Year Groups

The Nursery children have continued to explore a wide range of learning opportunities that link to our current Unit of Inquiry, 'Collaboration helps build a community'. During our inquiry, we have focused on the following IB early years Learner Profile Attributes:

Communicators - We express ourselves confidently and creatively. We collaborate. We listen to others.

Caring - We are respectful. We understand how other people feel. We want to make the world a happy place.

Inquirers - We are curious. We work by ourselves. We work with our friends. We love to learn.

The children loved listening to the traditional tale, 'The Enormous Turnip', and they talked in detail about the characters in the story and how they helped each other to pull the enormous turnip from the ground. They loved retelling the story using puppets and enthusiastically role-played the characters using their imagination. The children spotted a bird in the story and asked why it was there, leading to an exciting discussion about scarecrows. We also peeled, chopped and cooked a turnip so everyone could take a risk and have a taste. "It is good, please can I have more?"

The children were able to make connections with our Unit of Inquiry and talk about how we also help each other in our class community and at home. They have taken action by mopping the floor after water play, sharing with their friends and taking responsibility for keeping the learning space organised. We continue to look forward to discovering how the children help their family at home when they share their 'helping hands' photographs with their teachers and friends on the big interactive screen!

The learners in Kindergarten are currently engaged in the transdisciplinary theme of How we express ourselves focusing on the IB learner profile attributes of being – Communicators, Open-Minded and Principled.

Through this unit of inquiry we have been exploring traditional stories and fairy tales. The learners have been working on presenting these stories in different ways, which has helped everyone to use their communication skills more. There have been opportunities to retell these stories in pairs, small and large groups. We read the story, ‘The Troll’ by Julia Donaldson, and had some great interest in the main character. Some of the learners decided to write a letter to the Troll to ask him some questions. Examples from these letters were, “Where’s your Mummy?” “What’s your favourite movie?” “What’s your favourite food?” and “Curry is my favourite!” This led to many engaging and purposeful writing opportunities We look forward to him writing back to us!

During our current ‘Sharing the planet’ Unit of Inquiry, we are focusing on the Learner Profiles of Caring, Thinker and Communicator through inquiring into how ‘Our choices can affect the environment’.

We have had a number of provocations which have encouraged the children to develop their thinking skills to problem solve without teacher direction. We enjoy the growth in independence and confidence these engagements foster. The learners quickly became passionate about taking action to do their part in caring for the environment and the new Junk Modelling Recycling Centre is our new favourite area in the Year 1 Hub. The next part of our unit will focus on the learners communicating their ideas with others as they realise everyone needs to take responsibility to reduce, reuse and recycle. It was wonderful to see the learners exhibiting all of these Learner Profile attributes during their presentation in today’s assembly.

This week sees the final to our current UOI inquiring into how ‘Choices affect our health’.

During this unit of inquiry, we have been focusing on how we are caring, reflective and open-minded. The beginning of the unit gave the learners an opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of caring. We used choices related to social health and play provocations providing them to discuss their views on how to be a caring friend? What does the word caring mean to them? How do you demonstrate you are caring? A definition of IB learner profile ‘caring’ states ‘We are respectful. We understand how other people feel. We want to make the world a happy place.’ The learners created scenarios whereby they acted as a caring friend to others, they learned about empathy and having a caring nature when thinking about the character in the book The Invisible boy by Trudy Ludwig.

We are always reflective in our learning however at the end of the unit being reflective is hugely important; ‘We think about our achievements. We think about our next steps. We think about our learning. We think about how to make things better’. The learners are currently reflecting on their understanding of the unit and are sharing their understandings of what they knew before, to what they know and understand now. We ask them to think about a time they displayed the learner profile attributes at school, and use Seesaw as a learning resource to share their experiences.

Thank you to all the families who were able to attend our Year 3 Exhibition last week. It was a blast! There were big smiles everywhere, as learners shared their cultural research. This concluded our “How we express ourselves” Unit of Inquiry where Communication and Open-Minded are the Learner Profiles we were focusing on. Learners had many opportunities during this unit to practise and refine these profiles. Learners had to sing and dance on stage in front of the school and families. For many, this was their first experience on stage. Learners had to be very open-minded and display a growth mindset.

The Learner Profile of Communication was also present on stage, but more acutely in their research project—that they all presented. Learners spent weeks researching their cultural identity, which they put together on a display. The learners were then expected to proudly share this information clearly and succinctly.

In our current Unit of Inquiry, Sharing the Planet, learners will be practising the Learner Profiles of Caring and Inquirer. The unit will look into local issues that the learners care about and give them the opportunity to take some action. This will first involve inquiring into the issues and possible actions we could take. Watch this space!

Year 4 learners have recently come to the end of their Unit of Inquiry centred around ‘Water is an essential resource’. Learners presented their independently completed inquiries to each other. It was great to see learners developing the Learner Profile attributes of being an ‘inquirer’, becoming ‘knowledgeable’ and being a ‘communicator’. Learners shared their researched information through a range of methods such as drama, iMovies, slideshows, speeches, experiments, puppet shows and posters.

Now Y4 has started their new Unit of Inquiry with the central idea, ‘The clothes people wear tell a story’. This unit falls into the transdisciplinary theme of ‘How we express ourselves'. Learners are considering factors that impact what people wear and as a provocation learners came to school last Friday in clothes that represented themselves. This led to many interesting conversations about how culture, personality, people's interests, and occupations can be reflected through the clothes we wear.

Through these activities, we are developing many of the Learner Profile attitudes, but we are particularly focusing on Communication and Open minded throughout this unit.

This week Learners have explored the journey of an article of clothing such as a t-shirt or a pair of jeans from the cotton fields to their wardrobe. This has sparked conversations and opened our minds about the environmental impact of the production and manufacturing processes.

Learners in Year 5 have become more knowledgeable about government systems through our unit of inquiry focused on 'How we organise ourselves'. As part of the application of their learning, they are collaboratively creating their very own country. An engagement such as this requires attributes from all of the PYP learner profiles. Learners are communicators as they discuss ideas, generate solutions, negotiate and compromise. Creating their own government, deciding on rights, laws and allocating a budget have required them to be reflective thinkers and inquirers. Groups have created their countries using the Co-spaces app. They have been open-minded risk takers as they have learnt how to use a less familiar tool to present their learning. We look forward to sharing these with families soon. .