KZE students had a great time at the Halloween party. A big “THANK YOU” to Ms. Tina (Lizzy’s mom) and other parents who helped organizing the party.
Unit of Inquiry – Community…
KZE students had a conversation about what we need when we go swimming. This conversation led to more discussions about the concept of “Need”. Students drew pictures of things they think they need. Then we sorted the pictures into several categories. We decided that some categories are important, but some we are not so sure about. We will continue to find out…
Pokrovsky Hills Community Walk:
KZE went on exploring the Pokrovsky Hills community next to our school with the questions of “What jobs do you see people do in a community?” and “What do we need in a community?”.
https://animoto.com/play/W1mxUK0UdaJVVrYjCJE06Q
After our trip, we did some reflection. We brainstormed and created this list of what we need in a community:
Places: house, doctor’s office, store, school, office, hospital, airport, zoo, fitness center, aquarium, parking lot, and playground.
Jobs: security guard, plumber, cleaner, fire fighter, police,management people to help us, garbage collector, construction worker, and dentist.
Things: car, map, tree, food, water, transportation, clothes, sign, traffic light, road, and sidewalk.
This list will help us when we plan our model community.
Collaborative inquiry into math…
KZE students had a discussion about how we can use counting skills in our daily lives. We came up with a list of things that we can count. We voted the three things we like to count the most and formed our inquiry groups. Each group came up with a plan/strategy first and then went to work. After that we came back and shared what we had discovered.
Group 1
Our first plan: two people recorded the first floor, two people recorded the second floor, two people recorded the third floor and all of us recorded the fourth floor. When we came back together and tried to find out the total number, we noticed that everybody had a different total. We realized that our first plan didn’t work well. So we came up with another strategy. All of us recorded every drinking fountain that we saw. When we came back after the second try, most of us had the same total: 20. We decided that our second plan worked better. It helped us to find the correct answer.
http://youtu.be/KKYsQpG0lys
Group 2
Our plan was: use two different strategies to be sure we count the classrooms in ES properly. We decided to put sticker on the schedule of each classroom in ES. Then we took those stickers off and count them. We got 34 stickers. We also used the other strategy at the same time: one of us was writing down the numbers of the classrooms. Then we counted the numbers and got 31. So we decided to make double check with the numbers. We wrote down the numbers of the classrooms, count them and got 35. Then checked thoroughly and found out that we put in the list one number twice. So we got 34 numbers of the classrooms. Our strategy with the stickers worked properly from the first time, but the strategy with writing the numbers needed the double check.
http://youtu.be/jaWl86QV5yY
Group 3
Our Plan: We decided the safest way to count cars in the Main Car Park was to work as team and stay together counting only the cars on the left side where there was a sidewalk. We used tally marks to record the number of cars and we also put a tile in front of each car as we went along to check our answer on the way back. Once we reached the end of the sidewalk we counted up our tally marks and had a total of 32 cars. We walked back picking up and counting the tiles we had left behind. One car had gone so although we counted 32 tiles, there were really only 31 cars left in the car park at the end of the exercise.
http://youtu.be/kV_mx0exOTM
It’s OK!!
During our “Who We Are” unit of inquiry, we talked about similarities, differences, and acceptance. We read the book “It Is OK to be Different” by Todd Parr. We decided to make our own “It Is OK…” book. Each student made a page and Mrs. Zurfluh recorded our reading. We decided to make a cover and a back page. We wanted to make it because we like making books. We also want to let other people know that “It Is OK to be Who You Are”. It took us three days to make this book. We like our book. We would like to share with our parents and other Kindergarten classes. We are also hoping that we can share our book during one of our assemblies.
http://youtu.be/3SMczGqUyso