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We would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas from Lower Primary!
This past two months have flown by and the children have been very busy improving their mathematical skills, becoming more independent with their literacy time and learning about celebrations from around the world.
Year 1 has been busy using new strategies for addition, skip counting by 2s and 10s and exploring 2-d and 3-d shapes. Year 2 has been learning about 2-digit numbers, near doubles and learning new methods to help them add and subtract.
The children are enjoying becoming more independent with their Daily 5 activities and can now Read to Self, Read to Someone, Listen to Reading, Work on Writing and complete Word Work activities to become better readers and writers. They have been writing about their weekends and the children created an attractive poster about a celebration from their country. They did a fantastic job, you can see them outside our classroom or on these unlisted links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvhb6O3m6zQ (Ms. Crsiti’s class)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4khpbyh5hhc Ms. Julieta’s class)
During our IPC sessions, the children made their own calendar where they recorded important dates like all the birthdays from their friends and family members and also the celebrations we studied in class. We also made a year timeline with all the celebrations we explored during this unit.
We would like to say thank you to all the parents for their support during this unit. The children made fantastic presentations to showcase their chosen celebrations and thanks to these presentations we learned a lot about our different traditions.
Lower Primary also designed a traditional celebration item: ‘A Mexican piñata’. The children created it from start to finish. The end product was beautiful! You can see a time lapse video about the whole process on seesaw!
For our exit point we had an exciting mixture of celebrations, from baking traditional gingerbread cookies, breaking a piñata and exchanging books following a Catalan tradition.
We were also very happy to share our exit point with our Upper Pre-Primary friends, and together we broke a piñata as well. We had so much fun and all our hard work was worth it when we saw how happy our younger friends were.
For our Fun Fridays this time we went for Crazy Hair! The hairstyles we saw were out of this world, thank you all for participating!
Today we say a big thank you and goodbye to our Erasmus intern Ms Miren. She was a fantastic assistant to the teachers and to the students over the last few months and we will miss her! We wish her every success on her way to becoming a teacher.
We’ve also had a term full of birthdays! We celebrated Pietro’s, Kezhen’s, Matteo’s, Adam’s, Tomas’, Lana’s and Alek’s birthdays.
Thank you everybody for coming to our Winter Show! The kids were so excited to show you our Christmas dance, we had so much fun putting it together for you!
We wish you and your families all a safe, relaxing and wonderful holiday break and we look forward to seeing you all in the New Year!
Ms Julieta & Ms Cristi
Lower Primary Team
Welcome to Lower Primary
Hello everybody and welcome to Lower Primary Blog!
It has been a great start of the school year! We look forward to learn with your wonderful children and we are enjoying getting to know them every day!
After a long summer holiday, the children quickly settled to the new routines and the new environment! We are extremely proud of this class!
To start off the new school year, we discussed how important it is to be able to play and learn together. In Lower Primary we have 8 “golden rules’: Be a friend. Listen. Share. Help clean up. Wait for your turn. Raise your hand. Walk do not run. Keep your hands to yourself.
During our first week we reviewed some numeracy and literacy topics and polished up our reading skills. We also talked about how the brain develops and how it loves to take on new challenges. We now understand that our brain establishes new connections every time we are faced with new challenges. We talked about a fixed and growth mindset and their differences. Our aim is to work towards having a growth mindset and we will do our best to achieve it!
Currently we are well into our first IPC unit “Who am I”. We have been exploring our feelings, where we come from and we have learnt many new things about each other. The class created self-portraits experimenting with colour and exploring symmetry. We also created a mind map expressing what makes us happy or sad. Our creations are amazing and are displayed outside or inside the class, please make sure to pop by to have a look, your child will be thrilled to show them.
As part of this IPC unit, we took a look at how our heart works. The children understood the importance of our heart and its main functions. They created a wonderful 3D model using recycled materials where they could express their understanding on the topic. To consolidate their learning the class organized their first school assembly presenting their work. They did an amazing job!
Connecting our IPC unit and our literacy objectives we explored similes and the class created their own poem about happiness. They also created a stop motion movie to illustrate their creations.
In literacy, we explored the stories of “The Fire Children” and “Sing your Song”. The class split the story into 6 chapters; the children recreated the scenes using boxes and different materials like cloth, clay, wood, paper etc. Then, they rewrote the stories, and we created a video showcasing their work. We are very proud of them. It was inspiring to work as a team and learn from each other.
As our exit point, we visited the Fine Arts Museum in Brussels, where we could admire some famous portraits from different Belgian artists. One of them was René Magritte. The children were amazed by this surrealist artist and they understood what surrealism is.
These eight weeks at school have been filled with amazing learning and creativity and this is just the beginning! We are excited and eager to see what the rest of the year will bring!
This term we also celebrated some birthdays: Sofia, Isabella and Enzo ! Thank you very much for the yummy treats!
We also would like to thank our wonderful assistant Ms. Miren for all her support and love for our students! Thank you very much!
Wishing you all an amazing autumn break with your fantastic children and see you in our next blog!
Lower Primary team
Wow! What a beautiful end to an eventful year in Lower Primary at ISG! The children have come so far and learned so much in such a short time and now they are ready to move on to Year 2 and 3!
We welcomed 3 new students to Lower Primary after the Easter Break – Mina from Japan, Zlata and Emilia from the Ukraine and in May we welcomed back Daksh after he returned from India. We also had to say goodbye to our fantastic student teacher Ms Sterre who had become such a great part of our Lower Primary team! We wish her every success with her future studies and hope to see her again maybe in the future, who knows?!
We started our term with Exit Point for our IPC unit ‘The Earth: Our Home’ at Antwerp Zoo. The children learnt about a variety of the animals and were able to make connections between the plants, biomes and food chains that they had been learning about and actually see the animals in real life! We then moved on to studying famous ‘People from the Past’ as our last unit and with the weather warming up, we were able to take a trip to the inner city of Gent to learn all about a local person from the past, Jacob van Artevelde. The children also enjoyed sharing facts about famous people from the past from their own countries and creating many different art works inspired by Marie Curie, Steve Irwin and Rosa Parks. You can see some of their artwork in the entrance hall and in the lunchroom – they did a great job!
For the rest of their studies the children have been busy perfecting their dictionary skills in Year 2 and handwriting in Year 1 and they are all now very proficient in working independently and with partners as part of our Daily 5 literacy time. It’s so nice to see how far they have come, how they are continuing to become better readers and writers and are taking charge of their learning! In Numeracy, the Year 2s have been preparing for Year 3 and have been practicing using a textbook and solving more and more word problems. Year 1s did a great job hosting a snack shop to practice their money skills and were able to take part in some fun Numeracy rotation games and activities in the last couple of weeks.
As we wound down the end of this school year, we had some exciting events like International Festival that we haven’t been able to celebrate for two years. The children worked so well to learn and perform their dance to a song from Colombia. A special thanks to all the parents who helped find shirts for the children to represent the Colombian flag! They had a fantastic time and I’m sure that it will stick in their head for months to come! In the last weeks we have taken advantage of the great weather and been able to celebrate the end of the school year with a Water Fun Day, whole school Art Day, Fun Run and of course our end of year assembly. What a great way to finish off a long period of not being able to come together and a lovely way to say good luck to those moving on to other countries and other schools.
From Ms Julieta and I, it has been an absolute pleasure to work with this wonderful group of Lower Primary students, seeing them grow, develop, make mistakes and cement new and old friendships. We wish everyone a safe, healthy and enjoyable summer! To those of you who are moving on we wish you every success in your new homes and schools and for those joining us back again next year we look forward to another fun filled year of learning! Schools out!
