Guest Speaker: Mr. Pablo & UNHCR Systems (Written by Whole Class)

Andres: Dear Dad. When you came in (to the classroom this morning), I knew everyone was like, “Why is Andres’ dad here?”

Isabella M.: Today in class Andres’ father came and taught us about the organization he works for.  His organization is called UNHCR and it is a business that helps people who are refugees.

Julian: UNHCR stands for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Antonio: Refugees are homeless, foodless and helpless people who are helped by this company.

Mariam: Mr. Pablo explained that there are 39,000,000 refugees who need shelter.

Carolina: The number of refugees in the world is 3 times the population of Ecuador.

Juanita: I learned that women need food more urgently because some have babies, and the babies need food. 

Julia: I learned that a refugee’s life is hard because when they escape they only take their families (with them). They don’t take water, food or blankets. So when they are migrating, sometimes they die because of illness, hunger, thirst or isolation.

Juan Esteban: I liked the part when he had us write a list of things we though a refugee camp would need. I never knew that UNHCR existed. I have a question. How do the people know where the refugee camp is?

Andres: The part (of the presentation) that I liked the most was when we dressed up in UNHCR uniforms because I felt like one of the UNHCR workers.

Whole class: Mr. Pablo made a connection between systems (which is our PYP Unit of Inquiry right now) and how UNHCR is organized.

Sebastian: I think that the way Mr. Pablo helps refugees is a good way to help humanity.

Isabel: Thank you for coming and teaching us what actual crises there are in the world. Thank you for teaching us the true meaning of help.  Thank you for teaching us how we can help our community and the world. Thank you for helping us to be grateful for all we have.

Guest Speaker: Ms. Luisa & Water Treatment (Written in Small Groups)

Group #1: N.R.'s mom came and taught us about clean water and dirty water, because she is a water engineer. Since she studies water, she taught us that dirty water can look clean but still have mini-germs in it that can hurt you, so we have to be careful what kind of water we drink. It was exciting seeing slides of different "vacirias" (bacteria).

Group #2: Ms. Luisa had E. B. put a chemical in the dirty water called alum, and it made the dirt in the dirty water get together like magnets sometimes do. She helped us understand how this works by having a bunch of us pretend to "not like" each other and then, after we had alum put on us, we did a big group hug. We also learned that when things come together like this, it's called "coagulation". So, once the dirty water gets in together in balls, it falls to the bottom of a container and then it's easier for the cleaner water to be poured off from the top. N.R. said, "It was my mom that did this (presentation), and I felt proud of her because she did such a good job!"

Group #3: Later E.P. put dirty water in a filter that had sand on top of small rocks, and it let water come out of the bottom. When E.P. put the dirty water in the the top of the filter, it went through the sand and came out as CLEAN water! But it wasn't so clean, because there could still be some germs inside of it. So then we put in another chemical to clean the water, and it was called "chlorine". Still we didn't drink this really clean water, just in case. There could have been "jiaryas" (Giardia)!
Group #4: At the end of the lesson we made a pretend filter that takes salt out of water. We have lots of salty water on our planet, so it's a good invention to learn how to take the salt out so that we can have more to drink. We learned that there's very little clean water on our Earth!  We were also given an activity book to teach us more things, and we especially learned not to waste water! It was a cool lesson.

Parachute Math & Felix Baumgartner's Upcoming Jump From the Edge of Space!