你好 Nǐ hǎo (hello) welcome to week 5 & 6 weekly blogs
Learning Intention 1: To nurture each child’s identity through connecting with and learning about their culture and community.
A big link to our inquiry is being part of a community. This has many benefits for a child. It can create a sense of belonging and strengthen their sense of identity through positive relationships with other people in the community. With this topic being so broad we thought that dividing it into two sections would make this a lot easier for both staff and the children. To grasp a better understanding on culture and community.
One thing that we wanted to ask our families here in LDC B is if they would fill out the template we have made with a few questions about your culture and traditions that you have in your family. These documents were placed in your children’s bags.
Teacher scaffolding learning:
- Asking families questions about their cultural and linguistic profile (recording on template), for future planning and collaboration
- Use home greetings in children’s home language.
- Continue to seek significant home music from families to share with community.
- Add cultural artefacts to our available resources, supporting children’s dramatic play.
- Include key word sign in daily routines and play, using posters in our learning.
- Community as prompts
- Introduction of songs in various languages, such as Bandi Bandi (twinkle
- twinkle) and Taba Naba
- Continuing to sing our daily Acknowledgement of Country at morning group times.
- Referring to our new Kaurna number display, observing how children engage
- With the picture cards, while we begin to familiarise ourselves with the pronunciation.
Environment as the Third Teacher:
- Diwali celebrations through light exploration, music and colour
- Continue to encourage families to share photos and information about their culture (Family, celebrations, special moments etc). (E)
- Provide visual provocations in the home corner (Restaurants/cafes, Playgrounds, Adelaide landmarks, shopping centres etc.)
- Facilitate discussions about families as children engage with construction materials. Take note of what children are interested in sharing.
- Provide materials for dramatic play relating to (our knowledge) of each child’s culture.
- Community visits (Holy Family Catholic School
- Provide books that represent different family dynamics. Encourage discussions through shared reading.
- Create a video/PowerPoint with the family photos collected (E)
- Create print version/story book with family photos (E)
Bookmaking spotlight term 4 (LDC B): Author Study on Mo Willems
Weekly focus
- Reading everyday
- Reading environments offered.
- Display author and books in our book making environment.
- Book making station always on offer.
- Clear and consistent storage for finished and unfinished books.
- Making books together at group times
- Discussing the characters and writing techniques from author texts (using this writer’s language a lot so children grasp a better understanding)
- Community walks – mark making.
Mentor texts
- Staying on topic or theme for the entire story / book
- Writing on each page of their books
- Children’s published texts
- Numbers on each page
- Speech bubbles?
- Starting to talk about characters.
Child’s voice:
Sebastian – Look at my book!
Adriana – I did one with a speech bubble.
Sofia – Can we make a book together again?
Niya – Millie looks at my double page spread.
Charli – My book is about a dinosaur.
Inquiry project: Where We Belong
We finally have a name for our inquiry project!! ‘Where we belong’. Having this intention this week as well as our inquiry helped us to discover a little more about our cultures (don’t forget to fill out our template please) as well as what, who and where people belong too.
Something that has sparked an interest with this inquiry is transport and different types. We have taken note of this so children are about to link and learn more about this area of our inquiry. Some things we want to know next are:
What we know
- Who is in some of our families?
- Teachers and peers of Holy Family ELC
- Where we all go (different places in Adelaide)
- What types of transport we use
- What do big people do (different jobs)
- How do we get to different countries
- What is your culture?
- What type of food do you eat at home?
What we want to know
- What Archies and Millie’s cultures are and what they do with their families on the weekend
- Different foods from different cultures
- Extending on transport – looking at this with more detail, about different culture from around the world.
- How do we get to different countries
- Different jobs and purposes of those in the community
- Different events and traditions from different cultures
Provocations and experiences we did the past fortnight linking to our inquiry:
- Group times with photos of different times in our community
- Mark making
- Small Group experiences and group times discussing who they have in their families and what they like to do with their families.
- Different foods and resources for home corner about different cultures
- Art provocations
- Different music from different backgrounds
- Small world transport
- Buddy’s from school coming to discuss about their backgrounds and cultures.
Reminders
With the warmer weather coming in and transitioning to summer it is super important that all our children have the following when attending ELC each day –
- A sun safe hat
- A drink bottle.
- Sun safe clothes and shoes (no tank tops, caps, thongs, or slides)
Trajectories:
- Continue with Christmas prep.
- Transitions starting week 7
- Slowly finishing and concluding our spotlight for book making and our inquiry
