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.