Zoe's favourite part of our 'How We Organize Ourselves' unit of inquiry was our field trip to the Somerset MRT. She chose to include this experience in her portfolio because: "It was wiggly and shaky and I love it. You can go to shops with the MRT." Through our class discussions Zoe showed that she understands why we use the MRT and that it moves us places more quickly than we could walk.
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As emergent writers, we are always taking risks in writing. We are experimenting with sounds and letter formations, as well as pencil grip and different writing tools. As the year continues we are learning to make more and more letter and sound connections to express our ideas through writing. In our journals we do our best to add labels, descriptions, or short stories to our drawings. We also participate in free writing sessions where we write whatever we want for one to two minutes and use the writing centre and class mailbox to communicate through writing during free play.
Here is some of Zoe's journal and free writing work. Zoe confidently takes chances in writing and works hard to record her ideas, using her own knowledge and sound and alphabet charts for support. She is confident with many beginning and ending consonant sounds and is exploring vowels to make whole words. We watched a video with Bert and Ernie on the Sesame Street website called 'Guess What's Next'. They made patterns for each other and then had to complete them by guessing what would come next in the repeating sequence. After the video, we played this game in partners in our class with different manipulatives and materials.
Zoe said this game is an example of her best work because "We had to count how many things were there to see what's next." This work shows Zoe's ability to extend simple patterns. The work below also demonstrates this capacity: Zoe often demonstrates her ability to work cooperatively during play. One example is when she collaborated with Lea to do some writing. The girls worked together to combine their knowledge of the letters and letter formations they knew, working with whiteboards, whiteboard markers, paper, and pencil to write...a letter!
During our How the World Works unit of inquiry, our class investigated how shadows work. As part of our inquiries, we asked our buddies to help us trace our shadows at different times during the day. During this activity, Zoe discovered that the sun can be found at different positions in the sky over the course of the day and that this affects the shape of our shadows.
Zoe chose this piece for her portfolio because: "We drew ourselves and the sun moved so the shadow moved." Ms. Alison agrees that this is an example of Zoe's best work. She showed an ability to adapt and revise her theories about shadows and sunlight as our unit progress and enthusiastically committed herself to exploring shadows even during her free play. This semester Zoe showed that she is open-minded.
In our first unit of inquiry Zoe showed respect for and an interest in different family traditions as her classmates shared about who they are. On UN Day, Zoe appreciated the different cultural experiences she had in the Philippines, Malaysia, USA, and Netherlands rooms. At the shared lunch she independently decided to try some food which she had never tried before, including sushi, explaining that "UN Day is a good day to try new things". Zoe continues to observe and respect the differences and similarities between her and her classmates. She enjoys considering topics from different perspectives. This is a watercolour portrait of Zoe and her family. Ms. Alison typed on her computer what Zoe said about her painting. Both Zoe's words and her artwork are now hanging in our classroom.
Ms. Alison chose this piece for Zoe's portfolio because it shows how Zoe reflected carefully on the things that are important about her family over the course of our unit. Zoe understands how she is connected to her family in many different ways and that this makes her who she is as an individual. Zoe tells us all about how she has learnt to throw in PhysEd! |