Ms Julieta & Ms Narissa
Hello everybody
The first two months of 2022 have flown by! In Lower Primary, children are always busy learning and building up their skills! Everybody is becoming a better reader and a better writer!
Our IPC unit ‘Creators and Communicators’ kept us busy!
During our Entry Point we got an overview on the main developments of communication throughout the years, from cave paintings to the computers. The kids created a timeline showing main inventions and the year they were invented. They understood how humans have been innovative creating ways of communications… the kids also started wondering how they will communicate in the future!
We also explored the internet, its origins and how we use it. Kids made a survey about their own use of internet. It was very impressive to see that all lower primary students already knew that too much screen time is not good for our eyes and our brain. Later, we discussed how to use the internet safely. To wrap up this topic, the kids created awareness posters on how to use the internet safely! Everybody did an amazing job
Beginning February, we dove deep into technology! Everybody created an Avatar, we carefully looked at our features to create our own Avatar. We also reflected on the fact that not everything that is on the internet is true or real. Also in February the kids worked at home creating a video to show to the class their hobbies or their favourite activities. We had so much fun looking at them and also getting to know a little bit more about our classmates. Thank you everybody for sharing!
Our favourite task during this project was recording videos using the green screen technology. Everybody transformed themselves into weather reporters and created their own weather forecast! Check them out on Seesaw! They are hilarious!
We would like to welcome Igor and Lana! And, a big welcome to Ms. Sterre. She is our new classroom assistance. She comes from the NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences. Thank you very much for joining our class!
We wish you all a wonderful winter break! Take good care of your self and enjoy your wonderful and creative children!
Lower Primary Blog
This past two months has flown by and the children have been very busy improving their mathematical skills, becoming more independent with their literacy time and learning about colour during our IPC.
Year 1 have been busy using new strategies for addition, skip counting by 2s and 10s and exercising their brains by using logic puzzles and thinking problems. Year 2 have been learning about 2-digit numbers, near doubles and learning new methods to help them add and subtract.
The children are enjoying becoming more independent with their Daily 5 activities and can now Read to Self, Read to Someone, Listen to Reading, Work on Writing and complete Word Work activities to become better readers and writers. They have been writing about their weekends and doing creative writing about Autumn leaves and using new colour words to describe what they have seen during their IPC unit, Art:Colour. They wrote and performed colour poetry inspired by Christina Rosetti’s poem ‘What is Pink?’. You can see listen and enjoy your child’s work on Seesaw.
The children had an opportunity to present their learning about light to the school during assembly and did a fantastic job! They presented facts about light and performed a book called ‘Flash and Gleam’. They then continued their learning through our new IPC unit Art: Colour. During our Entry Point and Knowledge Harvest we explored line, colour and shape around the school and brainstormed different colour words to describe colours that we already know. We learnt about Mondrian’s, Matisse’s and Kusama’s artwork and created our own art inspired by theirs. The children learnt about primary, secondary and tertiary colours on the colour wheel and how to mix them, create tints and use complementary colours to create interesting effects.
Today we say a big thank you and goodbye to our Erasmus intern Ms Estela. She has a fantastic assistant to the teachers and the students over the last few months and we will miss her! We wish her every success on her way to becoming a teacher.
Although we’ve had to get used to some new covid restrictions we’ve also had a term full of celebrations! We celebrated Kezhen, Samuel and Laura’s birthdays as well as Diwali, Hanukkah, Sint Niklaas and now Christmas!
The children worked very hard preparing their Christmas dance '12 days of Christmas' We hope you will enjoy it!
Welcome to Lower Primary Blog!
8 weeks have flown by and our new routines are slowly but surely falling in place. These past 2 months the class has been focusing on two very important values: Respect and Resilience. It is amazing how we are starting to see our young students becoming more independent and responsible. We are very proud of them.
Having fun while we learn is the best potion, and so far we have managed to make magic in lower primary!
