Our learning journey

Self-Management Skills- How are yours?

Looking forward to Exhibition we have decided to focus on our transdisciplinary skills and check out how they are important for life outside of the classroom. Students interviewed their parents about how they use self management skills in their jobs and in life. Here are the responses:

Seisen International School

So that's the parents' view. Now, what about the students? Check out this video that was kindly put together by Saya (our photographer for the week) and her assistants. 

Math Sharing Tuesday- Be there or be SQUARED!

Surrender the ME for the WE

The grade 6's have started preparing for the exhibition. Collaboration, team work , cooperation play a crucial role in determining a group's success.

And so we all had a bit of fun in class while honing our collaborative spirit.

Task:
The students had to create a pyramid of plastic cups.

The challenge was to pick up the cups with strings and a rubber band. A noisy class it was.


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After the activity, we spoke of the the impediments that came along the way and strategies we used and to overcome them.

Sudiksha's reflection...

During the activity based on working as a group,I noticed how many problems would occur.I also noticed what did work and didn't work.While we were doing our activity,my group (Farah,Zarah,Isabella and I) we faced many problems such as not following the rules a few times by mistake, constantly dropping the cups and would sometimes not be working in a cooperative way which lead to a lot of stress and anger.But i did notice that our group was doing well on following each others instructions.The way we solved our conflicts was to just move on, and by that, I mean that we would just forget about it and not spend too much time discussing it  as it will waste our time and wouldn't be necessary.

Irene's reflection...

In this activity, we were tested on our all kinds of skills, but mostly our group working skills. The goal of the activity was to create a pyramid out of cups, with each person holding an end of the yarn that was tied to a rubber band. You couldn't touch the cups with your hand, or even hold the other end of the yarn to make it stable, which was very challenging for our group. Also, another thing that was challenging for our group was that when we were so close to completing the pyramid, somebody was so excited that they lost control of their mind, and let loose of the yarn that they were holding. What went wrong in during this activity is that everybody was irritated when someone made a mistake. The biggest thing I learned from this, is that not only my group work, and communication skills, but also that by being irritated at someone is not going to make a difference for your group. You are just wasting time, while others are doing well and not arguing.

Ideally, the students will have to use the vocabulary related to the skill sets.

I have highlighted this for them as shown below:

Hopefully, the students will be able to retrieve their learning today because:

1) they had fun and will remember the feeling associated with the learning.

2) they can go back to their reflections and recall how they resolved conflicts and dealt with stress and irritation during group work.

Happy New Year- WE CAN'T WAIT FOR EXHIBITION!

It was uplifting to hear many students excitement and enthusiasm for the Exhibition on return from the holidays. "I wish we could start Exhibition now!" and "I have so many issues that I might like to explore" are samples of the comments coming out during class discussions this week.

As we look forward to Exhibition 2017 the students are continuing to focus on developing the transdisciplinary skills they will need. This week particular attention was given to Communication Skills of presentation, both in their books and in speaking to an audience.

Here is a link to the rubric students used to peer assess their presentations. It is the same one that will be used for the Exhibition presentations later in the year.     Oral Presentation Assessment Rubric

Students have also been revisiting their passion collectors this week and updating them with topics that may be of interest for exhibition. Here are some of the issues students are considering and why: