Arrowsmith
July has proven yet another productive month for students as they braved the wrath of Winter to exercise their cognitive capacities in meeting the expectations of their program. In recognition of their effort and outcomes we introduced a monthly award for gaining the most Masteries in the L-Think exercise. While Twenty-Four is the benchmark for monthly masteries, the winner in August was Charlie Bernstein of 9B, with an impressive Fifty-Five mastered stories. Congratulations to Charlie!
To give some context to this achievement, I have attached a list of the benefits in Academics of practising the L-Think exercise daily.
EXERCISE |
AREA OF IMPROVEMENT
|
BENEFITS |
| L-THINK | READING | Getting the main point of what was read; thinking about the information and drawing conclusions; prioritising information as to importance; interpretation of text as appropriate; thematic analysis. |
| WRITING | Generating arguments in writing; relevant information is tied to theses or main ideas; less ambiguity in writing; less rambling, more to the point. | |
| MATHEMATICS | Able to determine what is relevant information in a math word problem necessary to solve the problem; able to generalise formulae appropriately to solve problems. |
Since the beginning of the school year students have chosen a place they would like to visit each day. They locate and label the country, capital city, island, continent and region where they want to travel. In another attempt to keep the winter blues at bay, we held a competition where students were invited to further extend their Geography skills; they were given daily clues to find and sequence places visited in a round trip. The students participated in this competition with enthusiasm and interest in discovering different parts of the world.
Many thanks to Trina Angelatos (Arrowsmith Facilitator) for her instruction and assistance with this wonderful and rewarding learning activity. It was a joy to see them co-operate with each other and encourage their peers towards finding correct answers each day. Winners were awarded an inflatable globe of the world.
This month we also set up our Gratitude Tree to help focus on something we truly feel grateful for. The students really enjoy this weekly practice, and a great opportunity to enrich their vocabulary by using adjectives other than “grateful” in their daily expressions.
Dora Papadakis
Acting Arrowsmith Coordinator