Grade 1's Take the Lead

Children at present are the leaders of the future, thus giving them the opportunity to put that into action is necessary.

At Student-led Conferences, the students take the lead and confidently showcase their work and walk their parents through their learning journey by making them experience the learning engagements that they had experienced in the class.

It started with planning the areas and stations together with the teachers. Designing the activities in the stations. Recalling the learning experiences.  Creating materials that are needed. Practising well for a smooth flow. Finally, leading the conference.

"I liked the idea that we are doing work of showing our parents about our learning, and at the same time, we are having fun because we did it in a game way."

" I am happy that I can use different languages to explain our work."

"My parents also liked the experiments!"

Endangered Species

 From last week, Grade 1s have been exploring endangered species.  Each child chose one endangered species that interest him/her and researched about the following: habitat, diet and reason why it is endangered.

They also made a poster of their chosen species and emphasized in the poster human actions that led to their critical situation now.

They plan to share their poster to the school community by putting them up for display where everyone can see them. In this simple way, they can spread awareness and invite others to make a difference.

Field Trip to Waste Water Treatment Facility

 Last Tuesday, Grade 1s went to visit a Waste water treatment facility located in Higashinada-ku just across Rokko Island.

This is the first time that we visited this facility. The students shared their questions and wonderings about the place we visited. Some of the questions they came up with are:

            * How do they change the colour of the water to make it look clear again?

            * How do they remove harmful bacteria in the dirty water?

            * Does the facility collect waste water all over Kobe? If not, which areas does it serve?

            * Can we drink the water that they treat after the process?

The trip started with an introduction from the staff of the facility. She mentioned what the facility is for and how it works. She showed a kid-friendly video to support what she just explained. She also introduced the safety protocols to be followed while on tour at the facility.

Then the tour around the facility followed. It was a new experience for everyone.

After the tour, we went back to school where in groups, we recalled the visit and show in diagram form or flowchart form, how the waste water is treated before it get released to the sea.

Sponsor Run

 Sponsor Run is an event that we regularly hold at school if not yearly, every other year. But just like any other events, it had not been put on hold because of the pandemic. Now that the world is trying to go regain the 'norms' before pandemic, we at Kobe are also starting to bring back one by one, little by little, these simple pleasures that were taken away from us because of the situation. One of the activities we now included in our list is the Sponsor Run.

This event is held for a cause. It is a health awareness and at the same time fundraising activity. Proceeds of this event will be used to fund projects that will help improve the learning environment of the students. Grade 1s, even though they are young, also participated in the said event. They finish laps and dropped coins in the box every time they complete the lap.

It indeed was fun and at the same time fulfilling.😊

Sharing the Planet - Unpacking the Central Idea

 As we have started our new unit on Sharing the Planet, we looked at the central idea and lines of inquiry and checked the big words/phrases in them.

Centra Idea: 

Our actions affect the Earth's resources and people.

Lines of Inquiry

* limited availability of the Earth's resources

* personal choices that help the environment

Together, we unpacked the meanings of these challenging phrases by looking at different resources online.

After unpacking challenging phrases, we paraphrased the central idea and present it in a simpler way.

Things that we do can hurt anything from nature and us.

- Mia

Our actions can hurt the Earth.

- Ren

Our moves make the Earth’s supplies less.

- Koichi

Hurting the planet is not good for our Earth.

- Eric

Letter of Love for our MommyL❤️ves

 Grade 1s had a lesson on letter writing. In the series of lessons, we looked into two types of letters and explored how they are the same and different. We went further on writing informal letters and took this opportunity to make a letter to our Moms on their special day. As everything is online ow, the learners find it a new experience to be writing a letter, not just notes,  to their moms and sending it by post.

They filled out the envelope with their address and glued a post stamp to make sure that their letters will be delivered to the right address.😊

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!!❤️❤️❤️