We started off the year learning about our brain and how we best learn. We understood that our brain is malleable, and that the connectivity between neurons can change with experience. We also explored having and developing a Growth Mindset, to help us navigate when things get a bit hard or tricky. Having a growth mindset helps us to embrace challenges! We also discovered the power of the word “YET”. (Check out more pictures about our learning on seesaw)
A few weeks ago, we started a new IPC unit called “Seeing the light”. We have been exploring lots of facts about light and how it is connected to us and to our world.
Learning about what light is and how it travels, the children explored the spectrum of light. They did an experiment using a crystal prism to see how the light diffracts showing the 7 colours of the visible spectrum. Lower primary created scientific models to explain their understanding. Year 2 students wrote a short text to complete their model. If you have not seen it yet, check the cool short movie about these activity on seesaw!
Fireworks!!!. We explored the world of Fireworks and made connection between celebrations-light-art. We made a list of words to describe shapes and patterns of the different fireworks to create a poem.
To represent the fireworks, we used two different art techniques: Stamping with acrylic paint, and wax crayons under black ink. Our vibrant firework display is hanging proudly at school, have you seen it yet?
As a class we also discussed and learned about sources of light, the children could immediately agree that our main source of light is our mighty sun. Therefore, we studied the fascinating relationship of the Sun and Earth. We made models to understand that earth rotates about its axis once every 24 hours, creating day and night. We used a shoe box, colour paper, styrofoam balls, wooden sticks, and glue. Pay us a visit and the kids will show you their models and how they work.
Shadows are made when light is blocked, Lower primary explored some art techniques to draw shadows. Using a lamp and a ball we carefully looked where the shadow is casted, where is light in the object and what is the difference between light and dark areas. Ms Maija showed us how to create shadow and light drawings using charcoal pencils, it wasn`t easy, but showing resilience we were able to have good results!
In one of our art activities the children met the work of André Kertész. He was a famous photographer from Hungary, his passion was to capture shadows in everyday life moments.
Lower primary wore a photographer’s hat for a day and took some pictures inspired by the work of this renown photographer. There is a charming short film on seesaw showcasing this activity.
One of our last activities was to learn about nocturnal animals and how they have adapted to the darkness. Every student chose a nocturnal animal and did some research about it to create a fact file. We learned so much about, foxes, bats, sharks, wombats, racoons, possums, owls, sloths, badgers, red-eye frogs…. In fact they are all walking/flying/hanging pompously on a display in our school!
In November many people will be celebrating Diwali, which is the festival of light. In class we explored this fascinating celebration and explored different aspects of it. We explored the rangoli patters and created our own in the playground and Rayaan`s family shared with us some delicious Indian sweets and crackers. Look at some pictures of our small Diwali celebration on seesaw.
Everybody has been working very hard learning and improving their literacy and numeracy skills. There has been spelling tests and numeracy tests… all these new to our younger students, so I must say, well done everybody for adapting so well to this new environment in primary.
We have been practicing our reading twice a week, reading one on one on our guided reading sessions, and Ms Narissa has been creating a wonderful atmosphere implementing the Daily 5 literacy program.
On Friday we celebrated Halloween! We had a super fun party together with Upper Primary and then we had a lovely time sharing poems and songs with Pre-Primary students!
Thank you everybody for sharing with us super yummy snacks and for dressing up , everybody was looking great!
Unfortunately, we had to say goodbye to Suzumi.
Suzumi is a wonderful and kind friend and a remarkable student, we will miss you and we wish you all the best in your new adventures in Japan. Remember that you will always have a place back here in ISG!
Enjoy your autumn break! Stay safe and enjoy your wonderful children,
Ms Julieta
t is hard to believe, but the end of our school year is already here… and what a year it has been!
Since our last blog lots of things took place in our classroom…
To start with, we welcomed a new friend in April: Eyal! … and unfortunately, we also said goodbye to: Fernando and Matthew…. We miss you so much but wish you all the best in your new schools! We also would like to thank Ms. Julia and Mr. José, our two fantastic interns this year!
