Sunday, November 15, 2015

Independent Writing Project: Paper Puppet Play


During writing choice time, Kate and Pierre chose to work together to create a paper puppet show!




They wrote the story together, thinking about the characters, setting, problem, and solution. 

Kate is reading the story and Pierre is moving the characters. 

Enjoy the show!

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Designing our Learning Space


For the past few weeks, we have been learning about learning!

This week, we decided to work together to design our learning space!




We started off discussing how the furniture in our classroom should be laid out. 

We thought about how the classroom layout would affect our learning. 

In the picture above, Pierre is drawing a classroom map to share his idea. 




We used our social skills and communication skills to make decisions together. 

Here, Skye and Minori are discussing that if we have extra desks and chairs, 

we could move to a different spot if we get distracted by our classmates so that we can stay in the green zone. 




Together, we made an exciting decision that we will no longer have set seats! 

From now on, we will each choose a spot where we think we can learn in a safe and focused way! 

This means that some of us will work on the floor or couch, while others will choose to sit or stand. 




Once we made our plan, we all got to work!




We cooperated to give our classroom a makeover!




If you are around, come and check out our new and improved classroom learning space!




Thanks for reading!

Tuesday, November 3, 2015

What is "learning"?



Howdy everyone!

Recently, we started off our second unit of inquiry with the central idea, 
"Understanding our place in the world develops our understanding of our personal journeys."




We started off the unit with a challenge to build the tallest standing structure! 

We only had 20 straws, one sheet of paper, and some tape. 

We worked together in small groups to come up with our best ideas!




Afterwards, we reflected on the process of how we worked to acheive our goals. 




On Tuesday, we brainstormed what we think it means to learn something. 




Here are the ideas we came up with.  




We then became detectives and explored our school to take pictures of things that help us learn! 

Here, Gabriel is taking pictures of things that helps children learn in early years!




After our exploration in our school, we transferred what we found out onto these yellow cards. 




We used our social skills to make sure we didn't write down the same ideas many times. 

We cooperated in our groups and made decisions together. 










In the next few lessons, we will be looking closely into what we have found out. 

We will be working together to see if the information on the cards can be sorted into different categories. 

If you see a second grader, ask us, "What are some things that help you learn?"




Till next time!