NUACHTÁN ELEMENTARY | March 2021
The second period of tripartite interviews, an open and active communication space for our students, is currently taking place
Interviews at Celtic International School are an opportunity for formal communication between students and teachers about their daily work. It is a moment to identify strengths and skills that they have developed, allow us to set academic goals, and realize how we are doing in the process of teaching-learning. In this model, teachers, parents, and psychologists accompany the student in a process of metacognition allowing him or her to realize what he or she is doing to learn; in addition to promoting effort, self-regulation, motivation, and responsibility.
Having readable handwriting
Writing in a readable way has some basic elements such as body control, motor, and perceptual maturation that we must consider and that we present below:
• Posture: Sit with a straight posture, feet resting on the floor firmly, sit down so you can look over the paper, but do not hunch over it, your arms must have a free range of motion, you should feel comfortable in no rigid way as it will cause tiredness.
• Taking the pen or working tool: Hold the pencil between the thumb and index finger by pinching it on the middle finger. The end of the pencil should rest on the fur of the skin between the fingers. To train the muscles from the hand, arm, and shoulder, you can do exercises in the air by typing with your finger.
If it helps, you may have a rubber gripper that correctly positions your fingers on the pencil.
• The development of fine psychomotor skills: Even though this is part of the preschool stage, you can continue working with exercises that give strength to the fingers, such as making paper balls, placing clothes tweezers, stretch garters, arming, or threading.
• Practice writing: You can start with basic shapes, letters are formed by straight lines, circles, and semicircles. Then try with each letter tracing in the correct direction. If you make the letters of equal size, it will help the writing look clean and tidy.
The goal of all this is that your handwriting is readable, it is not about having beautiful handwriting, as long as it fulfills the function of anyone reading clearly what you write.
How to take the pencil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUXIZq4yV18
Fine motor skills exercises: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oHq-joy22w
Letters (order and direction): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4HZwZNd-Xs
On-line Special classes
SCIENCE
Children are curious by nature and will seek to understand their surroundings, the best way to do it is through experimentation. Taking advantage of that, at school we have space where they can explore, know and understand natural processes, phenomena, and laws; which is the ‘science class’.
In science, they not only play but also explore, manipulate, satisfy their curiosity to know and understand their environment and how it works at their fingertips. Here, we allow students to be collaborators in the learning process.
In this space, the professor proposes an experience that will allow them to understand, from the point of view of the natural sciences part of what they are learning, at that time, in the unit of inquiry with their teachers.
When we hear «experiment» the first thing that comes to mind, it is a mixture with an obvious effect, such as effervescence or a change in color, smell, texture or an explosion.
With the current modality of online classes and as in the school, we are convinced that ‘students are agents of their learning’. A space is created where they can do it guided by a facilitator, who is the teacher.
So, taking advantage of them being at home, students have discovered that in the kitchen they have a laboratory, which, with homemade materials, can perform experiments emulating what we would do in the school lab. The class is designed taking into consideration our students’ well-being and health in plan, so we use materials that are within reach, are not dangerous, or pose a risk.
The class, at times, allows to experiment from a point of view of physics, through an experiment involving movement, strength, light, sound, magnetism, etc. Later, in chemistry, they will make preparations, mix, generate reactions where they will observe changes. Likewise, biology, experiments to know and understand changes in living beings, activities that allow to understand concepts such as biodiversity, ecology, importance of each individual in an ecosystem or its importance to man.
And thanks to technology and taking advantage of it, since we are using it, apps or web pages to address, from the point of view of astronomy, to know and try to understand a part of the universe around us. Thus, students in science class can satisfy their curiosity and need for knowledge, while developing skills, under these exploration processes to complement and enrich the Unit of inquiry.
SWIMMING CLASS
During this unit, students will perform exercises focused on the different muscle groups used in swimming styles, thus also developing their lung capacity and motor coordination. All this combined with different activities such as small interactive questionnaires in the form of memory, hangman, and roulette with swimming-related topics.
These activities will help our kids:
- Reduce stress
- Improve self-esteem
- Improve memory skills
- Increased endorphin production
- Peer interaction
CHESS CLASSES IN TIMES OF COVID-19
As you know, our school always committed to the integral and full development of our students, was given the task of finding the right and highest technology tools to improve the learning experiences of our children, evaluating more than 32 servers specialized in chess. This is how Celtic School joins the international CHESSLANG community, the safest and most advanced platform in the world for online chess delivery.
