Week 3 Term 3 Knowledge

Grade 2 had a fun time listening to and illustrating the story “Sebastian's Roller Skates” by Caitlin Wachs. These are the blue shining and simmering abandoned skates that Sebastian found on a park bench. 

Sebastian was a risk-taker and tried them on. At first, he fell and eventually he stood up. Shy Sebastian built up his self-confidence each day as he practiced more.

One day, a lady's dog got away from her and Sebastian grabbed the leash. 

They went for quite a spin and this event helped Sebastian become an excellent skater.

 Sebastian bought a new pair of skates and he put the old skates back where he had found them. He got the courage to ask a girl to go skating with him. A little knowledge goes a long way!

Week 2 Term 3 Knowledgeable

Pre-Kindergarten read the story ''Ten Grouchy Groundhogs." It is about groundhogs being cooped up in their hole and they wanted to get out. They develop a bad mood and become angry.

One goes out because he says  the den is too small.

Another groundhog goes out because she wants to take a bath.

Another goes because dancing makes her dizzy.

The 4th goes out because the den is too noisy.

The next groundhog goes out because it is tired of tumbling.

After that, a groundhog stated that she wanted out because of being a rock star. 

This groundhog has a toothache and wants out to see the dentist!

This one wants out because powder makes her sneeze. 

This groundhog wants out because it is spring.

The lonely groundhog wonders where his friends are and goes out too!

All the groundhogs see their shadows and are afraid. Then, they go back home. This story reminds us of our present day situation. We should be content with what we have at home. 

Week 1 Term 3 Knowledgeable

In our online educational program on Seesaw, Grade 2 listened to the book entitled "The Last Stop on Market Street." The book is about a boy taking a bus ride and seeing beauty in just ordinary things. Here is a scene from the story done by one of our students.

Week 12 Term 2 Knowledge

Our Learner Profile is knowledgeable. That means that the children know about many things and remember what they have learnt. Art is an interesting subject to think about in terms of knowledge and development. This castle is from one of our 1st Grade students. 

Week 11 Term 2 Knowledge

Our Learner Profile is knowledge. The children shared their research about the COVID-19 Pandemic that is going on and they analyzed the above picture. 

Week 10 Term 2 Inquiry

We inquired into simple machines. This compound machine is called a pencil sharpener and we broke it down into parts. 

Week 9 Term 2 Inquirer

We have been inquiring into words. In our online school, some grades have been studying about idioms. This was supposed to be the idiom for our Morning Meeting this week. The term "you really get my goat" comes from America. It means that a person says or does something that bothers another person. Goats, dogs and cats used to be put with race horses to calm them down. When the animals were removed then the horses got really mad. That is where the term comes from. We, as teachers, encourage the students to say nice things to each other. 

Term 2 Week 8 Inquiry

During our morning meeting, everyone inquired into nail polish and healthy practices. We talked about the fact that some of our girls have been wearing fingernail polish to school. 

We have a handbook and this product is against our school rules.

We found out that most polishes contain formaldehyde which preserves frogs like a mummy. Formaldehyde is a poison and can cause cancer. We decided that it is best to leave the polish at home. 

Term 2 Week 7 Inquirer

Lots of people shared during our Tuesday Morning Meeting. This presentation was about reflecting on music.

These girls took action and talked about how much money they had collected for the Australian bush fire victims and restoration.

Week 6 Term 2 Inquirer

We did an inquiry into germs (as of sort). In order to combat germs, the Librarian has decided to do a 45 second ultra violet scan on the covers of books in a light box. This is standard practice for most Japanese public libraries. 

Week 5 Term 2 Inquiry

The little ones and I have been inquiring into crayons. 

We read a story entitled "The Day the Crayons Came Home." It is about a boy named Duncan and he lost his crayons in various places. The crayons are writing postcards to Duncan about coming to get them. This crayon was nursed back to health by a paperclip after being sat on. 

