Month: October 2020
STUCO First Event – Friendship Day on August 31st, 2020
STUCO Promotional Poster
The PYP STUCO (Student Council) of Sekolah Ciputra provides opportunities for students to develop their leadership skills and represent student voice within the school community. PYP 4-6 students can join the organization to explore their creativity in creating and leading some events to make learning at school more enjoyable and meaningful. The first fun event during this remote learning period was Friendship Day and led by Celine A. Kurniawan (PYP 5C).
We decided to do it based on all the members’ ideas and we voted. There were numerous reasons to celebrate Friendship Day that actually correlate with International Friendship Day which this year was on the 2nd of August. We thought that Friendships are the purest type of human relationships. Friendship is also equally important to our mental health. Therefore, our aim was actually to celebrate friendship and the relationships that exist between friends. Friends help us deal with stress, make better lifestyle choices that keep us strong, and allow us to rebound from health issues and diseases more quickly. This is especially important during this pandemic.
This event was held on the 31st of August 2020 and many Elementary students participated with awesome ideas that were beneficial to share. PYP 1 – 6 students came up with creative products such as handicrafts (bracelet, photos or cards). Some of the upper graders used Google meet to hold an online chat and quiz that they created, video presentations of friendships, electronic letters to friend(s), and many more. Here are some examples of the students’ creative ideas:
Carolina P. Seran
PYP Vice Principal & STUCO Head Coordinator of Sekolah Ciputra
Carolina@sekolahciputra.sch.id
How Do We Use Technology at Our School?
Learning is fun and challenging at the same time and even more so during this pandemic outbreak. The school community has to adapt to the changes where educators, parents and students have to develop a flexible mindset to adapt to new ways of interaction and learning. To cope with the pandemic, schools maximize the use of technology for learning and seek to transform fully into a digital classroom. Sekolah Ciputra modifies the classroom setting into a series of virtual classrooms where blended learning happens synchronously and asynchronously.
Live presentations at Google Meet 
Sharing ideas at Padlet 
Online discussions at Flipgrid 
Seesaw as a platform where Sekolah Ciputra teachers can assign tasks to students and parents can access to view the learning activities done 
Students can choose media to express their thoughts and creativity such as creating an animation 
Students do personal inquiry planning at G-Slides 
Students use Canva to present their work 
The use of Jamboard during online learning activities
To understand more about the use of technology in Sekolah Ciputra, let’s hear from a sample of current students.
What are the best platforms/apps for you in learning?
What are the most memorable learning moments for you when you use digital platforms?
How will you maximize the use of technology for your learning?
What do you think of your online learning at Sekolah Ciputra?
Given the positive feedback from students and while the current situation is not ideal, remaining flexible in our approach shows that effective learning and positive outcomes are achievable if we try. Furthermore, it reinforces this concept with students to see that there can be more than one way to achieve a result.
PYP Elementary Team of Sekolah Ciputra 2020-2021
A tiny contribution to society
The Covid-19 pandemic has been associated with negative connotations, such as losing family members and income, fear, stress, physical distancing, working from home, etc. I reflected about the positive side during this challenging period. I found out the list is quite long. As the saying goes, “we can always make the best out of the worst that the world offers today”. Below are some thoughts about the effects of the pandemic.
- It reduces traffic and air pollution.
- It gives me more time to be at home and be with my family.
- It makes me reflect what is important and not so important in life.
- It raises my awareness to live a healthy life.
- It brings people closer in terms of helping each other and sharing knowledge.
- It forces me to be creative and adaptive.
- It improves my ability in using recent technology.
- It connects me with many educators around the world.
- It makes me aware of what is going on around my neighbourhood.
Since March this year, I have done most of my teaching activities from home. I noticed that six to seven children, with age range of 3 to 9 years old, have been playing around my house every day. This is also another positive thing during this tough time. Children have lots of time to play and go back to nature instead of spending their weekends in the malls. The children in my neighbourhood always ring my house bell and tease my four dogs. One day, I took an opportunity to talk to them and discussed their behaviour. Most of them were afraid of dogs due to different reasons, including the religious aspect. Then, I explained to them about dogs and ways to handle them. I also reminded the children to wash their hands after playing with pets. Surprisingly, they have become my regular visitors and made friends with my four dogs. They love to feed and walk my dogs every Saturday and Sunday. They even told their friends how to approach and feed the dogs. When it came to the religious reason, one child said, “Even though we have different religions,  we are one nation and we are not different in front of God”. I was surprised to hear this deep thought from such a young mind.
I recently finished joining a webinar series about “Play in the Early Years”. It was a confirmation of what I have been doing as a teacher. I was excited to apply what I have learnt and observe the inquiry process. So the following day, I prepared some sensory materials and let my regular young visitors play with them.
Immediately, questions were pouring out from them. They asked why there are bigger and smaller water beads, what is the rubber band for, who made the beads, etc. They were also very much engaged in the materials and busy playing together. I taught them a simple trick to move the rubber band from one hand to another. Two older children were paying attention and tried to do it by themselves, and they managed to do it. They were so happy and proud about their achievement and started to teach the other children until they too could do it.
Then, I was thinking about my school new vision which is “Fostering and Empowering Society in Building and Serving the Nation”. I just realised that it could be my tiny contribution to my society to develop the children not only at my school but also around my neighbourhood to be inquirers, thinkers, creative, open-minded, and caring learners.
By: Geertruida Maya
Early Years 1 Teacher
BINUS SCHOOL Simprug
gmaya@binus.edu
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