A Class of Ornithologists...

We had no idea "Bird of the Week"

would be such a hit!

By Tuesday morning students in P1 had taken it upon themselves to create a chart, set up a recording area and quickly began recording how many of birds they saw... 

From quiet bird walks to and from lunch
and a special Hoopoe hunt

we were incredibly excited about all

the birds we saw and can hardly

wait to know which birds will be the next  

BIRDS OF THE WEEK

This weeks Birds of The Week:

cubes, cuboids and pyramids!

Our P 5/6 buddies came to visit us during Math this week.

As we built cubes, cuboids and pyramids our buddies helped us count and record the number of faces, corners, and edges.

SWIMMING UPDATE!

Beginning Tuesday, 23^rd November P1C students will be swimming twice a week! We will have Swimming lessons on Tuesdays (9:20-10) and on Wednesdays (1:10-1:50) until the end of term.

Please send your child dressed in their PE kit in addition to having their swimming gear (suit/costume, towel and sun cream) on both Tuesdays and Wednesdays.  If the weather does not permit us to swim, we will use lesson time to continue developing ball handling skills.  

parent letter 11/19

19 November, 2010

Dear P1 Parents,

We’ve had a busy few weeks in P1!

Two weeks ago we began a new Unit of Inquiry titled “A Great Place to Live”. We have been inquiring into how people make homes in different places and in different ways. We have been reflecting on what a home is, why people need homes and why homes are different (specifically talking about environment and availability of materials). Our class trip to Olasiti this week left us with not only incredibly muddy feet and grateful to parent volunteers (thank you Lisa, Vasudha and Ilan!) but, with a greater understanding of differences in houses here in Tanzania.

Shape, number facts to 5 and 10 and patterning continue to be our focus in Maths. In Literacy we continue looking at the reasons people write and read. We began talking about elements of stories (plot, characters) and have read a number of non-fiction and fiction text related to homes. Our writing focus has been putting space between our words, using capital and lower case letters properly, and including “what” and “who” in our Weekend News recounts. Our high frequency words of the past few weeks have been: I, a, the, you, and; and we’ll look at: or, in, as next week.

If you are interested in seeing photos from our field trip or our visit with our  P 5/6 buddies, I have posted pictures here:  http://chekechea1k.blogspot.com/

Have a lovely weekend,

Chelsea

P1/2 Field Trip to Olasiti

Imagine…
12 hours of rain
32 Kindergarten and First grade students
5 Land Rovers
3 extraordinary parent helpers (and drivers and tire changers)
2 ISM drivers (well versed in navigating Tanzanian roads) 
2 brilliant Teaching Assistants
and 2 teachers with big boots and great expectations 

Imagine…
A winding road
deep mud-ruts
and a punctured tire
We did see houses, just not quite in the order we anticipated
and perhaps,the connections between classroom discussions
and this field trip were
a bit more murky than anticipated.
But, with mud-covered socks and shoes and ankles
We grew as thinkers and puddle jumpers.
And returned to school
to draw and think and share
comparisons between the houses
we saw during our muddy trip
and the homes we would return to
at the end of the day
to bathe and eat and sleep...

Imagine. 

New Unit of Inquiry: A Great Place to Live

Writing Prompts:

"A great place to live..."

"A great place to live...in a house on the horizon."
We had just been talking about horizon lines...

"This is Israel. I live in a rocket. There this is...pool, toilet, kitchen. We're going up to Israel."

"A great place to live...in Arusha. I moved out of this house and into the yellow house."




"England, just a normal house with a garden. It is hot there."


"A house is..."

"A house is where you have nice flowers, nice trees, nice sky and rainbow hearts and me and my mum."

"A house is where you can play and do anything you like as long as you don't use balls in it."

"...like you live inside and you open the door and you go outside and play."

"A house is made of glass, wood, metal and cloth."

"A house is for living your live and eating!"



" A house is somewhere you live and that's the place you can sleep and eat and play with your toys and watch television."



"A house is...that you can sleep in and have food and when you go to your room you can have racing cars."

"A house is somewhere you live in and eat in with your family."

"A house is a place where you live, eat, and if you buy something you get it in your house."



Snapshots of the week

It's all about shapes!

2D Shape Exploration. Can you build this?



How about this? Take 6 diamonds, 1 hexagon, 1 triangle...






Constructing 3D Shapes out of the play dough we made with EC



 

Our P 5/6 Buddies loaned us these; we've been busy exploring ways to make 3D shapes!



A new favorite literacy center: Reading the Room

Reading the Room while a massive AB pattern train was being built.
And yes, we did count each of the cubes in our train! 

Reading the calendar



We have  been exploring colour!
This week we had a go at making our own colour wheels.
We then expolored mixing our primary colours to see how many different colours we could make.



What colours can you make from our three primary colours?





We LOVE our P 5/6 Buddies!
This week we went to their room and they read to us.



Swimming!
We're gaining confidence and trying our best to float.