During our 'How We Express Ourselves' unit of inquiry, Ayesha worked on creating her own stories. Here is one that she created in her stories journal. She used her drawings skills and her knowledge of letters and sounds to record her story with illustrations and writing. Ms. Alison thinks this is an example of Ayesha's best work because she took risks to invent stories using her creativity and imagination.
Ayesha is beginning to recognize basic sight words, sound out new words, and use the illustrations to help her read. This activity shows that she is knowledgeable because she is applying her understanding of letter-sound relationships and the strategies we use during shared reading to read independently.
Ayesha said: "I looked at the words and I really understand. The books shows me all the words and I keep reading all the time."
Ayesha's favourite part of our 'How We Express Ourselves' unit of inquiry was creating films using the iPads and hosting a film festival for our parents and schoolmates. She wanted to include this piece of work in her portfolio because: "My team did something for me and I followed them. I did the fruits. My favourite part was setting up for the film. I like making movies on the iPad."
This week we measured our heights for the very last time in K1. We noticed that once again, we had all grown taller! We reflected individually and as a whole class on the changes that had happened. We also made comparisons between each other's heights using math vocabulary, like taller and shorter.
Here is Ayesha's explanation of how and why she grew. During our class discussion, she said: "I am tall because I am taller than Aziz and Ayesha."
Last week, Ayesha shared some interesting work in our Morning Meeting. She had completed a compass points chart for the story of Rapunzel during her free playtime! The compass points chart is something that we completed as a class in preparation for the three little pigs visit to our classroom. Ayesha drew pictures of her Needs, Excitement, Worries, and Suggestions based on her understandings of the story. This work shows that Ayesha is capable of sophisticated thinking and analysis. She took action with work we had completed as a class and applied it to her own activities. Well done Ayesha!
As a class we read a story about the number 7. We learned how rainbows are symbols for 7 because they are have 7 different coloured arcs. Ayesha loved this story and wanted her follow-up work to be included in her portfolio because: "I like the colours of the rainbow and I wrote the 7 really clear."
Ayesha has a strong concept of number up to 10. Recently she has been working on challenging herself and exploring numbers in the teens, including what they represent, how they are written and how they are sequenced. Here she is working with Aziz to choose the numbers that come after and before a given number in the teens.
Ayesha now knows all of the letters in the alphabet and many of the sounds these letters make. She is independently applying this knowledge to her writing. She is working on reviewing and consolidating her alphabet-sound knowledge by completing sound sorts in her word study journal like the one below:
Ayesha used this photo of her friend Zoe playing to collect ideas for a story. She used the app Draw & Tell to illustrate pictures and record her voice.
Student-led conferences are a chance for students to take the lead and show their families some of their best work, favourite activities, and how much progress they've made over the year.
In other words . . . a celebration of learning!
Here is Ayesha's reflection on her Student-led Conference: