Responsibility and Nature
The theme this term was centered around responsibility and how we must shoulder certain burdens to keep society going. We looked at topics such as protecting the global environment, how Medieval people worked to maintain society, and how to respect one another. It’s been a busy term, here’s a look at some of what Elms have done in their different core subjects.
Literacy
Two students working on their narrative tales.
- Introductory letters – Each student wrote a letter to introduce themselves to the class.
- Apple pie recipes – Students made apple pies following a recipe, sold them, and then made a class poster about organic farming. We later used the business experience for ICT.
- Narrative tales – Students compared the narrative tales of William Tell and Snow White, learning about the different stages of a basic story (introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution).
- Writing their own Medieval narrative tale – Students wrote their own narrative tale centered around a Medieval conflict of a noble banning apple consumption for peasants. Used knowledge from history to make the stories feel realistic.
- Class play – Students then took the story they wrote and used it to write a Medieval style play.
- Class book – The Jungle Book. Students were introduced to the law of the jungle and the responsibilities Mowgli must carry with him while challenging their vocabulary.
- Through these different forms of text, students practised grammar such as simple past tense and connectives. They also practised structures commonly found in texts listed above and challenged to expand their vocabulary. We will continue to work on these fundamentals throughout the academic year.
Bilingual History and Geography
Pupils learned about the Medieval way of life.
To start with, students planted grains, winnowed them, and then milled them by hand.
They then took their hand-milled flour and made bread.
We baked the bread while learning about Medieval food.
Additionally, we learned about Medieval clothing and made our own.
We made a Medieval dance as well!
The objectives of this term were to learn about the characteristics of Medieval society and its people. We focused heavily on social status and how it worked with the system of Feudalism as a whole. For example, through winnowing and milling grains ourselves, we learned concretely how much work went into making a single loaf of bread, which gave students a basis for understanding why white bread would be for the richer nobles while brown, coarse bread was for the peasants. We also looked at Medieval clothing, housing and other aspects of general life to build an idea of how people lived in the past and how that compares to today.
Pour découvrir les activités en français, téléchargez le PDF ici !
La découverte de la période médiévale à travers différentes activités culturelles, artistiques et culinaires.
ICT / Computer Class
Students busily creating their Excel-style spreadsheets.
Students were introduced to touch typing and Excel spreadsheets. First we practised how to type with our fingers in the right place, particularly focused on typing with two hands. We will continue to work on this skill throughout the academic year. Later we took our apple pie business and itemised the expenses and income of the business on a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet proved to be an excellent introduction into the world of accounting, business, and programming. Students itemised the inventory needed to make apple pie (e.g. apples, flour, butter, sugar), but then used the computer to multiply the price and quantity of the ingredients and add them together for a final expense. We did the same for income and subtracted the final income and expense to calculate the profit. The spreadsheet worked so that any change of inventory would automatically change the values of expenses and show a new profit. Overall, we bridged mathematics, business and programming from the simple creation of an apple pie.
Building Environmental Awareness
We learned about the impact of global climate change throughout the weeks of Global Climate strikes. Considering the term was about nature and responsibility, it was perfect timing, and there’s no time better to start learning about the environment than today. Caro came in as a guest speaker to educate us on how we can live a zero-waste life in order to stop wasting plastic. We learned a lot from her talk and challenged ourselves to waste less and help our planet now.
End of Term Play – The Delirious Duchess
Elms took their narrative stories and used them to create their own playscript, which we then acted out in front of an audience. The plot and characters were created by the students from scratch. They used their knowledge from Medieval history and how to create a story to create this play.