Theme 4: Circle of life

In this fourth theme “HOW THE WORLD WORKS” which the central idea is All living things have life cycles characterized by physical change and changing roles having the unit title “THE CIRCLE OF LIFE”, students did various activities covering the three inquiries namely Pictures of living things’ life cycle, Explanation about the stages of physical changes occurred in the life cycle and Role(s) of each of the stages and the reasons that make it possible.

In doing those activities the students are given opportunities to demonstrate values such as commitment, curiosity, independence and creativity, develop skills like Thinking skills, Self management and Research skills. We also encourage the students to reflect the qualities of profile; Knowledgeable, Inquirer and Communicator. In addition to that, we encourage our students to understand the theme with their own multiple intelligences. Thus, our students have various ideas to share their understanding about this theme, such as make a presentation, a puppet show, riddles, etc.

Some learning experiences that the students have undergone which should be connected to the inquiries were that each group concentrated on the topics “The life cycle of plants (seed and non-seed), animals (give birth and lay eggs) and human”. Having explored the topics and written their observation results in their daily science journal, the students exchanged their findings by visiting different class and presenting their findings and also sharing their experiences in working on it. As summative assessment the students wrote a scientific report in a form of a booklet containing information about the coverage of those three inquiries mentioned at the first place.

Theme 3: Fair Play For All!

Hi! Good to see you again this new year with new hopes and dreams..Sorry to keep you waiting for this post. There were lots of ‘academic things’ that needed to be done, but let’s head on, shall we!?

We have completed our third theme, which focused on social studies entitled ‘Fair Play for All’. This theme ran from October 8th until November 19th. The Central idea for this theme was that different value systems can affect social justice. To understand about this central idea, we set up some lines of inquiry; what values are, the principles of human rights and social justice, and how personal and institutional behaviors and attitudes affect each other. After this theme is finished, we hope that the students will have an enduring understanding that people have different values that affect social justice. We have loads of activities to show you!

We started the theme by watching a movie entitled ‘Over The Hedge’. The story was about a group of hibernating ‘Amish-like’ animals (relying solely on nature) which had an unexpected encounter with a ‘city’ raccoon. Along the way, their values finally changed on how they look at things, especially others. A good movie to teach about values in life!

From that movie, students made a comic-like reflection about the value(s) that changes, and what characters from the movie had the major influence on those changes. Then, they shared the changes of values they really experienced in their life. After watching the movie, they know that values can change over time, depending on the situations they meet.

We had a discussion with students on how institutions accommodate the difference of values in life. They said rules and law could accommodate them. To check their understanding, we made a timeline about the parts of their life (watching TV, eating breakfast, etc.) which are affected by rules and law. It turns out, almost all aspects of their lives are affected! It kind of surprised them! Let’s see what they had in mind!

Related to this theme, November 20th is ‘Children’s Rights Day’ which is also a form of celebration of human rights. So, we set up some activities related to this day. We made some banners reflecting the celebration of this day, and we had a fundraising activity by selling badges for Rp 5,000 each, and were able to collect Rp 3,150,000 from students and teachers of SBR. WOW!

This fund was donated to the Bina Harapan orphanage in Bogor City. We visited them on December 7th. Besides donating the money and stuff that we collected (many thanks to the parents who supported this activity by donating some items, like rice, books, etc.), we also played games with them! Look at how our students were having fun with the orphans!