The end of this week has marked the half way point of our unit of inquiry. One of the things I like about the PYP is that units don't follow a linear path and it doesn't matter if it is the first or fifth time a unit has been taught it is always different.
Through prior assessment and student questioning units follow the path of the students and what they are interested in and want to know. At the start of the unit we asked the students what it means to be healthy and what they wanted to know. We found that most students had a general idea about the importance of exercise and eating well.
We gave the students some statements about lifestyle choices and asked them to rank them from 'unhealthy' to 'healthy'. Statements included 'We should never eat pizza', 'We need to exercise everyday' and 'we need to relax daily'. These statements made the students begin to question their current understanding of healthy lifestyles and think about what questions they have.
Using one of our related concepts, balanced, we started talking about when it is OK to eat some pizza, or stay up a little later than normal. These discussions encouraged students to question why we do things in certain ways and how can we make balanced choices.
From the student questions we spent time this week looking at the importance of sleep, why we need sleep and what happens when we sleep.
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| Researching the importance of sleep |
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| Using iPads to help in our inquiries |
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| Researching why we need sleep |
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| Working together to find answers to our questions |
After reading poems from the book Hailstones and Hailbut, by Mary O'Neill, we looked at emotions and how colour can be associated with different emotions. Students started writing their own colour poem.
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| Brainstorming the emotions we have felt |
Our current writing focus is recount, students started a recount on an emotion they felt recently. We also started looking at the writing process of planning, writing a draft, editing their work and then publishing their piece of writing.
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| Guided recount writing |
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| In-class EAL support - Guided recount writing |
In math we continued to look at numbers, finding balanced equations, place value and open ended worded math problems.
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| What does 239 look like in numbers words and with blocks |
Looking forward to the coming week, students will continue with their recount writing and colour poems. We will talk about symbols and emotions and look at some mindfulness techniques we can use in the classroom.
Important dates for this week
Tuesday 1st September - Elementary parent workshop - the writing process 7.45am
Friday 4th September - Students finish school at 11.30am
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| Introducing Josiah, Nicole and Mollymoon to the school at assembly |
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