Following last week's introduction of a variety of different scripts from different languages, this week the teachers felt it would be interesting for the children to see yet another variety of letters; braille. We first showed a short clip from Sesame Street to the children, entitled Lauren goes to school. In the clip, a young girl, Lauren, introduces herself and explains how she uses her fingers, instead of her eyes to read and write special letters. The children were fascinated to see how the raised bumps that make up braille can be read with the fingers and how Lauren uses a special machine, a braille writer, to write the alphabet as her classmates write the traditional alphabet using a pencil and paper. I would recommend looking at the clip (linked in green above) again together with your son or daughter. After watching the clip, I showed the children a book written in both traditional script (in English) and in braille. They were very intrigued, and enjoyed using their fingers to feel the raised dots. Following this experience, the children were given the opportunity to create a kind of braille version of their own names. Referring to a braille alphabet chart and their name cards, they used lentils and strong glue to 'write' their names. Dress Up DayIn other news, this week we were held the Dress Up Day that the children carefully planned last week. It was exciting to see cats, rabbits, Spidermen, bats, pyjamas and more in our classroom, and the children were excited to show their friends their special outfits. Later on in the day, we had a special visitor. Superman stopped by to sing a few songs with both PS1 classes! Next week we will begin to consider the value of letters. As we will need to define what we mean by valuable, please can I ask all children to bring something from home that is special to them. Of course, please do not send anything of great monetary value. We imagine this children will bring a special toy or picture, for example. Please ensure your child brings something from home on Monday. We will send the 'special/valuable' item home again at the end of the day. Many thanks in advance!
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We decided this week to introduce a simple provocation to the children in PS1, with the goal of continuing to reveal just how prevalent letters (of the alphabet) truly are in our world. A week or so back a child asked me if we could have a dress-up (costume/fancy dress) day in school, I took the idea to the group and asked if they would like to come to school one day next week, not in regular clothing, but in something different. I gave three possible options, based on interests we have noticed in class and previous successful dress-up days:
Since the votes were even, we decided not to select only one, but to allow children to choose on the day. Now that we knew which outfits were going to be worn, I explained that we needed to ask permission from Ms. Robyn, our Assistant Principal, in order to dress up. I projected onto the screen while together we constructed the email seen below. The children were excited to spot letters they recognised from their own names and the names of their friends as I typed. We were able to again make the connection that letters form words, which in turn can be read by others. Afterwards, each child drew a picture of themselves in the outfit they hope to wear next week. We waited excitedly to see if Ms. Robyn would reply and give us permission. The next day, we immediately checked the email, and found a response. Hooray! She said yes (see below). This was exciting news, and when Ms. Robyn walked by the Early Learning Centre playground later that day, several children ran to her excitedly to let her know that they had read her email and that they were going to dress up next week. So now we knew what each child wanted to wear on dress-up day, and we had permission from Ms Robyn. The next important step would be to let parents at home know, so that they could help in the preparation of the special clothing. The children were invited to write a letter to their parents. Some wanted to use emergent writing to have a go themselves, others preferred to dictate the letter to me, so I could do the actual writing. Each child then signed their name before putting the letter, along with the picture drawn the previous day, in an envelope which we then addressed to parents. The children were very excited to take their letters and pictures home to share. Dress up day is next Wednesday, 26th February, and we look forward to seeing a variety of superheroes, animals and pyjamas on this day! Next week will be our final week of focus on our first line of inquiry, Letters in our world. After this, we will begin to consider the second line of inquiry, The value of letters. During this part of the inquiry, we will think about how letters are of use to us, and perhaps what the consequences might be if we didn't have letters, or what happens when the letters are incorrect. Stay tuned! International Mother (Home) Languages DayToday we celebrated this day by considering the variety of languages spoken just in our own class community. Our thanks go to Isla's father for coming in to read a book in his native Scots to a group of children, and also to Enrico's mother for reading to the other half of the class in her own native language, Spanish. The children very much enjoyed hearing a story read by our special visitors! Afterwards, we spent time looking at the books written in home languages that the children had brought from home especially for the day. We talked about which languages were spoken in our homes. In our group today we had eight languages represented by the children alone. We are truly very fortunate to be part of such a genuinely international setting.
