9 February 2015

Back to School - Upper Primary, by Ms. Megha Arora Form Tutor Gr 4


The theme for this year’s Back to School was to share how we develop our Language and Math in class. The students lead the session completely and became the teachers for lesson. The session began with a glimpse of
how the development of skills was interspersed with various activities related to reading, writing, presenting etc and would repetitively occur during the day at various times. This was followed by the sharing of the system of reading and tracking in class. Lexile tests,  Reading assessments through tasks and written responses,  the expected reading levels of the class,  number of books to be carried home, process of guided reading-novel study, online reading websites for reading along with parents, due importance on reading both at home and school etc were some topics covered by the students through their talks and samples of work.
A demonstration lesson on ‘Biography Writing’ took the parents through a process wherein reading, writing, spelling and grammar
blended in well to create a perfect written piece. The students engaged the parents in reading and writing of biographies through differentiated tasks, laying due emphasis on grammar and spellings.
The math lesson headed by the students looked at the tuning in to a fractions unit. The parents were divided into four groups and were given an opportunity to explore fractions using a variety of manipulatives, based on differentiated situations. The students lead the parents into various hands-on activities related to fractions using cakes, a ball and bucket game, Jodo Gyan fraction kit etc. These activities were followed by revision sheets to be filled in. The parents were truly engaged and excited to have gone through a typical lesson and could get further clarity on how and where they could help the kids at home.