Children Around the World
Source/Author: Raffi Darrow, Ebytes Editor
March 28, 2019
Second grade teacher Mrs. Johnson collaborated with Assistant Head of Lower School Mrs. Craft on a “Children Around the World” unit for second grade that incorporated a questioning strategy called The Question Formulation Technique - working intentionally to promote curiosity, inquiry, and self-directed learning in our young students.
The unit focused on teaching students to ask their own questions. Rather than teachers giving them questions to research, students were taught steps to help them come up with questions on their own. The class thought long and hard to brainstorm many questions they have about children around the world. They categorized and combined questions based on similarities and differences, and narrowed the list by their top learning priorities and curiosities to end up with just six top questions.
Señora Jaime-Allwood came to speak about El Salvador, Shorecrest parent Mrs. Seymour spoke about England, second grade teacher Ms. O'Mullane spoke about Australia, Shorecrest parent Zeina Hemadeh spoke about Lebanon, Shorecrest parent Kate Fiala spoke about the Czech Republic, and Eckerd College athlete Yarden Danan visited the class to speak about Israel.
Yarden taught the Chargers so much about her country and shared information about her family and her culture. She also talked a bit about life as a college athlete, what it's like to be Jewish at Eckerd College, and what she plans to do after college. The highlight of her visit was when she wrote students' names in Hebrew.
Second graders took ownership of the visits by interviewing their guests and directing the conversation to address the questions they had generated as a group.
“The engagement and energy my students have shown to learn more about the world is exciting!” Mrs. Johnson said. “And I went to Eckerd, so it's fun to be connected back to my alma mater through classroom lessons.”
Thank you to everyone who took part in helping second graders learn more about the world around them!
![Commotion in the Ocean with First Grade [Video, Photos]](/Images/1px.png?command_1=url&url_1=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.shorecrest.org/userfiles/shpsv2mvc/images/news-images/commotionocean2024.jpg&command_2=resize&height_2=85 "Commotion in the Ocean with First Grade [Video, Photos]")
