Today is Wacky Wednesday!

Wacky Wednesday at ISPP

When I got to school,

It was so cool,

ABC was not in order,

Shoes were around the border,

The tables had human legs,

Everyone was eating eggs,

The stairs switched sides,

Teachers were following guides,

Books could talk,

Folders could walk,

Miss Carolyn was upside down,

King was wearing a crown,

I looked at the sky,

Miss Mom could fly,

Reach was a pop star,

Who lived in a chocolate bar,

Nikor had super powers,

And made everyone take showers,

Babies were crawling up the walls,

I needed to make some calls!

By: King, Nikor and Reach

G4/5 Autobiographies

Over the last few weeks, G4/5 students have been reading and writing biographies and autobiographies. During EAL, we looked at the structure of these texts and then worked in groups to create rubrics for How to write a good autobiography. 

We thought carefully about what to put in each section of our rubric.

After creating time-lines for our own lives, we used these to write our autobiographies. We then evaluated our own writing using our rubrics, before swapping with a partner to see if their evaluations matched ours. The results were very interesting and we had some great discussions about the structure, accuracy and content of our writing.

We didn't always agree with each other's assessments!

G2/3 Punctuation Kung-Fu!

G2/3 students have been learning about punctuation and practicing adding punctuation to familiar texts. This week, we used an extract from a book called The Clay Dog, which we have all read and enjoyed during EAL lessons. 

We added punctuation to extracts which had had the punctuation removed - using Kung-Fu moves! We took it in turns to read the text, pausing to allow our partners to perform the moves when necessary. It was great fun - and when it was time to add the punctuation in writing, we did REALLY well. 

Speech marks!

Full stops!

G2/3 Perform 'The Tenses' Song

This week, G2/3 students have been learning about the tenses. Together, they brainstormed performance ideas and decided how they were going to perform 'The Tenses' song. During the following lesson, they had their final practice and then performed to Miss Tatiana's groups.

The children showed a great deal of confidence and were willing to take risks by performing in front of their peers. They did extremely well and the audiences listened carefully and enjoyed the performances.

If you would like to listen to and watch the original song, then please follow this link: The Tenses Song

G2/3 students watching their own performances. 

Unfortunately, the videos of the performances are too large to include in this blog post, but feel free to drop me an email and I can share them with you through Gmail.

G4/5 Nelson Mandela

In their unit of inquiry, G4/5 students have been learning about famous world leaders. During EAL, they researched Nelson Mandela, created time-lines for his life and then presented their information orally to their peers.

Having discussed the language needs for biographies, they are now creating a rubric for how to write a good biography, which they will use next week to evaluate their own biographies. 

Fun with Acrostic Poems

This week, Grade 2/3 had such good fun writing acrostic poems about different forms of artistic expression, that the Grade 4/5 students decided to write some as well! 

We used the following website to plan and write our group poems, before working independently, using different words linked to our UOI: 
 http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/acrostic/

G2/3's impressions of painting

G2/3 think about the work of n artist

G4/5 on what it takes to be a good school principal

More thoughts from G4/5 on how to be a good school principal

Grade 2/3 Habitats and information booklets

This week we wrote our own information booklets using our ideas from our inquiries about animals and their habitats and our knowledge of informative writing. We looked at the structure of information texts and non-fiction books to help us structure our booklets and decided to include contents pages and glossaries to help our readers.

We included diagrams to make the information clear and interesting to look at.

We used coloured writing for the words that we explained in our glossaries.

We also had some fun creating habitats online at the following website: http://mrnussbaum.com/habitats/

G4/5 Energy Research

This week we have researched different kinds of non-renewable energy, looking at where they come from and how they work. We highlighted the strategies we used to identify the meanings of new words while we worked.

We have also found out about some of the positive and negative aspects of our chosen type of energy.

Grade 2/3 The Becrog.

We have discovered a new species!

The Becrog lives in the wetlands of Canada

Here is some information we wrote about it:

Grade 4/5 Focus on Energy

The Central Idea for the current Grade 4/5 Unit of Inquiry is: Energy exists in different forms. Students have looked at a variety of things, but they particularly enjoyed finding out about the different types of energy and making posters to explain them:

 Here are some of their posters:

Grade 2/3 Book Reviews

Grade 2/3 Full Support students are working hard to create two useful folders for the EAL classroom. One of these folders contains reviews for books they have enjoyed and one contains reviews for books they have not enjoyed.

Concentrating hard.

Starting the reviews.

Grade 4/5 Giving Directions

Today, Grade 4/5 Full Support students took a break from ISA testing to practise prepositions of place and giving directions. First, they took it in turns to hide an object somewhere in the classroom and then they gave each other directions to find it.

Next, they were given a map, which was used to give directions from one place to another. Key words covered included forwards, backwards, straight on, left, right, in between, under, on, next to, opposite, inside and outside.

Grade 4/5 Maths vocab

We have been focusing on expanding our Maths vocabulary, looking at the four number operations and also 2D and 3D shape names and properties.

This matching game helps students to learn which words go with which number operation. The black and white version is much harder, but we are getting pretty good at it now.  

Grade 2/3 Healthy Living

As part of their Healthy Living Unit, Grade 2/3 students researched the topic: People eat too much junk food today. They then prepared informative posters for display around school and arguments for and against the topic for a debate.

The debate was very exciting and both teams did a really good job of arguing their points persuasively and responding to what others had said sensibly.

Grade 2/3's also enjoyed researching and creating persuasive leaflets about using water responsibly as part of this unit.

Grade 2/3 story plans

Grade 2/3 have been learning about the narrative genre and planning, writing and performing stories. Here are two students briefly reading through their story plans.

Grade 4/5 perform their own stories

This week, Grade 4/5 read an extract from a story called The Owl Who was Afraid of the Dark and then finished the story off themselves. After checking and editing their work, they filmed themselves reading their stories whilst working on adding expression. Here are two of them: