The Story of a City
April 28, 2021 | Sossi Essajanian
It all started with a walking trip…
As part of a building study, the Sky Class took a walking trip around Church Square Park. They noticed buildings of different sizes, shapes, and purposes.
After the walk the children discussed the buildings they noticed:
a library
a hospital
restaurants
apartment buildings
In partnerships, the children used the class iPad to take photos of particularly interesting buildings.
What part of the building do you need to capture in your photograph?
After you take the picture, how does the building look in the picture?
Later in the classroom, teams looked closely at printed pictures of their photographs. First they noticed big shapes of the building:
Rectangles
Squares
Then they looked closely at the details…
How many windows does it have?
Where are the doors?
Next decision: what type of blocks to use to build it?
Unit
Double
Column
Pillar
From this observation, the children drew blueprints from which they would build the structure in blocks.
Let the building begin!
The children then took their blueprints and photos to the block area.
The final step will be to make video tours of the park and their buildings, explaining how they built their structures.
Stay tuned!
Sossi Essajanian
Teacher, Sky Class
Sossi Essajanian is excited to continue her teaching and learning journey at the Mustard Seed School. She began teaching at the United Nations International School where she worked with children and colleagues from around the world. This inspired her to take a primary teaching position abroad in Nicosia, Cyprus, where she lived and worked for two years.
Ms. Essajanian has a passion for supporting children’s social/emotional skills and learning through a loving and caring classroom community. These are built on creating shared understandings and opportunities for children to identify and express their feelings and of those around them. She believes in creating experiences through pair and group work where learning blossoms through social experiences.
Ms. Essajanian also enjoys reading and talking about books and continues to pursue her second passion: editing. She’s worked in various editorial capacities in newspapers, magazines, and books. She was recently excited to serve as the development editor of a children’s book about engineering and is looking forward to leading some tinkering investigations of her own with her students!
In her free time Ms. Essajanian runs, swims laps, and likes to take long walks to explore the world around her.