In February we had our first snack shop! The children were able to practise their numeracy skills as they sold their snacks, they set the prices and they also managed to give change back. It was a wonderful learning experience! Check out the pictures!
A few days later we celebrated the 100th day of School! We ate yummy cupcakes and ice-cream and decorated the classroom and build our own crowns and funny sunglasses! That same week our first general knowledge quiz took place… This afternoon quiz became a very popular activity in our classroom, and I would like to congratulate everybody for their fantastic effort in improving their knowledge!
Our unit of inquiry ‘Buildings’ came to and end also in February, Ms. Erica planned an online conference with two brilliant architects! The kids got the chance to chat with them and to ask questions, really an unique experience! The architects gave the children a challenge: they needed to make a cardboard model of their own “den”. The class were busy planning, creating and building! This was a fantastic way for the children to use their knowledge and skills to build and to build up their understanding.
Since the beginning of this school year, it was clear that the children of my class were always hungry for knowledge, their curiosity about the world and how it works was remarkable. There for, right after our building unit, we embarked in a mini project about the Moon! During this project we discovered important facts about the moon, we had fun with a moon poem and we create a cool display showing the phases of the moon using recycling materials. The children were really amazed about the moon that they decided it is Magical! We created a short video about all our Moon learning. Check out our seesaw page to enjoy this video!
After our moon project, we started the wonderful unit of enquiry “Stories people tell”. This unit took us on a trip to discover different types of stories (fables, legends, Greek myths and fairy tales). We studied three legends from around the world and the children rewrote them using their own understanding and vocabulary. Take a look at our entry point video https://youtu.be/9cf00pXp_v0 .
One of the legends we studied was: ‘Becoming Buddha: the story of Siddhartha” Through this legend the children reflected on the meaning of happiness. https://youtu.be/VfD7DBilEE8
The class had a brief introduction to the intriguing world of Ancient Greece! We talked about Greek Mythology and explored a few Myths like Hercules, Pandora’s box, The story of Medusa and The Origin of the Seasons. Ms. Veta and Ms Ourania (two amazing interns from Greece) came to our class to tell us these fascinating stories, they also introduced us to the main Olympian Gods… we thank them so much for enriching our learning! Look at this video to learn more about the Olympian Gods. https://youtu.be/tRPi3nheWUM .
During this unit we also investigated how people in the past represented stories and characters We learned about ancient Greek pottery and designed our own plates and told a short story around it We also explored what fables are. We looked at the characters, conflicts, and morals in a few fables. As a class we discussed how we can learn from these fables and use this understanding to solve problems.
For our exit point, the class planned and performed a shadow puppet show! Everybody participated in this production. The children learned about teamwork and how every member of a team contributes to the success of the team. I am so very proud of everybody; they did a fantastic job… we presented our show to the whole school! Take a look at this fantastic video!!
Our very last project was about…. of course… THE OLYMPICS! This final unit of inquiry blended perfectly with all our previous learning about Greece and the Olympian Gods… we learnt how the Olympics have changed over time. They understood the origins and essence of the Olympic Games. The children learnt the meaning of the Olympic rings and created their own Olympic flags and medals. We explored all the host countries of the modern Olympic Games and learnt some facts about Japan, the host country this year. As a class activity we also created a timeline with all the host countries since the origin of the Modern Olympics. And we explored what it takes to be an Olympian. We looked at some Olympic and Paralympic athletes share their stories of diversity, courage and perseverance. But the cherry on the top was to meet and chat with an Olympian Champion! His name is Hugh Freund, a Paralympian sailor who represented the United States of America during the Paralympics Games in Brazil in 2016. Hugh Freund is a silver medallist!
This remarkable athlete talked to the kids about his personal journey becoming a Paralympian and he shared positive stories about his life and achievements. The children had the chance to ask him very interesting questions as well. Hugh Freund is a friend of Ms Sophie, and we would like to thank her for organizing this conference!