For the past couple of weeks, we have been considering positional language, particularly focusing on 'next to', 'behind' and 'in front of' but also, because it is fun to explore, thinking about 'in' and 'under'. Last week we looked at photographs of cats and tried to describe where they were in relation to, say, a fence, another animal or a door. The children then had great fun pretending to be cats, and responding to the instruction to position themselves in, under, behind, next to, or in front of a large basket. Of course, getting inside and under caused the most giggling! During the normal course of the week the teachers have tried to be increasingly conscious of using and drawing attention to these positional words in authentic everyday use. Then again this week, we made sure to make time for a particular focus on these terms. We read a short non-fiction book together before taking advantage of a break in the rain to head outdoors and challenge the children in small groups to crawl under or into, stand next to, behind and in front of, and climb on top of the climbing equipment. We found that 'in' and 'under' were more readily understood than 'next to', 'behind' (I reinforced this one by adding 'at the back of') or 'in front of', perhaps because hiding in or under things is a fun thing to do, and therefore sticks in the mind more quickly. It would be helpful if at home you could take any naturally occurring opportunity that arises to use these terms in your home language with your children. Ongoing CorrespondenceIn the continuing adventures of our (previously mysterious) letter-writer, Tilly Teddy, this week we received a plea our nighttime visitor, saying she would love some fresh fruit salad. Naturally, the children wanted to help. I said I would go shopping for the apples, bananas, pears and mandarins that Tilly Teddy said she liked best. The next day, we looked at a 'recipe' for fruit salad. We were able to make the link again it was letters that made up the words that told us of both the ingredients and the instructions for making our fruit salad, in other words, letters were helping us to organise ourselves. Each child helped to wash and chop the fruit salad. Luckily, the fruit salad we made was very large, and there was enough for everyone who wanted to, to have a bowl themselves at snack time (or in some cases to eat three bowls!) It was VERY exciting the next day to come into the classroom and discover another letter from Tilly Teddy. This time, with a selfie photo! In the words of one child "We've solved the mystery! We know what she looks like!" Of course, we responded to Tilly's plea to us to share our favourite books with her, and left a pile for her to read while we were at home that night... She wrote in return to say how much she had enjoyed our choices....and so the correspondence adventure continues. Of course during this ongoing learning engagement we are able to take many opportunities to point out how letters (of the alphabet) are being used in both our correspondence to Tilly, and hers to us.
Please don't forget to spend a few minutes with your child looking for letters around your home. Please then email me two photographs as we will be using these on Monday. Thank you for the photographs I have already received. We have had an exciting start to our new inquiry (Letters help us organise our world) this week. The children arrived on Tuesday to discover some mysterious symbols on the carpet where we have our morning meetings. We mulled over what they could be. Someone suggested that they were numbers. Then another child recognised 'H' and 'p' and named them for us. I explained that they were letters, rather than numbers. I asked where we usually find letters, and the children pointed them out on books, on signs on the wall and on our whiteboard. We wondered what they were doing on our carpet. I explained that I hadn't put them there, and when we asked Ms Shirin, she also said she had no idea where they had come from. Since letters go together to make words, we wondered if we might be able to put them together to make some kind of message. We tried rearranging the three letters in different ways, and I read the results out to the children each time. We were unable to make any sense of them, but saying the silly-sounding nonsense words was very funny! We wondered if someone was trying to tell us something; to communicate with us. When I asked what we should do about the letters we had found, I received this response: "We need to be like detectives!" "Like Paw Patrol!" "We might need magnifying glasses!" Since we couldn't make sense of the message, I suggested we leave the letters up on the board, and that we all keep our eyes and ears open to anything unusual, in case we discovered any more clues. Of their own accord, several children found magnifiers and spent time looking closely at the lettering, and around the classroom, searching for anything that might tell us more about the mystery. We found nothing definitive, and wondered if we might find anything new the next day. The next morning, the children arrived very keen to immediately check to see if there was any sign of the mysterious visitor. They were extremely excited to discover that the visitor had indeed returned overnight, and once again appeared to have left some letters on the carpet for us. This time we found an m, an l and another e. We decided once again to try to shuffle the letters around and see if we could make any sense of them. We tried many different combinations of letters, which I sounded out each time, much to the hilarity of the children; "Hmmmm! 'Hep leno' Does that mean anything to you?" Now we were getting somewhere. We eventually managed to shuffle the letters around to spell 'Help'... It was a very exciting moment when we finally put the letters in a combination that made a meaningful message; "Help me"! But now we were even more confused. Who might have left us letters spelling out "Help me"? We discussed the possibilities as we saw them. The children came up with:
Once again the next morning the children were excited to run to check to see if we had had any more communication. They were initially disappointed to find that there were no large cut-out letters on the carpet. But then they discovered that there was a message after all, this time several sentences on one piece of paper. Even more intriguingly, there was what one child was certain was a bear 'footprint'! Now we had some more detailed communication: "Dear boys and girls, Thank you for your pictures. Will you be my friends?" The children wanted to know who was leaving us the messages. "How can find out?" one asked. I made a suggestion that we write a letter back, and ask our mystery visitor who she or he was. Together, we constructed a letter, which every child present in class signed. Now we were also introducing ourselves to our visitor. This morning we received a letter in response. Again there was a paw print on the letter. Now the children were convinced it was a bear. One child went to find the book 'Where's My Teddy' to point out the bear on the front cover (see below). I wondered aloud if the bear was big or small. After some discussion, we came to the conclusion that due to the small size of the paw-print, the bear must have small paws and therefore must be small. We read the letter. This time the mystery visitor introduced themselves, and asked for some help in finding drinking water... Finally, we knew that it was a teddy bear that was asking for our help, and that her name was Tilly. Tilly Teddy! We composed a letter dictated by the children and written by me, which said:
Dear Tilly, You can drink water in the kitchen. Yes, it is OK, you can play in our classroom. We are sending you a hug. Where are you from? Love from all the children in PS1H Today we will leave it on the carpet again for Tilly to find, and await her response after the weekend... What an exciting way to begin to consider what letters (of the alphabet) are, how they help us and what their value is! This weekend, it would be fantastic if you could find letters in your everyday lives. Examples might be found not only in books, but also on food packaging, computers, telephones, street signs and so on, and to notice and talk about them and their purpose with your child. |
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