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!

Mini-Museum of Children's Lives Then and Now

To share with others what they learnt in our second unit of the year, the first and second grade students created displays about things that have changed in children's lives and presented them to visitors to our Mini-Museum.

During English language time, the Grade 2 students have been learning about paragraph writing, and were tasked with writing an informational paragraph about how things have changed. Their paragraphs were expected to have a topic sentence, at least two details about how it was in the past, as well as two details about it now, as well as a concluding sentence.

Ryann explained how the soccer ball has changed.

Richard looked into how the toys, such as toy cars have evolved.

Brandon explained how the changes to something as functional as the heaters in the class has made a difference in children's lives.

 Tiago noticed that boys and girls used to be separated but now get to learn together.

 Hirohito explained how different generations of kids enjoy playing games, but that the types of games and the way that we play them has changed.

 Aira explained how computers and the internet have changed the way students do research.

 Aruto demonstrated how pencils and erasers have made writing easier to correct your mistakes than pen and ink.

 Airen wrote about how toys today are made of plastic and often use batteries.











Riku wrote about the change from firelight to electrical light.

Changes in Children's Lives

Over the past six weeks, the second grade students have been inquiring into how children's lives have changed over time. Throughout the course of the unit we focused on three main aspects of children's lives; life at home, at school and the games that they play.

Through stories, narratives of children from the past, as well as interviews with parents and grandparents, as well as a simulation of an "Old School" day, the students had the chance to see for themselves what school was like in the past.









As a Show and Tell activity, students brought in games or toys that their parents or grandparent had played with, as well as some of their own in order to contrast and compare, in order to see how toys have changed.










Students also did some research using topic related books about: Cooking and Eating, Homes Today and in the Past, Washing and Cleaning, Travel Then and Now, and Communication. Students then presented on those topics to the rest of the class.

For the end of the unit, each student chose one thing that has changed in the lives of children and created a mini-museum display and description about how it has changed. Together with students from Grade 1, we held the Mini-Museum in the Grade 2 classroom last Thursday and many classes came to check out our displays. Please look forward to more details about the Mini-Museum in the next post!

Getting into the Christmas Spirit

As the holidays are quickly approaching, the second grade students started took a break from their regular work to inquire into the art of Christmas ornament making. Instead of choosing one type of ornament for the whole class to make, we let the students do some research to find an ornament that they liked online and could be made within a very strict timeline...one hour!

They quickly got to work. They were only given 10 minutes to find one design they liked, and would also be able to make with the limited resources in the class. Most were all set to go after 10 minutes and were busy gathering materials from around the school and even some from outside!

Working carefully with scissors, hedge trimmers and hot glue guns, the busy little crafters crafted away! Just narrowly meeting the 3 o'clock deadline and big event for lighting up the Christmas tree!
Check it out in the school entrance area the next time you're in the school! Some of their ornament designs might even end up being chosen for this year's Christmas market!

Field Trip to Suma Athletics Park

Last month on the day before DSK's Oktoberfest, the students in Grade Two joined together with those from Grades 1 to 6 to have a fun day out at Suma Athletics park.