The International Baccalaureate, Primary Years Program, encourages students and teachers to make connections to real world contexts, strengthening learning and understanding. This supports the inquiry process, and allows students to “go further”, fostering a greater understanding of the world around them.
In the current unit, students have explored the transdisciplinary theme “How we organize ourselves”, which is an inquiry into the interconnectedness of human-made systems. The central or main idea for Grade 2 is “Money is a system that gives value to goods and services”. Under this central idea we have explored lines of inquiry into banks, money, spending, saving, budgets, being responsible with money and concepts such as demand and supply. As part of each unit, students are encouraged to take action and will do that by raising money for charity through the organization of a big event at the culmination of the unit.
On their field trip to the Royal Thai Mint, the children learned all about the coin creation process, starting from initial sketches to the final coin press. While we were at the Royal Thai Mint, students put the staff through their paces with their challenging inquiries. An example of which was “how do they go from a large design to a print on a small coin?” The answer is truly fascinating indeed.
The benefits of this captivating field trip were extensive, leaving the children full of newfound knowledge and anticipation for the adventures that await in their next unit of inquiry.
