Week 7

First, "Forest Adventure" and, now, the “Community Challenge.” The Horrible Haze is trying its best to dampen our spirit in 1BeM but we are managing to stay positive...just! Hopefully, it will all disappear in the not too distant future and we can find a time to reschedule. The children have dealt with the disappointment very well and seem to understand and appreciate the reason behind the decision.

We did manage to get out of the classroom and enjoyed a wonderful tour of "Tampines House" with our Boarder Buddy, Lana. She showed us her room and the shared spaces the boarders enjoy and answered LOTS of questions about day-to-day life in this unique part of the UWCSEA community. I think half of 1BeM want to move in! 

In the sanctity of the classroom this week, we have been thinking back on everything we have learned over the course of our "Communities" inquiry. We have been using the “I used to think…, Now I think…” Thinking Routine to help us articulate and share how our understanding has changed over time. We have used a traditional pencil and paper format as well as recording our reflections in Voice Recorder. We are certainly more aware now of our responsibilities within different communities, although we realise we are all individuals at the same time. We used Path on to create these "I Am Not Just Me" portraits to illustrate this.

Hopefully, Monday’s “Service Day” as part of the “Round Square Conference” is the perfect way for us to put much of this into practice. We will be working with students from Grade Eleven on a number of community projects with the desired aim of raising awareness of and gratitude for a number of the more unsung heroes in our UWCSEA East community. In 1BeM, we will be thinking of ways to show our appreciation for the lovely Ley Chu, who is in charge of the cleaning in our grade.

Matilda and Noah did a fantastic job earlier in the week sharing there (amazing) photographs and experiences from their adventures last weekend in Malaysia and Indonesia respectively. They talked about the many differences between the communities they visited and our community but also talked about the things that were the same. Felix also did a grand job at talking about the work he does to make his community a greener space and displayed an impressive knowledge of the local fauna! 

Well done also to Eva, Zara and Rihaan who did a great job stepping in at the last minute as the Student Voice in Monday's assembly.

In Reading Workshop, we are coming to the end of our current unit. We are becoming more familiar with the strategies (or powers!) readers use to help them when they come across unfamiliar words, such as reading on or back, chunking and looking for “little words” within words. Many of these strategies will be revisited over the course of the year. 

In Writing Workshop, we have moved into the revision and editing stage of the writing cycle. We are spending time checking and changing our words, adding ideas, including details in our illustrations and so on, before fixing and fancying up our chosen pieces ready for publication. After adding a front cover, these will be ready to share with the world...so, watch this space!

This week, we started our second Mathematics unit of the year, “Measurement and Data.” We have been thinking about why learning to measure accurately might be a useful skill to have in the real world and situations when people use it. We have been exploring a variety of non-standard units of measure and are beginning to look at measuring techniques, such as measuring from end to end and in a straight line at the longest point. We have enjoyed lots of hands-on experiences measuring two or more objects and ordering them by length.

A big thank you to Vanessa (Willem's mum) who was our inaugural "Mystery Visitor" on Thursday. In line with our ongoing "Communities" inquiry, Vanessa shared information, anecdotes and lots of photographs all related to her native Portugal and the children really enjoyed finding out about some of the history, traditions, famous people and food (yum!) from there. Willem also joined in! 

Have a great weekend