Grade 5

Sharing the Planet

by Ibu Sarah Dotulong

This year Grade 5 took a new and different direction for the Sharing the Planet unit. Our central idea this year is: Survival within a population depends on relationships. We looked at the role of living things in an ecosystem, how the balance of an ecosystem changes because of human actions and the impact of relationships within a population.

To start the unit, we looked at God’s plan for a perfect ecosystem, the Garden of Eden and how man messed things up during the fall. We challenged the students to think about how we can make a difference in the world by personally engaging in the redemptive restoration of our world.

We learned a lot about living things within our school environment as well as various other ecosystems locally and globally. There were some interesting things that we discovered as we took some time to see what was living on our campus.

As the unit came to an end, students were challenged to think like a reporter tasked to discover a local issue relating to biodiversity. Some chose issues in Indonesia and others chose issues related to their home countries. As part of the task, they had to explain how human actions have impacted the balance of the ecosystem and come up with a plan of action.

Lots of interesting discoveries and promising action are happening in Grade 5!