What's New in Grade 2

Garbage Art

Over the last two weeks, influenza and colds have been keeping some of the students at home for a few days, but the other students have been busy at school learning about how they can make choices that will help the environment. As they sorted through their trash, it didn't take long for the students to notice that there was an abundance of unnecessary plastic wrappers and other things made of plastic.

Many of the students were moved towards taking action as they watched some videos about the huge amounts of plastic floating in the ocean, and in landfill sites. They focussed on making plans for what they could do themselves, at home and at school. To help make others aware of the problem, they started a making a Garbage Art Project out of the trash they collected last week.

I wonder what the finished projects will look like?

Field Trip Next Thursday

To help us understand more about the topic of recycling, Grades 1 and 2 will be making a visit to the Higashi Clean Center next Thursday morning. We will be leaving school on the school bus, at around 9:30 and will take a tour of the Centre before returning to school just before lunch.

3 Way Conferences

From Monday, February 4th until Friday the 8th, we will be holding 3 Way Conferences for all students and their parents to attend after school. Please complete the form that was emailed to you earlier tonight, with your top three times to meet and return it to me by next Tuesday. I will confirm the times and dates and let you know the schedule by next Friday.

Online Club Registration for Term 2

The list of clubs being offered in term 2 has been updated and is ready for students to signup! With the exception of the Science Club, all clubs that ran in the first term will be offered again in the 2nd term, plus several new exciting clubs! To find out more or to register, please visit the school's club page.

Limited Resources and Personal Choices

This week the students looked into one of our most important natural resources: Water. To gain a better understanding of how much water each of their families used in one day we applied a bit of science and math. To calculate how much water their shower uses in one minute, they used a timer and containers to catch the water at home, one came up with 6L/min while myself and another student measure our showers to use 12L/min. At school, they calculated how much water is used for whatever length of time they shower for. We also used rough estimates to figure out how much water gets used for other things at home: Bath tub 150-200L, Washing Machine 50-60L, Toilet 5L/ flush, Kitchen (Cooking & Washing) 10-20L/day, and of course drinking water 2L/ person each day. 

After all our calculations were done, the class average was about 500L a day per family, some were around 440L, while another was about 560L. We discussed some ways to save water such as taking shorter showers, to turn off the tap when brushing teeth, or reusing bath water to do the laundry.

We also looked at just how much fresh water there is in the world. By breaking the world down to a grid and then counting the squares that were either: salt water, frozen fresh water, or fresh water we could get an idea of just how little liquid fresh water there is on the planet. As can be seen in the graph below:

Finally, our trash collecting homework also came to an end on Friday as the students took some time to separate and sort the trash that they had amassed over the week. When sorting through it, they noticed that the majority of it was either paper or plastic waste. On Monday and Tuesday, we will discuss what personal choices they can make to help the environment.

How our Actions Affect the Earth's Resources and People

This week we continued on from where we left off before the holidays, with our third unit of the year about natural resources. We began by reviewing different types of natural resources and took some time to sort out them out as either renewable or non-renewable.

After reading the story of the Lorax, we talked about different types of pollution that we heard about in the story, or have noticed ourselves. The students worked in two groups to identify different causes of air and water pollution. Later on in the unit, we will discuss ways to stop or to create less pollution.

Finally, we unscrambled and looked closely at the central idea and lines of inquiry for this unit.

After some discussion about what each of these meant, we focussed on looking into what we can do about reducing, reusing and recycling. To begin we did a SEE, THINK, WONDER activity looking into how trash is handled and disposed of at school. Then in order to research how much trash each of us produces within a week, the students were each given a plastic bag to collect all or their trash, at home and at school for the following week. Everything that they themselves would normally throw away, except for food waste is to be collected and carried with them each day back and forth from home to school until next Friday, January 18th. Once the trash has been collected, we will examine it closely to see, which can be reused or recycled. Let's find out next week, how much trash 8 second grade students produce in one week!