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It’s been a super busy Spring Term in Lower Primary 2 and the children have been learning and discovering so much.
We hit the ground running after the February break, welcoming our new friend Venia and re-organising the classroom and embedding some new class routines. All of the children were so excited to have their own roles within the class, gaining more autonomy over the arrangement of resources and up-keep of their learning environment. We’ve loved working even more as a team too, and being supportive of our friends to help us achieve our new goals of ‘class smilies’ – twenty two smiley face stickers in total for all of our collaboration! The children were so proud of themselves when we celebrated their successes with some extra playtime outside!
We started our IPC unit, ‘A Day in the Life,’ with the children thinking about the type of jobs that they already knew and using costumes and props to decide which would match with each type of profession. The class then had a fantastic time deciding what jobs they would like to have in the future and designing their very own tabards to match these professions; remembering to think carefully what their clothes would need to be like in order to allow them to complete their work safely and successfully. With the help of a green screen and their very own scripts, it was fantastic to see the class describing and acting out their professions for each other.
We also furthered our knowledge of a variety of careers through welcoming so many parent visitors into the class to tell us about their jobs. From architects to police officers, researchers to historians, there were so many different professions! A huge thank you to Magda, Jamie, Irena, Raquel and Vladimir for taking the time to come in and speak to us about their roles and their daily working life. We’ve definitely been inspired to be the best that we can be when we grow up! These wonderful visits also helped form the basis of our literacy work for this IPC unit which saw the pupils creating their own job fact-files for each of the parents. It’s been fantastic to see the children grow their literacy skills and take pride in the achievements of their written work.
Just as the work of our visiting parents was so varied, so are our own families. As part of our international tasks, we thought about the people we live with and who takes care of us. Lower Primary 2 then put their art skills to the test to create their own family portraits and made the most of their literacy skills to write a description of each member of their family. We celebrated diversity and enjoyed learning how no two families are the same, yet each is special and unique.
This term has also been good practice for our memories where we used the ‘Talking Hands’ approach to memorise a class poem called, ‘Things People Do.’ We were proud to be able to perform the poem to the whole school as part of our IPC Exit Point, along with showing them the video we made of our professions. What confidence the class showed being able to speak in front of all of their peers!
As well as our IPC, we’ve also been extremely busy with numeracy activities. Year 1s have been enhancing their Maths skills this term through work on number bonds and have been so enthusiastic about using Numicon and function machines to help them. We’re all getting much, much quicker at recalling our number bonds to 10 and 20 and using these to help us solve more and more difficult number problems. With the help of coins and Dienes rods, Year 1s have also been showing their understanding of two digit numbers and can confidently partition and build numbers with tens and units.
On top of all of that, they’ve also been learning how to make analogue and digital times to o’clock and half past and have been practising recognising fractions of shapes - phew!
Year 2s haven’t been having a rest while all of this was going on though as they’ve also been working away in numeracy. Over the course of the term, they’ve furthered their understanding of place value and used this to help them with three digit numbers. They’ve also dived into using grouping to help them with times tables and division. This has been particularly exciting for them when they got to take part in outdoor Maths lessons, using stones and pine cones as their manipulatives. On top of all that, they’ve been furthering their mental Maths skills with new strategies to help them solve larger and more complicated addition and subtraction problems.
This term has also been a busy time for birthdays which saw us celebrating Venia turning 7 and Andreu and Grant turning 8. We particularly enjoyed marking the occasions with the children being able to share their birthday experiences (and also some cake!) Another milestone has been 100 days of school! It was lovely to be able to share these festivities with Lower Primary 1, bake some bread together and celebrate being 100 days cleverer!
All of our focus and concentration has clearly paid off as we were rewarded with a visit from the Easter Bunny at the end of term. What better way to celebrate six weeks of hard work with an Easter egg hunt in the fresh air and some delicious Belgian chocolate.
Welcome back to our Blog! Since January, we have been very busy with our new unit of inquiry, 'What is it made of?', and many more activities! What a busy couple of months!!!
The children have been involved in various activities aimed at understanding how materials possess different properties and how they can be processed into useful things. We explored various materials to create fit-for-purpose hats. These hats needed to be comfortable to keep the children cool in hot weather, protect them from the sun, and be sturdy. Using their creativity, the children crafted some interesting hats and gained an understanding that different materials have different properties to serve a purpose.
Together as a class, we reflected on how most of our toys are made out of plastic. The children agreed that plastic is a material that can be melted and poured into molds to make many copies. With this idea in mind, the class tested materials to see if they would melt or not. They also made predictions and recorded the results of their findings.
