Secondary Drama Puppet

As part of our How the World Works unit we had the opportunity to visit with the secondary drama department who made a larger than life puppet. Mrs. Buckman was kind enough to give us a hands on chance to see how the puppet was made, how it is operated, and even try it out ourselves.  The highlight for me was watching the five secondary students needed to operate the puppet make it dance and move as our kids followed along. 

Halloween Math

This is the first of several much overdue updates.  Here the students gut pumpkins and make groups of ten from the seeds.  The students then counted by ten to see how many seeds each pumpkin had.  Three different pumpkins were named, opened, organized, and counted. 

Balance in Drama

Kseniya and Kade balance on one leg.

Izabella mastering the art of balance.

Margaret help Minchan walk across the mat on his hands.

Anthony jumps
and spins.

Koshiro shows off his
balancing skills by standing
on his head. 

Evie jumps and spins.

How The World Works

Dear First Grade Families,

This week we began a new unit.  It falls under the theme of How the World Works and focuses on physical science exploration through design with trial and error.  The students will play with designing different objects in order to gain a better understanding of balance, movement, and force. 

Central idea:  Forces can be discovered and applied through the investigation of different designs.

Inquiry into:

• How our designs move and balance
• Changing conditions for how things move and balance
• The relationship between cause and effect

Profile focus: balanced, thinker, inquirer

Attitude focus: curiosity and commitment

Key concept focus: causation and change

Related concept: design

 

Skills focus: Acquisition of knowledge by learning through experience Application of knowledge by making use of previously acquired knowledge in practical and new ways

Science expectations: Explore the way objects and phenomena function, identify parts of a system, and gain an understanding of cause and effect relationships Communicate ideas or provide explanations using scientific experience Use age appropriate scientific method, making inferences, testing hypothesis and making conclusions about how things move, balance, and speed up or slow down.

As the related concept in this unit is design, we will discuss how changing the design changes how the toy moves or balances. We will build on experiences with balance to understand the profile of being a balanced person.

Single Subject classes aligning with this unit:

Drama: We are looking at the different ways we can use our bodies in space and exploring what our bodies are capable of doing. Balancing, tumbling, rolling, spinning, turning, falling, tossing and catching.
We have a professional gymnast who trains kids for the Uzbekistan national team and Ulugbek, a yoga instructor, will come in after the break to work with the kids on balance and co-ordination using their bodies. I'm going to teach them skills using some basic circus props (rings, balls, feathers, plates, and ribbons)

Art class: Students will make movable toys.  The students will demonstrate understanding of forces by explaining what causes their toy to move (push or pull).  Students will create various types of movable puppets, a ribbon/wood folding toy, paper airplanes, and rockets. We will look at mobile sculptures and practice making a balanced mobile.

Uzbek studies: the students will use unit vocabulary to discuss the flying of Uzbek kites, including the forces that move the kites through the air.  They will design their own kites and make them out of traditional Uzbek materials, making discoveries and changes to improve their designs.

In the library we will be reading If you… series by Laura Numeroff and discussing cause and effect. We are hoping that students will be able to write their own version of the story and share the cause and effect with their peers.

PE: First graders are currently working on a football unit.  Students will demonstrate understanding of the way the forces of push and pull move the ball in multiple activities and games.

Technology: During this unit, students will play a highly educational and brain developing game – Contraptions.  Students will then build their own contraptions and save.  Later they will play and solve one another’s contraptions.

Special Events:

Assembly – We will be presenting an assembly to the elementary with the theme of curiosity, next Wednesday, October 12 at 2:40 in the MPR.

Secondary – We will visit with the secondary drama department to learn about the design and function of the life-sized puppets they’re making.

This unit runs 6 weeks, finishing up in mid-November.

Many thanks for your support, 

The Grade 1 Team                                                     

Who We Are field trip

Grade 1 went around the school and neighborhood to celebrate the end of our first unit of inquiry. We have been thinking about how people form opinions of us based on what we do and say. We went out into the neighborhood and practiced greeting people in Uzbek. When we came back to the class students wrote journals about how they thought the people we greeted felt about us.

Koshiro and Saya stand
outside a local store.

Mr. Buckman stands with a group of students from 1W
outside a local store.

A group of students eagerly practice
their greeting with people they met
outside of school.

Margaret, Sokina, and Taegyeoung
practice greeting people on the streets
outside of school.

30th day of school

Anthony make a number patter
to 30 counting by 4.

Evie Shows off her number
pattern to 30.

Students get to work trying to think of different number
patterns they can make to get to 30.

Kopshiro and Zin make a
number pattern to 30 counting
by ones.

Maragret works on a number pattern that is counting by ones.

To celebrate the 30th day of school students made different growing patterns to 30. Students could choose what intervals their patterns would grow by.

First Steps Reading Suggestions

TIS uses First Steps  as the basis for our elementary reading program.  The two images below are helpful suggestions from First Steps related to how to support your reader and activities that you can do with your reader before, during, and after reading.

The value of the books that come home this year will be increased if support is given at home. If reading is made into a treat instead of a chore it is more likely to become something that the child will relish and want to do. The document that these clippings comes from is much larger and I would be happy to send it to anyone who wants further information.