Big Ideas in Small Packages

On Thursday, December 11, MYP 4 students were afforded the opportunity to step out of Humanities and enter the world of similes and syllables, rhythm and rhyme… grade two style!

During this unit’s program of inquiry, Mr. Bradley’s second grade students have been exploring poetry, focussing on expressing themselves, and their perspective of the world, in English.  On Thursday, however, each second grader was paired with an MYP student with whom they shared another language, and together they were encouraged to apply their understandings of poetry and expression in their mother tongue.  Poetry, with its frequently fluid and flexible language structures, allows children to disregard traditional conventions, providing them with a unique opportunity to play with, and explore, language. This type of exploration is integral to a child’s language development (not to mention, incredibly entertaining!).

As students began to brainstorm ideas and create their creations, the classroom was filled with English, Chinese, Korean, Finnish, and Romanian. It was fun to see all of our students share their ideas and feelings in a way that was completely unrestrained, all while sharing their mother-tongue and culture with their friends.

In the end, this proved to be a valuable experience for everyone: The MYP students, being older and more experienced than their pint-sized counterparts, enjoyed mentoring their buddies and refreshing their own knowledge on what it means to “see through the eyes of a poet”; the PYP students were able to transfer their knowledge of poetry to their mother-tongue, and the rest of the school community will benefit when these poems are published and hung in the halls of the school for everyone’s enjoyment!