Water Matters
Over the last few weeks, Grade 4 has been investigating water. We have discovered that fresh water is a precious resource. We also learned that it is often polluted. Agriculture, sewage, industry and detergents can make water unsafe to drink. Many people around the world do not have clean water. In China, over 100 million people are drinking unsafe water every day. This causes diseases. Today, special guests from RISE Tsinghua University visited to teach us how to keep water safe and make it clean. They have invented a special filter called a bio-sand filter. It uses sand to trap the germs in water. They travel around China, teaching communities how to protect their water and make it cleaner. After watching their presentation, we went outside to make our own filters! We were in 4 teams for “The Cleanest Water Competition”. We prepared bottles, stones, sand and dirty water. In this order, we added water, large stones, smaller stones and then sand to the bottles. At last, each group’s filter was ready! We took turns to pour dirty water into our filters. Then we looked at the water coming out and it was very clean! The University student chose the winner by judging which team had the clearest colour. Benedict, Joshua, Jack and Geon Woo’s team were the winners! We had a great lesson with RISE Tsinghua University students. We learned a lot about water pollution and ways to clean water. We think their work is very important in China. By: Geon Woo & Hyun Seo Why is water so precious as a resource? How can you conserve water in your own life? How can you conserve other finite resources in your...
Read MoreTalking Tsunamis with Mr. Masuda!
Two weeks ago, Mr. Masuda came to our class to talk about a natural disaster in Japan. He told us about a huge tsunami that hit Fukushima in 2011. The tsunami caused great damage to the city and citizens in Fukushima. The earthquake had a magnitude of 6.5 on the Richter Scale, which then became an enormous tsunami. Mr Masuda was living in Hawaii but he knew many people in Japan. He also told us about his friend who lost his family in the tsunami. Fortunately, this man found his family, after months of searching, and he lived happily again. But it was so awful when he told us that the man had to search in gyms full of dead bodies. We thought about how awful it would be if we lost our families and were left alone. We also learned that the shape of Japan’s coastline made the tsunami much bigger, because the wave sped up as the water rushed in towards the land. We also learned where Tokyo was placed and some geography about Japan. Mr Masuda told us that Japan has had lots of earthquake before and will continue to have them, because it is on the edge of a tectonic plate (Pacific Plate). We were proud to share our knowledge of why earthquakes happen with Mr Masuda. Thank you, Mr Masuda, for giving us your time and telling us all about this natural disaster. We learned a lot about the impact of tsunamis from you. By Geon Woo, Diana &...
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