Year 4

We ended our previous unit “How We Organize Ourselves” with our assembly play. The students came up with the scenes themselves, we voted on our favourites, and then everyone adjusted their lines to suit them.They also created slides to support their performance. After plenty of rehearsing and refining, we performed for the school. We're proud of what the students achieved, and the play gave them a chance to reflect on what they've learned so far.

For the provocation for our next unit, “Sharing The Planet” we watched The Lorax, based on the Dr. Seuss book, in which the Lorax protects a magical forest. Students answered questions like "How could they have used their resources more responsibly?" and "Was there a way for them to still make money while preserving the forest?" This led to great class discussions about responsible and irresponsible use of resources, which ties directly to our central idea: “Sustainability requires collaboration and the responsible management of resources.”

Right now we're doing some direct instruction on what resources are, how they can be managed together, and how to use them more responsibly. Next, we'll look at examples of how institutions have managed resources well and poorly in the past, and what could have been done better.