Quick! Quick! Fast as you can! Wednesday Word Study means Speed Sorting in Grade 1AC! Every week we get faster and faster at putting our words into their categories and explaining our thinking. Click on the video to see what this activity looks like in our class.
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As part of our inquiries into growth and measurement, we've been thinking about concepts like change, bigger/smaller, longer/shorter, and distance and length. At home, we traced our own feet and our mum's (or dad's) feet. We brought the cutouts to school and compared them to each other and with our friends' feet. We even compared them to a basketball player's footprint, which was huge! To practice our measurement skills, we used all of the feet as non-standard measurement tools to find the lengths of various pieces of tape around the room. We developed strategies for measuring and identified common errors, like leaving gaps between the objects used to measure, not keeping the objects straight, and not starting at the beginning of the line. We also thought about how the number of steps it took to measure the line was connected to how short or long the feet we used to measure were. Thanks to our parents for letting us use their feet! Gong Xi Fa Cai! Happy lunar new year from Grade 1AC! We celebrated at school by performing a Mandarin song at the annual Chinese New Year assembly on Friday, February 8 and having a Lion Dance performed for us on Wednesday, February 13. Some lucky students even received received oranges and candy from the lion! Best wishes for a prosperous new year! Today Andy turns 7 years old! We celebrated by singing 'Happy Birthday' in English and Mandarin and eating some delicious strawberry and cream cake. Thanks for the treat Andy and HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
As part of our data management unit, we've been learning how to conduct surveys. We read Would you rather by a Bullfrog? to learn more about the difference between open and closed questions. We discovered that closed questions have only a few possible answers and that any answer is possible for open questions. When conducting surveys, we should only use closed questions. Some ways to start a closed question are:
Like many of the children in our class, Sanjita has been VERY interested in this unit of inquiry. Two weeks ago she brought in some life cycle books for us to read. Today during our Morning Meeting she presented us with some work she did at home. Sanjita extended our thinking from class and made her own lists of living and non-living things. She also explained her developing understanding of the life cycles of frogs and butterflies, based the reading she has done and her observations of the tadpoles and caterpillars in our classroom. Well done Sanjita! Today we Skyped the with Grade 1a class from the Tokyo International School. They are currently investigating the senses and found out that we had completed a unit of inquiry about the senses at the beginning of the year. Two weeks ago they sent us some some questions on Twitter: We are always looking for opportunities to reflect on our learning and make revisions to our understandings, so we jumped at this opportunity. We discussed their questions and brainstormed a few answers. We loved our Skype chat and the kids at TIS said we did a good job of answering their questions. They taught us some new things about the senses too! We hope to see and speak to our new friends again soon!
Some reflections we had on Skype:
Last Friday we welcomed some new friends into our classroom. Tadpoles! After a Grade 4 student at our school found a puddle full of tadpoles behind Takashimaya, Ms. Jan went to investigate. She found that the puddle had formed from all the rain we had about a week ago. Normally we wouldn't take living things out of their natural habitat, but Ms. Jan could see that the puddle was going to dry up very quickly. She rescued some of the tadpoles and brought them to our classroom where we've been taking care of them ever since. Some of our observations so far:
Some of our questions:
Have you ever been fishing? If you have, you know that there are certain rules about the fish that you can catch and keep. For example, you can't keep a baby fish. You can tell if a fish is a baby or a grown-up fish by measuring how long it is. When a fish is long enough to keep it's called a "keeper". Before we started measuring fish, we read a story about a girl called Kim. She had been fishing and caught a perch. She was trying to measure the fish with inch tiles to see if it was long enough to keep. The problem was that she kept getting different measurements. The first time Kim measured the fish, she found that it was 6 tiles long. The second time she measured it, she found that it was 8 tiles long. The third time she measured it, she found that it was 5 tiles long. The fourth time she measured it, she found that it was 4 tiles long. Every time she tried to check her measurements she got a different answer! We tried to help Kim figure out what she was doing wrong. 1st Attempt: 6 tiles long
2nd Attempt: 8 tiles long
3rd Attempt: 5 tiles long
4th Attempt: 4 tiles long
We then tried to measure Kim's fish ourselves. Even we got some different answers! Using photographs of our measurements on the ipad, we compared our strategies. We decided on some important measuring techniques that can help us to always get an accurate answer:
Finally, we measured some of our own fish to decide if they were keepers or not.
On Wednesday, January 16, Grade 1 visited Acres, an animal concerns organization here in Singapore. We learned lots about what animals need to live, be healthy, and stay safe. Before leaving for the trip, we read I Was Walking Down the Road by Sarah E. Barchas. The story is about a little girl who collects animals as she finds them and puts them in cages. At the end of the story she decides to let them all go free. We discussed the issue of putting wild animals in cages:
After the trip we discussed what we had learned about animal protection in relation to one of our lines of inquiry: "The things that can affect life cycles". Through the sharing of personal stories and experiences, we decided on a few key points:
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Grade 1ACWe are a group of Grade 1 students at the ISS International School in Singapore. Our teacher is Ms. Alison. Take a look at how much we're growing and learning! VisitorsWhat's happening in PE?What's happening in Art?What's our Principal up to?What's happening in Literacy?Grade 1 Classes We Follow:Ms. Cassidy's Class (Moose Jaw, Canada)
Mr. David Bullio's Class (Tokyo, Japan) Mrs. Frazier's Class (Ohio, USA) Archives
August 2013
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