By Ian Thomas, Group 7 Teacher at OIA Primary
It has certainly not been a quiet start to the year in Group 7! From the hum of the 3D printer to pencils scratching, books opening, ideas bouncing around the room and the occasional kitten exploding!
Our year began with our class motto: “Together, we shine brighter!” Rather than simply putting those words on the wall, we have been exploring what they actually mean. Through our আমরা কারা unit of inquiry, we have moved from ME → YOU → WE, thinking about identity, perspective, belonging, rights, responsibilities, and the choices we make as members of a community.
We started with Mondrian Me, using colour, symbols, poetry, and art to tell the story of who we are. From there, we explored how our identities and experiences give us different perspectives—and why being different does not stop us from belonging together. In fact, those differences can make the whole picture much more interesting. We even learned that the calming corner in our room is essential for everyone and that we can contribute to making it a great place to calm our amygdalas.
Meanwhile, our journey through The Odyssey has taken us considerably farther from Hoofddorp. We have travelled to ancient Troy, thought about hospitality and perspective, met Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachus. Encountered the Cyclops and discovered why telling a giant that your name is Nobody can sometimes be a surprisingly good idea. We have used the story for comprehension, poetry, perspective writing, graphic novels, vocabulary and even blackout poetry. Blackout poetry has shown each lion that the best poetry doesn’t have to rhyme and can help us become better summarisers.
Maths has had its own adventures. We have worked with place value, integers, addition and subtraction, multiples, factors, primes, composites, GCF, LCM and prime factorisation. Sometimes the fate of the world—or at least survival against a giant space octopus—has depended upon getting the maths right. We have navigated balloons using integers and seen how the ancient Greeks used maths to make F-artastic things!
In our Digital Design Workshop, ideas have moved from paper to screen and sometimes right into the third dimension. We have explored digital safety and our digital footprints, learned to design with purpose in Tinkercad and on other programming software and investigated scale, measurement, solids, hollows and how designs need to change if we actually want them to print. The 3D printer has been busy—and so have we.
Across everything, we are practising being open-minded, principled, and better communicators. We are learning that mistakes are useful and necessary, that questions matter, reflection makes our work stronger, and learning does not always have to look the same for everyone.
We have packed a lot into the first few weeks and we are really only getting started.
After all, a waterfall begins with one drop…
…but together, we shine brighter!