A warm welcome to our new Rainforest student S. and her family to ISN Matsumoto! S. prepared a poster and did a fabulous job introducing herself. Thank you!
Our next line of inquiry is ‘What can I do in a team?’ This brings us to how we can do our part to help one another as a team. Once again we turn to stories to help us conceptualise our central idea. The beautifully illustrated book ‘Swimmy’ by Leo Leonni tells a story of Swimmy whose brilliant idea helped the others escape the jaws of the other bigger fish. Each little fish had a part to play. Together they swam about like one giant fish and chased all the other big fish away. Rainforest dramatised the story in class, and similarly each had a part to play. One was the head, others the body and tail of the giant fish. ‘Hey, don’t swim so fast! Oh no the body is too far away!’ They learned to communicate with each other and ‘swam’ around the classroom as one giant fish.
Our week’s highlight was an invited guest speaker who gave a little talk about teamwork in basketball – Mr. Takei. He is a professional basketball player and the General Manager for Shinshu Matsumoto Dynablacx. Rainforest listened intently as Mr. Takei. shared about passing the ball well to one another and aiming for the basket hoop to score points. He showed us a video of a game and photographs of his teams. Thank you Mr. Takei for your precious time and teaching us about teamwork. He ended with a very important message. As a team, we must listen to each and every one. We think of ways to work together so everyone succeeds and achieve their dreams and goals.
Inspired, we tried working as a team with the Hula Hoop Pass game. We held hands as one and passed the big hula hoop over ourselves. At first, it was difficult ‘because I don’t know how to move! Put your other leg out. Help me, how?‘ Then using their arms and legs they helped one another. Then I threw them a few challenges – how about NOT speaking, NOT looking and Speed Round!
We wrote about our emotions – positive and negative feelings. ‘I feel glad when I get a hug. I feel cross when my friend kicks me’. In the following weeks, we will discuss ways to resolve conflict. Rainforest has progressed to Blue Words and we played Blue Bingo. This group of high frequency words are mostly tricky and not easily decodable as in ‘do, my, by, me’.
Rainforest is looking forward to Saturday’s Matsumoto Bon Bon. Till next week, please take care and have a wonderful weekend!
