Pine Garden Biweekly News – March 29- April 9, 2010

松园双周报 Song Yuan Biweekly News—No.8

March 29- April 9, 2010
1st/2nd Grade Pine Garden
瑄瑄老师 Teacher Joyce joyce.chang@shureninternationalschool.com

Greeting Pine Garden families,
Spring is here! Our class has noticed there are sprouts and blossoms on the trees. And while we are observing the weather, the students are aware of the change in temperature. The class decided we want to plant flowers to welcome spring and hopefully bring them to our new campus site.
For our new inquiry, we learned how to read thermometers and to get to know the difference between Fahrenheit/华氏温度 and Celsius/摄氏温度. We are going to review all the elements of weather, for instance, the four seasons, variety of clouds, thunder, and lightening. We are also going to learn more about natural disasters caused by weather and water cycle.
Since we are also working on plants and habitats now, we are going to go deeper in to discover the parts of plants and their life cycle.

The Pine Garden Biweekly review and planners are listed below:

Language/ Geography/ Art
The class wrote two short essays telling stories about our family and friends to wrap up the Family and Friends inquiry.The students are expected to write 3-4 sentences to describe their family and friends. We also talked about our family members who moved from one country to another based on the homework we did interviewing our family.

For our weather inquiry, we had a chance to make our first webbing map in groups while we were discussing all the elements on weather (温度/temperature, 太阳/sun, 云/cloud, 风/wind, 雨/rain, 闪电/lightening, 雷/thunder. We placed all the works we had done on the wall in our science center. We welcome parents to stop by our class after school so that we can share what we’ve learned with you!

The first graders are going to focus on parts of plants and life cycles of insects in next two weeks, and for second graders, we are also going to figure out the three states (forms) of materials and water cycle, in addition to getting to know more about plants.

Math
We have been practicing two-digit subtraction together, and are going to get more practice on carry-over addition.
The second graders are going to practice more with multiplication.
We are also learning how to measure the sprout of the flower we planted, and engaging in knowing the sense of 比较大/bigger than, 比较小/smaller than, 比较长/longer than, 比较短/shorter than.

Earth Science/Art
The class decided to plant flowers while we were talking about weather and noticed that Spring is coming. We discussed how to make the flowers we planted grow well and healthily, and later on webbed all the elements planting would need– 阳光／sun shine, 空气／air, 水／water, 种子／seeds, 昆虫／insects, bugs etc..
The students are really interested in the parts of flowers, so we are going to go deeper in to getting to know more about flowers and fruits, and how insects help with pollination.(授粉)

Music
We’ve learned a new song 快乐地向前走／happy go go go!