8/7/2019 Sharing the Planet newsletter 2011

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January 24th

, 2011

Dear Parents,

Welcome to a new year and a new Unit of Inquiry. In this unit

our central idea is: Plants, as a natural resource, play a central role in human

and animal life.

For this unit the key concepts that are going to be emphasized are: function,

causation and responsibility.

The focus of this unit is on why and how plants are important to animals and

humans and the relationship between these three resources. Finally, students will

gain a better understanding of their responsibility towards sharing plant life with

animals.

Our students will inquire into:

y Plants as an essential resource for humans and animalsy The relationship between plants, animals and humansy Valuing and protecting the environment

We will guide our students inquiry through such questions as:

y How and why are plants important?y How are plants shared between humans and animals?y What do we need to do to respect the needs of ourselves, plants and

animals?

As parents you can help your child by reading books relating to plants and how

they are used. Talk to your child about how one event in an environment can

change or affect other resources in that environment. In your own languagediscuss some of the vocabulary in this unit. Maybe discuss with your child some of

the inquiry questions outlined above.

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In addition, some of the literature resources that we will be sharing with your

child are: We Planted a Tree by Diane Muldrow, Where the Forest Meets the Sea

by Jeannie Baker, The Loraxby Dr Seuss,Alejandros Giftby Richard E. Albert

Please feel free to borrow from the library any titles that you think might interestyour child. Continue to read aloud to your child discussing some of the previously

mentioned themes and concepts. For any and all learners, whether your child is in

the ESL programme or not, it is important to discuss the central idea in your

mother tongue or home language. Some key words that would be beneficial for

your child to know for this unit are:

conservation, habitat, interdependence, value, respect, protect, resource,

relationship, essential resource, responsibility, sharing, purpose, role, behavior

Another idea that you might consider over the next couple of weeks is the

following: since we are looking at how human changes in our environment affect

plants and animals, perhaps your child could ask aunts, uncles or grandparents for

any photos they might have of a previous home area or piece of land from several

years ago. You could then discuss with your child what changes have been made

to the land/property/house? What does it look like now? Encourage discussion

about how plants or animals might have been affected by the changes? What

plants are no longer there? What animals might have lost their homes? Where did

they go?

In Math during this unit we will be further exploring length as well as continuing

our study of number knowledge and strategy. In Language Arts the students will

be exploring poetry. Students will listen to various styles of poetry and discuss

the techniques poets use to make the poem effective (eg imagery, alliteration,

use of particular words, the structure of the poem, repetition).

Inquiry based learning is what the PYP programme is all about here at NIST. With

your continued support we will further nurture our students independent

thinking which leads to action.

Best Regards,

Year 2 Team