Welcome to IST’s Kindergarten Information Site

Welcome to the International School of Tanganyika’s Kindergarten Team Website. Here you will find what’s happening in Kindergarten classrooms, student work and much more. Please check back often and feel free to leave us a message with your ideas, links and good thoughts. Asante!

http://blogs.istafrica.com

http://blogs.istafrica.com

January 6 to 10 2014

Happy New Year – it’s great to see our students back enthusiastic and ready to learn, even though many are dealing with jet lag and recovering from busy holiday activities.

No school Monday and Tuesday see you all on Wednesday……..

KG Assembly  – Friday 17^th of January at 7:30am.

All classes will be preforming on stage. After the assembly we would like to invite all parents to come back to the classroom to share their child’s learning journey portfolio.

New dress up capes

New dress up capes

New gross motor equipment

Our surprise garden has grown 🙂

Literacy

This week students have shared their holiday stories with their classmates. They have written about one small moment of their whole holiday. This encourages students to focus on one event and include interesting details to engage the reader. Students have also been participating in guided reading sessions. These sessions allow teachers to focusing on reading skills and strategies and assist students individually. Students are expected to remain focused while another student is reading and follow with their reading finger, often the hardest skill to learn! We are also working on students re-telling skills. This involves students re-telling the story in sequence, with specific details, characters names, names of places, day or time event took place. You can assist your child by doing this at home once you or they have read a story.

Guided reading

Sharing holiday moments before writing

Sharing holiday moments before writing

Sharing holiday moments before writing

Maths

Students are exploring number bonds to ten. They are working as a whole group, in small groups, in pairs and individually. They are beginning to understand the concept, vocabulary and symbols of addition and subtraction. They are also working on understanding the patterns of commutative property of addition   6+4 =   4+6=     3+7=    7+3=  These concepts are learnt using hands-on materials and integrating technology as appropriate.

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Unit of Inquiry

As part of our new unit students drew and labeled a trip and the various steps and transport that they used. They have been using the construction equipment to explore the central idea and there have been many conversations about flying to different countries!

Our new unit of inquiry has started this week – under the transdisciplinary theme How We Organize Ourselves. Our central idea is: Transportation systems are organized to help us connect with people and places. Students will inquire into:

         Personal journeys

         Reasons for choosing different transportation systems

         The structure and function of transportation systems

If you have any transport systems maps (London tube map, ski runs, metro map) that you used on holidays that you don’t need please allow your child to bring it to school to share. Tickets, boarding passes, timetables, anything that is part of a transport system will assist students in understanding the central idea of our unit.

We would like to do some construction work during this unit, as we will also be working on different 3D shapes. Please send empty cereal boxes, toilet rolls, tins, etc. and PLEASE make sure that containers are properly cleaned.

Thank you once again for your help and support with your child’s learning.

Holiday just announced……..

Dear Families,

The president of Tanzania has just announced a public holiday tomorrow Monday 13th, Tuesday is already a holiday.

See you all on Wednesday.

KG Team