We wrapped up this unit with our very own Wacky Olympics. This schoolwide event was organized by Mr. Francis. The kids got the chance to work as a team in different physical activities mixed up with lots of fun. We had fun races, hula-hoop, burpees, cartwheels, and tennis challenges. We all had tons of fun! Catch some of the pictures on our school Facebook page!
I would like to thank all my students and their parents for a fantastic year. We have learnt, grown, matured, and changed together… I am extremely proud of all of my students and their achievements.…
have a fantastic summer and see you all around!
Time flies when you are having fun!
January 2021 is gone! We have been so busy learning, creating, constricting, discovering… that time seems to fly at the speed of light!
This term our project ‘Buildings’ has been an amazing adventure. We are busy making a booklet full of important information about famous buildings from around the world. Every week we study 2 buildings, and the children record important facts about each building and they also make sketches of them. The children were eager to share all this knowledge with our community, therefore every week the kids prepare a mini presentation and together we make a short video featured on seesaw. In addition to this, every other week the kids have the opportunity to show what they have learned with a short presentation in our school assembly. It is remarkable to see how the kids have developed their presentation and oral skills. I am super proud of all of them because with their effort and commitment they show an understanding of the value of communication.
If you are ready to take a tour around the world…take a look at the following YouTube links (unlisted) to see some of their short info videos!
https://youtu.be/nJ8iJVRI0_k Great Sphinx of Giza
https://youtu.be/FbKAOClGoz4 Eiffel Tower
https://youtu.be/xN_q5MylpeU Opera House Sydney
https://youtu.be/XZREKLG7EjY St Basil Cathedral
https://youtu.be/RDsva1Nii5c Angkor Wat
https://youtu.be/dRsYGVg5en0 Great Mosque of Djenne
https://youtu.be/L67pZ-j28sk Machu Pichu
https://youtu.be/7R7TBO50VqY Great Wall of China
https://youtu.be/UKZxRynrX-s Tower Bridge
As part of this unit, we also have learned about homes through time. In class they have created their own timeline representing some main eras and periods with remarkable constructions. We have also studied the different types of modern home constructions and created a vibrant display showing terrace houses. The class looked at different streets with terrace houses, they constructed their own facades and designed their own windows and doors…all on milk cartoons! We also reflected on the type of houses we live in: apartment, terrace house, semidetached house, detached house, bungalow…
One of the main components of our International Primary Curriculum (IPC) is the interaction and involvement of parents in the learning process of their children. This term we had two children sharing with us two amazing building projects. We could study building plans, pictures of building sites and we got to hear stories that we can relate with. Thank you very much Kasper and Caius for sharing this with us you really enriched our unit!
To develop our literacy skills this time around we read and explored a marvellous book called “The postman's palace”. As a team the children made a summary and identified the main parts of the story. Working at their own ability level and using their own words, the children rewrote the story. To illustrate the story the children created beautiful dioramas! Click on the following unlisted link for a short video about this writing project. https://youtu.be/yuo367XVxaA. Also every Friday we read and explore a poem related to our unit enquiry. We read it aloud together, we study the structure of the poem and we always make a fun activity around it! We love our Friday poetry session. Amazing things take place when we connect our unit of inquiry with our core subjects!
One of the many buildings we had the opportunity to study and explore was the St. Basil Cathedral in Moscow Russia. This flamboyant building immediately captured the attention of our class and they were mesmerized with the patterns, textures, and colours that this remarkable building has to offer. Following a drawing tutorial, the children created their own version of a section of the Cathedral. You can also admire their compositions on a short video. https://youtu.be/y5Zi6ieaCyE
We are always looking for ways to engage kids in being interested in what is going on around them and in the world. This term we are quizzing! General knowledge quizzes are a great way to nourish their inherent curiosity. Every month the kids receive a set of general knowledge questions to review and practise at home. During class we also get to examine these questions and we always end up having rich and fascinating discussions about the different topics! Every month we will quiz with a twist, playing snakes and ladders!
