Guest Speakers
Our Grade 4 Students’ Learning Journey with Guest Speakers
Learning online has brought many challenges for the students who have lost the opportunity for physical interactions and outdoor explorations for more than a year now. Aside from these, we can’t deny the fact that in the beginning, when everyone was still adjusting, it created a sense of isolation for our little ones who used to spend more time in school than at home. By now, many of these concerns have been addressed in virtual learning, as teachers continually innovated and looked for ways to adapt to the ‘now normal’ and ensure that approaches to learning are still applied.
During our first unit of inquiry, under the transdisciplinary theme “Who we are”, one of the approaches to learning (ATLs) that we focused on is research. One of the ways to research is to gather information from primary sources, and we were very privileged to have been given the opportunity to hear from experts from different fields such as medicine, nutrition and mental health. Although the teachers can teach and facilitate inquiry into these subject areas, having speakers talk about their own fields of expertise made the students more excited to learn.
Our first guest speaker is a young, Filipino doctor who grew up in Indonesia. Without second thoughts, he gave a resounding yes to our request to conduct another session with our Grade 4 students. Dr. Daren Laurente talked about ways to keep our lungs healthy and explained how smoking is extremely dangerous for our health. He also shared with us the connection between environment and health – that a healthy environment or community is essential for our health. He shared photos of when he rescued animals, released turtles to the sea and joined beach clean-up drives when he was still based in El Nido, an extremely popular tourist destination on the island of Palawan in Philippines. Dr. Darren brought a better learning experience for our students by not just imparting knowledge but also to reminding the children that we share our planet with all of God’s other creations.
Our second and third speakers talked about the circulatory and nervous system, respectively. Dr. Asmoko is a talented and skillful cardiologist. He did not hesitate to accept our invitation even though he was very busy. He spared 40 minutes of his precious time to help us enhance and broaden our students’ learning experience online. Dr. Asmoko was in the hospital, and he emerged in his scrubs when he introduced himself to the students. He shared with us the functions of the heart and showed a video of how it works. Dr. Asmoko also reminded the students about the importance of keeping our hearts healthy to avoid diseases. He reminded our students to start focusing on their health from an early age, to eat healthy and avoid junk/instant food so that they can grow up to be healthy and strong adults. Dr. Asmoko also emphasized to the students the importance of physical exercise.
Ms. Yoshiko, on the other hand, is a certified hypnotherapist. She talked about how our brain works and how amazing it is, how we all have different intelligences, how to stimulate our brain, and how to reduce stress by doing some simple breathing exercises. Like Dr. Darren and Dr. Asmoko, this is our second year to have Ms. Yoshiko as a guest speaker. The students asked her so many questions, and she answered all of them. She also praised the children and told them how amazed she is by their questions.
Our next three guest speakers are our very own school nurses, Nurse Debby, Nurse Maria, and student counselor Ms. Fransisca. Nurse Debby and Nurse Maria talked about the current pandemic and how the students can protect themselves from COVID-19. Aside from these, they also discussed the importance of having a healthy lifestyle and emphasized the value of having a balanced diet, having enough sleep, and keeping our bodies hydrated. Ms. Fransisca, on the other hand, provided useful insights on how to maintain a healthy mind. She pointed out looking after our mental health is just as important as looking after our physical health. She talked about the importance of getting enough sleep, managing our emotions effectively and respecting other people’s feelings. There is no doubt our school nurses and counselor not only delivered content but also encouraged discussion and critical thinking.
Having guest speakers in the online classroom had helped us, homeroom and co teachers, to fortify the topics and concepts we were exploring for the unit. We are grateful to them for engaging our students in authentic discussions and for inspiring our students to be mindful of what they do with their health – physical, mental or emotional. Our guest speakers have definitely made our learning more fun for the students because they have sparked students’ interests and developed in them a desire to learn more.
By Corita Silapan
Grade 4 Acting Level Head
BINUS School Simprug
ctorregoza@binus.edu
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