Spring is in the air...

Welcome back to the Lower Primary blog! It's been a while since our last entry, and I'm very excited to share with you what we've been up to.

To start, we delved into a new unit of inquiry called 'A Day in the Life'. During this unit, the children explored various professions from around the world. We also looked at the evolution of televisions, from the first ones back in the day to the modern and fancy TVs we have today. Additionally, the children used their imagination to envision how televisions might look in the future. Can you imagine?

We were fortunate to have contributions from our family members during this unit. Each week, our class had the opportunity to host two parents who kindly shared insights into their professions. They discussed their primary responsibilities, highlighting both enjoyable and challenging aspects of their jobs. Additionally, they shared interesting details about their occupations. The children actively participated in these discussions, listening attentively and asking thoughtful questions of our guest speakers.

After each presentation, the children documented their learnings about each speaker in a fact file booklet. By the end of our project, the children had completed their booklets, creating an interesting collection of fact files about various professions. We learned about engineers, detectives, historians, dendrochronologists, naval officers, dentists, project managers... It was a fantastic learning experience. Thank you so much to all our family members!

The children also embarked on discovering a profession they would like to pursue when they grow older. For this task, they conducted research on the main tasks involved in their chosen jobs and created their own uniforms in the form of tabards. They also made IDs, and we produced a video using green screen technology where the kids acted out and explained all about their chosen professions!

For our exit point, the children proudly showcased this video and also recited a poem called 'Things People Do'. Year 2 proudly presented what they learned from our parent interviews.

In terms of literacy skills, the children continue to work with our Daily 5. It's truly remarkable how much progress everybody is making; I'm so proud of how independent they've become. During this term, we also conducted some reading tests, and progress has been a common factor among all our students. Good job!

For numeracy, both Year 1 and Year 2 students have been working hard to improve and acquire new skills. Year 1s have been focusing on number bonds and have shown enthusiasm in using Numicon and function machines to help them. With the assistance of coins and Dienes rods, Year 1s have also been demonstrating their understanding of two-digit numbers and can confidently partition and build numbers with tens and units. Additionally, they've been learning how to tell analog and digital times to o'clock and half-past and have been practicing recognizing fractions of shapes. Year 2s have furthered their understanding of place value and used this knowledge to help them with three-digit numbers. They've also explored grouping to aid them with times tables and division. Outdoor math lessons, using shells as manipulatives, have particularly excited them. Moreover, they've been enhancing their mental math skills with new strategies to solve larger and more complicated addition and subtraction problems.

In addition to all these learnings, we also celebrated 100 days of school! To mark the occasion, we baked some yummy bread and enjoyed it with sweet spreads!

This term, we welcomed two new students, Adriana from Ukraine and Milica from Serbia! We welcomed them with open arms and are delighted to have them adding color to our classroom with their smiles.

We also celebrated a few birthdays together with Ms. Elspeth's class: Grant, Davi, Venia, and Drishi. Thank you so much for the lovely treats!

On Friday, the Easter Bunny helped us close this term with a bang! We had a fantastic Easter hunt activity and a classroom celebration full of crafts, music, and face painting!

We wish you all a fantastic Easter holiday. Keep safe and enjoy your time with your wonderful children! See you again soon!

Ms. Julieta