Ilan and Snehi are back in our classroom, and we are delighted to have our friends back, we missed you! This term we are also welcoming Matthew! Welcome (back) everybody!
Little by little all our students are improving their numeracy, literacy, and personal skills. Everyday they mature and become more self-reliant. It is a privilege to be a witness of all the progress and goals they achieve!
Have a wonderful winter break, enjoy your wonderful children, and recharge your batteries for our next term!
Welcome to our class blog!
It has been amazing to see all the children back in school. I feel very fortunate to be able to work and learn with an amazing group of children!
We started this school year exploring how we best learn and the different types of learning. (skills, knowledge and understanding). The children also understood how our brain works and the importance of having a growth mindset.
During these past weeks we have been working hard improving our literacy skills. Year one has been practising their handwriting. They are beginning to write sentences independently to tell a story and they have been doing lots of amazing reading! Yr two has been busy practising their writing skills with different types of texts, improving their reading skills, and studying different topics of grammar.
The class reads one on one with a teacher twice a week during our reading rotation sessions. During reading rotation, the kids learn how to work independently, and they are responsible for their tasks. Yr 1 students are gradually adjusting and getting used to our routines, good job Tiago, Rayaan, Elize and Laura.
Side to side with our complete numeracy curriculm, we love to explore patterns and relationships between numbers. We play games that ecourage critical and logical thinking and that helps them to improve their visual tracking and their spatial perception skills.
During our IPC unit ‘Sensational’ we were very busy learning about how our body works and also that like all living things we use our senses to experience the world around us.. We created science models using different materials to understand how our eyes, skin and ears work. The class explored different art techniques such as pastels, clay modelling, collages, 3-d structures and paint marbling. We are very proud of our models. We still have them on display around the school .
We also made a few experiments. One of them was to identify different scents. The other experiment was to differentiate between 4 main tastes (sour, sweet, salty and bitter). We also made an ear drum to visualize the sound waves. The class recorded their findings and observations to keep in their IPC book.
An Exit Point is the final step in every Project from the IPC. It is the culmination of all the activities involved in the project. With an ‘exit point’ we celebrate the knowledge, skills and understanding that took place during the project. Every day in school we encourage the children to be in charge of their learning. At a very early age this could be quite challenging, but little by little the children become aware of the learning process and start to reflect about it. The Exit Point is a great opportunity for this process to take place. For the exit point of our project SENSETIONAL the class prepared a presentation in our school assembly. Everybody prepared their part and as a class we made a power point presentation with pictures of their work to embellish our presentation! It was a job well done and we received lots of positive feedback from peers and teachers!
School life is full of challenges, learning activities and of course lots of fun. This term has been a very busy one, but at the same time very rewarding. We have shared so much, and we have also grown a lot!
Kasper, Vritika, Tiago and Fernando celebrated their birthday this term! Congratulations and thank you very much for the lovely treats!
I would like to wish you and your family a lovely autumn holiday. Please take care and enjoy your amazing children!
Welcome to our blog! It has been a while since we last shared what is going on in our class, and I am so proud to report that the learning in our classroom is remarkable. From Numeracy to Literacy and everything in between… our IPC project and our personal values. It’s amazing how much the class has matured and developed!
This week, we saw our fantastic project ‘People from the past” come to an end. As our exit point, we visited the Historium museum in Bruges. The children immersed themselves into the medieval times. They could picture how everything looked like in the XV century.
Every week, the class records on a special book facts and interesting remarks about an important person from the past that we are studying. This is an activity the class looks forward and enjoys doing because it has become a very familiar task, and at the same time it is very personal. This is a great way to get the children engaged in their writing!
