Library
Handbury and Winifred Berry Libraries
INNOVATION WITH GRADE 2, 3 AND 4:
As part of the Information Services program for 2018 I get to work with the wonderful students and teachers at the Junior School. This semester I see Grades 2,3 and 4 and the intention is that I have done some work with all classes by the end of the year.
Picking up from the work we did last year with Grade 5 on the global Climate Action project (click on the words to revisit our work) we are working with other schools worldwide on the Innovation Project. Just like the Climate Action project, the challenges presented to us each week are set by Mr Koen Timmers, a fellow Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert teacher from Belgium. Koen is doing wonderful work in his own school but also in Africa through the Kakuma Project. If you are on Twitter you can find him @zelfstudie and on Twitter and Facebook you can find the project via the hashtag #sdginnopro. Koen was recently one of the top ten finalists of the Varkey Foundation's Global teacher of 2018 prize. (Along with Eddie Woo, Mr Woo Tube, from Australia).
The projects he sets up are based on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals or UN SDGs. You can see what other schools have done for week 1 here – we appear under the continent “Oceania”. You can also see our presentation for the week in this Sway. If you look further into the site, you will find photographs of some students working on their tasks for the first deadline.
By the end of our 4-week timeline we hope to have some invention suggestions to make our world a better place. Last year the suggestion was made that a solar suitcase would assist the Kakuma children’s learning by powering laptops for them to use. This year such a device has been made and is in place!
You can also see why educators such as myself take up these challenges in this short (unrehearsed) video (my part was recorded separately and added in). Grade 2 identified almost every flag as it appeared on screen – an outstanding effort!
Mrs Margaret Simkin