We started our new Unit of Inquiry this week! It’s a brand new unit that has never been taught in Grade 2 before and I’m very excited for it! Our UOI is How We Organize Ourselves, the central idea is “In a workplace people share responsibility and work towards a common purpose.” Our lines of inquiry are: 1) Examples and purposes of workplaces 2) How people in a workplace are connected 3) Using common purposes and goals to work together efficiently. The concept lenses that we will be using to guide are inquiries are FUNCTION, CONNECTION, and RESPONSIBILITY. Because this is a new unit, we are a little short on resources so I figured the best way to learn about a workplace is to become one! This week we tuned into purposes and examples of workplaces and decided that the purpose of our workplace and business will be to CHANGE THE WORLD. We haven’t figured out exactly how we are going to do that yet, but we are all very motivated to help animals and ecosystems after our last UOI. To further motivate us we watched the youtube video How To Change The World by Kid President and How To Change The World in 5 Minutes A Day. After watching both videos we were very enthusiastic and flowing with ideas on how to change the world, but we still didn’t really know how to organize ourselves to do it. We decided that maybe we could make stuff to sell for fundraising. We then brainstormed a list of jobs that we might need. While brainstorming Mahwish made a connection to a book that she had previously read on Raz-kids called “We’re in Business.” This happened to be just the kind of book I was looking for so together as a class we read it and listened for key words that could help us find out what jobs are needed in a work place. I encourage you to re-read the story with your child at home, it can be found in level R on Raz-Kids. Thanks Mahwish for making such a great connection! After our brainstorming I made a list of what jobs we think we will need to run a business. Then to collect more information (and improve our workplace vocabulary words) the students went on an ABIS scavenger hunt around the school to find out who does what at ABIS. Students also had to find out what our purpose is at ABIS. Students interviewed many different staff members to find the answers. Next week we will be looking closer at job titles and responsibilities. I encourage you to talk about your workplace with your child.
In Math we are working on Multiplication in iXL and on solving addition and subtraction word problems in our Mighty Math Journals. We will also be learning about money during this UOI as they students will be needing to put their math skills to real life use!
In Language students are enjoying some free narrative writing during Awesome Authors time. During this UOI we will be focusing on procedural writing and we will also be writing some persuasive advertisements.
Have a lovely weekend.