We studied the life and legacy of “The wise man of Ghent” Jacob Van Artevelde. The class understood how this famous person from the past helped to shape the grand and beautiful city of Ghent. Reflecting over what he achieved during his life, we tried to imagine being in his position and what we could do to help our city grow and develop. To get inspired the class dressed up as a medieval citizen. They posed as the statue of Jacob Van Artevelde and created a map mind full of ideas. Gathering these ideas, the class wrote a few sentences imagining what they could do if they were Jacob Van Artevelde. Year Two learned about the difference between will and would and used would in simple sentences, they also learned about ellipsis. Year One learned about nouns and used them in simple sentences.
Moving on to important scientists form the past, we also studied the legacy of Marie Curie. After reading about her life we created some artwork to honour her remarkable research and achievements. We created our own forearm and hand x-rays using Paint and Chalk.
We all agree that we all should be treated equally, isn’t it? Well…sadly, this isn’t always the case. But there are some amazing people who have done incredible things to fight for equality. One such person was a civil rights activist called Rosa Parks. We studied her life as well, and the children were really inspired by her courage and determination. As an art activity we created a very special portrait of Rosa Parks. We used 7 different skin colours to create a ‘mosaic/puzzle’ portrait of Rosa Parks to illustrate that we are different and yet we are the same. Then they created their own quotes about diversity and equality and how we all should have the same rights, just like Rosa Parks believed it should be. To accompany these lovely thoughts, we learned a new art technique called marbling.
In the arts, we studied the life and work of one of the most famous painters in the world, Gustav Klimt. Lower Primary students wanted to experiment and create a masterpiece just like Gustav Klimt. We studied his paintings and discovered how he loved to create patterns and swirls, how he loved to use gold and vibrant colours. The tree of life is one of his most renowned paintings. It is complex and fascinating. The children fell in love with it and decided to reproduce a section of it. We used a projector to trace the outline and then we divided the painting in 11 parts. Everybody was responsible for one eleventh of the painting. Looking at every detail, colour and shape, the children did their best effort to create a masterpiece that even the maestro Gustav Klimt would have been proud of.
To close our unit, we learned about three explorers. Christopher Columbus, who was the first person (recorded) to arrive to the American continent. Afanasy Nikitin, a Russian merchant who ventured finding new routes to India and wrote a very famous Journal of his travels. And we also studied about Valentina Tereshkova, who was the first woman to go to space and to spend more than 3 days orbiting Earth in her space capsule.
The children reflected about the characteristics and values that these three exceptional characters have in common. They are Brave, Risk takers, Curious, and Resilient
The class chose to sketch a map of the journey of either Columbus or Nikitin. It was a challenging task because they had to look at a real map and then sketch it more less on scale. Everybody did a remarkable job, they always showed resilience.
One of the many things we learned when we studied the explorers is how they oriented themselves during the journeys. We learned about the compass and how it works.
We learned about the earth’s magnetic field and we created our own compass using a needle, a magnet, a container, and water.
Year two took on a geometry challenge, and created their own compass rose…. They used a protractor, compass, and ruler.
Year one, also created their own compass rose using fancy patterned paper and cutting and pasting shapes (triangles and circles)
We also learned about the cardinal points (N E S W) and that the sun sets in the West and rises in the East!
We were so moved and inspired by Valentina Tereshkova and her achievements. We could only wonder how marvellous it must be to be in space and to look at the earth from so high up!
Inspired by this, we created an abstract painting on canvas. The class learned about the art technique “pouring”. It was so much fun (take a look at the pictures).
The cherry on the top was our assembly. The class had the opportunity to share what they have learned with the whole school! I am so proud of all my class, they not only wrote the ideas they wanted to share, they also memorized everything and delivered an amazing presentation. Bravo!
Carnival day was such fun! In the class we had male and female football players, Snow White, a cosmic dragon, two ninjas, one samurai, Tutankhamun, Valentina Tereshkova, a mouse, and Moana.
This is all for now, please enjoy your break! Have lots of fun, keep practising your reading and take good care. See you in March!