The teachers have new mugs. Thank you, administrators! One of our Teacher's Aide suggested that we put the SIS logo on library bags to transport books home safely. 

The effect would look something like this (minus the cup). 

Thanks to PTA bags, on a small scale, Pre-K has been doing their on art on the outside of their bags. One of the parents adhered a plastic bag inside the cloth bag so that the library book wouldn't get wet. 

Term 2 Week 4 Inquirers

 

We would again like to thank all those people  for donating books! We will take an idea from 

this 3-D Chinese/English alphabet book to make our Library Rules. 

Term 2 Week 3 PYP Inquirers

We sought to find hidden objects in a Disney "Frozen" book. 

During Library recess, Grade 2 students are drawing pictures of some of our Learner Profiles. 

Term 2 Week 2 Learner Profile.

Just to remind you, our Learner Profile is inquirer. These girls are planning to share their inquiry during our next assembly.  They partially planned their activity in the library.

Week 1 Term 2 Learner Profile

We are now focusing on "inquiry" for our PYP Learner Profile. We listened to the story "How I Learned Geography" in our morning meeting. Can you imagine if your father brought back a rolled up map instead of a baguette (loaf of bread) to your starving family. Well, that's what happened in this story. At first, the child was angry at his parent. After a while, however, the child could forget about his hunger and imagine he was eating different foods from around the world. The map made him forget about his problems and focus on geography. 

Week 15 Term 1 Learner Profile

Congratulations to a 4th Grade student who found a hidden book that contained 20 Knowledgeable cards in it. The student found the book in an obscure place only 10 minutes after looking for it! By the way, the book was located in the Japanese teacher's bookshelf! The caring girl will share the cards with her friends so that they have a chance to win a book in a drawing at our Tuesday Morning Meeting. 

Week 14 Term 1 Learner Profile

In our Morning Assembly, we talked about being knowledgeable. A quote was shared from one of the founders of Coca Cola. He said, "You'll be amazed what you can accomplish if you don't worry who gets the credit." There is another philosophy that says, "Give credit where credit is due." As a provocation, we showed the children how to make a bow out of a Coke label. We don't know who invented the bottle bow but we do know who made our script. 

So, we honored 3 of our winter performance script writers. 

Week 13 Term 1 Learner Profile

During our Morning Assembly, we talked about a rich man (a long time ago) who had a monopoly on stores in New York. Just about everybody bought goods from his stores. 

Since the people supported him by purchasing things from his store, he wanted to do something good for them.

So, the rich man went to the top of the highest building  at that time (called the Empire State Building)  and started throwing thousands of dollars out of a window. At first, the people saw only a dollar or two trickle down. Then, cabs stopped, people got out of their cars, and others went crazy trying to grab the money. After a while, chaos reigned, traffic jams formed, riots were going underway, accidents happened, people were late for their work and shouts and screams were heard. The city was a confusing mess but no dollars were left on the sidewalks or the streets. 

In order to have a more organized event, the rich man decided to have ticker tape and confetti parades instead. Eventually, balloons, marching bands, and clowns were added all for the pleasure of people hunched on front-row-seats on the curb. 

We encouraged the children to use their knowledge of their community to help others in their inquiries. 

Week 12 Term 1 Learner Profile

Grade 5 took action and shared about Human Rights Day. The United Nations has declared that children basically have 30 rights. These rights include everything from being born free and equal to no slavery or torture. 

We have embarked on a new Learner Profile called knowledgeable. The younger children were read a story entitled "A Day in the Park." In this story, we did some math and went over vocabulary such as total, altogether and went away. We also counted to 100. The librarian and children had a conversation about not talking to or accepting candy from strangers. 

Upper Elementary learned about a lady who was discriminated against  with Jim Crow Laws in the USA because she was black.

She; however, got a job working for NASA and she worked her way up to become a supervisor.

Her  name was Dorothy Vaughan and she could calculate math so fast that she was known as a human computer. 

We figured the moral of this story is to do your math homework and girls are equal to boys.