Getting brains buzzing with cross-curricular learning in Year 2
7th October 20
Y2 students in Ilona’s class have been busy bees in this first half term. A project which started out with students looking at masks has led them all the way to our beehives.
Students first looked at different sorts of mask and talked about the pros and cons of masks in different areas of life. With mask-wearing a hot topic in the news, they were able to talk about current affairs in a relevant and age-appropriate way. They worked in pairs to examine the question ‘Are masks good?’
Next, they started looking at what masks can be made out of as part of their Science topic for this term, ‘materials’. A particular type of mask which interested the students was a beekeepers mask and they wanted to find out what it was made from.
Luckily, we have KAS bees on our Ivy Wood site which are looked after by Chris in the Design Technology Department. So students practiced their letter writing and sent missives to Chris, asking him to visit them with his beekeepers mask. The letters let them practise their handwriting, their sentence construction and the letter construction. They illustrated their letters with fabulous drawings of Chris and the bees, allowing them to use their creativity too.
Chris visited the students and brought with him not only the beekeepers mask, but also a welding mask and a visor for use with a chainsaw. The students had lots of great questions about materials, bees and everything inbetween, which they were keen to have answered. “Why is a bee a bee?” “How does welding work?” “If a human eats royal jelly will they turn into a bee?”
They also looked for solitary bees in the insect hotel in the Y2 playground.
So biology, art, literacy, science and teamwork all covered in one topic, guided by the students.
