KG Performance

All grade levels will have the opportunity to perform during tomorrow's assembly. KG will be performing a dance learned in Performing Arts class. Due to the number of students performing and the fact that all elementary students will be attending the assembly, there will not be enough room for parents. The assembly will therefore be live streamed so that you can watch your child perform. You can access this link through the AISD website. The assembly begins at 7:55 am.

Please help your child dress in clothing that will allow for jumping and moving (no long dresses as they might trip). Other than this nothing special is required.

Down By The Bay...

As part of our morning meeting every day the 'president' chooses one song to sing, and one of our favorites is "Down By The Bay" by Raffi (click here to listen). We use our creative minds to come up with new rhymes to sing, and we recently created our own KG-M book of rhymes. Look at all the ideas we came up with, and check out that amazing writing! (Hint: If you  hover over the slideshow and click on the image of the speech bubble at the bottom you can see the captions, which tell you what each picture says.)

Creative Curtain

We met with our fifth grade buddies last week and designed a creative door 'curtain'. This was the kindergarteners idea, and with the help of our buddies we were able to make it a reality!

Creativity Unit of Inquiry

We have been busy the past couple weeks being creative in our new unit of inquiry. Our classroom has been full of creating, visualizing and story building. One of these activities involved a mystery bag which contained a set number of objects. We had to work together in pairs to use all of the items (including the bag) to build a creation. After finishing with our creations we talked about what makes something more creative than others and are begin to expand our thinking by coming up with novel ideas. Check out the creative things we made!

Richard & Mayalou

Eli & Gonzague

Alina & Liam

Connor & Kai

Stephanie & Masrur

Shayna & Armaan

Carla & Zahraan

Pavitra & Ruth

Leo & Zumar

Final Plant Activities

We formally concluded our plant unit a couple weeks ago, however, I have yet to post about a few of our final activities, so I'm doing that now.

We really delved into understanding the various things plants provide and their necessity in our lives. To making our thinking visible we did an altered version of a thinking routine called "Generate, Sort, Connect, Elaborate". After generating a list of items plants provide, students worked in pairs to sort the items based on their necessity in our lives. They worked with such pictures as oxygen, chairs, food, happiness and clothing. Students put those items which are necessary in order to survive in the circle. Just outside the circle were items that were pretty important, but not necessary, and along the exterior were pictures of items that are nice to have but not as important. Upon finishing, students examined each others' papers and then sat down to discuss them in more detail. They questioned one another on the placement of certain pictures and discussed why they did or did not belong in a certain area. The discussion was quite deep and is a good example of the capability of young learners when challenged and encouraged to share their thinking. View the clip below to see a snapshot of this discussion.

PlantGenerateSortConnectElaborate from AIS Dhaka on Vimeo.

Another activity that showed our thinking was an art project in which we use only paper and glue to show our understanding of how humans and animals use plants in similar ways. View the slideshow below to see all the connections we made.

UN Day

AISD celebrated UN Day on Wednesday, which is always an amazing day at the school. Students truly exemplified what it means to be internationally-minded citizens through their comments made during the keynote address. I hope some of you were able to come witness and partake in this celebration.

Please see the photos below and feel free to save any of them to your computer. (You can do so by simply clicking on the slideshow, which will take you to a Picassa Web album.)

UN Day: Tomorrow

Reminder: AISD will celebrate UN Day tomorrow, Wednesday, November 26 @ 8:30 am. Please help your child wear traditional clothing of his/her home country for the parade. We would love for you to join our celebration by meeting us out on the big field. All parents are asked to use the field gate. Please do not come to the classrooms as this causes congestion. See you tomorrow!

PTA Book Fair

Tomorrow morning (Monday, November 24) our class will attend the PTA Book Fair. Your child will have an opportunity to purchase both new and used books. Please feel free to come in and join your child in choosing his books; meet us at 8:00 in the Community Hall. If you are unable to come but want your child to be allowed to purchase books, please send money to school in an envelope labeled with your child's name. Please see more information in this week's Shamachar.

Gulshan Society Lake Park Field Trip

We had a wonderful field trip to Gulshan Society Lake Park yesterday and put all of our learning into practice as we saw and discussed plant parts and what plants provide for other living things. We were amazed to see roots above ground, leaves larger than our bodies, and stems covered in rings. We also saw both people and animals using plants in various ways.

While walking around the park, we made notes on clipboards so we could take our data back to our classrooms and explore it as scientists. What a wonderful opportunity for first-hand learning!

Upcoming Events

Field Trip:
We will be taking a field trip this Tuesday, November 18 to the Gulshan Society Lake Park to explore plants for our unit of inquiry. We will be leaving the school at 10:30 and returning around noon. Please see the permission slip your child is bringing home today. Also, if you are interested in joining us and helping chaperone, we would love to have you! Please send me an email.

Individual Photos:
This Thursday, November 20 our class will take individual student photos. If you would like your child to wear anything special, please dress her accordingly that morning. You will receive a copy of the photos in the near future, which you can then order if you choose.

Bloomball Mall:
This Thursday, November 20 the fifth grade classes will be putting on 'Bloomball Mall' to practice the business skills they have acquired during their unit of inquiry. We will attend the event for a short time during which your child will have the opportunity to purchase items of all sorts (i.e. treats, small toys, etc.)  Your child of course is not required to purchase anything, however, if you would like him to be able to, please send in no more than 500 taka and we will help to ensure the money is managed accordingly. Please send small bills rather than just one 500 taka note.

