01The Big Idea of the first unit in Grade 4’s Topic class is “The Features of China Can Be Represented in Many Ways”. Students got to explore the geography of China and human activities. Starting from understanding the formation of mountains then they moved to knowing the necessary of mining and the impacts of mining. By comparing different rivers, the relationship between human life and water sources, the following was considered: identifying reliable water and non-reliable water by water testing. This week, students began to compare the water drinking habits across the world and think about the reasons behind it. Topic lessons always encourage students to think and learn from the real world.
02 During exploration, students are curious about where our daily waste water could go and how to reuse sewage and deal with the garbage that is in the sewage and so on. Here is the list of questions from our Grade 4.
03 We decided we can start from knowing and understanding our own urban sewage treatment situation, so we went to LongTing Sewage Treatment Co.,Ltd. under the Xishan Water Group. After explaining the safety instructions to students, the professionals showed students a video of “Little Water Drops” and watched examination of water biological activity through a microscope. Students not only had the chance to see biochemical reaction tank, secondary sedimentation tank and denitrification filter, but they were also able to ask questions when they were observing on the site.
04 Students learned that the main water problems of our city are people’s uncivilized behavior, unreasonable water use habits, illegal industrial emissions and so on. Therefore, some of our students asked why we are always advocating water conservation and not littering, but we still have serious water problems. What else we can do to engage more people to understand the importance of using water wisely. In the next topic lesson, we will carry out PBL (Project/Problem Based Learning) about this issue. You are welcome to join us if you want to make a contribution about using water wisely. Let’s start by understanding how much waste water one person can create in one week. You are most welcome to share your data with us!