Birthday Fun

Happy birthday to 

Rhimon and Rhea!

Rhea celebrated her birthday with her twin brother, Krish from Grade 4Z, with yummy cakes brought in by her mother. 

Rhimon gets to go home on his birthday! 

What fun!

Find your Gender Partner

Gender game – Find your partner.

Each student was given a gender noun. They had to find the opposite of the gender noun given to them but they had to do so without talking. The students had fun trying to look for the correct gender noun and it was a great activity to begin the class with. The students then wrote the gender pairs in their notebooks. I used some difficult or uncommon words for this activity as I thought it might help the kids remember the gender nouns better than if they simply write them and learn. I think it worked as the students were able to remember the uncommon ones better after the activity. 

Fire Drill

Safety of the students is out utmost priority and to ensure we don't slack in any area, a mock emergency evacuation drill or fire drill was conducted in school today. The importance of evacuation drills can be the matter between life and death . All the students managed to move out of the building in 2.5 minutes and with the tallying and headcount time included, the whole process took about 4.5 minutes. It is always good to be ready for emergencies and we intend in making our students aware of what to do in such situations through more mock and surprise drills in future. 

Photo credit- Abhimanyu Das Gupta

A picture is worth a thousand words.

'A picture is worth a thousand words.'

This week, the students attempted a picture composition in which they used the strategy of 5Ws and 1H to write a paragraph based on a picture given to them. I picked up pictures from the newspaper and magazines and stuck them it in their notebooks. They then had to write a paragraph which gives the reader information about the picture and also what the picture may be portraying. I think the activity was great fun and the students enjoyed themselves by giving wings to their thoughts.

Will upload a few samples tomorrow. 

TD theme

The students were asked to match their ideas after watching the video' Earth Song' with the strands of the TD theme. The students also had to inter- connect the ideas themselves and give reasons for the connections they made. They then presented the work. It was quite exceptional to see the students making sensible connections with valid reasons for doing so. 

Earth Song

That amazing moment when a video touches your heart and moves your soul. 

Today saw one such moment in Grade 4 after the viewing of the video' Earth Song' -a song by late Michael Jackson. The students were shown this video as a provocation to the Transdisciplinary Theme- Sharing the Planet. The room was silent and the expressions on the students' faces varied from sadness, worry, shock to amazement. The aftermath of this reaction was a fruitful discussion in class about the theme and the video. The students related the video to the TD Theme by coming up with ideas and  topics one could find common in both. 

                               SHARING THE PLANET                                     
An inquiry into rights and responsibilities in the struggle to share finite resources with other people and with other living things; communities and the relationships within and between them; access to equal opportunities; peace and conflict resolutions.

Please do watch the video sometime   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqeADZgjtpY

Gender nouns activity

The students were each given four coloured cards - Green for feminine, red for masculine, yellow for neuter and black for common. I read out the name of a gender noun and asked the students one by one to raise the correct coloured card to indicate the gender of the noun. Meanwhile the other students acted as referees to check if the colour held was correct or wrong. Then we did the activity with the class as a whole. It was great fun. The students pretended to be traffic policemen/women and the gender nouns I read out were people on bicycles. The traffic policemen/women had to hold up the correct colour t let it pass. What imagination!

Health Fest

Health Fest

The excitement was palpable and one could see the enthusiasm with which the students had prepared for the health fest. The displays were put up, brochures were tucked into the pockets, games were laid out and the props set. The students made little badges and book marks to hand out to the people visiting after they answered questions or played games. The students were very confident and carried out the presentations efficiently. They displayed all the attributes and attitudes of the IB Learner Profile through the his fest. To name a few, they were great communicators when they interacted with each other and everyone who visited the fest, they were terrific inquirers when they inquired more into the factors of health and came up with games and quizzes for the visitors, they were knowledgeable throughout the process and they cooperated with each other.  Many people commented on it being a 'Mini PYP Exhibition'. I am sure after this, next year's PYP Exhibition would be a piece of cake for our kids. I am really proud of the extra work the he students put in and the meticulous planning they had put in to make this fest a successful one. 

This is what Mr. Abhimanyu Dasgupta, the PYP Coordinator, had to say:

"It was wonderful to interact with the students of Grade 4 this morning. The students had obviously done their research thoroughly which was revealed when I quizzed them. There was a lot of excitement about their displays which again communicated the great ownership students feel towards their learning. The displays were well organised with the typical PYP energy and buzz!

It was also heartening to see how well these students are getting prepared for the PYP Exhibition. The confidence levels were amazing, and the fact that almost each student was pulling in the visitors to show off their work was exemplary!

As a team, you all have not only ensured high quality learning, but also inculcated the right attitudes and attributes to the same. A big round of applause for all of you and of course the students! :D"

:) :) :) Three cheers for Grade 4- Hip Hip Hurray!!! :) :) :)

Here are the photographs