How the World Works Inquiry

For this unit our central idea is "Design and construction depend on our understanding of materials and environment."  

To start it off we watched the old classic Disney cartoon, "The Three Little Pigs" to get us thinking about how we use different materials to construct buildings.  According to the story, the best material for building is bricks while straw and sticks could easily be blown down.  We questioned this idea as a class, did some research and found some interesting ideas.   We saw that some people make straw bale houses that have many benefits and can even stay standing during an earthquake test.  Some of the first known buildings, the Terra Amata huts were built with sticks and stones.  Also, some of the students from Lego Engineering ASP taught the other about using overlapping when brick building and that if the bricks are stacked then the structure will not be as strong and could be knocked down easily.  

After that the students researched different buildings from various time periods that they thought were interesting.  They discovered how different materials have been used, why different types of buildings were built for different community needs and other interesting facts about famous buildings.  

Now the students are getting into their own inquiries about materials, design and construction! Here are some photos of them at work.  

 

Nimet uses a book and computer to research about glass and glass bottle houses. 

 

Busra and Bahar research about using snow and ice for buildings.  They are also learning how to make an igloo.  

 

 

 Adia and Ganghui are learning about how to build with brick and different brick laying methods.  Here they are making their own bricks from clay.  

Eli and Maya are collaborating on ideas for a tree house.   They learned how to make a blue print and are designing their tree house together.  

 Kerim and Joseph researched about the Terra Amata huts in France and created a diorama model of one to show their learning.  

Not pictured, Geonhui and Aiden are researching how a wood frame house is built and will attempt to make their own model. 

Japanese song

Students have been practicing a song "Hana wa saku" for Japanese Culture Day on February 26th.

Students picked this song because they thought it sounds really beautiful.

NHK(Nippon Hoso Kyokai) produced this song to build public support for the 3.11 disaster recovery efforts. 

It also helps JAL students practice Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji because the lyrics are written in those alphabets.

I am so glad that all G2 students like singing in Japanese so much!

JIES Speech Competition

Today, Grades 1, 2, 3, and 5/6 competed in the JIES Speech Competition which was put on by Grade 3.  Everyone in Grade 2 worked hard on writing and memorizing speeches about their favorite art.  Below you can find videos (and some photos of the students who were absent and had to do it early) of the student's speeches.

Reading circle

Grade 2 JNL students enjoyed reading the story "Otegami" from Frog and Toad.

They really liked the characters in the story,especially the slow snail who sent the letter to Toad.

JAL students have been practicing how to read calendars in Japanese.

They already know how to say days of the week.

Now it's time for them to practice how to say days of the month!

A Summary of Our Inquiry into How People Use Art to Express Ideas and Feelings

Our central idea is "People use art to express ideas and feelings". 

To better understand this idea we inquired about different kinds of art and different artists.

We looked at Jackson Pollock's art.  He makes abstract art with splatter paint.   He doesn't make any real objects but expresses different perspectives, ideas and feelings with lines, colors, and form.  It looks messy but the artist thinks about every move, color, and stroke.

Paul Klee also does abstract art with shapes and many colors.  He usually uses bright colors for the foreground subject and darker colors for the background.  The feeling from his paintings is usually happy and warm. 

MC Escher uses math with his art.  He creates 3D art with strange perspectives and uses a lot of tessellation.  It feels like you are in a different world when you see his art.. 

For the students own inquiries they used the inquiry cycle and for the first time used inquiry guides to organize what they know, their questions, and how they can answer those questions.  Everyone inquired about different ideas like cave art, fonts and old kanji, castle art, music, animation, tessellation, pencil shaving art, using color for feelings, and more. As we continue to use this format to organize our inquiries I hope the students become more comfortable with them and naturally start to think about each step.  

After researching and learning about their questions, they reflected on if they were ready to create something using their new knowledge. Everyone created many interesting and different pieces of art and responses to art to express their ideas and feelings.  You can take a look at the previous blog post to see all the students' hard work.

In the end we wrote our final reflections.  They tell about the most important guiding questions, what the students made to show what they learned and the skills that were used to think about, research, communicate, and create.  

 

Grade 2 Art

Up and Down Mario by Busra

 

 The Frog Song by Maya

 Magic Land by Ganghui

 

Look Up Look Down by Nimet

 

 High and Low Loop by Busra

Starry Night on the Mountains by Maya

Here Comes the Smack by Eli and Joseph