This Platform has a video communication server (video group calls), interactive demonstrative boards so that teachers and students can manipulate them directly in class and privately, an LMS server exclusive to our school for access to class resources, a baseline of chess problems, server for the realization of online tournaments, a play area for students to play live 24 hours a day, 365 days a year with any other member of the Celtic community who has a «Celtic chess» account, just to name a few.
Students have enjoyed this platform and have been motivated. Each day you can find more than 20 students connected simultaneously at all hours of the day sharing time with their peers, actively participating in the development of their learning.
Classes through this platform allow a direct and immediate interaction promoting the development and continuity of the content learned in class, and well, not to say of the internal tournaments between students, that allows them to measure their skills in a friendly environment and healthy competition that was missed, because it is exactly like playing in class with their friends, but at the comfort of home and wearing the clothes they want, what could be cooler than doing the things you loved so much, with whom you decide and at any time of the day? Definitely a great tool that our High Elementary kids are making the most of.
Applying the PYP in the classroom
As part of the Triggering activity of the 4th unit of inquiry, 5th graders performed the domino effect at their homes. This allowed them to make connections recognizing that all components are very important within any system, they were from the easiest to the most difficult, because they designed their domino effect with few pieces and also with all the parts. They watched a video showing a large domino effect and with a variety of other elements, students saw a fragment of the divergent film, where they observed a different system of government and social organization. Teachers showed our students that a domino effect can represent a contagious stage of the pandemic and that it does not work if the components keep the required distance, demonstrating that the current pandemic can be stopped if we can do the right thing and stay home.
Motivation is the difference towards our goals
During psychopedagogy classes at Elementary, we are interested in encouraging, through activities, on focusing on our positive thoughts. That is why we were working on motivation for several sessions.
Students highlighted that motivation is ‘the engine’, ‘the reason’, ‘the strength’, ‘the help’ ‘the impulse’, that has allowed them to face some circumstance or make decisions in the short, medium, or long term with or without help to solve some situation from necessity or interest.
Students also recognized that these impulses can be part of the interior (intrinsic motivation) or the exterior (external motivation), which, can be part of their character, values, beliefs, reinforcements, or rewards. All these help us to maintain interest and be challenged by the goals that we proposed. They used the following scheme to expose their motivating activities that they consider will do more and continue doing, and those that will do less or stop doing because they have made them lost interest.
Another activity, which was determined by the use of imagination, was that students became heroes and heroines, who were tasked with designing functional motivating tips for themselves or someone else who could help them feel better or contribute to their goals of the day. They gathered the following tips:
The advice of our heroes allows us to exemplify that motivation in our day, must be essential to continue to know us, promote our environment and continue to develop our skills.
Finally, and to continue to favor good attitude, performance, and good mood; Miss Gaby García, High elementary psychologist, proposes another strategy that involves formulating a monthly plan to identify activities or dynamics of your interest:
And shares a thoughtful phrase by Louis Holtz:
‘Your talent determines what you can do. Your motivation determines how much you’re willing to do. Your attitude determines how well you do’.
De la Fuente, A. J. (2012) Perspectivas recientes en el estudio de la motivación: la teoría de la orientación de la meta. http://www.investigacionpsicopedagogica.org/revista/new/ContadorArt iculo.ph. Recuperado.
Efectos motivacionales de las emociones. En: www.inteligencia-emocional.org /ie_en_la_ educacion/ efectosmotivacionalesdelasemociones.htm.
Santrock, J. (2002). Psicología de la educación. México: Mc Graw-Hill.
Dates to remember
• MARCH 1st to 12th – Parent-Teacher-Student conferences
• MARCH 12th – End of the 4th Unit of Inquiry
• MARCH 15th – Class Adjourn
• MARCH 16th – 5th Unit of Inquiry begins
• MARCH 16th-19th – Art and Culture Week
• MARCH 17th – Green Day, St. Patrick’s Day
• MARCH 23rd – Report cards published SESWEB
• MARCH 24th – Parent´s Making a Difference
• MARCH 29th – Spring break