AIS - Grade 1: July 2020

Dear Parents

What a term it has been! I would like to thank all of you for your compassion, patience, understanding and support throughout what has been a very different Term 1. Apart from getting students settled into their daily routine and immersed in their academic work, we have achieved quite a lot over the past few weeks. Here is a summary of June in review:

Art

We worked on our visual literacy by learning about the seven elements of art. Every week, we studied a particular element by using a driving question at the beginning of the inquiry as the frame for the lesson. Each element had a space for us to read, write and create visual images of the definition.We also examined examples from various artists and created a composition of our own to demonstrate our understanding of the element.

Mathematics

We developed and applied number sense to solve a variety of real life problems . We also worked on word problems and data collection. We collected data to create concrete graphs and pictographs. We had a great time collecting, representing and interpreting data. We also learned about probability by predicting the outcome of planned experiments. We described the likelihood that everyday events will occur, using mathematical language such as impossible, unlikely, less likely, more likely, certain. We continued to work on mental strategies to find sums and differences of given numbers. We also used story maps to create our own math problems and solve open-ended math problems.

Daiya and Taisei did some simple experiments to help their peers have a better understanding of the concept of probability.

English

We defined and identified the elements of a story. We created story maps as teams and then worked independently to write our own narrative stories based on the completed maps. We then worked with a partner to edit and revise the narratives. We also worked on guided reading through inquiry and collaboration. We enjoyed formulating quiz questions in collaborative groups, brainstorming the main idea of a given text and answering quiz questions belonging to another group. We also reviewed and practiced basic spelling rules on a daily basis.

Seina and Haruka worked together to analyze a story to determine its elements.

Snapshots of our daily guided reading lessons

We used our word wall to write and spell grade-appropriate words.

Unit of Inquiry

Central Idea: Science and technology changes societies and the environment

We worked very hard on our summative assessment.We used several sources to collect information and various methods to demonstrate our understanding of the central idea. We were very happy to host a mini exhibition at the end of the term to show what we have learned in the unit.