Learning and Teaching

Making Connections to Enrich Learning

There are many ways we design learning at LPS to ensure students are able to make connections to enrich and deepen their learning experiences.

By focussing on making connections, we support students to make more meaning and sense of their own learning, and experience knowledge and concepts in a variety of ways through multiple exposures.

There are a multitude of avenues in which students can connect their learning - to the real world through their personal lives, as well as to their past and current learning. This could be by making connections within learning areas, such as Reading and Writing, or across different learning areas such as Geography and Maths.

This term so far has seen some high quality interconnected learning happening across the school.

Grade 1 Literacy and Inquiry

The grade 1 team has worked collaboratively to integrate the History Inquiry Unit into their Literacy block. They have accomplished this through reading historical texts with the students, exploring historical vocabulary, and encouraging students to apply their new historical knowledge in their writing.

Elisa (1KA) exploring her understanding of historical connections through Poetry writing

Thomas (1KA) chose to write about what he has learnt in History in his free writing, successfully communicating his new formed ideas.

Grade 4 Maths Connections

Grade 4 students have been learning about the mathematical concepts of Shape, Area and Symmetry. They are combining this learning through a Mathematical Investigation designing their own unique symmetrical shape.

By exploring these different concepts together, students are learning how they are connected, and their understanding of each individual concept is further consolidated and strengthened.

Poppy (4FZ) created a symmetrical design and can measure it's area using the grid squares

Hugh (4FZ) created a rabbit with one line of symmetry using 3 different shapes

STEM Science and Maths in the Real World

This week in STEM, Grade 6 students explored light reflection as part of their Physical Science Unit. Through this, they explored the idea of light reflecting through angles of incidence and angles of reflection. Students had to connect back to their prior learning and knowledge about angles from the mathematics classroom.

Students investigated these ideas and concepts in the real world where they predicted the angles that light was being reflected off objects, depending on their surface characteristics (transparent, translucent, opaque).

Some light passes through, and some light is reflected off this translucent bottle.

All light is reflected off this opaque jar.

Rich, interconnected learning such as this helps students to 'see' concepts in the real world, and gain a deeper understanding not only of the 'what' - the content knowledge, but also the 'why' - the purpose of, and need for, learning.

Zahra Harvey, Learning Specialist | Numeracy