NUACHTÁN ELEMENTARY | April 2021
It is nice to share with you in this edition of our newsletter that during the Art and Culture week, our students and the whole community enjoyed the planned activities. Galleries, interactive games, origami workshops, art therapy, photography, storytelling, and abstract art, among others, were very enriching experiences. St. Patrick’s parade was very colorful and the enthusiasm to greet us was also a moment of great joy. Art in all its forms of expression has always been and will be a fundamental part of our program because it allows us to appreciate things from different perspectives, promotes creativity, and complements us in comprehensive and complete development.
We share some images with you.
Cacographic inventory
It is an activity that we find in Pearson’s Language and Communication books from 1st to 6th grade, and that students perform as a strategy to write well the words that have the greatest spelling difficulty.
Cacography, which etymologically means «wrong writing», is the opposite of spelling, which means «correct writing».
In Spanish some spellings are confused when writing them (such as g and j; c, s and z, b and v, among others), so we need to work with them to use them correctly.
Making a cacographic inventory implies that from an original text we recognize the words with a spelling error, select them, list them and in this way make aware what is the spelling that we are confusing. One recommendation would be to have this list on hand and constantly review it to assess whether we have improved in writing the words listed above. This means that children not only use the language within the appropriate standard but also make a constant meta-linguistic reflection.
Finally, our mission as teachers is to help students find strategies to improve their language proficiency with the agency that we promote. The incorporation of a new lexicon is part of a thoughtful process, in which the student constructs the meaning of the words he does not know and internalizes to make it part of his/her vocabulary.
You may ask yourself if games add something when you are learning a language and the answer is yes!
Games are a fun way to practice, and it can even be motivating to be engaged in improving your different skills in your general language performance. Why? Because when you combine the solid educational foundation with the benefits of learning a language through games, you will learn faster and retain more than with traditional teaching.
Games are also great for those who have shy or worried personalities because they have the opportunity to communicate themselves without worrying about their possible mistakes, so they feel safe, and they have fun.
Teachers design different kinds of games, for example, colaborative games, in which they also encourage skills like teamwork, problem-solving, and creativity.
On the other hand, students act naturally when using the information, they were already given, and they are immersed and able to use the knowledge in real contexts receiving feedback not only from their teachers but also from their classmates.
We cannot forget videogames because they also allow practicing the language. You may ask; how is it possible? Nowadays, a videogame includes the integration of several linguistic skills like reading, listening, and speaking in a context in which children feel free to make mistakes. This is a good opportunity to develop linguistic and cognitive abilities in the process of acquiring a language. So… Let’s play!
To be able to see, you must close your eyes
‘Behold my secret, which cannot be simpler: it can only be seen well with the heart, for the essential is invisible to the eyes’
-El Principito (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)-
It is not a new thing; in every psychology class we also build habits. Small actions and attitudes are aimed to normalize the variety of emotions and feelings we experience every day. Identifying, feeling, normalizing, expressing.
There is a little exercise that involves saying how you feel today, then breath and say, ‘It’s okay to feel that way’, for example, ‘It’s OKAY to be tired and calm’.
We stop for a moment to contact, to feel, to name, and to accept. No judgment and no criticism.
It has been curious that when children seek to know how they feel and then express it they close their eyes even though they have not been given that specific instruction to do so. I think when they close their eyes they do so from a very natural and intuitive place, that is, to contact their interior.
When it is the turn of one of them, others wait in silence and listen to their peer without saying anything, without judgment, and without criticism.
And we all see with good eyes that it is OKAY to be tired, calm, excited, and sad at the same time.
What if in all Celtic families would be ok to feel what it feels like and those feelings could be expressed without fear of what people will say about them? What goes on here, it is just a start.
Note: the technique was taken from the book Planting Seeds. The practice of Mindfulness with children. Thich Nhat Hanh, Kairós Publishing House.
Applying the PYP in the Classroom
Teamwork
Among the activities that children enjoy the most is teamwork, the little ones had the opportunity to put into practice different skills such as critical thinking, research, communication, social, and agency.
Through collaborative work they achieve enriching and meaningful learning experiences, resulting in a true understanding of concepts.
Like our 1st grade students, who worked lines of inquiry of the movements of the earth: rotation and translation, day and night.
By teams, students investigated the movements of the Earth and day and night, worked collaboratively, made a presentation on a digital board in which they wrote the ideas they considered most important, this includes drawings and images that complement the information obtained.
To conclude, they shared with the rest of the class the result of their inquiries and this was undoubtedly accompanied by a feeling of pride, satisfaction, and the duty fulfilled.
On the other hand, 4th-grade students made an «Infinity and Beyond» newscast as part of the closure of the Unit of Inquiry. Taking different roles, whether as a presenter, reporter, scientist, astronaut, or cosmologist, and overcome the obstacles of the distance they did great teamwork showing what they learned during the unit and sharing their knowledge with us.
Dates to remember
• MARCH 29th to APRIL 12th – Holiday Vacation
• APRIL 12th – CTE -Class adjourn-
• APRIL 13th – Back to school
• APRIL 22th – Informative Meeting for parents regarding EXPO PEP 6° | 6:00pm
• APRIL 30th – Children’s day Celebration