by step, and there will be no homework this first school week. The first book we got was the Literacy workbook and we have all written a text about ourselves. It was really interesting to share the texts, because we represent so many different countries and together we speak many different languages! We have talked about our favourite sport activities and some of us have talked about sports that we would like to try out. Zorbing looks interesting, we all agree on that!

We have been working with patterns and the capital letters of our names. These pieces of art are already hanging in the hallway. Today we made imprints of lavender, fern and rosemary in clay. Tomorrow when we come to school, it will be interesting to see what the imprints look like and if the clay has already dried.

It's hard to imagine that school started only three days ago. We haven't even told you about all the things that we have done during these first days, about books we have read, spelling tests we have had, numeracy activities that we have completed and handed in to Miss Jenny! We will tell you more about our school days, IPC topics, numeracy and literacy tasks and personal goals that we want to reach, so just keep on reading our blog. Upper Primary is looking forward to a really fun, exciting and interesting school year!

  

Back to school!

 

We are looking forward to seeing some familiar faces back in Primary this year, and also welcome a lot of new children! The Lower Primary class will start the year with 11 students, and the classroom is ready for the students to learn and have fun.

 

The Upper Primary class will start the year with 9 children! Four are returning students and five are new to our school. The Upper Primary class is also ready for action!

The Lower and Upper Primary classes are on the first floor in the tower block of the beautiful Leopoldskazerne. In between our rooms we also have a common room that we will share.

It was great to see so many of you at our Open Day yesterday, and to see the students so happy to be back at school. We are sure that we are going to have a fun year together!

End of year fun

Every time pupils in Primary have worked together they have been able to pick a marble and put it in a special marble jar. They have been able to show how they can work well together in different ways. Every time they have behaved in an excellent way they have been able to pick a marble. When they have shown respect to each other they have been able to pick a marble. When they have spread happiness to the whole group they have been able to pick a marble. We really do have lovely pupils! Yesterday the marble jar was full! Today they got their reward...

...Belgian waffles in the city centre !

     

We walked back to St Peter's Abbey and the children played in the garden there for a while. Even though we had our Exit Point for our IPC-unit "Flowers and insects" yesterday, the children kept on using their scientific eyes and the saw and documented some of the insects that they saw during their playtime.

     

We know that they have learned a lot during this unit, they have been able to share their knowledge, both with us and their family members, they have actively searched for insects, books and other things to bring to school for "show and tell" and they are looking forward to using their knowledge during the summer ahead! Parents, be prepared to learn a lot about ants, honeybees and butterflies!

 

Van Gogh's sunflowers - and our sunflowers!

The pupils started with a first draft and made a drawing of a sunflower, looking at Van Gogh's sunflower paintings for inspiration. Then they asked each other for feedback, with a special focus on shape and size. Only friendly and kind voices were used in the classroom during this activity and the helpful comments given were clear and useful. Using this feedback they then tried to improve their work by drawing the sunflowers a second time. They asked for feedback again and then drew sunflowers a third time.

Austin tried to draw a certain butterfly and he had to try six times before he was happy with the result. Our pupils were inspired and quite impressed with Austin's approach. He didn't give up!

This is the type of butterfly that Austin wanted to draw. Here are his butterflies!

Van Gogh did not only try once either, he made drawing after drawing of sunflowers. This inspired us too. Today the pupils looked at their drafts and they felt that they all could do better if they tried again, so they did. Again they asked each other for feedback and again they learned more about shape and size of flowers and petals, length and width of stems and the shape of the vase. Our pupils finally decided that they had prepared themselves enough to try to go for a final version. They used really nice paper to draw on, they tried to sketch their sunflower drawing with an as soft hand as possible and then they chose colours and started painting.

The pupils were focused, worked hard, chose colours with care and then started with the yellow sunflowers and the green stems. They then decorated the vases in creative ways and coloured in the whole painting with a safe and secure hand. The result is really nice and Van Gogh would have been impressed with our pupils' hard work!

     

     

The paintings are now drying in the classroom; hopefully they are dry enough to put up on the wall in the hallway tomorrow. We hope that you take a closer look at our paintings when you see them, and even more so, we hope that you would like to see all the drafts that led up to the final result!

Going for gold!!

 

What great weather, sportsmanship and fun we had together on our Sports Day on Friday.

