Australia and Asia

Our travels and research continues.  This week we went to our third and fourth continents: Australia and Asia.  The scholar above brought his globe from home that has a plethora of information to read to us.  So cool.


Our around the world unit is really helping us develop the common core standard illustrated above. At the beginning of the unit, the students came up with great questions to explore with each continent.  The students developed questions about location, size, landforms, landmarks, animal and plant life, and culture.  As I said in the Africa post, I was unable to keep up with the children as we charted the answers to their research questions.  With Australia, I didn't even try.  The students went about their research and added information to our chart independently.   They did amazing and were so proud to share all their learning.



With all this research, I thought I might check to see it the children were remembering the information that we are learning.  We played a game of headbands with important words for our study.  For instance, words like Sahara Desert, Mt. Kilimanjaro, Leaning Tower of Pisa, Antartica were written on cards attached to one child's forehead.  The other students on their team had to describe the word in the headband without saying the word.  So much fun! The vocabulary of these second and third graders was pretty incredible.



Next, onto our largest continent!  Our travel to Asia brings an all new S.T.E.M. challenge.  Before we were introduced to the challenge, we learned about the Silk Road.  We learned that the Silk Road was an ancient network of trade routes connecting Asia to Europe, East to West.  Our S.T.E.M. challenge was to design a cart to travel the Silk Route in a caravan.  The cart had to follow certain specifications.

The engineers got straight to work.  At the end, we had a mighty creative caravan.  Students shared their creations with the group and also posted their learning to SeeSaw.  In the next newsletter, look for the information on SeeSaw.  SeeSaw is a digital learning portfolio.  By downloading the free app and scanning in (your code will be in your child's envelope next week), you will be able to see and compliment your child's hard work.  So much of the learning and projects we do in class is not paper/pencil.  SeeSaw provides another great window into your child's learning.  Stay tuned!





Last note, it is RAINING!  So thankful.  However, the rain did mean indoor recess.  We use a website called GoNoodle.  It is fun, engaging, and gets those little bodies moving.  The students wanted to do this Zumba dance called Indian Moonlight because we were studying Asia.  Ha! Just look at those smiles! By the way, the sound effects are not in the song...that was totally kid created.