A smooth transition to distance learning

Hello K2 families. While we may not be in the same building at the moment, we remain a strong community at Hillside and the progression of learning and strong connections we have with your child continues. Our priority is to support your child's wellbeing during this period of home learning, so communicate with your class teachers often and raise questions if you have any along the way. This will enable us to ensure the learning we are sending home is as personalized and meaningful as possible.

I have heard so much positive feedback from the class teachers last week; children have made an incredible transition to home learning with their familiarity to Zoom sessions and increased levels of engagement. In K2, teachers utilize live Zooms as the main avenue for delivering learning, along with the weekly Skills Builders, which gives families flexibility in accessing the curriculum in their own time. We are thrilled about the large numbers of children attending Zoom sessions, as it gives teachers a chance to provide feedback to individual children and assess their current understanding of the unit of inquiry. 

The K2 children are well underway in their inquiry into how "People can design and create for a purpose". This learning continues through distance learning as they actively use materials and resources in their home environment to support their emerging understanding of the central idea. Design incorporates lots of different math concepts, so last week children tuned into 2D and 3D shapes in various ways:

Children are also actively using various toys and materials they have at home to exercise design thinking, which is when they come up with cognitive, strategic, and practical solutions to a problem. When you look at the learning experiences below, can you guess what problem the children are trying to solve?

Design thinking is an integral part of the unit of inquiry, and you can support your child by asking them questions when you're out and about in the city. For example, here are a couple of things I saw over the weekend and questions I wondered about:

What material might the windows be made out of? How might they have been constructed?

I wonder why the architect designed the building like that- it looks like it has a big hole in it.

Some of the windows have a triangle design above it, while others have semi-circle arches. I wonder why the architect designed it this way? Did they design it for different purposes?

The balcony looks like there isn't a lot of space at all. Is it a real balcony? If it's not real, why did the architect build it like that?

Design is all around us, and can serve as inspiration for our own learning. This week, children are invited to use their environment to do lots of creative thinking, design, and creation. Please start with the yellow "action box" and share your learning with everyone by sharing photos and videos in the class Google album!

Have a great week ahead :)