In the PYP, it is believed that education must be extend beyond the intellectual to include not only socially responsible attitudes but also thoughtful action. An expectation of the PYP is that successful inquiry will lead to responsible action, initiated by the students as a result of the learning process. Actions extend the student's learning, or often have a wider social impact. Actions show our little learners what they can do with their newfound knowledge to change the world. My role as the teacher, is to encourage action and to create opportunities for action. This is done through asking questions: What could you/ we do? And making the questions specific for the unit of inquiry that we are are studying at that moment. There, Student initiated action should be seen as a voluntary demonstration of a student's empowerment in the context of the expectations laid down in the programme. The action can be a service in the wider sense of the word: service to fellow students, and to the larger community, both in and outside the school. During this unit of inquiry on weather, we learned about the power of the sun and solar energy. We learned about how some communities rely on solar ovens to cook their food and boil water. As a result of this discussion, and questions like “what can we do,” the students decided that we can use our solar oven (and our electric ovens at home) to bake cupcakes, and sell our cupcakes in order to buy solar ovens for communities that need them. Today we sold our cupcakes and made over 415,000 AR that's enough to buy 8 solar ovens! Thank you so much to all of the families who made contributions. I am so proud of our little ones for taking on this task to help the needy in local communities across Madagascar. I have asked the ADES to send photos of people enjoying their ovens as they are delivered, so that students can see the impact of thier action. This morning, we learned how to make butter-cream frosting to ice our cupcakes that we made in the solar oven. We made pink icing, and used sprinkles and chocolate chips to decorate them before selling. After selling all of our delicious cupcakes, we had to count the money we earned. We began by sorting the different notes, and then using our skip counting skills to count by 2s, 5s, and 10s. There is no such thing as a day without math in this class! After counting our money, our hearts were so full from being able to help others. We talked about all of the wonderful qualities that each one of us has. We then defined what a compliment is. Next, we went to our own desks to start writing on our own Compli-Mats. First stop, compliment yourself. We talked about how important loving yourself is. So, we asked our children to write something about themselves that they really like. This gave us a quick assessment to see that they understand compliments before they began. Next, we went to each other's desks, providing compliments to everyone in the class. Like one big valentine. Teaching our primary students about compliments is highly important in our classroom. Sometimes it seems easier to point out what we don't ilke...But, we have found that we have to purposefully teach our first graders how to see the good in one another by pointing out what they do like. After that, students sat with a partner and read all of their compliments. This gave me all the feels <3. Read through your child's compliments with them at home tonight, asking them which is their favourite and why. Finally, we began to talk about our own hearts, and what they are full of. We brainstormed things and people we love, and talked about what is important to us. Students cut out a great big heart, and began to draw and label things that their heart is full of. We will finish this task tomorrow. Can you feel the love today?
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March 2017
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