BILINGUAL PLAY

Last Wednesday was the showing of “The Little Red Riding Hood” and “The Three Little Pigs” to all the grades. Our cast of wonderful actors was made up students from the sixth grade classes who volunteered to do the play in English. We made the set and costumes (almost) from scratch and Ruben, the music teacher, complemented the actions with creative sounds effects. A big thanks does out to all the people who participated in the making of these two plays!

UNIT - DAILY LIFE

In this unit students learned to recognize the characteristics of their families, the roles of family members and friends in their daily lives, as well as the features of their daily lives (with an emphasis of the sequence of the days and their school schedules). We worked with “What have you got (on)…” and “I have got…” sentence structures.
We began the unit with the story “Goldilocks and the three bears” and reviewed the members of the family: granddad, granny, mum, dad, sister, and brother. Students then made their own family trees using family pictures which they pasted in the appropriate boxes.

Students then classified activities such as sleeping, learning, eating, showering, playing, reading, cleaning, washing the dishes, watering the plants etc depending on if they are done at school or at home. At school, students have a variety of subjects. After seeing the difference between weekends and school days in a month, students learned about the subjects they have at school: language, maths, religion, English, computers, science, P.E., music and art. They decided which subjects they liked and disliked, and which ones were their favorite.
For the end of the unit activity, the students wrote an imaginary letter describing what classes they have every day, their age and where they live.

Here is a link to online activities and printable projects and recipes:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/laac/menu.shtml

UNIT - PHYSICAL PROCESSES

In this unit students learned about physical forces. We started the unit presenting the forces of push and pull with toys and other objects. Students learned to respond to daily directions such as "pull the door open, push the door closed, pull the blinds up etc".

We also sang the song "wind the bobbin up". You can find a good version of it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXo_8BvoZhU

The students liked it so much they ask to sing it almost every day!

In physical education, we used the forces of push and pull: we played tug-of-war and had the students pull each other on gym mats.

In the classroom, students made their own "push-pull" ice-cream cones. Yum!

While push and pull are physical forces used to move objects, electricity and human energy are forces that allow us to do work. In this part of the unit, students learned the difference between human and electrical energies. We presented the concept experimenting with an egg: students beat one egg with a fork and one with a blender. They learned to differentiate objects that need electricity to function.

Students then learned that light can be both natural and electrical. They saw that the sun, fire, the moon and candles are forms of natural light, while lamps, televisions, computer screens, and flashlights are forms of artificial light. We experimented with these different kinds of lights in the classroom, and had students decide which ones (sunlight and overhead lights) were better for working.

Here is a neat link to an online activity where students identify sources of light:

http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/vtc/light/eng/Introduction/pop.htm

While a good working environment is one with sufficient light, it is also one with few noises. Students saw that excessive noise (using various musical instruments) can be detrimental to a healthy classroom or working environment.