TERM 2 - HOW WE ORGANIZE OURSELVES

 

How We Organize Ourselves is our next unit for Term 2. 

The transdisciplinary theme of our inquiry focuses on the interconnectedness of human-made systems and communities. 

Central idea: Communities function more effectively when rules and routines are shared with all members. 

The lines of inquiry that define the scope of investigations into our central idea are the following:

Function - Different systems or organizations that we use personally.

Causation -  Various communities we belong to.

Responsibility - Purpose of rules and routines.

We started our unit with some provocations. I spread out a couple of things on the floor, and they notice the change in the classroom. One student reacted right away by trying to clean up and putting them back where they belonged. After clearing up the mess, the students then organized their backpacks. 

Attached here is the video, so please have a look.

The students are organizing their backpacks.

The next thing we did was to explore and learn about the community helpers. 

Students are channeling their artistic side. We create future PAINTERS. 

Our future news reporters. Two of our students went to Pre-K and Kindergarten classes to report what happened in our classroom during a windy day. 

Yuno pretending to be a doctor. 

In the video below, Akemi is pretending to be a teacher.

We get to play dress up for a week where students come to school wearing any community helper's costume. 

We also invited the parents to come and talk about their job.

Andre's Daddy is a pitcher in one of the baseball teams here in Osaka.

We capped our unit with a field trip at Kids Plaza, where students had so much fun.

TERM 1 - WHO WE ARE

 Welcome to the new school year!

Meet our new Preschoolers batch 2022-2023.

We start our school year with our first unit of inquiry, "Who We Are." In this unit, we focused on building students' vocabulary and confidence where they would be comfortable speaking in introducing themselves and their families. 

In one of the activities we did, the students identified and named each family member. They talked about similarities and differences. Also, they made a comparison and identified their likes and dislikes. Lastly, they arrange the events in order. 

How am I changing? We made a connection between people and plants. 

We measured and compared each other's heights. 

Same and Different

TERM 3 - How Do We Express Ourselves

This is our last unit and last term for this school year.  Our unit for this term is "How We Express Ourselves." Our Central Idea is "Art expresses emotion" and the lines of inquiry are: 

• Form - Various media to create art.
• Causation - How art makes us feel.

In this unit, we tried to make connections between emotions and artworks. We use different tools to create artwork and students recognize that certain colors carry certain emotions for different people. 

As part of our summative assessment, the students did a play called "The Gingerbread Man" where they use body language to communicate and convey understanding and danced to the song "Butter" by BTS where they deliver emotions.  

TERM 2 - How The World Works

Our next unit for term 2 was How The World Works. Our central idea was about "The cycles of Earth and People influence each other. In this unit, we talked about the natural cycles of Day and Night, Seasons, and Weather Patterns. We also talked about how people's actions are connected to Earth's natural cycles and our responsibility for taking care of life and the environment.

The lines of inquiry are: 

• Change - Natural Cycles (Day - Night, Seasons, Weather Patterns)
• Connection - How people's actions are connected to Earth cycles
• Responsibility - Our responsibility for taking care of life and the environment

The goal for this unit is for students to be able to talk about activities that occur during the day and night. To compare activities that occur during seasons, to make connections between the weather and how to protect himself or herself. To identify simple patterns in daily and seasonal cycles. To observe the features of the local environment that are affected by daily and seasonal cycles. To be aware of the role of people in the environment. And lastly, to show responsibility when caring for living things and the environment. 

We incited students' curiosity by spreading out different photos that tell us about day and night. After talking about the photos, the students sorted them out accordingly. As we go further, the students started asking questions like "Why does it rain?", "Where do clouds come from?", "Why do leaves change color?"

Why does it rain?

Where do clouds come from?

WATER CYCLE

To evaluate students' learning, we asked questions and let them talk about the water cycle.