Marbles and paint make for some pretty beautiful artwork. Students had fun dipping their marbles in a colour of their choice, scooping up the marble and rolling it around in their tray.
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We have added a few more questions to guide our inquiry and this time we tried a slightly different approach to the questioning process. We got into groups of two and discussed the topic with our partner. The IB PYP often recommends arranging student desks in groups of four, the rationale is that students will be more comfortable to express their ideas and thoughts without feeling nervous or judged. This is less applicable to younger students and especially in classes with a low number of students but still can apply in many ways and can also generate different results than if you were to have a whole group discussion. The fascinating part is that we have seen proof of this in our own teacher meetings at AcadeCap! Guess the research has some validity ;)
Students drew their questions and when we got back together as a group, I wrote them on the back of their picture. Below are the questions we hope to answer throughout the rest of this unit (not including teacher questions). Do only humans have families? (meaning do animals have families too) Why do families live together? Why do families like each other? Why do families do things together? Why do families document what they do? Recently, students have been exploring this fun math manipulative called base 10 blocks. Among their many uses, their primary purpose is to help teach math concepts such as place value, counting and number sense. We have now learned that each type of block represents a number. We used them to add and of course, to build!
Over the past month, we have looked at the family albums that students have brought in and done several activities using the photos. We are not quite done yet though. Miss Andrea and I have also shared some of our family photos and talked about how we have documented some of our family history. As we looked through and shared all our pictures, we described and shared the who, what, where, when and why about the photos. Throughout the observing and questioning activities, students have become more aware of the difference between a question and a comment. More to come!
Today was Pi day at AcadeCap as part of our spirit week. Now this day may have been a source of some confusion for the kindergarten students however they did enjoy and did understand to some degree that Pi meant a number, had something to do with circles and was represented by a table like symbol (or that it was all about pies). The very best part of today is what I would like to share with you and it all started from a kindergarten student's shirt that was specially made for Pi day. On her shirt was the title Buffon's Needle and a depiction of what that was. Since we (myself included!) were so curious as to what this meant, we decided to ask one of AcadeCap's resident math experts, Mme Neena. Mme Neena told us she would come to our class and explain! Just 10 minutes later, Mme Neena arrived with a special paper marked with a few lines across the page, evenly separated, and a sewing needle. She went on to explain about Pi and about Buffon's Needle and then demonstrated. We took turns dropping the needle on the paper and seeing if it would land on or between the lines. It was a really fantastic learning opportunity and was so very interesting, all inspired by our kindergarten friend's shirt! Mme Neena was also inspired, her grade 8 math lesson went from whatever had been planned to a lesson about Buffon's Needle. Mme Neena loved sharing her knowledge with us so much that she said she'd like to come back and share more! Thank you to our kindergarten friend for coming to school in the mathiest shirt ever and inspiring this series of events!
Part of our inquiry into families will be to explore family traditions. Mme Andrea started this off by reading the book 'The Keeping Quilt'. Through listening to the story, observing the images and discussing the content, students began to understand what a family tradition was. We had a 'movie day' with popcorn and all and watched a short video of the book narrated by the author herself. Again, we discussed what a family tradition meant and the traditions that took place in 'The Keeping Quilt'. We shared what we thought were our own family traditions, whether true or not! The pictures in our family albums suggested some ideas too and since we had just looked at these before English class we talked about what we observed in the pictures and if we thought they were indeed a family tradition.
'The Keeping Quilt' is such a lovely book and I highly recommend that you read it at home too. It can definitely be found at the public library. If you do have a tradition within your family, share it with your child so they may further understand the concept of what a tradition is! They may be as simple as a special type of homemade cake for every birthday and could be an old tradition or something you have started for your family. In 'The Keeping Quilt', the tradition was ever so slightly changed as it was passed down through the generations, something the students picked up on while hearing the story! |
Welcome to the daily life of Académie de la Capitale's Junior / Senior Kindergarten class! We hope you enjoy this window into our classroom as much as we enjoy sharing it!Archives
October 2022
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