Saturday school 18th June 2022

 

Primary years

Theme: Food from around the world 

The students enjoy learning about  food from around the world. This helps  broaden their horizons and nurture an open mind. The first important lesson that they learn is that different people have different ways of life and appreciate different tastes and textures. On top of that, they  learn a bit about geography. They explore the world map to locate a variety of food from around the world. 

English 

Weekly Vocabulary Challenge 

Karuta is a Japanese game similar to snap. It's a fun way to test listening recognition for vocabulary sets and students love this game. It gives them the opportunity  to practice their sight words and build toward mastery while also keeping them engaged and having fun. 

Language and Reading 

Weekly book discussion with reading and writing activities.

 

International graduate 

The student's of the International Graduate Class have been doing some pretty fun things in the classroom. Currently our Unit of Inquiry is "How the World Works" and we have been taking a deep dive into learning about materials and their properties. 

In our ICT class we have begun to look at what makes a computer tick inside. Learning things like RAM, CPU, and GPU components and what they do. Earlier in the term we also set up some games of Among Us. And 8 - 10 students would all play together in the class. 

Among Us parties will definitely happen again! 

Early years

In class this week we were learning about the letter Bb and all the words we can use that have that sound at the start. We worked on our hand writing and recognition of the letter Bb and played a few games to help us remember.

In our craft time we made a father's day card by making a portrait of our fathers and decorating the card with different stickers, paper punch outs and drawings. We were very creative! 

We hope that our fathers' love the cards as much as we loved making them to show our appreciation for all they do for us.

Last day of Saturday School 2019-2020

Wow the rain fell hard today, but that didn't stop any of our students from coming in and enjoying the morning. Unfortunately Saturday School year has ended a week earlier due to recent events. Regardless I was glad to see a lot of our students still show up for the last day of the year.

This month we are learning about weather and today we covered natural disasters. Our older cadre of students learned about volcanoes and the different part of the volcanoes, they had to label each part of the volcano before making volcanoes of their own out of perler beads. 

The younger students created their own story before reading a book with Ms. Bel about a skeleton losing his hiccups. During playtime in class the students playing musical chairs.


In the gym we played a lot of sports from hockey to basketball and even a few games of handball.










The next year there will be a lot of changes to the curriculum, as well as Saturday school in general. We will be sending out an email regarding those changes in the month of March. Thank you everyone for another fun year of Saturday School. Let's make the next year even better than the last.

January 11th, welcome back!

First day of Saturday school has come and gone, and it was a delight to see everyone back. The first week back to school is always met with a lethargic feeling, but we soon got into our regular groove and had a lot of fun.

This month our theme is about everything sports. And our first day back we talked about winter sports. What are the different kinds of winter sports? Can you do any of them? If not, which ones do you want to try?

As a big class we put together a poster about winter sports.

After we made the poster, each student wrote down what they can do, and what they wanted to try. It was interesting to find out that some could already ice-skate.

Next week we will talk about summer sports, I am sure the discussion will be a lot bigger due to the 2020 Olympics this year being held in Tokyo. Stay tuned for next time.

- James Barbosa

End of 2019

For our final Saturday of Saturday School we held a winter party that was jam-packed with Pizza and other goodies. We also played some winter games and winter crafts. The craft was to make a giant winter scene on one of the gym walls, and the game Ms. Bel ran was 'pin the carrot on the snowman'

And of course Saturday is always full of sports. And during this Saturday we had some games of basketball being played.

I hope you all have a great New years and we will see you all next year. Bring on 2020!

- James Barbosa

Cozy in December

Wow is it ever getting cold outside, luckily we are pretty cozy in Saturday school, burning off energy in the gym and electrons lighting up in the classrooms.

Today in the Sunrise class Ms Bel and the students worked on their fine motor skills by making perler bead designs! 

They also did some reading with raz-kids books and the students were sent home with a couple of books home so that they can practice their reading.

lastly they also learned about winter! They made snowmen and practiced their wintery vocabulary.

As for the daylight students, we started the day off breaking the silence with a fun game called 'Rhino Hero'. It is a fusion of Uno and Jenga where you have to build a tower out of cards, while also trying to get rid of the cards in your hand.

During the game there was a teachable moment where they learned about the physics behind 'load balancing'.

During our language focus lesson we learned about sentences and fragmented sentences. They had to identify what sentences were complete sentences and which sentences were fragmented. 

