ICT class with new laptops

We are pleased to inform you that JIES has purchased twelve new laptops for both in-class and ICT usage in the multimedia room and changed the decoration of multimedia centre. All the students are very excited to work on their task via their own laptop account in our new multimedia room setting. Our aim of having laptops is to foster the technology access within students` inquiry. Any of the individual students or whole class can book and use laptops when they need it. I am pleased to inform you that all the students have done a great job to utilize their laptops until now. I believe that it will  help them to become very strong 21st century learners who are capable of demonstrating high level of computer skills and social media citizenship through blogging, posting, etc.

Week 12

Dear parents,

This has been an eventful week.
Students started by sharing their book reviews on Monday:

For math, we have been doing addition over 10. We have been sequencing and sorting numbers to ten and learning different ways to add numbers together.

Students learned a lot about working together to solve problems!

In inquiry, students have been learning about different art from around the world. This week we have been focusing on aboriginal art.

The students did a great job!

We also finished up our lap-books about traditions from the country we chose.

Finally, on Friday we had Pika-Pika! This is when Jinsho and JIES get together to clean up the community! Today we were picking up leaves from around the school.

Next week is our class field trip. Please make sure you return the forms ASAP for confirmation.

Kind regards,
Sara Matthews

Making a calendar

Grade 1 has been learning Japanese Celebrations by making their own calendar.
Each lesson they are learning different Japanese holidays.
They can also enjoy making some Origami for the holidays, too!
Next week, we will start practicing New Year's song"Oshougatsu" .

Week 11

Grade one parents,

Inquiry

This week we have been making our "traditions" lap books! Students chose a country they were interested in learning about and we have been researching the traditions from there.

We have been learning about different traditions around the world, and finding out if our countries are taking part in that tradition. We are also looking at traditional music, art, food, and clothing.

Arts

This week for art we started making our own traditional Aborigine pot. This was inspired by Beyza's inquiry into Australian traditions. 

In music, we have been looking at Japanese traditional songs and being introduced to musical bells.

Math

In math class, we have been working on counting to 20 and back to zero again. Our teamwork is really paying off! We are able to sort the numbers in 2 minutes by working together!

Language

Students have been learning how to do book reviews. Students will be doing this for homework every week and will be sharing them on Monday mornings.

Week 10

Dear grade one parents,

Thank you for coming in for a fantastic parents day!
I hope you all enjoyed working with your children and experiencing their day.

Here are some pictures from the rest of the week:

Reading time

Language (word hunt and book reviews)

Math time

Inquiry (Kandinsky style family tree)

Have a great weekend.

Kind regards,

Sara Matthews

Japanese Traditional Stories

We started reading "Omusubi Kororin".

They like reading this story because the rhythm, "Omusubi kororin sutton ton, Koro Koro Kororin sutton ton" is very catchy and they like to say this phrase.

We will keep reading some Japanese traditional stories during this unit,

so please let me know if you have any stories that you want students to read during the Japanese class!

Term 1 Week 9

Grade 1 parents,

I hope you enjoyed your Autumn break!
This week we have started our new unit. Below is the following details about what we will be covering:

WHERE WE ARE IN PLACE AND TIME

Family traditions and history are transferred and shared.

For this unit, we will be revising family history through family trees. We will be focusing mostly on story-telling, as we look at folktales and fairytales from around the world and how they have changed. We will be inquiring into different traditional food, dance, song, and clothing.

In math, we are taking a quick break from subtraction and addition to look at position. Students have been counting their Friday marathon scores to create a scoreboard.

Here are some pictures from our inquiry introduction this week:

 See you on Monday for Parents Day,

Sara Matthews