Grade One and Two thoroughly enjoyed their field trip to Singapore City Gallery, Maxwell Food Centre and China Town. They explored systems in Singapore, the history of trade in Singapore and exchanged money for needs and wants at lunch and souvenir shopping.
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To begin our work on capacity we discussed vocabulary that would describe how much sand is in a container. We made labels and then went to the sandpit to fill up containers with sand to match the labels. Next we estimated how many small cups would fill different containers. To check we did the filling and counted to find out how many cups of sand filled each container.
This week we read our published versions of the Three Little Pigs to the Kindy class. They all enjoyed our stories and illustrations.
After discussing our initial ideas about what defines a need and a want we were presented with a box of things to sort out. Some of them were obvious, such as water as a need. Yet some proved to be more challenging and provided lots of discussions. We had to share our opinions and give a reason for our thinking. After this we made our own needs and wants posters to display as part of our UOI formative assessment.
This week we used metre rulers to measure with and then completed some weight investigations using balance scales as well as digital weighing scales to find out about grams and kilograms.
To focus in on one of lines of inquiry ‘forms of exchange’ we played a game called quiz, quiz, trade. In this game we were exchanging information as well as question cards. We then watched a video about the history of trade along the silk route. Afterwards we discussed how to categorise items that are traded into agricultural, manufactured, religion, culture and technology. We worked in groups to think of things in these categories that were traded in the past as well as ones that are traded by countries today. The next day we focused on another line of inquiry ‘how trade affects our choices’ by participating in a class trading event. Everyone brought in items to trade and we also had picture cards of items from the previous days activity. We traded things with others in the class multiple times. We then did a reflection on the activity to focus on how and why we made different choices during the trading. We also played a trade simulation game with a group. We had 5 items belonging to our trade and had to collect 5 items from others in order to win the game. We developed strategies such as trading things we knew we didn’t need in order to get things we did need two or three turns later in the game.
We worked with 3 different units of measure...baby steps, basketball shoes and lolly sticks. We used these to measure three different lengths of lines. As we worked we realised that 5 baby steps equalled 1 basketball shoe. This made it easier as we could then line up the basketball shoes and count in 5’s to calculate the number of baby steps. We worked together to measure each other’s height in cubes to find out who the tallest person in the class was and how much taller they were than the rest of the class. We used cubes laying down on the floor as well as stacked up against the glass door to compare our accuracy.
For our Grade One class assembly we wrote our own version of ‘The Enormous Turnip’ called ‘The Enormous Watermelon’. We based the story in a Singapore setting and used characters for the story from Singapore. After writing the script we made all the characters as stick puppets. To draw them we used youtube tutorials to help us. We tried using them as shadow puppets first, but decided we liked having the puppets be seen from the top of the puppet theatre. We had worked so hard on on the details and colour we thought it looked nicer. We practiced saying our part from the script, holding the puppet and doing actions - it took some work to coordinate all these things! Then we took a look at the puppet theatre and decided it needed to extra scenery, we wanted a sky and grass. Then we added details as well as a title. We used good teamwork in preparing for our assembly. Enjoy the video of our puppet show below! We started a new unit in Maths this week - measuring. We did a class mindmap of all the things we already know about measurement and then came up with some measurement inquiry questions. Next we got to work with our personal measurement inquiry’s. The next day we discussed the different units of measurement that are appropriate for measuring different lengths of things. We also learned to estimate before we measure.
This week we started our new unit of inquiry ‘How We Organise Ourselves’ with the central idea ‘exchange systems help our community’. In order to explore the idea of systems, we arrived to school and found many of our school systems were ‘broken’. Our name tags were not on the wall, the lights were off, the chairs were not in the correct place, there was no schedule for the day, no date and all the levelled reading books were jumbled up! After a few minutes of experiencing this confusion we gathered with Grade Two to discuss the cause and effect of systems. We then brainstormed different systems that we knew of and what the purpose of them is/how they help us. The next day, to tune into exchange and helping a community, we were given a task of building a tall decorate structure. We were divided into groups and each group had one resource except one group which had no resources. We had to work out how to exchange resources in order to get all the things we needed. Some of us decided to donate to the group that did not have any resources. During this activity we practiced the learner profile ‘caring’ and developed our social skills. It also helped us focus on SDG 10 ‘Reduced inequalities’. To explore SDG 5 ‘Gender Equality’ and exchange we were given a task of clearing up the blue blocks and stickle bricks from the quad. Afterwards we were given a reward...but the boys were given a much larger amount than the girls. This caused some confusion. We had a discussion about what was wrong, why it was wrong and what could be done to make it more equal. We also watched video about gender equality and answered some questions.
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May 2021
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