To learn more from an expert, Dr. Artur Tamm, an atomistic physicist and Adeele’s dad, talked to us about atoms. He explained that everything is made out of atoms, and the way they are arranged determines the strength of the material. As a follow-up, we conducted strength tests with metal, plastic, and paper. The children came up with their own hypotheses for which material was the strongest.
We also delved into the process of crafting common objects. Showing resilience and perseverance, the class designed flow charts to explain how something is made, from the raw materials to the finished product.
One of our last topics was exploring how plastic is made and why it is a big problem for our environment. Through interactive activities, we highlighted alarming facts such as the vast amount of plastic polluting our oceans. We also learned about the five Rs: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose, and Recycle. Applying these principles, we repurposed plastic bottles creatively.
For our exit point, we had the pleasure of visiting the fantastic workshop of the famous glass artist John Moran, who won the third season of the Netflix series 'Blown Away'. He provided a wonderful demonstration of some of the techniques he uses to create his art while giving us an insightful explanation of glass blowing in general.
In numeracy, Year One has been working on counting patterns, introduction to fractions, 3-D shapes, and recognizing odd and even numbers. To boost their creativity and understanding of fractions, they created lovely pizzas and cakes, which are proudly displayed in the corridor. At the same time, Year Two deepened their knowledge of 3-D shapes and fractions and started to understand the concept of multiplication. They creatively used arrays to design their own times table buildings.
Throughout this term, the Lower Primary children have been working hard to improve their reading and writing skills through guided reading sessions and different literacy-based IPC activities. Our favorite one was the creation of some idiomatic expressions inspired by the phrase ‘As useless as a chocolate tea cup’. The children made their own animated stop-motion videos to illustrate their ideas.
Uniting forces with our friends in UPP, we had a successful snack shop! The children raised 49 euros, which we will use towards an end of year pizza party! Well done everybody!
This term, we celebrated a few birthdays. Congratulations to Leon, Adeele, and Adam! In January, we also welcomed a new friend, Kei; he comes from Japan and is a Year two student! Welcome Kei!
We would like to wish Ms. Maria all the best in her new role as an intern in ISG+. We are sad to see her leave Lower Primary, as she was a fantastic teacher assistant! We all loved her enthusiasm and commitment to the well-being of our class. We will miss her, but we are happy we will still see her from time to time at ISG.
We wish all of you a fantastic mid-term break. Take care and enjoy the time with your wonderful children! See you in a week's time!
Ms. Elspeth and Ms. Julieta
Dear Friends and Families,
This term has been an engaging journey for our young learners as they delved into the world of Treasure Islands through our IPC topic. We began our exploration by immersing ourselves in geography, exploring concepts such as the equator, northern and southern hemispheres, and cardinal points of a compass. Each child crafted their own map, marking significant geographical elements using a special transparent sheet. This hands-on activity extended to tracing the origins of different fruits, fostering discussions about trade routes and global influences. The children identified and marked oceans and continents, enhancing both their geographical knowledge and understanding of the interconnectedness of our world.
The journey continued with the development of map-making skills, through focusing on the role of a bird's eye view when mapping. Working collaboratively, the children formed teams to create maps of our school playground, considering key elements and their aerial perspectives. The introduction of scale sparked insightful discussions, fostering teamwork and a deeper appreciation for map-making. We also delved into history to learn about pirates and the significance of the pirate code, drawing parallels between pirate rules and the importance of agreed-upon rules for our health and emotional well-being. The unit concluded with an exciting Exit Point to the city centre, where the children followed clues and compass points on a treasure hunt, resulting in a delightful reward of waffles and hot chocolate for everyone.
In addition to this exciting topic work, the children engaged in beautiful non-fiction writing about islands. Each student chose an island of interest, conducting research on its flora, fauna, climate, and area, all linked to our IPC unit. Using the Talk for Writing method, the students memorised a model text with actions, guiding them in internalising language and grammatical structures. With this foundation, the children crafted informative and well-crafted Fact Files, complemented by incredible watercolor paintings of animals and their respective islands. Their work showcased not only a deep dive into fascinating facts but also mastery in structuring and writing non-fiction texts. For a closer look, check out the captivating display around the school.
To celebrate the winter season, we were very fortunate to be visited by a special visitor- Sinterklass, who came armed with presents and imparted a special, heartfelt message to each child. Also a huge thanks to everyone who came along to watch the Christmas show- I think you will agree that the children did a wonderful job of dancing with such joy and dedication and plenty of shimmys!