Students learnt the techniques for high jump, shot put and 60m sprint during our PE sessions. They recorded their personal best jump, throw and time for each discipline and then aimed to beat these scores on Sports Day. Students were awarded gold medals for smashing their personal best, silver for equaling it, or bronze for not quite reaching it!


After each round, we had a little awards ceremony! It was great to see the students proud of their achievements and also coping well if they did not beat their personal best.

After a strenuous morning of athletics, we had lunch and then enjoyed some time in the sand and water!

It was really nice to see the students spontaneously work together to dig the biggest hole they could!

Well done Primary students and thank-you for a lovely day!

Have a look in the photo gallery for more photos.

Twisting by the pool!

 

Here is a short video clip of the Primary students in the swimming pool.

 

Primary swimming from ghent.isg on Vimeo.

 

As well as swimming every week, students also have one PE lesson. At the moment we are training for our Athletic Sports Day this Friday 6th June. During PE lessons we have ben practicing shot put, high jump and 60m sprints. Students have recorded their best throw, jump and time for each discipline with the aim of trying to beat their personal best on Sports Day! If students manage to beat their personal best they will be awarded a gold medal, if they equal their personal best they will get a silver medal, or a bronze medal for not reaching their personal best. This has been a valuable activity in practicing throwing, jumping and sprinting, but also setting personal goals. Students, try to practice at home in preparation for Sports Day this Friday! Good luck!

We have a tiny greenhouse, part 2

Science task, IPC-unit "Flowers and insects"

All living things need food and water to grow, so we have done our best to take care of our plants during the last week. We have given them water and we have made sure they are not standing in direct sunlight, since that would be too hot for them, but still standing in a sunny enough place. We have carefully looked at the plants and every day we have seen how they have been growing. It has been fascinating to see the changes and, we couldn't help it, Wednesday we just had to try some of the radish sprouts! "Spicy", some pupils said. "Spicy and yummy", others said.

Today we had a modest harvest feast in the classroom! Some crackers, some butter... Some cress! Some sprouts! And water, of course, if it would be a bit too spicy!

          

           

The sunflower seeds grew as well! Tiny green plants stick up in all our pots in the classroom now! We gave them some extra water today, since they will be left in the classroom over the weekend!

We have also read a book about a sunflower's life cycle, so we know that a seed becomes a plant that flowers and eventually produces more seeds that either travel to new places with the help of birds or the wind, or become seeds that we can plant. That seed then becomes a plant that flowers and eventually produces more seeds that can grow into new plants... We know what the word life cycle means now!

   This is what the greenhouse looks like now! We are looking forward to follow the process the coming weeks! Hopefully we can all start the summer holiday with a lovely sunflower in our gardens!

We have a tiny greenhouse in our classroom

Monday morning we came into the classroom and quickly rushed over to the little greenhouse to see if anything had happened. Hmmm, what do you think?

The radish sprouts looked like this!

The garden cress looked like this!

  ...and the first signs of life started showing in our sunflower pots!

Tomorrow it is time to harvest the sprouts and the cress, so if you know any pupils in Primary class, you should remember to ask them if they liked it! The sunflowers still need some weeks before we will see any flowers, so we will take care of them for some time. Hopefully the pupils will see their sunflowers blossom before the summer holiday! Keep your fingers crossed!

 

Ants ants ants!

 

As part of our IPC unit, Flowers and insects, we are now focusing on the amazing ant! We started by setting up an ant farm, and the children made predictions about what they think we will observe happening. The children shared what they already know about ants and thought about what they would like to find out. That has got us started on a little research project! As we read together in the lower primary class, the students have been writing down any tricky words. We then discuss the tricky words and use the context and glossary to find out the meaning. It is a lot of fun to be reading about and watching ants at the same time.

 

 

 

Fair Play!

With such diverse students we continually focus on how we are all unique. Out in the playground during break times we often see the students playing games together. Often these games require teams and the students have a real appreciation of teams with mixed ages and abilities. It isn't always easy playing a game of football with students aged from 4 to 9 years old in the same team! Our students learn so much during these play times, supporting the younger students and allowing the older students to take more of a leadership role. So often we see them enjoying themselves and showing fantastic Fair Play.

So when our PE teacher, Miss Naomi, read about a competition which requires schools to send in a photo and text showing Fair Play, she thought of ISG! Have a look at this fantastic photo of our Primary class in the swimming pool. Fingers crossed we win the competition!