The First 5 Weeks in EP1 Red (2nd EP class June 2012) and Summer Camp June 2011 My First EP class

varee chiangmai school

Dear ep1 red VCIS parents and guardians,

Over these last 5 weeks the children of EP1 Red here at Varee Chiangmai International School have been learning a great deal in a variety of different ways.

The following are just some of the activities that the children of EP1 Red have been participating in.

First let’s start off with English which is a daily subject in the EP1 classroom.

During these initial weeks within the EP1 Red classroom the premise behind most of the lessons has been to go over the very basics. The children have covered phonics, blending (composition of words by reading or writing) and question words such as “what, why, where” and so on.

These questions words are extremely important at this stage as they will form the basic scaffolding of their expansion and inquiry of their own understanding of the English language. It is with these question words and the children’s ability to apply them in spoken language, which will significantly catalyse their own language development. This will be done continuously by asking each other and the teacher questions in English.

The pictures below show the children of EP1 Red in groups of about 7 using flashcards to form accurate sentences which are dictated once by the English teacher.

In English recently the children were tested on their days of the week.

The pictures below show one of the varied fun ways they learnt to remember the days of the week.

The teacher shouts out 3 to 7 random days of the week and the groups of children must align them in order. The first group to do so gets a point.

In English another game which the children found immensely enjoyable was the “what’s this?” game. This was a simple pairs game where the a child took turns to ask their partner what type of stationary they were holding up. For example “what’s this? It’s a pencil.”

This game served the children to be able to correctly identify different items of classroom stationary.

Please click on the link below to see the What’s this stationary exercise.

In science the children of EP1 Red have covered the fundamental differences between living and non-living things. They are able to list those differences and explain them.

They are also able to state what living things need and their basic functions which define them as living. For example “living things need water. Living things can grow.”

The pictures below are of a lesson where the children of EP1 Red had to cut out pictures of living and non-living things and stick them into the correct half of a table and then label them.

Living and Non-Living Things Cut Paste and Label Activity

Wan Wan

Model working hard

EP1 Red working hard

Andrew very happy at school

The next topic following on from living and non-living things was plants. The children are able to draw and label a simple representation of a flower and talk about the specific functions of those parts.

The children are currently able to differentiate between plants and trees with woody and soft stems.

They have recently completed a practical activity where they had to firstly draw a classification table and then walk around the grounds of Varee Chiangmai School filling the table with the types of vegetation they saw. This meant not only drawing the specific plant but labelling it and making sure it was in the correct portion of the table they had produced. See the pictures below.

Outdoor Plant Classification Activity

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Happy Earng with her book work finished

Happy EP1 Red Children

Finally in science the children are currently learning about different types of seeds and the types of plants they will grow into.

In CAT the children of EP1 Red have been learning about various types of clothing.

Firstly the children learnt about basic every day casual clothing and then they covered the various items of clothing which make up their school uniform.

The pictures below show the children sticking pasting and labelling various items of clothing in their CAT notebooks.

Inch working hard

Geol nearly finished.

Luka hard at work

: Kongkwan nearly finished

Kongkwan nearly finished

T-Jay concentrating hard

Superstar nearly done

Ploy very proud

Reading their notebooks will serve to aid in revision prior to their mid term tests.

The pictures below show the children taking part in a bookwork activity where they had to draw their own school uniform and label it.

In social the children are learning about the 5 major religions of the world today.

They are able to differentiate between the different places of worship (buildings) and the people of a specific faith who worship in them. For examples Buddhists pray in a Wat.

The children are also able to identify the main religious symbols and associate them to the 5 different places of worship according to the religion.

The pictures below show the children of EP1 Red playing a game with mini flashcards. The aim is to listen to the teacher and pair up the cards or order them according to what the teacher says.

In reading the children are now on their second reading book entitled The Enormous Turnip which they are taking home every day to read as part of their daily homework. They are also reading a different book which stays at school.

The current school reading book is entirely phonically based and aids in blending.

The reading book which they take home is a mixture of phonics and sight words.

This mix of reading allows the children to become more fluent readers quicker by being exposed to words they have to remember and recognise by sight and words which they have to be able to read a letter at a time.

In health the children are studying the various parts of the human body from the head/face down.

The emphasis here is not only to recognise and clearly (verbally) identify the various parts of the human body but to also spell them.

The pictures below show the children of EP1 Red pairing up and drawing each other than labelling the parts of their partner’s body.

Very recently in health the children of EP1 red took part in a barrier game.

A barrier game essentially is an activity involving at least 2 children whereby one individual has information which the other child must obtain by using the correct target vocabulary.

In this case the target vocabulary was “how many (body parts) has it got? “It has got (number) (body parts).

The first lesson involved the children producing the actual barrier game template which in this case was an outline of a monster which they had to fill in with whatever amount of body parts they wanted.

The next lesson the children were paired up and one child did the asking and the other child filled in a blank template and drew on the correct amount of body parts they heard from their partner.

once finished the pair would compare pictures to see if they were similar. Then they would swap their roles and the other child would do the asking.

As you can see from the images below this activity was very successful and fun was had by all.

In art the children of EP1 Red created a simple representation of a flower using coloured plastic film, coloured wool and coloured pencils.

They then labelled it.

Art in this case is an integrated subject which is connected to the same theme/topic studied in science.

EP1 Red with Teacher Chaz

Also in Art they have recently completed an accurate representation of a face using clay which included all the facial features they have been learning about in health.

Finally in Art the children very recently produced a seed plate.

The children were given a paper plate which they then had to stick and label 4 different types of seed onto.

This is an example of integrated learning as the children are currently learning about seeds in science.

I hope you enjoyed the EP1 Red blog.

As always if you have any questions or concerns regarding your child’s English language development than I am always available to talk to during school hours.

Kind regards………………………..Teacher Chaz.

EP1 RED CLASS OF 2011