How does the world work?

Have you ever wondered how the world works and how important light is to our daily lives? Can you imagine a day without light or electricity? What can we do at school or at home? How can we cook or even just move around? The grade 2 students inquired into these questions about light and how important it is to our daily lives.

As a tuning-in activity, they learnt about a famous person that changed our lives forever, Thomas Edison, because he invented the light bulb. Besides learning facts about him, the students also learnt about Thomas Edison’s positive attitudes. They learnt about his perseverance, life-learning attitude and his willingness to think outside the box. Then the students were asked to discuss the learner profile this famous person possessed and how they can apply it in their day-to-day life.

After that, the students learnt various knowledge about light, which included day and night, electricity, reflection, refraction, how the amount of sunlight varies in different seasons, and how light evolved throughout history. They also did two fun investigations - the star jar and the color

wheel. The star jar helped the students to understand why they can see stars better at night time, and the color wheel helped the students to realize that the white light we see is actually made up of seven different colors.

The summative task was a difficult challenge for the students as they were asked to write and perform a play about how light was used in different eras. They argued and struggled while they were writing the script. They had fun creating the puppets. They tried hard when they were practising their play and they were brave when they were performing it. Although the students experienced difficult times while preparing this summative task, this task helped the students to grow and learn how to better work in teams as well as learn the requirements for being a great performer in public.