Term 3, Week 6 Learning

The children are continuing to explore how we can use stories to communicate important messages about the environment for our future. Last week students began writing information texts about the environment, writing narratives told through the eyes of animals, and stories with persuasive ideas about the environment. They have been creating habitats for animals that live in the desert, ocean and rainforest. They have continued on these projects this week.

To extend the children’s understanding of information texts, we invited guest speaker Dr. Geoff Brown, a wildlife scientist, to share his work with the children. He spoke to the children about the how and why he writes Information Reports about endangered animals. This ties in with our Inquiry of how stories are used to build communities and communicate important knowledge and supports the children’s inherent interest in animals – in particular, what action can we take to save endangered animals.

As part of BookWeek celebration this week, the Year 5/6 neighbourhood invited the year 1s into the 5/6 neighbourhood to share in some reading. The 5/6 students shared the books they love and the year 1s brought their favourite books to show the 5/6 children. After sharing their favourite books we provided the children with pencils and paper and asked them to work together to write a story. It was a really successful collaboration and one that we are all keen to re-visit in the future.

To support their understanding of mathematical concepts, the children have been learning about the features of a clock; collecting data from a survey and using this information to create a graph. They have also been learning about mapping by drawing and building maps of familiar places and writing details of directions and locations of their maps.

This week the children had their 3rd session of Dance Movement & Mindfulness. In case you missed reading about the benefits of these classes in an earlier post, here is the information again. Along with some photos to enjoy.

Dance Movement offers expressive movement experiences that engage body, mind and emotion.

The dance section of the class is vibrant and energetic; teaching the children the name of their body parts through tapping each body part to the rhythm of the music. There are a couple of things at work here. It locates the child in their body and along with naming the body part has been shown to build body-spatial awareness. Spatial awareness has been associated with the successful uptake of maths. Rhythm, on the other hand, has been used by indigenous cultures since ancient times, to create co-hesion in groups. The rhythmic beating of a drum or a track of music promotes group cohesion as all members fall into a similar dyanmic of movement.

The movement section refers to expressive movement, self-initiated by the child. Music is played and a theme of “winter” is given. The children are invited to explore this theme through the use of their body and feelings in response to the music. This is termed, “Authentic Movement” and it expresses personality and reveals the inner experience of a child.

The mindfulness section leads to the ability to meditate and has two main purposes:

it builds inward stillness so that a child is able to remain physically at repose – calm, centred, alert and aware. Over time it gently extends a child’s ability to remain focused on a single point of attention. The ability to hold focus for extended periods of time is associated with the most effective uptake of learning.

Enjoy the weekend! We look forward to Week 7 with the children.

The Year 1 Team.