Snack Tag

The importance of teaching and learning with more than just sight and sound lessons.

Multi-sensory learning has the benefit of reinforcing strengths, improving students’ weaknesses and assisting the brain in making connections between current knowledge and the new knowledge that is being taught. It also helps students who differ in learning styles to make concrete connections during the lesson.

In the BIS Library – learning is dynamic, engaging and often involves more than three of the body’s senses. The ‘/j/’ sound lesson is the perfect example of a lesson where students are facilitated in remembering the sound by tasting jelly. After singing the jolly phonics song for ‘/j/’, they move their bodies like wobbling jelly and read a book about jelly. The students then have the opportunity to enjoy smelling and tasting some jelly. Multi-sensory lessons seem more like playing than learning to children and as research has shown, this is one of the best means for children’s brains to make connections and store information.

Facilitating learning through the senses is important, in particular learning to read because reading always leans towards sight and sound. Reading is an abstract concept that requires concrete learning methods in its teaching, and not only for those who need it with regard to their learning styles.

Kirsten Stoffberg

School Librarian and Teacher

We will celebrate book week next week at BIS. It’s a fantastic opportunity to celebrate books and to see the young students getting excited about reading.

There will be many fun activities during Book Week:

• On Tuesday, 3 May 2022 we will do stop, drop and read. All students need to stop what they are doing and listen to or read a story for 10 minutes when they hear the bell ring.
• We are holding another night of fun stories and book sharing for Foundation Phase and Key Stage 1 students. Bedtime story evening on Wednesday, 4 May 2022 will start at 18:00. We invite all students to come along wearing pyjamas and snuggling their bedtime toy and listen to some great bedtime stories told by the teachers and parents.
• Book Character dress up day will be on Friday, 6 May 2022. Students are encouraged to bring a book to donate and dress up as their favourite book character.

As you can see our Book Week is packed full of exciting activities for the students.

Martie van Dyk
Pre-Reception Teacher

Earlier on in the term we started off by learning about the concept of more, which also helped the students understand the idea of counting forward and numbers getting bigger when one more is added.

This week, the students were introduced to a very popular and friendly character in Numberland, called Mr Plus.  Mr Plus likes to bring the numbers together by making friends with them and making them more. The students learnt a song about Mr Plus. Then the teacher pretended to be Mr Plus, using the students to make sums. The sums were made on the board using magnets and a whiteboard pen.

The students were reminded that the plus sign is in between the numbers to add them and the equals sign comes before the answer.  Afterwards the students came to the mat in small groups for a focus group lesson with the teacher. They used their own counters on their whiteboards to make their own sums.

The students were so excited to be making sums with counters and learnt how to check if their answers were correct. Later on they will also be introduced to picture sums and progress to using counters or their own drawings to work out addition sums with numbers.

Mathematics can be so much fun!

Bronwen Nuthall
Reception Year Teacher

Going forward into a new term I encourage parents and students to consider adopting healthy eating habits throughout their day. In the Junior campus we have incorporated a robot system which gives the children a visual aid of which foods are a healthier choice.

The red light is used for foods which should be avoided in school lunches. “Red light” foods include items such as sweets, fizzy drinks, pastries, chocolates, etc.

The orange light is used for foods which can be incorporated occasionally in school lunches. “Orange light” foods include white grains (such as white bread or pasta), chips, etc.

The green light is used for foods which are encouraged in school lunches.  “Green light” foods include fruit, vegetables, wholegrain foods (such as brown bread and whole-wheat products), water, etc.

It has been proven that sugar hampers a child’s ability to concentrate and focus. In the Junior classrooms the students are very proud when they have healthy items as snacks and love to show these to their classmates. We would like to encourage this behaviour and really adopt a positive attitude towards healthy eating habits. If we do this from a young age then we can be assured that our children will grow up with this healthy frame of mind regarding food habits.

For some inspiration for healthy school lunches, please see the below article entitled Healthy Food for Kids: Are your kids hooked on junk food? With these simple tips, you can get children to eat right without turning mealtimes into a battle zone.

https://www.helpguide.org/articles/healthy-eating/healthy-food-for-kids.htm

Kim Hahn
Reception Year Teacher