26 Jan 2018

Yr2 Curriculum Update – 26/01/18

Working together to achieve success for every child

 

 

Welcome to our seventh edition!

In each update, the Year 2 Team will bring you snapshots of what your children in Year Two have been up to. You will see a variety of learning experiences exemplifying learning which is fun, exciting, challenging, innovative and/or creative…and whatever they are, we know that your child has worked really hard to get there and should you have the chance, you may want to share this newsletter with your child to find out the juicy details and discuss the great learning he/she have been doing!

Transdisciplinary Learning It’s all connected!

Forces affect objects around us.

 

Unit of Inquiry

It has been a very busy week, as we have begun our How the World Works Unit. Right now, we are in our tuning in stage. Students are getting tuned in to their own thinking and what they already knew about forces and motion. As a provocation, some students tried to move different objects without touching them. What a conundrum! At first students thought about their past experiences with moving objects to derive an answer. Soon they realized that in order to move the object, they will need to apply a force to change its position.

Year 2 students explored forces on the playground using different equipment. Through play based investigations, children worked on understanding that push and pull are two main kinds of forces. They were asked to describe the forces they were using on various objects and this helped students to develop vocabulary related with push and pull forces.

This week, students also co-constructed the meaning of our PYP attribute ‘curiosity’ through story books and exploration time.

The Year 2 children continued working on poetry. Some classes learned about adjectives and the different kinds of describing words that are used to describe people, places and things. In writing, we continued to work on how good writers think about their ideas and use lots of details to make their ideas shine. This week children have been introduced to a new reading strategy called prediction. Students learn to make smart guesses using picture clues in the book and their back ground knowledge about the topic. The children have really enjoyed making predictions and checking if their guesses were right.

In Maths, this week we started our new unit – measurement. In order to assess students’ prior knowledge, we tuned them to the concept of length where students used a variety of materials to measure the length of different objects. In number maintenance, students continued working on addition problems to consolidate their understanding of different strategies and tools taught in the class.

 

How you can help at home?

We are working on our unit ‘How the World Works’.

 

Using the password located in your child’s diary, please encourage your child to go onto the KJS website www.kjs.edu.hk and browse our Splat page to access Brainpop Jr., Big Universe and Pebblego to learn more about forces.

 

‘Show and Tell’

The most important way of showing understanding in a PYP student’s learning is by taking action. When a student takes action, he/she applies new learning, extends the learning and makes a change. If your child has taken action at home, please let the class teacher know. We would like students to share their understanding of forces and its connection with our day today life with their classmates.

 

Key dates for the Diary

Monday 5th  – Friday 9th February    Book Week

Thursday 15th February Chinese New Year (school closes at midday) Monday 26th  February    Teacher Training Day