Final week

Our last week as the 'Uniters' class focused on reflection and preparing to celebrate our learning for the entire school year at the Year End Show, School Awards, and Graduation Ceremony.

The grade five and six students wait with patience for younger classes to rehearse their stage entrances and exits.

You can't hide on stage. Our rehearsals were a unique opportunity to learn and practice stage presence and other performing arts and presentation skills.

One of my favorite types of photographs is the 'preshow', taken moments before a performing group takes the stage.

The students' show, being totally student created and collaborative, was a very authentic product of their understandings of 'How we organize ourselves'. It was our summative assessment task for the unit, and a valuable artifact of learning across disciplines and elements of the PYP.

This has been a rewarding school year for all of us. I truly appreciate the opportunity to learn and grow together and wish everyone the best for their future endeavors.

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Preparing a musical

This week, we have been applying our new understandings of how people organize themselves to collaborate with the Grade 4 students to produce a mini musical.

With Suheda serving as Producer and Miray as Musical Director, the students have written a script, organized music, and choreographed original dances.

They have enjoyed working together and practicing their social and communication skills.

I was very impressed the first time I saw the 'dance battle' and recorded the time lapse video above to give you a preview of what to look forward to at the Yearend Performance.

This week has also been the final chance for a few activities, such as visiting the Harajuku Public Library. We will have more of these closure activities next week, particularly the Yearend Performance, Graduation, and Student Led Conferences. I look forward to seeing you there!

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Inspired & Independent

Activities this week were designed to inspire the students to pursue their inquiries with independence. While we maintain rigorous routines for language and mathematics skills building, we also use plenty of time for research, making, sharing, and reflecting.

Sule used some of her independent inquiry time to refine her sewing and doll making skills. She was very shy at first to discuss her project, but we were all excited to hear that she was making toys for her brother!

After school on Wednesday, Bushra and Suheda were joined by Busra from Kindergarten for some dance practice! Fantastic to see our 'Uniters' enjoying learning and setting a positive example for younger students.

We took our first trip to the public library. After exploring the 'pop up' books, Miray also visited the third floor to research about animals.

Suheda works on a blog post about human rights with her notebook on her lap. 

One of my goals for this year is to see the students actively following inquiry models, use their notebooks to gather ideas and research, then transfer their learning into digital format for editing and publishing.

Another addition this week is our ACTION organizer. This chart helps us to think about and share our actions in different ways, and use a model to turn our ideas into meaningful action that has an impact on the world around us.

Of course, we have been utilizing our ActivBoard extensively, especially in Mathematics. There is something special about a two meter long virtual ruler!

It seems my efforts to get the class inspired to pursue their interests are working! On Friday, they decided to build a small stage in the front of the class out of cardboard and PET bottles. Of course, they need to ask for donations of plastic bottles, so they are conducting a marketing campaign with posters and planning to make an announcement in the school assembly on Tuesday morning.

Next week, we look forward to hosting the school's Peace Crane Club. The Uniters will read aloud Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes and teach younger students how to fold origami cranes to exchange with other schools around the world in the Peace Crane Project.

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