How can Room 2 students learn from the surrounding environment, to not just survive, but to thrive?
This is the goal for Room 2 students as they immerse themselves in their inquiry unit called ‘Unite to Survive and Thrive’. This involved learning about animals and their habitats, and exploring how they have adapted over time to survive.
Room 2 students integrated what they have learnt across a variety of curriculum areas. For writing, they started by writing riddles about things related to the world around them. Their purpose was to write to entertain and practise using question marks.
Students had to learn to work together to plan an information report about elephants by researching and gathering information about elephants.
Some teams found this easier than others. This is what was said about the activity.
I was the leader of the group and had to write down the answers that my group found - Skye
It was good because we had to work together to find the answers’- Kaley
Sometimes it was hard to read the answers we found on the ipads - Jaxon
I am trying to find words I know to help me make sense of the writing - Dorian
Every student used the structure of an information report to develop their writing. It involved using the keywords from their team brainstorm, adding details to the keywords and turning them into sentences and paragraphs. These are some paragraphs that showcased the learning.
Part of the learning that came out of the team research was that poachers are one of the greatest threats to the survival of elephants. This led Room 2 to design wanted posters to inform the world about this threat. Here is Skye’s draft.
For science, diagrams were drawn to show how animals are able to adapt and survive in their habitats. Part of this learning involved watching videos and listening for key information to use in their diagrams.
Keywords: Unite to Survive and Thrive, animals, habitat, adaptations, entertain, diagrams
