Ms Courtney's Class

We are coming to the end of our current unit of inquiry and the students have been very busy researching and presenting their findings ready to share with you next Tuesday. We hope to see you on Tuesday morning 7:45 in the Grade 2 piazza. Child Safe Ms Alison, the elementary councilor ran two lessons with the students this week on safety. In the first lesson she spoke to the students about times and situations we may not feel safe, these included swimming without adult supervision, riding in the car without a seatbelt and crossing the road without an adult. Students were taught he to say stop if they don't feel safe and identifying a person to talk to such as a parent or teacher. On Wednesday Ms Alison focused on three types of touch. Unwanted, Uncomfortable touch and private touch. She explained the three types of touch and students gave examples. Unwanted touch - hitting, kicking, hair pulling Uncomfortable touch - hugs when one person doesn't wan...

On Wednesday Grade 2 went to the National Museum of Cambodia. We visited the museum so we could study some of the history of Cambodia. We went to look at artifacts. Each statue had it's own story. We learnt a lot of stories about gods, Buddha, and kings of Cambodia. We learnt that there was an ancient language that was sand script. We saw this carved in stones that were on the walls of temples. We learnt about Ganesha, his head is an elephant and his body is a human. He is a god. We learnt that Shiva was Ganesha's father and he but his head off. We saw the boat cabin the royal family traveled on. The found out that Vishnu had four arms and each hand has a different object in it. The objects are a shell to represent water. A chakra to represent fire a ball to represent the Earth and a mace to represent wind. Written by Grade 2 students.

UoI This week we inquired a little deeper into how artifacts can help us learn about the past. On Tuesday we searched the playground for buried artifacts and thought about how archaeologist feel when the are looking for clues and what the artifacts we found are. We looked at some images of the land around Phnom Penh from 2010 - 2018 and observed the changes in the land and looked for evidence of change over time. On Friday our Teacher Assistances brought some Cambodian artifacts to share with the students and to learn more about the place we live. Math We have been working on coordinates for the last two weeks. We completed our unit with a hidden picture where they needed to use their skills of reading coordinates to find the images. Literacy Our writing genre for this unit is narrative. We have been focusing on character descriptions this week. Students will begin writing their own narratives next week. Field Trip To find out more about...

Welcome Back! I hope you had a wonderful New Year. This week saw the start of our fourth unit of inquiry, Where we are in Place and Time. Central Idea: Artifacts help us to understand how societies have changed. Lines of Inquiry: The different sources we use as evidence Evidence of change over time Evidence helps us to understand where we live Concepts: Change, Function, Reflection, Discovery, History, Civilizations Provocation On Friday four teachers brought three artifacts to school that represented something about themselves. The students had to look at the artifacts and try and dedice which artifacts belonged to which teacher. Can you guess? The teachers are Mr Johnny, Ms Karyn, Ms Petra and Ms Courtney. As the students returned from languages on Wednesday they had found that the classroom had became an archaeology site. The students observed the artifacts they found, recorded where they found them and used the clues to understand the artifacts. ...

UoI This was the last week of our Where we are in Place and Time unit. Students worked hard this week to complete their report writing on an aspect of Cambodia's past. Continued to work in math on addition and subtraction of numbers within the hundreds and create a piece of clay to represent something from the unit. Please have a look at the individual student pages over the next few days for some of their work from the unit. Jeslyn's Birthday On Friday afternoon we celebrated Jeslyn's 8th Birthday. Happy Birthday Jeslyn! Swimming Here is an update from Ms Anne. For the PDF version please click here Field Trip Grade 2 students are studying a unit of inquiry which falls under the transdisciplinary theme How the World Works . Students will be learning about the application of scientific principles through the use of simple machines. Our central idea is: The application of scientific principles through the use of simple machines makes work easier....