Ms Courtney's Class

This week we completed our Who We Are unit. Students shared their understanding of the Central Idea by brainstorming our rights and responsibilities as a learner and how our mindset can help us to learn. You should have received a Seesaw post with your child's assessment and rubric for the unit. On Wednesday the students participated in a tabloid sports with our new house teams. The students all enjoyed the morning!! We also participated in Pchum Ben activities by our Teacher Assistants. We learnt about this and some of the traditions from the festival. I hope you all have a wonderful break and I look forward to seeing you back at school on Monday 25th September. 

It was wonderful to see everyone in their house T-shirts for the assembly this morning. UoI In UoI this week we created posters on what we know about the brain. The students worked in pairs to discuss their knowledge and make the poster. They have learnt a lot over the past few weeks on what the brain does, what it looks like, the parts of the brain and our responsibility to keep the brain healthy. We continued to add information to our brainstorming of what we know about how we grow and learn. We also started our summative assessments this week. Students have begun reflecting on what they have learnt this unit. Next week they will add their assessment to Seesaw for you to see. Math Here are some photos from math this week. We continued to work on our understanding of measurement. The importance of nightly reading Each Monday we reflect on our learning goals and decide what to focus on in reading at each each week. We have discussed the importance...

Another week has flown by and the students have been busy learning about their brains in UoI. In Math we started a unit on measurement and we have been writing recounts with the help of Ms Petra. UoI This week in UoI we focused on 2 lines of inquiry The rights and responsibilities we have for our learning Ways that help us grow and learn We spent time this week learning about the brain. We started by comparing our brains to a camera, jelly, pot plant, cup and playdough. We read My Fantastic Elastic Brain and looked at the different parts of the brain and what they all do. We used Todaysmeet to write interesting facts and information while reading the book. Students painted a picture of a brain and labeled the different sections.  Towards the end of the week we reflected on our learning using a Padlet, each student was able to record their thinking. We will revisit this Padlet at the end of the unit and add more of our learning to it.  Math I...

Prior Knowledge assessment This week students completed their prior knowledge assessment of themselves are a learning. We used My map book by to help us with some ideas. Students were asked to draw a map of themselves including all the parts of their bodies they use to learn and some places and ways they like to learn. We will revisit these maps at the end of the unit to see your growth. Seb's birthday On Tuesday we celebrated Seb's birthday! Happy Birthday Seb, we hope you had a fantastic day. Bio Poems The students have published their bio poems and uploaded them to Seesaw. The students worked hard to complete these and are a great insight into each student. Gardening Our second unit of inquiry is about how planets grow. We started this unit today by planting some vegetables in the garden. Hopefully by the time we officially start the unit we will be able to see our carrots and corn growing. Homework Thank you for sharing your children...

We began to delve into our first unit for the year this week. We started with a challenge for the students to make a folded piece of paper the same as mine. They were allowed to look at the paper from any angle, but could not touch the paper. While they were trying to make it I recorded some of the comments that I heard the students say as well as filming them. After 10 minutes we looked at the list of comments and watched the video and wondered if these would help us to complete the task. This was a difficult challenge and many of the students found it hard to complete. After hearing our responses and watching ourselves we starting talking about Growth Mindset. Growth Mindset is the study of Carol Dweck she believes: If you have a growth mindset, you believe that with work, practice, and perseverance, you can improve – whether it’s your academic performance, or any other skill. (Those with the opposite, a fixed mindset, believe that our intelligence and talents are pre...

We have had another fantastic week of school. The students were busy with a guest speaker, reseraching inquiry questions, Dot Day and assembly. Next week we are looking forward to celebrating Peace One Day on Wednesday. It is also our last week of school before the Pchum Ben Holiday. Dot Day This week we celebrated International Dot Day . Dot Day is a day to celebrate creativity, courage and collaboration. We combined with Ms Dana in Art and Ms Rachel in the Knowledge Centre to celebrate this at ISPP. Art On Monday we went to the Art Room to create some Dot Day art with Ms Dana. We took a Grade 2 photo with our Art on Thursday and the art work will be on display in the Knowledge Centre. Knowledge Centre In the Knowledge Centre Ms Rachel explained Dot Day and the author, Peter Reynolds. We sang the Dot Day song and checked out the live Twitter Feed at #DotDay2016 Classroom In the classroom we used the Quivervision App to create our own 3D augmented reality ...

It was a short week this week. We welcomed Phallyka to our class and continued to inquire into nutrition. Welcome Phallyka to our class PE with Helmi's Mum Saara helped Mr Andy teach the class one of Helmi's favourite games from Finland to our class. Our school Lunch On Tuesday I took a photo of each students lunch and we spent time looking at the food groups on each plate and the variety of food the students ate. Asking thick and thin questions We introduced students to the idea of 'thick and thin' questions. Thin questions generally have a yes or no answer and thick questions will give you a lot of information. We did this to help students develop good inquiry questions they will research next week.