Sharing The Planet (STP)




 Dear Turtle Class Families,

We are in full swing of our current unit of inquiry (UOI) - Sharing The Planet (STP), which the class have been thoroughly enjoying! To find out more about this unit please see a recent blog post from Brenda, our PYP Coordinator, HERE.


One of our Learner Profile attributes that we will be exploring further in this unit is how to be effective inquirers, from using technology to exploring outside, asking questions and using books to help us search for answers to our wondering. The class became aware that there are different types of books in our school library - Fictional texts and Non-Fictional texts. The Turtle Class have been using more non-fiction texts to help us gain new knowledge about nature and the world around us. 



   

We also enjoyed a walk along Bowen Road last week, where the class had the opportunity to experience our co-existence with nature. We had some great discussions about what we saw, heard, smelt and felt during our excursion. We would like to say a big thank you to our parents who volunteered to help us on our walk! Please see some of the main takeaways from our Bowen Road walk:
1. The number of signposts that supported communication and systems for people to follow.
2. The amount of rubbish that we saw.
3. The lack of wildlife - were they hiding? 

Please find the Photo Albums for our walk along Bowen Road below. 







We have noticed some children displaying a 'W-Sitting' position whilst sitting on the carpet area. If you see your child sitting in a w-sitting position at home, it would be great to correct their sitting position to a crossed leg position or ask them to stretch out their legs in front of them. A w-sitting position is usually an indication that a child has weak or undeveloped core muscles. Over time this sitting position can cause stress on the knee and hip joints, which can ultimately cause lower back pain. Please find more information about how to correct w-sitting HERE.


We also enjoyed our incursion this week, when a Therapy Dog named Mia came to visit us at Hillside. We learned how to take care of dogs, we learned what to feed and not what to feed dogs, as well as some grooming techniques. 

From discussing how some animals can take care of people, we posed the question to the class as to whether any other animals can help us, which led to some wonderful discussions. We focused on bugs and explored whether they can help people and whether people can help bugs. From our talk partner activities and Chalk Talk activities - both the AM and PM classes decided it would be a good idea to create some sort of house or hotel for the bugs in our school playground! Watch this space...



We also had an unexpected visit from an insect during our circle time this week while we were discussing how bugs move in different ways! We rescued the lost cockroach and created a makeshift habitat, using the knowledge we have gained from researching bugs recently. The children have named the cockroach Crystal, and she will be our first customer for our Bug Hotel, which is due to open in the near future! 



The class also had lots of fun dancing around like insects with the following song: 



Please find our most recent Photo Albums for our Sharing The Planet UOI:




We look forward to seeing lots of you at our Sports Fun Day today! Please remember to wear the colour blue for the Turtle Class Team! 





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