With that, I would like to wish you all a wonderful and fun-filled winter holiday and a very happy New Year!
Warmest wishes,
Ms Erica
Dear friends and families,
It’s been a great start to the school year I have loved getting to know all the children and can’t wait to continue to learn more about them each day. I have loved how the children settled in quickly this year and have already formed a cohesive and inclusive group. It has been exciting to watch their learning this half term and I cannot wait to see where their creativity, resolve and interests take us this year.
Our IPC unit this term "Superhumans" was all about our amazing bodies and how they work. The unit sparked so much curiosity and lead the children to ask all sorts of wonderful questions such as "What's inside our ears?" and "What happens to our food?". They then took the lead in exploring these questions and discovering about the inner wonders of our bodies. It has been an absolute delight to watch their interest and knowledge grow over the course of the unit.
In our literacy, we plunged headfirst into the magical world of Roald Dahl and his weird and wonderful stories. We've read about the mischievous Enormous Crocodile and the terrible Twits who play revolting tricks on each other. The children had a blast creating their own Twit stories, acting them out, and even making their own stop-motion videos to retell the tales. We can't wait to share their fantastic work with you next term!
To celebrate Halloween and the change of seasons, we ventured into the woods behind our school. There, the children collected natural materials to make spooky decorations. Back in the classroom, they painted these materials and created beautiful art pieces that turned our room into a Halloween wonderland! Today we celebrated the end of term with a Halloween party and parade. What a frightful sight it was to see their spooky costumes. Also a huge thank you to the parents who put in so much effort to make delicious treats for the children’s shared snack.
At the start of October, we had the pleasure of welcoming Ms. Maria, our fantastic new intern from sunny Spain. She has been a great addition to our class, and we consider ourselves very lucky to have her by our side, providing support and care for the children.
With that I wish you all a lovely Autumn break and look forward to seeing the children on our return to school! Have a spook-tacular time, and Happy Holidays to all!
Erica
Welcome back to our last blog from this school year!
A lot has happened since our last blog! First we studied all about structures during our IPC Unit called “Buildings”. The children discovered many famous buildings from around the world. They created a little booklet, or how they like to call it “a little encyclopedia”, with lots of interesting facts about the buildings or monuments we explored in class. By using books, the internet and other sources of information, the children sketched the main features of each building.
We also studied how buildings have evolved through time, and visited one of the oldest streets here in our city, Ghent. The students observed very carefully, trying to catch every detail of the facades, and after that they created their final sketches. Back in the classroom the children used their sketches to construct a 3D relief model with clay. They also painted them, decorated them and created their own street.
Finally, we studied different types of bridges, (the suspension bridge, the cantilever bridge, the beam bridge and the arch bridge) and the children constructed their own bridges by using popsicle sticks and glue. Later we held a competition to see which bridge was the strongest. The results were surprising!
Our last unit of enquiry for this school year has been The Magic Toy Maker. At the beginning of the Unit, for our Entry Point, we were surprised the children by giving them a huge box full of wonderful materials to build their own toys. The children showed their creativity and put together their own toy Museum with all kinds of different, unique and fantastic toys - a car, a spaceship, jungle animals, binoculars and other imaginary creatures!
As part of this Unit we also explored toys from the past. We were delighted to receive some help from some parents who shared with us their favourite toys from when they were little. Gathering information from books and the internet we built a timeline of the evolution of toys, throughout the decades. Getting inspired by all these old and new toys, the children were challenged to write and illustrate a well-structured fiction story book. They were guided to include a beginning, a middle and an end to their story. They worked very hard, showing resilience and responsibility, and everybody felt very proud of the end results. If you would like to read our stories, please visit our own digital library!
https://read.bookcreator.com/library/-NYRgl4UU0_dwXMJ3sKz
https://read.bookcreator.com/library/-NYX1RDKOjxgIt-ZxNZa
To celebrate our Exit Point we visited the lovely Toy Museum located in Mechelen. The children experienced first hand some toys and games from the past, and they also got to study the famous painting “Children’s games” by Flemish Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel, painted in 1560.
As well all this engaging learning, there has been much more happening in Lower Primary! Some of our highlights have been...immersing ourselves in the Catalan culture during our International Festival by learning some traditional songs, traditional instruments and even learning the most popular Catalan dance! We also organised our own Snack shop where the children practiced their numeracy skills by selling snacks and giving back the right change. To end the year with a splash we had a Water, Pizza and Ice cream Party! and to say goodbye to everybody in Lower Primary we had a cozy and delicious last breakfast all together!
