Dear KG2 Parents,

The students of KG2 are beginning a new Unit of Inquiry this week. We would like to share with you some of the concepts and learning outcomes that we plan on covering over the next six weeks.

Central Idea: All living things change Transdisciplinary Theme: Sharing the Planet An inquiry into rights and responsibilities in the struggle to share finite resources with other people and with other living things; communities and the relationships within and between them; access to equal opportunities; peace and conflict resolution.

Through continual involvement of the students in this unit, they will learn about the following Key Concepts: Form, Reflection, Responsibility Form- characteristics of living things Reflection- how plants and animals change Responsibility- our impact on living things Related Concepts: life-cycles, animals, growth, sequence, adaptation, transformation, initiative, plants We will guide the inquiry and ensure the students grasp the concept of the following lines of inquiry:
o o o

characteristics of living things how plants and animals change our impact on living things

Transdisciplinary Skills Research Skills: The students will have the opportunity to develop and utilize various research skills such as formulating questions, observing, planning, collecting data, recording data, organizing data, interpreting data and presenting research findings.

Learner Profile Focus: o Inquirer They develop their natural curiosity. They acquire the skills necessary to conduct inquiry and research and show independence in learning. They actively enjoy learning and this love of learning will be sustained throughout their lives. o Knowledgeable They explore concepts, ideas and issues that have local and global significance. In doing so, they acquire in-depth knowledge and develop understanding across a broad and balanced range of disciplines. Attitudes Focus: The students will work towards developing the attitudes of curiosity and appreciation. Throughout the Unit of Inquiry we have content standards in language, math and science which we will be focusing on. We have listed them below, both so you can stay informed and to enable you to encourage learning at home.

Language Reading Ask and answer questions about unknown words in a text. Name the author and illustrator of a story and define the role of each in telling the story. Describe the relationship between illustrations and the story in which they appear (e.g., what moment in a story an illustration depicts). Actively engage in group reading activities. Recognize and name all upper- and lowercase letters of the alphabet. Recognize and produce rhyming words. Isolate and pronounce the initial, medial vowel, and final sounds (phonemes) in threephoneme (consonant-vowel-consonant, or CVC) words. Demonstrate basic knowledge of letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary or most frequent sound for each consonant. Read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding.

Writing Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose informative/explanatory texts in which they name what they are writing about and supply some information about the topic. Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to narrate a single event or several loosely linked events, tell about the events in the order in which they occurred, and provide a reaction to what happened. Recall information from experiences or gather information from provided sources to answer a question. Confirm understanding of a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other media by asking and answering questions about key details and requesting clarification if something is not understood. Ask and answer questions in order to seek help, get information, or clarify something that is not understood. Describe familiar people, places, things, and events and, with prompting and support, provide additional detail. Add drawings or other visual displays to descriptions as desired to provide additional detail. Use frequently occurring nouns and verbs. Form regular plural nouns orally by adding /s/ or /es/ (e.g., dog, dogs; wish, wishes). Understand and use question words (interrogatives (e.g., who, what, when, where, why, how). Capitalize the first word in a sentence and the pronoun I. Recognize and name end punctuation. Write a letter or letters for most consonant and short-vowel sounds (phonemes). Sort common objects into categories (e.g., shapes, foods) to gain a sense of the concepts the categories represent. Identify real-life connections between words and their use (e.g., note places at school that are colorful).

Speaking and Listening Confirm understanding of a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other media by asking and answering questions about key details and requesting clarification if something is not understood. Ask and answer questions in order to seek help, get information, or clarify something that is not understood. Describe familiar people, places, things, and events and, with prompting and support, provide additional detail. Add drawings or other visual displays to descriptions as desired to provide additional detail.

Mathematics Count to 100 by ones and tens Understand addition as putting together and adding to, and subtraction as taking apart and taking from Identify and describe 2D and 3D shapes, and distinguish between the two Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them Attend to precision Represent addition and subtraction with objects, fingers, mental images, drawings, sounds (e.g., claps), acting out situations, verbal explanations, expressions, or equations. Solve addition and subtraction word problems, and add and subtract within 10, e.g., by using objects or drawings to represent the problem. Decompose numbers less than or equal to 10 into pairs in more than one way, e.g., by using objects or drawings, and record each decomposition by a drawing or equation (e.g., 5 = 2 + 3 and 5 = 4 + 1) Compose and decompose numbers from 11 to 19 into ten ones and some further ones, e.g., by using objects or drawings, and record each composition or decomposition by a drawing or equation (such as 18 = 10 + 8); understand that these numbers are composed of ten ones and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, or nine ones. Classify objects into given categories; count the numbers of objects in each category and sort the categories by count. Describe measurable attributes of objects, such as length or weight. Describe several measurable attributes of a single object. Identify and describe shapes (squares, circles, triangles, rectangles, hexagons, cubes, cones, cylinders, and spheres). Describe objects in the environment using names of shapes, and describe the relative positions of these objects using terms such as above, below, beside, in front of, behind, and next to. Correctly name shapes regardless of their orientations or overall size. Identify shapes as two-dimensional (lying in a plane, flat) or three-dimensional (solid). Analyze, compare, create, and compose shapes. Analyze and compare two- and three-dimensional shapes, in different sizes and orientations, using informal language to describe their similarities, differences, parts (e.g., number of sides and vertices/corners) and other attributes (e.g., having sides of equal length).

Science

Use observations to describe patterns of what plants and animals (including humans)
need to survive. Construct an argument supported by evidence for how plants and animals (including humans) can change the environment to meet their needs. Use a model to represent the relationship between the needs of different plants and animals (including humans) and the places they live. Communicate solutions that will reduce the impact of humans on the land, water, air, and/or living things in the local environment.

We look forward to your co-operation and support for your child through this unit. Please let us know if you have any questions regarding this unit. Thank you, The KG2 Team