HSK K2 Learning Blog (2020-21)

Children are curious and capable learners with a sense of agency, who brings unique skills and understandings to their own play and learning every day in and out of school. Through play, children create actively create meaning and make sense of their world through interacting with different people, materials, and environments.  I'm hearing the word  AGENCY  a lot, what does it mean?  The IB explains that agency is when... " Students take initiative, express interest and wonderings, make choices and are aware of their learning goals. They are actively engaged, and monitor and adjust their learning as needed. " At Hillside, we offer 1 hour of Open Play every day for children to exercise agency and lead their own learning. Learning engagements are intentionally planned by the teachers to support their current inquiries, develop approaches to learning and more importantly, provide opportunities for children to engage in the 3 facets of agency:  Voice;  Choice;...

The K2 children have embarked on their last Unit of Inquiry of the year-   How We Express Ourselves . Children will be exploring different mediums of expression, with the goal of being aware and intentional about the choices they make in their learning and play. A big focus of the unit is continuing to develop children's communication and social skills, which serve as approaches to learning as they prepare for transition to primary school near the end of the school year.  Here is the key information and learning outcomes for the unit: If you would like to learn more about the Unit of Inquiry along with some concrete examples of what the learning might look like in the K2 classroom, feel free to hear me walk through the unit in finer detail. It's a 5 min video and you may press the full screen button for a clearer view: The first couple weeks of any Unit of Inquiry is always exciting as teachers set up play invitations and plan engaging circle times to gauge the children's p...

The highly anticipated World Book Day is here and the children have certainly shown up for the occasion! We are so impressed with their storybook characters, it's as if they jumped right out of the book! 📚There was a buzz of excitement in the air as we celebrated the joy that books bring us, and children loved it when we were able to guess what storybook character they are dressed up as 😀 At the beginning of Open Play, all K2 classes participated in the Book Parade. Every class had their moment to shine as they walked up and down the "catwalk", with some children even striking a pose! The rest of us were an enthusiastic audience as we clapped to the music and cheered them on.  After all the classes had a turn, it was time for the teachers to strut their stuff! We paraded to the song The Freeze Dance  and some of the children got up to dance along with us.  Thank you all grown-ups at home who helped to make such creative costumes. What a memorable World Book Day it was! ...

During this month of April, our Chinese teachers, Yammi Lao Shi and Joey Lao Shi are tuning the children into the new Unit of Inquiry. Through weekly circle time and smaller group learning engagements, children acquire the Chinese language through play and exploration.  Parents are welcome to support your child's Chinese learning at home with the following stories, songs, and vocabulary sound bites. If you have any questions or would like clarification around the Chinese curriculum, please feel free to reach out to Yammi Lao Shi directly at yammi.cheng@hillside.edu.hk Happy learning!

At Hillside, children have ample opportunities to engage with all sorts of texts through weekly library sessions, accessing their classroom book baskets by themselves, learning in a print-rich environment, and through many other more structured learning engagements. As a PYP school, our children develop their reading skills alongside inquiry-based learning. Their innate curiosity and enthusiasm serves as the cornerstone for being self-motivated readers, as both fiction and non-fiction books helps them to acquire knowledge, develop empathy, and make sense of the world around them.  The PYP believes : Reading helps us to clarify our ideas, feelings, thoughts and opinions. Literature offers us a means of understanding ourselves and others, and has the power to influence and structure thinking.  Children learn to read by reading . Writing is a way of expressing ourselves. It is a personal act that grows and develops with the individual. From the earliest lines and marks of young l...