Ms Julieta and Ms Cristi want to thank everyone in Lower Primary for a fantastic year full of learning, full of fun, and full of love! We are very proud of every single student in our class. They all made a big effort to show us their best and we are so proud of them!
Last but not least, we would like to wish Lana, Tomas and Matteo the best of luck in their new schools. We are sure they will make lots of new friends! Come and visit us from time to time, we will miss you!
To all the rest of our super “Lower Primary” team, we will see you back in September! We are looking forward to enjoying a fantastic new school year, full of new adventures!
With lots of love,
Ms. Cristi & Ms. Julieta
Welcome back to Lower Primary’s Blog!
The weather starts to change, springtime is slowly making its way and in the meantime the children in Lower Primary are also developing and growing. We are amazed to see how much our class has been learning this term!
This time around we dipped our toes in a novel visual-effect and post-production technique: The Green Screen.
The children were fascinated and intrigued by it, and to take full advantage of it we made our School Assembly Presentation about the Green Screen based on our IPC project ‘ We are what we eat’!
The result was amazing and everybody was very impressed with all the special effects the class managed to present. Good job everybody!
This term the children also learned about plants, how they grow and the vital role they play in our planet.
The last Friday of February the whole school showed their support to BedNet and we came to school in our pyjamas. It was a very cosy and comfortable day!
We would also like to welcome Siya, our new student in Year 2. Siya comes from India and has adapted wonderfully to our class!
The cherry on the top was our Exit Point! For this celebration of learning we invited parents and family members to join us, and we showed them a very special video with all the learning that has been happening during our unit of inquiry ‘We are what we eat’. In addition to that, the children prepared a top secret event, which turned out to be a ‘Restaurant’. The children designed the menu, they did the groceries and prepared the food that was served in the restaurant. The children became professional waiters and waitresses! The family members were amazed! You can watch the video on our Seesaw platform!
Besides that, the Easter Bunny paid ISG a visit and all the children participated in a fantastic Easter Egg Hunt!
This term Grant and Stan celebrated their birthdays! Happy Birthday!
To end with, we wish you all a restful and enjoyable Easter break! Take care and enjoy your wonderful children!
Ms Julieta and Ms Cristi
Hello everybody!
The first two months of 2023 have flown by! In Lower Primary, we have been busy becoming independent and responsible learners.
We are currently working on our new unit of enquiry ‘We are what we eat’. In We Are What We Eat, we are learning about the vital role of food in sustaining human life. To kick off our project we talked about the different food groups and how to balance them together to have a healthy diet. The children built a food pyramid showing a few examples of food items belonging to each group. The class became more aware of what they eat and they are becoming more responsible about their food choices.
The following step of our project was to discover how we enjoy and taste food. We explored our sense of taste, and to showcase what we learned about it, the class made a model of the tongue and its taste buds. We used an art technique called marbling. Our display is hanging proudly by the school reception!
After this cool activity we studied our teeth. We let the children discover the different types of human teeth, they crafted a set of teeth using plasticine and they labelled them accordingly.
Currently we are investigating the issue of world hunger and how we all can make a difference. Together we explored ‘The Global Goals for sustainable development’ issued by the United Nations.
For Numeracy Yr1 has been busy learning about time, recognising coins denominations, number bonds and subtraction to 20 using the number line. Meanwhile, in Yr2, we have been busy with the concept of giving change and beginning to understand the concepts of multiplication and division.
Our literacy program continues to help the children to become better writers and better readers. Our Lower Primary students enjoy learning with the Daily 5 routines.
During our swimming sessions everybody has been making lots of progress. Swimming is a fantastic way to be fit and a life saving skill! We are very proud of our young swimmers.
We would like to use this space to welcome our new amazing interns Ms. Julia and Ms. Laura, they come from the University of Girona in Spain.
This past two months we have celebrated a few birthdays! Congratulations to Cici, Andrew, Adam K, and Leon!
Lower Primary Team
Ms. Julieta & Ms. Cristi
We would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas from Lower Primary!
This past two months have flown by and the children have been very busy improving their mathematical skills, becoming more independent with their literacy time and learning about celebrations from around the world.
Year 1 has been busy using new strategies for addition, skip counting by 2s and 10s and exploring 2-d and 3-d shapes. Year 2 has been learning about 2-digit numbers, near doubles and learning new methods to help them add and subtract.
