27th September

9th September

Yet again, the children had fun and learnt a lot at the same time!

In English, the groups were given samples of a few poems. They were asked to find the unique Methodology used by the poets. There was a discussion and 'Figures of Speech' were introduced. We spoke about simile, metaphor, personification, alliteration and onomatopoeia.

In math, we had a very interesting kinesthetic activity. We learnt coordinates (positive and negative). The grid was represented using coloured ribbons and stuck on the tiles of the school corridor. The children were split into two teams. A memeber from one team was given a coordinate pair. He/she was asked to give instructions to the member from the other team member to move to that particular point. For example, if the student got (-4, -5), he/she would say "Move four blocks to the left; move five blocks down". Then, the member was asked to say what point he/she was at.

We also then went to the class and plotted some coordinates on paper.

In UOI, the Music teacher came to the class as Guest speaker. He spoke about how he started playing music instruments and why he likes it much. He played some music to show different feelings. The students would close their eyes and feel the music to realize it's impact. It helped the students to understand how people express themselves through music and how it makes them unique.

8th September

It was a fun filled day for Grade 5!

In UOI, we had presentations by the expert groups. They represented different feelings through performances and the rest of the class had to guess the feelings.

Then, we had a guest speech Mr. Pradeep (Art teacher). He spoke about how he expresses himself through Visual Art. The students asked him questions which helped them understand the central idea and the lines of inquiry.

In Math, we played a 'bidding game'. The concept was comparison on integers. The students were asked to write a least value within a given range. The student wrote the least unrepeated number won a prize.

We also did an activity for the concept of the number line on the active board and watched a PowerPoint presentation for ordering of integers.

7th September

The students completed their differentiated English activity on parts of speech today.

The concept of 'integers' was introduced with the help of the 'feelings ribbon' that they made. The ribbon resembled a number line and it was easy for the students to understand. They also learnt how to compare negative and positive numbers. This was a classic example of conceptual integration of Math and Unit of Inquiry.

In UOI, the expert groups were asked to choose a feeling and prepare a presentation using their Art form. The presentations will happen tomorrow.

6th September

The children were back from sweet and short break.. they shared their experiences over the weekend during the first hour.

In math, We did scratched our heads by doing some mental math. The strategies that we dealt with were Breaking up numbers according to place value, doubling and halving and multiples of ten.

The English class was differentiated today based on their prior knowledge. The topic we gained knowledge about was 'parts of speech'. One group received a short story in which they were asked to highlight different parts of speech. The children who were a little familiar with this did the activity independently and the rest got help from the teacher.

Another group got a list of words belonging to different parts of speech and were asked to create a story out of these words. The last group was asked to find new words from a dictionary/thesaurus and then create a story out of these.

Above are a few pictures and videos from the day...

3rd September

The children received their math assessment sheets today.

We also completed our discussion on the movie "Fame". Children filled up the reflection sheets given to them.

Hence onwards, all the home work that will be given on Fridays will be due on Tuesdays. The reason being that some children have abundant time over the week end to complete their work and others are involved in various week end engagements. This will also give a chance to all the children to do any 'catch up' work on Mondays.

Let me know what you think...

1st September

The students today complete their math Summative assessment on Place value and Number systems. They also wrote brief reflections - it was great to know that the students liked the idea of using new ways to assess rather than the conventional ones! They also found it 'Challenging' and 'fun'!

In English, the students worked on completing their 'Thank you' cards. They did the entire writing process for the note inside the card (Planning, Drafting, Editing and Publishing). As it is the beginning of the year, the students are writing many drafts so that they can clearly know what and how to improve in. Each draft is checked by me and I tell the student what corrections (content modification, paragraphing, grammar, spellings, structure, etc.) to be made for the next draft.

In UOI, the students were given a graphic organizer to reflect on the movie "Fame". As few students had missed the movie, snippets from the movie were played again and discussed.

Happy Janmashtmi to you all!