Lastly, as with last month the students were finishing up their Animal reports, they are nearly done and today was spent drawing out the anatomy of their chosen animals.

During our break time there is always loads of fun to be had in the gym. We played some basketball games with the Turkish school students and several students enjoyed sitting down and doing coloring pages.

Next week will be our last Saturday school of the year. We will be having a winter party. Pizza will be had and tons of fun too. 

See you next Saturday.

- James Barbosa

Last week of November, here comes December

Last weekend marked the end of our November theme covering animals and animal habitats. The daylight class has been working on finishing their animal reports from this month on an animal of their choosing. And as always the students have been enjoying playing sports in the gym.

As for the Sunrise class in Saturday school we made some bead artworks, read two raz kids stories, practiced our days of the week and months of the year! 

The boys really enjoyed practicing their spelling with abcya! The girls read stories and got creative!

I hope you continue your reading at home! See you in December.

3rd week of November

Hey there readers, 

We just finished our third week of Saturday school. The daylight class has been learning about classifying animals as invertebrates and invertebrates. In our third week of November we began our animal reports. Each student is using a PC to research about their chosen animal. Here is a sneak peak

This week in the sunshine we had a great time using our English to guess different foods and animals in our draw and guess game.

We also finished off our beaded artworks ready for pressing next lesson! Everyone did really well improving their fine motor skills.

Finally we have introduced a greater focus on reading for the sunshine class. We read three books together and I have sent everyone home with a book to keep, study and enjoy!

I hope you all had a great time and we look forward to seeing you again!

The story so far

During this fall we have been learning topics like Health and food, Cultures and holidays, and this month of November, we have been focusing on Animals. For the Sunshine/Sunrise class they have focused on the different animals and their habitats, and for the Daylight class they gone more in depth learning about invertebrates and vertebrates. It has proven to be a challenge classifying animals in these groups.

But Saturday school has not been just about the themes, we have had a lot of fun organizing various sports in the gym. Hockey, Basketball, have been popular to play in the gym during our free play time.

During this weeks Saturday school session, the Sunrise/Sunshine class made perler bead creations

What I like a lot about Saturday school is the students ability to express what they want to do. If they wanted to explore other things around the classroom, they are free to. In this case, making a pizza on the smartboard.

That's it for this time, here are some more pictures of the students doing what they do best.

Stay tuned for more!

Saturday school Pizza day

That's a wrap for Saturday school. As we go on holidays in August we decided to end July and ring in the holidays with a pizza party. But not before one we accomplish one giant art project as a group. We decided to make a summer mural out of coloring pages. Each student was tasked with coloring in 2 to 3 pages in order to put them all together to make a mural.

The students were pretty focus trying to bring this mural to life.

The final product turned out really nice too!

And after that we all sat down and ate a bunch of pizza. They ate so many!

Hope everyone has a good time during the summer holidays! See you at the end of the month!

- James Barbosa

Summer in English

July has almost come and gone, and we have two more weeks of Saturday school. Last Saturday we talked about summer clothes, and what kind of clothes we wear for certain occasions. In terms of grammar and English learning the older kids learned and practiced their past and present verbs and even learned some words that never heard before.

When it came to fun time in the gym we invented a fun game together; pool noodle hockey! It was super fun and everyone got pretty tired by the end of it. The funny part was inventing rules as we played. Some of the students were pretty clever in some of the ways they tried to play, even traveling with the ball without it touching the ground. I had to add a traveling rule to the sport!

What to look forward to in the future. On August 3rd we will have a pizza party to end the term before summer vacation! See you then!

 ~ James Barbosa

Summer in full swing

Well the summer is in full swing and we have been having a good time in Saturday School. Last month we worked on learning about the body. The skeletal system in our body, the muscles in our body, and also the basic vocabulary that comes with learning about the body.

When we are in the gym we come up with all manners of games using what we have in the gym. One week we decided to use colorful bottles in order to do a water bottle flipping contest. The students beat me easily, I learned that I am not very good at flipping water bottles.

This month we began our summer theme, and to start off the first Saturday of the month we made a craft for Tanabata. Everyone colored their own Mario and Princess and glued them on a cloud and we made a giant banner of stars. The project turned out great and you can see the finishing product on the 10th floor!

We have two more weeks of Summer school before Obon and then after Obon the theme will focus on all things music.

Stay tuned for more.

- James Barbosa