All the children in Grades 3 – 7 have enjoyed writing poetry with Miss Bonnie this week, using the ‘Private Eye Program’.

The Private Eye is a program about the drama and wonder of looking closely at the world, thinking by analogy, changing scale and theorizing. It’s based on a simple set of tools that produce “gifted” results.  Hands-on and investigative, The Private Eye uses everyday objects, a jeweler’s loupe (magnifier), and simple questions to develop higher order thinking skills, creativity and scientific literacy: “What is that like?”  “What else does it remind me of?” “What else does it look like?” These analogies, written in the compressed form of metaphors and similes, become the bones-for-poems.

Each of the children in Grade 5 wrote a poem after looking closely, through a loupe, at a scallop shell.  Here are a couple of them.  Can you guess which shell they were looking at?  Can you see how the shells inspired their poems?

War Shell

Barb wire getting boiled in molten lava

Bullet wounds in fallen soldiers

Blood on the white silver sand

Tears of loved ones on the lonely bed

Terrible cries of agony on the battlefield

True and noble soldiers put to the test.

My Shell

An early morning sun

Patterns like waves on the beach

A racing cheetah in the forest

Lines that are parallel,

A sandy beach from a distance,

Zig zag lightning strikes.

The Grade 3’s have been looking at patterns and how they are made.  In art they designed their own patterns; then made a block print from it.  They repeated and rotated their patterns.  They also designed some patterns using their ICT skills; they found the computer much quicker and easier to produce a design.

They used their design pattern to dress their models.  Take a closer look at their designs and patterns in a slideshow of their models.  Would you buy their designs?  Do you think they are trendy?

In order to develop their skills further, Mrs. Krys, a graphics designer, has volunteered to come in to help the children to create designs using Adobe Photoshop.  We look forward to seeing how they get on.

Click on below to read a couple of pieces of creative writing that were inspired by this drama re-enactment in their English lesson… [Read more…]

The Grade 3’s have designed a Science experiment to see which surface material will make a plasticine ball ‘splat’ the most.  After making their predictions, they set off in pairs to see if they could set up a ‘fair test’ using the equipment they were given.  To insure that their experiment was a fair test, they knew that they must change only one factor at a time while keeping all other conditions the same.

Scientists call the changing factors in an experiment variables.  The different surface materials needed to be the only changing variable, everything else needed to stay the same.

Click on to see the children working on their experiments…

[Read more…]

In Grade 2 Science lessons this term, the children have been learning about variation of plants and animals.  They have organised them in groups according to their similarities, differences and unique characteristics.  The children have done a fantastic job in creating their own classification keys about different animals.  They answered questions about each of their animals using their keys.  The animals were made using paper art.