Hello, dear parents and fellow students. It has been a regular, peaceful week in Grade 6, without much excitement. Not surprising, since our Unit of Inquiry topic is “Peace”. Excitement is overrated anyway. 😃

The students have started inquiring into the second Line of Inquiry of the Unit, “A modern, peaceful world”. We have continued talking about the tragedy of the Hiroshima bombing, but this time from the perspective of the present, watching videos of the survivors and learning how people of Hiroshima and Japan honor this event every year and celebrate the ability of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to rebuild so quickly after the tragedy.

The students thought of ways they could communicate the impact of this story to their schoolmates and decided on preparing posters giving information on the event and a beautiful drawing of the tree nicknamed “Miyajima” from a story we read. “The Peace Tree from Hiroshima” tells a true story of a tree that, after being taken care of by the same family for four hundred years, was donated to an arboretum in the US as a symbol of friendship between two countries. 🕊️

We followed this story up with a discussion on what makes a peaceful world and is our personal happiness or our country’s happiness only ours to decide, or does it depend on the actions of others (and other countries) as well. The students shared some insightful thoughts, for example saying how it’s impossible to live life without any regrets and one where everything goes your way, and that accepting that you sometimes don’t have a choice in life is the way to happiness.

The students prepared individual presentations on the articles they read about people and countries helping each other and nature. Kaisei’s presentation was on a school teacher working with his students to protect the swamps in his hometown, Aoi’s was about how the Japanese government helps India with updating their railroad system, and Nayl’s was on the return of ancient, previously stolen, artifacts from Germany to Nigeria. 💻

The weather has been a little bit warmer recently, so we hope you have a wonderful weekend. ☀️