Sowing the seeds!

“He that plants trees loves others besides himself.”

—Thomas Fuller

Morning meeting 

We had fun playing four pictures and one word. Students took turns to guess the word. At one point all of us got stuck, even Ms. Chetna couldn't guess the word. We realized nobody knows everything all of us are learning. 

Key concepts

Ms. Chetna shared an image displaying the PYP key concepts. It was a recap for the existing students and the new students benefitted from the discussions. We shared about form, function, and change. Next, Ms. Chetna shared the read-aloud to the book The Boy Who Grew a Forest It is based on a true story. Referring to the image shared again students connected the video to the key concepts. They made thoughtful connections to the concepts discussed earlier and added thoughts about the concept of Responsibility in reference to the video. Students could reflect that all of us need to be responsible for the environment and the other living things around us. 

Sowing the seeds

Today most of the students were ready with the resources to sow the seeds. Meera displayed confidence and volunteered to lead this session and guide her peers with the steps to be followed. Once the students were done, we shared our thoughts on what will help these seeds to grow properly. Ms. Chetna encouraged us to annotate the whiteboard for the same. 

Informational writing

It was nice to see that students were ready with their writing journals and had thought of a topic on which they wanted to create their informational writing. Ms. Chetna suggested we share our topics through chat. The first step was to create a mindmap listing what we already knew about the topic chosen. Ms. Chetna shared an example by annotating the whiteboard. She created breakout rooms and guided students to join Room 2 the moment they were done creating the mindmap. This allowed us to discuss our thoughts individually with her and move on to the next step of framing sentences based on the points added to the mindmap. Some of us quickly framed sentences so were further guided to the next step of thinking about what do they want to know more about the topic. She reminded them to use the question words while framing their research questions. After returning to the main session, Ms. Chetna shared a checklist that helped us self-assess on writing conventions.  It was amazing to see students being honest about the points they missed. The checklist helped us understand that the next step is to frame paragraphs. We watched a video to understand how can we decide what information to be added in the paragraphs. 

 “One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between man and nature shall not be broken.” —Leo Tolstoy