Sharing our Learning

On Friday morning, Grade Two shared their learning with the school when they led the assembly. They identified how we express 'creativity' at ISPP. We looked at how we used the creative cycle to guide our inquiry during our Urban Environments unit, and rewrote the lyrics to a song we shared with the school. Here are some of the videos we shared during our assembly. Well done team! We were super proud of you...you were superstars! Well done for being such risk takers.

Here is the creativity video about our Public Art.
Public Art 

Here were the lyrics our class rewrote to the song 'Built This city'. The video was played while we sang along. It shows the cities grade Two built at the end of our unit.

The students were fabulous at assembly this week. They all did a wonderful job presenting, singing, and being on stage throughout the assembly.

Say you don't care much, for this city or this space

Say you don't care what goes in this kind of place

Knee deep in the rubbish, stinking out the air

Too much pollution! Everyone should care!

You’re cutting down the trees again, don't you know we’ll pay the toll

Don’t you remember...

We built this city, we built this city with one small goal

Built this city, we built this city with one small goal

Built this city, we built this city with one small go- al

Time to make a difference, Time to make a change

Cities of the future...that can be arranged!

Use the public transport, get rid of the streets

Make more parks and cycleways, exercise your feet!

Wind turbines on the hills will spin,

Gotta stop burning coal

Don't you remember

We built this city, we built this city with one small goal

Built this city, we built this city with one small goal

Built this city, we built this city with one small goal!

Let’s make our city a better place to live!

The Big Dig

In class we have been learning what archaeologists do. Today we had a 'Big Dig' - a simulated archaeological dig in our school sandpit. The area was sectioned off and students carefully and systematically searched for artifacts. We had a great time and uncovered 20 of the 21 hidden items. Tomorrow we will look closer at the objects and try to establish their possible uses. Children are being encouraged to make connections and ask the question "What does it tell me about Cambodia's Past?'

Sharing our Home Learning

We have enjoyed hearing all about student's personal artifacts. They explained their chosen items and read their descriptions to the class over the past two days. Tomorrow we will finish displaying these in a creative way and will comment on how artifacts can give us an insight into the way people live.

First Week Back

It was wonderful to have everybody back at school after an exciting Christmas break. We were thrilled to welcome Signe to our class. She joins us from Sweden and has settled in fast and made many new friends. She is a creative, enthusiastic learner who has already impressed us with her gymnastics moves and ability to adapt. Check out that smile!


When we arrived back after the break, we were thrilled to see our public art installations displayed around our school. We have been working on how we could have an impact in our community and children decided on creating a variety of artworks to brighten our environment. Their individual process can be viewed on their student pages on the right tab of this blog. Here are some of our students sharing their work. Thanks Ms Dana and Ms Alice for guiding this journey! You can see these displayed around the Elementary School.

Last week we had a busy week wrapping up our unit of inquiry on Urban Environments. On the last day we reviewed our learning an looked at how our knowledge had developed. We build a city again and this time their was a clear improvement in sustainability. Roads were replaced with cycle ways, walk ways and public transportation. There were wind turbines and solar panels as clean energy sources and many green spaces including rooftop gardens! Well done team. You even made the ISPP news!



In reading we continued to build our reading fluency by reading a variety of texts and responding to them in different ways. In this video, children are paraphrasing what they learned in a small part of text.

Catch Up

SPORTS DAY FUN

Here are some photos from the last week of semester. We had a fantastic time at our Grade 2-5 sports day. You couldn't wipe the smiles of the kids faces all day! Thanks to the PE team for organising this.

In our unit of inquiry we made comparisons between model cities like Copenhagen and Phnom Penh...identifying the similarities and differences. We continued to investigate in order to find answers to our inquiry questions. We used the creative cycle to assist us with this.

We had fun using creating our own Google Doodles in art class to end our unit.

We had a musical performance in a Public Art space. We had planned to perform on the Amphitheatre but were rained out...so our concert took place in the outdoor gym.

Updated Pictures

Ms Theary took these last week! We are a handsome bunch!

The Week in Review

This week we have been busy getting familiar with concepts and ideas related to our new unit of inquiry.

We had a busy day on Monday with our second extra art session. These extra classes will continue until the Christmas break and are an opportunity for students to have extra time to work on the collaborative community projects they started during this integrated unit of inquiry. Here are some images of the students working through the creative cycle in Monday's class. Ask your child to tell you what they have been working on!

Here's what we have been up to in the classroom this week;

UOI: We have been exploring issues in our urban environment and recording our wonderings about them. Ms Rachel the librarian came an helped us use a question scaffold to help us think deeper about what we could inquire into. During lab this week, we explored Google Earth - examining the features of our urban environment and reflecting on how it has changed.

Literacy: We have been working this week on journal entries to build our writing fluency. We have also been exploring the Words Their Way spelling programme...working in groups based on our specific learning needs. Here we are presenting some of our word sorts and justifying our ideas.

 

Mathematics: We have been reviewing how to solve sums and word problems involving addition and subtraction. Children have been sharing the strategies they are using to assist them to deal with 2 digit by 2 digit problems. They are using a variety of methods to demonstrate their understanding. We also reviewed our understanding of compact and expanded numerals, and greater than and less than earlier this week. On Thursday we used our community development time to participate in some fun mathematical activities related to our unit. These included measurements of the body, and using coordinates to find items on a treasure map and in the game battleships. 

