This week we continued to learn about differences between daily life now and in the past. The two main areas that we inquired into were transportation and toys. As we had begun learning about transportation before the autumn break, it seemed fitting to continue from where we had left off. As the transdisciplinary theme for the unit is Where We Are in Place and Time, it was a good opportunity to check on what ideas and understandings the students had about the concept of time. To check, students were given pictures of vehicles at random and then asked to place them somewhere along a timeline that stretched from now, to all the way back to 3500BCE. After placing the images, students discussed and reasoned with each other if they thought it was in the right place or not. To check, another set of the same pictures were passed out and these had the year on them so the students could place them along the timeline to compare and see how accurate they had been.
Students shared some of what they had learnt from their parents about their favourite toys and games when they were kids.
We also did some reading about how toys have changed over time, from the stone dolls of ancient Egypt to the soft plastic dolls of today. We worked through the reading comprehension activity together and focused on strategies to help with research and reading comprehension such as reading the questions beforehand. Then when we identified part of an answer, we underlined it in the text and then took the relevant parts and copied them into proper sentences to answer the questions.
Students also sorted out pictures of toys from the past 50-60 years by decade to compare the similarities and differences between the toys that they have today and those of their parents or grandparents.
In language, we also focused on the past! Learning about regular and irregular past tense verbs!
In math, we also spent some time studying time and how to read digital and analogue clocks, and took notes on how to write out the numbers and time with words.
We also welcomed a new member, Sio to our class this week. Welcome Sio!
Finally, the students really reached out by creating get well cards for Leon. We all wish her a speedy recovery and miss her.
Field Trip
On Thursday, November 17th Grade 2 will be going on a field trip to Minpaku- the National Museum of Ethnology as part of our inquiry into life in the past. We will be gone for most of the day but plan to return around 2:30 so that the students can join their Japanese lessons from 2:45. We ask that students bring a lunch from home as school lunches will be cancelled for that day. If you would like to join us, we are looking for 2 volunteers to come along!