The children are enjoying becoming more independent with their Daily 5 activities and can now Read to Self, Read to Someone, Listen to Reading, Work on Writing and complete Word Work activities to become better readers and writers. They have been writing about their weekends and the children created an attractive poster about a celebration from their country. They did a fantastic job, you can see them outside our classroom or on these unlisted links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvhb6O3m6zQ (Ms. Crsiti’s class)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4khpbyh5hhc Ms. Julieta’s class)
During our IPC sessions, the children made their own calendar where they recorded important dates like all the birthdays from their friends and family members and also the celebrations we studied in class. We also made a year timeline with all the celebrations we explored during this unit.
We would like to say thank you to all the parents for their support during this unit. The children made fantastic presentations to showcase their chosen celebrations and thanks to these presentations we learned a lot about our different traditions.
Lower Primary also designed a traditional celebration item: ‘A Mexican piñata’. The children created it from start to finish. The end product was beautiful! You can see a time lapse video about the whole process on seesaw!
For our exit point we had an exciting mixture of celebrations, from baking traditional gingerbread cookies, breaking a piñata and exchanging books following a Catalan tradition.
We were also very happy to share our exit point with our Upper Pre-Primary friends, and together we broke a piñata as well. We had so much fun and all our hard work was worth it when we saw how happy our younger friends were.
For our Fun Fridays this time we went for Crazy Hair! The hairstyles we saw were out of this world, thank you all for participating!
Today we say a big thank you and goodbye to our Erasmus intern Ms Miren. She was a fantastic assistant to the teachers and to the students over the last few months and we will miss her! We wish her every success on her way to becoming a teacher.
We’ve also had a term full of birthdays! We celebrated Pietro’s, Kezhen’s, Matteo’s, Adam’s, Tomas’, Lana’s and Alek’s birthdays.
Thank you everybody for coming to our Winter Show! The kids were so excited to show you our Christmas dance, we had so much fun putting it together for you!
We wish you and your families all a safe, relaxing and wonderful holiday break and we look forward to seeing you all in the New Year!
Ms Julieta & Ms Cristi
Welcome to Lower Primary
Hello everybody and welcome to Lower Primary Blog!
It has been a great start of the school year! We look forward to learn with your wonderful children and we are enjoying getting to know them every day!
After a long summer holiday, the children quickly settled to the new routines and the new environment! We are extremely proud of this class!
To start off the new school year, we discussed how important it is to be able to play and learn together. In Lower Primary we have 8 “golden rules’: Be a friend. Listen. Share. Help clean up. Wait for your turn. Raise your hand. Walk do not run. Keep your hands to yourself.
During our first week we reviewed some numeracy and literacy topics and polished up our reading skills. We also talked about how the brain develops and how it loves to take on new challenges. We now understand that our brain establishes new connections every time we are faced with new challenges. We talked about a fixed and growth mindset and their differences. Our aim is to work towards having a growth mindset and we will do our best to achieve it!
Currently we are well into our first IPC unit “Who am I”. We have been exploring our feelings, where we come from and we have learnt many new things about each other. The class created self-portraits experimenting with colour and exploring symmetry. We also created a mind map expressing what makes us happy or sad. Our creations are amazing and are displayed outside or inside the class, please make sure to pop by to have a look, your child will be thrilled to show them.
As part of this IPC unit, we took a look at how our heart works. The children understood the importance of our heart and its main functions. They created a wonderful 3D model using recycled materials where they could express their understanding on the topic. To consolidate their learning the class organized their first school assembly presenting their work. They did an amazing job!
Connecting our IPC unit and our literacy objectives we explored similes and the class created their own poem about happiness. They also created a stop motion movie to illustrate their creations.
In literacy, we explored the stories of “The Fire Children” and “Sing your Song”. The class split the story into 6 chapters; the children recreated the scenes using boxes and different materials like cloth, clay, wood, paper etc. Then, they rewrote the stories, and we created a video showcasing their work. We are very proud of them. It was inspiring to work as a team and learn from each other.
As our exit point, we visited the Fine Arts Museum in Brussels, where we could admire some famous portraits from different Belgian artists. One of them was René Magritte. The children were amazed by this surrealist artist and they understood what surrealism is.
These eight weeks at school have been filled with amazing learning and creativity and this is just the beginning! We are excited and eager to see what the rest of the year will bring!
This term we also celebrated some birthdays: Sofia, Isabella and Enzo ! Thank you very much for the yummy treats!
We also would like to thank our wonderful assistant Ms. Miren for all her support and love for our students! Thank you very much!
Wishing you all an amazing autumn break with your fantastic children and see you in our next blog!
Lower Primary team
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