Upcoming Events:

We have some exciting events coming up during the next two weeks. Please make a note of these dates:

Thursday 8th December: ISPP'S got Talent. 1.30pm - 2.25 in the Black Box Theatre. For more details please refer to the Weekly Bulletin Announcements

Tuesday December 13th - School Closed for 3 way conferences. Please be on time for your appointment. Your child attends this conference with you. Letters were sent home last week.

Thursday December 15th - G2-5 Sports Day - 07.50 start on field

Urban Environments

The week started with parents and caregivers coming in to look at our learning from our 'How We Express Ourselves' unit of inquiry. It was wonderful to see students proudly sharing their learning journeys. They shared their inspiration boards, finished artworks and artists statements, and their book creator journals.

I will add the book creator journals they made to their individual blog pages during the next few days. These were student's personal journals in which they created and reflected on artistic forms they experienced throughout the unit of inquiry. Here is a student example;


This week we began our new unit of inquiry 'Sharing the Planet.'

This is an inquiry into;

Rights and responsibilities in the struggle to share finite resources with other people and with other living things; communities and the relationships within and between them; access to equal opportunities; peace and conflict resolution.

The central idea for our unit is;
By developing an awareness of an urban environment, we can understand and modify the way we live within it.

We spend several sessions tuning into what we already understood about urban environments. Some of the activities we did this week included;

• Numbered heads together (a game to get groups discussing and using important vocabulary related to the unit). Students answered questions and came up with a group response that one group member had to feed back to the class.

• We completed an online survey to give us an overview of the Grade 2 student's prior knowledge.

• We built a city...demonstrating our initial understanding of how urban environments are organised. We then visited the other grade 2 cities and commented on ideas for change. We then had an opportunity to 'modify' our city based on the suggestions from our peers and our class reflections.

• We went to key spots within our school to view what is outside our gates! We recorded what we saw, what we thought, and what we wondered about the urban environment around us.
• We had a 'spiderweb' discussion reflecting our understanding of the city.
• 

MATHEMATICS
During mathematics we continued exploring our understanding of measurement. In class we have been looking at units of measurement for length, and have been solving problems using what we have learned. On Friday we took our learning outside. With our grade 5 buddies we made paper planes and recorded the distances we threw them in centimetres and metres using tape measures and trundle wheels.

WRITING
We worked on writing character descriptions about a special person or friend. Being able to describe a character in detail will help us when we write our narratives over the next few weeks.

Inspiration

This week more children shared their passions and creativity with us. We were presented with two incredible 'nature houses', a guitar and singing recital, a very well planned puppet show (with handmade puppets and a complete script), lamps made from recycled materials...and many more interesting examples of home learning.                  

Tekoah took his learning one step further and came prepared with materials and instruction for the whole class to create their own origami king cobra. It was wonderful to witness him confidently 'teaching' his peers what he had learned.

 READING
Reading is not a stand alone subject. We engage in a variety of reading activities across the school day and integrate it a closely as possible to our current unit of inquiry. We predict, engage with, and respond to a wide range of text on a daily basis. Here are some pictures of us in action during some of this week's reading engagements.

We have been looking at how to write an 'artists' statement' about our work. This week we experimented with torn tissue paper and gave our work a title, described the art medium, and explained our inspirations.

We have also been working on completing our inspiration boards. These demonstrate what motivates and inspires us. They are filled with pictures and written ideas about things we love and why. We will draw on these ideas when creating our own piece of art for our summative assessment.

  There are a diverse range of 'themes' evident, including;

• Nature
• Travel
• Spiders
• Football
• Flowers
• Animals
• Dinosaurs
• Culture
• The Moon
• Building
• Cars

These boards also identify how we learners felt they could translate their concept into their own artwork. Most have decided on a way to present their ideas to an audience. Some of the artforms they have chosen include;

• Clay sculpture
• Acting / playwriting
• Painting
• Pointillism
• Collage
• Mosaic
• Craft
• Origami
• Puppetry
• Paper Mache
• Pixel Art

Creativity

Last week we explored an important aspect of our unit of inquiry - 'Creativity'. We looked at this through many lenses and across all areas of the curriculum.

We began the week with a visit to the elementary school art exhibit 'Colour'. While we were there we reflected on the forms of art we saw, and interpreted them using our personal perspectives. We wrote responses to a favourite artwork.

During our Lab visit this week, Mr Matt helped us learn how we can turn ordinary images into art using photo editing. We explored how to take an image and make it more emotive using pic monkey. We will follow this up next week.

In mathematics, we looked at the 'Telling time' aspect of measurement, and reviewed our understanding of reading analogue and digital time.


In literacy, we continued with poetry. We learned what personification is and added ideas from this into our poets toolbox.

We also continued with guided reading and Readers Theatre. We are learning to read aloud with expression and present our plays to an audience in an animated way.

Children loved the opportunity to explore different art-forms during grade two's Community Development session this week. They chose from;

• pointillism
• origami
• puppetry
• nature art

Puppetry

Nature Art

Origami

 Pointillism

For home learning, children have been choosing from a choice board of tasks centered around the concepts;

• Imagination
• Creation

And our attitudes of;

• Appreciation
• Creativity
• Confidence

I really enjoyed seeing what the children came up with this week. They loved sharing their ideas with the class and via email. Well done team!

To end the week we connected with our grade 5 buddies. We completed an activity looking at how how perspectives differ, then go stuck into building stuff using the construction equipment.