GIS SP The International School of São Paulo

Student-Led Conferences: Celebrating Learning and Growth

Our Primary students are currently participating in Student-Led Conferences, sharing their learning journey with their families. Through their reflection binders, they showcase key discoveries, achievements, and experiences from throughout the year within the IB PYP.

This is a valuable opportunity for students to reflect on their growth and for families to connect more deeply with their children’s learning, celebrating the progress they have made along the way.

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Student-Led Conferences: Celebrando a Aprendizagem e o Crescimento

Os alunos do Primary estão participando das Student-Led Conferences, compartilhando com suas famílias sua jornada de aprendizagem. Por meio de seus binders de reflexões, apresentam descobertas, conquistas e experiências significativas vividas ao longo do ano dentro do IB PYP.

Este é um momento valioso para que os alunos reflitam sobre seu crescimento e para que as famílias se conectem de forma mais profunda com a aprendizagem de seus filhos, celebrando juntos todo o progresso realizado ao longo do caminho.

What if the heart of a school was not a classroom, but a shared space for encounters and ideas?

In the Reggio Emilia approach, the piazza is exactly that — a place where children and adults meet, exchange perspectives, and where learning becomes visible through relationships.
Inspired by this idea, we have been reimagining our own Piazza as a living learning environment. We began by organizing the space into three invitations for exploration:
Structures & Stories, where children build, test ideas, and collaborate with open-ended materials.�Many Languages, a space for expressing, imagining, and communicating through drawing and other forms of representation.�Quiet Encounters, a cozy corner for stories, listening, and moments of pause.
Little by little, the Piazza is coming to life through the children who inhabit it and the ideas that emerge there.

As part of EY1’s ongoing graphic research and their investigations within the Who We Are unit, the children engaged in a self-portrait experience using their own photographs as a reference. Working with acetate sheets placed over their photos, the children observed their faces closely and drew what they noticed. This approach supported careful observation, fine motor development, and growing awareness of facial features, while reinforcing that drawing is a way to represent what we see.

Over the past few weeks, our EY2 students have been exploring colors through hands-on investigations with light and different materials.

We began by experimenting with water and light to create rainbows. As the light passed through the water, children noticed how it separated into different colors, sparking lots of curiosity and questions. From there, we continued exploring how light can change the way we see colors.

The children tested different light sources, including colored lamps and natural sunlight. They observed how colors looked under bright light, softer light, and shadow, and noticed that colors can appear more vibrant, darker, or even slightly different depending on the intensity and direction of the light.

Through these experiments, students were encouraged to observe, compare, and share their discoveries, developing early scientific thinking while exploring colors in playful and creative ways. It has been exciting to see how their curiosity grows as they experiment and make sense of what they see around them!

At GIS, we believe learning goes far beyond the classroom.
Our PY1 students reflected on how they could contribute to the school’s partnership with TETO — and they chose to take action.
With empathy, initiative, and a strong sense of community, they organized a *Food & Hygiene Drive* to collect essential items, supporting the families who will soon receive their homes and helping them begin this new chapter with dignity and hope.
When we give children a voice, they show us that it is never too early to make a difference.
Small actions. Big impact.
Education with purpose.

A meaningful morning connecting with families as we explored the IB framework and our upcoming PYP Evaluation Visit with the Education Director Emanuela Ferloni.

Exploring Shadows
As part of our “How the World Works” inquiry, EY2 children have been exploring how shadows are created and how they change. Through playful investigations with their bodies, hands, and classroom objects, they observed how shadows grow, shrink, and shift depending on the position of the light and the movement of the object.

Building on this learning, the children designed and created their own shadow puppets using different shapes and materials. Taking turns as storytellers and audience members, they combined imagination, collaboration, and their growing understanding of light to share creative shadow stories.