Happy New Year! Time to Dance!

  First day of school after a long holiday year, 4 came to our class to talk about their new dance club.They meet every Wednesday during lunch. 
The club is open to everybody so anybody can join in. This dance was really fun and we danced to a lot of songs like “Shake It Off” by Taylor Swift, “Timber” By Pitbull Featuring Ke$a and a lot more. 
The whole point of this dance is to get you moving and have fun. It’s a great thing to get together with people who like to listen to good music and dance. This was after P.E (Gymnastics) and we were so tired but we did it and enjoyed it a lot. Although it made us even more tired - it was worth it!
Anna

Advertising - How We Express Ourselves

We are inquiring into how advertising  influences our beliefs and behaviours. Part of our Tuning In was to use QR codes to look at and try to work out the messages the advertisements were sending us as well as who was their target audience. We looked at about 20 QR Codes altogether.

The codes were split into two groups, one group with the text and company edited out and the other group had all of the text and advertiser's name included.

We started by looking at the group without the text and then, after we tried to work out the message, we looked at the second group. We thought about how having the text, and not having the text, made a difference to how we interpreted the ads and their messages.

Wind Powered Cars

For the Year 3 assembly, we mixed it up a bit and used the technology we had in school to help us out.

For a change, the only classes in the auditorium were Year 3 and Year 4! All the other classes were linked using Google Hangout and we were set a challenge by Mr Beach, in the auditorium over the video link. In our classes, we had to help our younger partners to build a wind powered car with the materials that were provided.

We had a great time watching the other classes in the Auditorium and classrooms as we all worked on our own models. There was a live video link to the "roaving reporters" as well so as we built, we saw and heard what was going on in other classes. There were some issues with the sound sometimes but it was great fun and all the groups managed to build their cars and show them over the video link to all the other classes.
Here are some images from the event.

Terracotta Figurines

Not too long ago, the Art Department heard about an artist who had created a vast number of terracotta figurines.
Using that as inspiration, almost the entire population of the primary school set about creating our own "Nexus Field" in C Pod. It is now finished, and it looks great!
There are about 700 figurines altogether including children and teachers. Can you work out which one is Mr. William's? Those who know me well will spot it straight away!

I am not great at making sculptures in any medium but it was great fun even when the arms kept falling off!
Thanks to Ms Meher and the rest of the Art Department!

The Argument Game!

Recently, as part of our Unit of Inquiry "How We Express Ourselves" we played a fun game called "The Argument Game."

Two players will need a die and a game board. On the game board are lots of statements which could be debated (or argued over). Some are quite funny such as "Homework is good for you" and "Dogs make better pets than cats." There are about 36 statements altogether in a grid. Player 1 will roll the die and then pick any column and then counts the number of squares down that column. They then read the statement and Player 1 must support the statement, while Player 2 must disagree. The two players debate and then swap and repeat the process but Player 2 plays from left to right along the grid.


It was great fun and players definitely had to demonstrate some Learner Profile Attitudes and Characteristics (such as creativity and being open-minded) when they had to argue against something they actually agreed with!

Wear a Moustache Day!

It's "Wear a Moustache Day" at Nexus Singapore!
This week we are celebrating Movember which is a fundraising initiative raise awareness of men's health issues. A huge number of male teachers are sporting a variety of moustache designs and today, the primary school decided to support them by sporting their own versions of upper lip growth :)

Information Reports - Fact Finding Mission

Last Tuesday we were learning about facts contained in information reports. To start this lesson we read a book on materials and their properties; each of us made our own notes.  Then we each shared one of our notes and went to write it down on a piece of paper and sort it into first piece to last.

After that thrilling note taking activity, it was time to move on to a small assessment on jotting down information on three different sheets with the titles: What we know, What we need to know and Where can we find information from?

For the What We Know section, we very excitingly jotted down what we knew about materials, their properties and so on. We worked in groups of three and took turns writing and giving ideas. As you can see in the first picture, we were able to express our ideas using diagrams and pictures to explain the learning.

Then we went onto part 2: What We Need To Know? This one was a bit harder because you had to think deeper and think what did you not know. So for this we switched writer and sat down to brainstorm some questions then we listed them like:

1. Why do we use materials in our everyday life?

2. Why do we use natural materials to make non-natural materials?

After that we had to think if we had covered questions in natural habitats, factories and so on and we kept inquiring into different topics on materials until we felt we had asked enough.

Finally, we moved on to Where Can We Find The Information From? So for this we thought of sources that could be used to find out our inquiries like the internet, a library, peers, and so on. We wrote all we thought we could get the information from and we went onto think about the origins of the materials and where they are produced as well as encouraging people to have reasons for their choices. Basically, anywhere or anybody you could get the information from, you should put on the list.

- Hugo