Qatar National Day Practice!

Dear Students and Parents,

The school will be celebrating Qatar National Day next Wednesday, December 16th at 11:30 AM *Please make sure you are seated by 11:15, as the show will begin promptly at 11:30*.

Here are audio files of your lines for the show. Please find the one with your animal and practice, practice, practice!!

~ Tiger Class ~

Dugong: “This is a Dugong. Their nickname is the Sea Cow. They can eat up to 70 pounds of grass and can weigh up to 800 pounds.”

 

Sea Snake: “This is a Sea Snake. There are 62 different types and they are all very poisonous. They can stay under water for up to one hour.”

 

Tiger Shark: “This is a Tiger Shark. They get their name from the dark stripes found on them. They have sharp teeth and powerful jaws.”

 

Stone Fish: “This is a Stone Fish. They are the most poisonous fish in the ocean. They have good camouflage, so they are rarely afraid of danger.”

 

~ Lion Class ~

Dolphin: “This is a bottlenose dolphin. They can jump very high. Dolphins are good communicators and play together.”

 

Eagle Ray: “This is an Eagle Ray. It’s body shape allows it to glide in the water. They eat mollusks and crustaceans.”

 

Green Sea Turtle: “This is a green sea turtle. They move quickly in the water. They can grow up to 1.5 meters long.”

 

Jellyfish: “This is a jellyfish. They can live in warm or cold ocean water. They sting for protection.”

 

Good luck practicing, Preschool 5!!! You’re going to do a great job during Qatar National Day!!! 🙂 Have a great weekend!

Friendship Reading Challenge!

Preschool 5 has expanded their Friendship Challenge to include reading activities in the school library. Students from the Lion class were paired with students from the Tiger class and read stories to one another. This activity extended Preschool 5’s perspective and showed them more about ways they are similar and ways they are different from one another. Despite differences, they have learned they can still be friends.

Preschool 5 was also privileged to have Mrs. Natalia come and talk about how “Before you speak, think and be smart. It’s hard to fix a crumpled heart.” We continued talking about how to be “bucket fillers” and “bucket dippers”. Great job, Preschool 5! 🙂

 

 

We’ve Got Attitude!

Last week students celebrated our achievement of moving the mystery box from the ceiling to the teacher’s desk. In order to move the mystery box, students needed to demonstrate our key attitudes of commitment, empathy, and appreciation. Each time students showed these or caught one another showing these attitudes, our box moved down. The Lion class celebrated with a “Planes” party while the Tiger class had a pirate theme party. Students greatly enjoyed the opportunity to celebrate their good attitudes. Below are pictures from our parties. Great work preschool 5!

 

 

Friendship Challenge … Accepted!

For the past few weeks of our Unit of Inquiry on Friendship, students in both the Lions (Preschool 5A) and Tigers (Preschool 5B), have gotten the chance to practice making friends with one another. The students have been partnered up with different students to practice Kelso’s Wheel Strategies for Problem Solving as well as learning how to fill our invisible buckets from “Have You Filled a Bucket Today?” with compliments and good gestures, deeds, and words.

The students have made new friendships within their own classes and across both Preschool 5 classes. They truly accepted the “Friendship Challenge” and have excelled at recognizing how to begin, develop, and maintain their friendships. Great job, Preschool 5! Have your child share an experience with you and with us about the Friendship Challenge by posting a comment on the blog.

 

Kelso’s Wheel…as Demonstrated by Preschool 5

This week students were given the challenge of creating their own display to show Kelso’s Choices. We have discussed and participated in small role plays for all of the different Kelso Wheel Choices. On Tuesday, students used their knowledge to create their own wheel. Each group chose a strategy such as walking away or talking it out. The groups decided how to show the choice through a picture. Our pictures were then displayed in the main hall to help all students remember the problem solving strategies. Try to guess which choice each group is demonstrating. Feel free to post your answers as a comment.

Week of November 9th

This week in preschool 5, we continued our Unit of Inquiry on Friendship by starting to eat in the cafeteria, mingling all of Preschool 5 in order to make new friends. In addition, we learned about Kelso’s Choices and Wheel to help problem solve small problems that we are SMART enough and STRONG enough to solve on our own.

We were also lucky enough to have Mr. Fernando arrange for the Qatar Music Academy to visit the school and show the students the instruments from the orchestra that they were learning about during our unit on Communities. The students really enjoyed and were able to connect their learning inside the classroom to life outside of the classroom.

Please have your student reflect on what they learned and enjoyed about this week. Share them on the blog, if you would like. 🙂

Preschool 5’s Teaching Assistant, Mrs. Clara!!!

Hi everyone!

I am Mrs. Clara, the Lions’ and Tigers’ teacher assistant. Some of you know me, but if not I am going to speak a little about myself. I am from Spain, this is my first year working in Doha and I have a Bachelor degree in Nursing. I am really happy working here and helping Mrs. Shanna and Miss Doreenda. We are going to learn lots of things and have fun playing games, reading, and working all together as a team!

I hope you are as happy as I am this year! Because you all have something special that makes you unique to me!

Week of November 2nd

We had another exciting week in preschool 5. Students learned more vowel teams including oa, ie, and ee. We also learned the sounds for z and j. Students were excited to use our “hot spot” games and the iPads during listening centers. We practiced our tricky words by writing them with letter magnets and sorted objects by their beginning sounds. In math we continued practicing telling time to the hour and half hour. Students learned our new learner profiles for the unit. We are focusing on being open-minded, balanced, and caring. Thank you for viewing our post, please write a comment about something you learned this week or your favorite part of the week.

 

That’s a Wrap! … on Communities.

This week in Preschool 5, we were finishing up our Unit of Inquiry on Communities. Students began to build different places in the community using the vocabulary gained during the unit and throughout our math lessons on 2D and 3D shapes. Students made connections that certain buildings were the shape of rectangular prisms, others as cubes or cylinders. They also made connections between their chosen community helper and the places they created for them to work in. Here are some photos from this unit. Ask your student what they enjoyed most about learning about communities.

Tricky Words

Tricky words are frequently used words that are difficult to sound out or spell phonetically (using the sounds). We describe them as words that do not follow the rules. As these words are used often, it is important for students to be able to read and write these words automatically. Tricky words are also called sight words depending on the curriculum that is followed. As we use Jolly Phonics, we will refer to them as tricky words. Currently we are working on the following words:

She, do, are, he, the, was, all, we, me, to, and be. Please practice reading and writing these words at home.

These links have wonderful online games that students can play to practice a variety of tricky words (the words included in the games go beyond what we are currently practicing in class):

http://www.familylearning.org.uk/sight_word_games.html

http://www.iboard.co.uk/activity/Phase-2-Tricky-Words-Bus-747