Northbridge Grade 2 students learn all about sharing the planet

Recently, Grade 2 students at Northbridge International School Cambodia finished their Sharing the Planet unit of inquiry. In this online unit, the children came to learn how plants, animals and people are all connected and depend on each other to survive.

The students started off the unit by learning about different habitats and the living things that can be found there. Later, they identified their favourite plant or animal and communicated everything they know about them before building their very own habitat at home!

The children then learnt all about predators and prey. They watched videos and conducted their own research to find out how different predators have physical features to help them hunt and how prey use various strategies to avoid becoming a meal!

The students came to understand that every ecosystem is made up of three broad components: producers, consumers and decomposers. The children now know that producers are plants that make their own food using energy from the sun.

The children used all of their acquired knowledge and applied it when learning about food chains. Most students were able to create their own food chain for a selected habitat including the sun, a producer, the three types of consumers, a decomposer and arrows to show the transfer of energy.

Students were introduced to the term biodiversity and why it is important for a healthy planet. They considered what would happen if any species was removed from the food chain and the negative consequences of any imbalance within ecosystems. This knowledge was an important foundation for when we started looking at animals that are extinct, endangered and threatened.

We learnt how habitat loss is threatening biodiversity as well as how other human activities such as pollution, deforestation and overfishing are impacting the environment and the species that live there. This led us to think of our responsibility as humans to take individual and collective action to save the planet!

Grade 2 really developed their communication, thinking and research skills in this unit and this was evident in their summative assessment. The students each picked one habitat to focus on and applied their knowledge from the unit to it by creating a Seesaw presentation guided by success criteria. The students did a fantastic job and some risk-takers even presented their slides to their class!