UN Day:
AISD will celebrate UN Day on Wednesday, November 26 at 8:15 am. It is a wonderful celebration and all parents are invited to attend. Please meet us out on the big field rather than come to classroom or to the hallways as it gets quite congested. I promise to take lots of photos to share.

Measuring Pumpkins

How can pumpkins promote math practice? We explored this by measuring pumpkins in a variety of ways. We compared height, circumference and weight before then opening the pumpkins and scooping out the seeds. Many of us found the goo to be "scary" so we had to be risk takers and get our hands dirty. This brought us to a great discussion about how scientists often get dirty in their work!

We followed this by carving our pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns, which was a new activity for many of our teammates. Thank goodness we had Shilpa's (Pavitra's mom) help as we worked!  

 Reminder: We are always looking for volunteers in our classroom. Not only is it a great opportunity for you as parents to get a first-hand glance into our classroom, but it's fun! Please consider volunteering during our learning centers (11:25 - 12:15). Email me if you are interested, and thanks for considering!

What's Been Happening in KG-M?!

We have been busy the past couple weeks with all sorts of learning. Check out some of our favorite activities:

We have been busy being botanists and studying plants in detail. We explored various items and tried to determine what linked them together.

After further discussion and learning we revisited these items and tried separating them into two groups: items made from plants and items not made from plants. This made us wonder about how plants can be manipulated. Many of us thought that only items of green color are made from plants!

This led to further investigation of various materials made from plants and how they are produced. We watched videos and read books to get us thinking.

Through this exploration one of us made the claim "Everything is made from plants". We are now exploring this idea and finding support for as well as questioning the claim. We will inquire further into this claim to eventual prove or disprove it.

We have also been botanists as we have planted our own small garden, and we have even planted personal bean plants.

Our garden is growing like crazy! Stay tuned for pictures.

We also have been developing as mathematicians. We are studying measurement and are doing all sorts of measuring activities to help us hone our skills.

We were very excited to have a guest speaker visit our class! Mr. Galaty is a professional mathematician and we were very interested in hearing him talk about seeing math in the world. He encouraged us to develop our math skills by practicing and noticing math around us.

Finally, we had the opportunity to 'adopt' one of the SAISA boys volleyball teams, and were very excited to cheer on the TAISM Eagles. Our cheering even helped them win a close game!

See even more pictures of the tournament by clicking here.

 

Reminders

• Kindergarten Literacy Night is this Tuesday, October 28 beginning at 7:00 pm in the multi-purpose room. Please join us as we share AISD's approach to teaching literacy and share information about how you can help your child at home.
  
• Student-Involved Conferences are next week. Please sign up for a time if you haven't already done so. See the instructional note sent home in both soft and card copy formats.
  
• Please check our class schedule with your child each morning to ensure he/she comes to school with the appropriate materials for that day (i.e. library bag, P.E. attire, etc.).

Plants Vocabulary

Dear KG Families,

Our students are beginning a new unit about plants!  From a language perspective, it is important to build understanding in a student’s 1^st language as well as their 2^nd language.  Please have a look at some of the words your child might see and hear in the next Unit of Inquiry.  I encourage you to discuss a few of these words each night with your child in your family’s strongest language (Bangla, Korean, English, etc.).  Your child’s first language is very important because it helps your child to build concepts!

We are looking forward to exploring this new Unit of Inquiry: Sharing the Planet!

Sincerely,

The Kindergarten Team

Conferences

Please review the note sent home Sunday regarding conferences and take the time to sign up for a time online. Follow the guidelines in the note when setting up conferences with single subject teachers, but be aware that Ms. Betty Chang has shorter availability as the only elementary grade she teaches is kindergarten. If you would like to meet with her she will be available Thursday, November 6 from 10 am to 12 pm or via appointment. You can reach her at bchang@aisdhaka.org with further questions.

Writers Celebration

We are authors!! We published our books last week and then shared them with our buddies during our first writers celebration. Our buddies brought us each special congratulatory cards to tell us how proud they were of us and were amazed at how much we've grown in just this short time since the beginning of school. We followed this sharing time with cookies and a game called Freeze Dance.

We can't wait to bring our books home and share with you! Right now they are being prepared to put into our electronic portfolios, but it shouldn't be long before they can come home. When they are brought home, please take the time to discuss the writing process and time we as authors have put into our stories. Notice the growth over each page and congratulate me on a job well done!

We are now focusing on predicable pattern books in class and have read a multitude of pattern books. We have examined the various approaches used by the authors and know different types, such as:

• See-Saw patterns (AB)
• Page patterns
• Growing patterns
• Shrinking patterns
• Circle stories

Watch us explore the see-saw pattern in the book It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles G. Shaw:

See-Saw Pattern Books: KG-M from AIS Dhaka on Vimeo.

We will begin mapping out our own pattern books tomorrow by doing the first stage of the writing process: thinking. The writing of books takes time and care, so please ask me throughout the week how my first pattern book is coming along!

**Please see the previous couple postings on our blog. They did not come through via Feedburner due to picture sizing issues -- meaning you may not have received an email update if you normally do.

New Unit of Inquiry

Today we practiced being botanists. We used our knowledge of our five senses to go outside and look closely at plants. We recorded what we felt, smelled, and saw. We noticed lots of things that we have never noticed before and realize the importance of stopping and taking the time to look closely at things. We now know that this is what scientists do!

 

We will continue our new unit of inquiry on plants throughout the next weeks and will look at plants at an even deeper level and see how they and other living things have an interdependant relationship. Stay tuned to see more postings on what we are learning in class so that you can extend this learning to your home.