Our Learning Journey

Last week of November, 2001: We discussed the unit on the Human Body and brainstormed to list all the things we wanted to learn about the body: heart, lungs, digestion, brain, eye, ear, bones, blood, arteries, teeth, joints, and muscles. We also talked about how we wanted to share our learning: small books, centers, visual display and Power Point. That was when Mrs. Vaage recommended we make a web page because we could share all of our ideas with the whole world.

We began to think about ways to gather information. Some children referred us to their parents who were in the medical and scientific fields as being a good source of information. Others volunteered to bring in some of their books, games, and artifacts regarding the body. Others suggested information from the Internet. We are excited to be using all of these ideas.

We began our Journey into Learning with reading the book: The Human Body: Inside and Outside

Dec. 7/01: We have scheduled one parent's visit for Dec. 17 at 1:00 p.m. and have decided to use a video camera to record the information. Students are bringing in Internet addresses, artifacts, and information and we are collecting them in a large file folder for now. We continued reading Inside and Outside.

Dec./01: Finished reading Inside and Outside

Dec. 17/01: Dr. Chatenay came into the classroom as a resource expert. He taught us about the digestive system and answered many questions.

Jan./02: We went to the school library to see if we could find information books on the body. We found out that the information books are organized by numbers. Mrs. Korol explained the Dewey Decimal system to us and suggested that we look under 612 for information about the body. We checked out a lot of books to bring to the classroom for research.

Jan. 14/02: We learned about diagrams - that they are a drawing or a picture with labels. This week we spent a lot of time practicing our diagrams. When we were finished, we outlined them in a fine line black marker and coloured them if they were a bigger diagram. Diagrams were scanned Jan. 20/02 and uploaded to the web site.

Jan. 15/16: We had computer time and researched the Internet site: Innerbody.com. We really liked the animations that show how body systems work.

Sarah's Dad, Dr. Bigam came in and played a game that he and Sarah made up about how the human body works. This game can be found in the game section under "Sarah's Game". He also explained about the liver and how liver transplants are done.

Jan. 30: Jeff's Dad, Dr. Gleason came into the classroom as a resource expert. He taught us about how babies grow before they are born and how babies are born. 

Feb. 02: We worked on creating Word Search games for the web site. You can find them in the Game section. 

Feb. 10: We played games on the body charts that are up on the wall. We had to take turns to find the body parts or the bones. Then we played Question and Answer games. First Mrs. Vaage asked questions, then we got to ask questions. 

Feb. 12: Today we worked on the heart diagrams. We had some papers that were for grades 4 - 6 that showed how the blood moves through the heart, but we worked on them, even though we are in grade 2. They were hard, but we could still do them.

Feb. 13: We did a quick check to see what children had learned about the body and what they still wanted to know about the body. We need to read some information about the brain, the heart, bones and muscles. Everybody in the class said they had worked "very hard" on this Unit. It shows, doesn't it?

Feb. 15: We decided that next Friday would be our last day on the Human Body Study. We will have a party to celebrate all of our hard work. We will bring in "body parts" and construct a body. Of course, they won't be real body parts. We'll use a cauliflower for the brain, and sausages for the small intestines, and so on. The pictures should be very good!

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