Week 31

We have now divided into four groups to work on our Service ideas for the Kuma Cambodia community. One group is creating collage posters full of ideas to encourage people in the villages surrounding the Kuma School to reuse plastic bottles in creative ways, for example as planters, light shades and, even, boats! A second group has chosen a logo for the BBTT (Book-Book-Tuk-Tuk) and are busy fine tuning their rainbow design. Another group is using everything we have explored in our Reading and Writing Workshop units to create non-fiction books to teach the children at Kuma all about life at UWCSEA. The fourth and final group is in the early stages of composing a piece of music for the BBTT to play over a speaker to announce its arrival in each village. It is fantastic that all of these initiatives have come directly from the children and they are so enthusiastic about driving them forward. Ida and I are just along for the ride!

We have also found the time to find out all about the wonderful artist, Laurel Burch. She was a remarkable lady who overcame so much and saw her art as a way of cheering people up and being of Service to others. This afternoon, we had a go at creating our own Burch inspired pieces...so, look out for them very soon!

Closer to home, we have enjoyed being of Service to our friends at Happy Lodge again this week. We decided to share our new favourite Maths game, "Place Value Bingo," and to have a go at drawing pencil portraits of each other...and sharing compliments about our friendly residents.

There are weeks when each room is full of residents and other weeks when there seems to be a few familiar faces missing. We spend a lot of time talking to the children about how the residents are free to come and go as they please and that, some visits, they might prefer to be by themselves. Dealing with this disappointment or frustration is a big part of the learning process during these Service trips.

We are becoming more and more confident and comfortable during our Word Study sessions and are now working hard to transfer this developing knowledge and understanding to our own independent writing. As we come to the business end of another Writing Workshop unit, we are busy trying to add a little bit more to our pieces, checking and changing words or, even, replacing them with “more interesting” alternatives. We are adding more detail or labels to pictures and, in line with our unit, making sure we have used non-fiction features to enhance the experience for the reader of our books.

In Mathematics, we are enjoying exploring “Pattern and Function.” In this relatively short unit, we will investigate and describe patterns, both number patterns formed by repeated addition or subtraction and patterns with objects. At the moment, we are thinking about the difference between repeating and growing patterns and effective ways to describe patterns. From here, we will begin to isolate the unit in a repeating pattern and make, describe and extend repeating and growing patterns. At the same time, we are continuing to unpack the idea of place value, using tens, units and, even, hundreds!

Reminders and Requests

*Saturday 19th March-Family Festival 2016-11.00am–3.00pm-East Campus

*Wednesday 23rd March-Happy Lodge Visit-12.30-1.45pm

*Thursday 24th March-Last day of Term 2-School ends at normal time

Have a great weekend...and hope to see you all tomorrow!