Shinagawa International School (SIS) has a practice of reaching out to help during such emergencies, and we as a school community decided to lead a sponsored Student Action.
Australian Bushfire
Grade 2 students have done an excellent job collecting donations to help Australia. We are extremely proud of each student for taking action!!! We enjoyed our buddy reading with preschool students. We had visitors from kindergarten. They surveyed us about our favourite land, sea, and air animals. They did great! We wrapped up the week starting our new unit How the World Works. As students did a gallery they recorded observations and though of questions about the buildings and structures they saw.
Student Action for Soma
The mining disaster in the Turkish community of Soma killed many of the men of Soma, leaving their wives and children without a way to support their family. SIS has a practice of reaching out to help during such emergencies, and we as a school community decided to lead a sponsored reading campaign. To raise money for the victims’ families the children participated in a sponsored read-athon. Parents and SIS community either pledged a single amount that they would like to donate, or an amount for every five minute period of reading that the students completed. It enabled our students to raise awareness of the responsibility we have as global citizens to help when we learn that a community is in need. We were able to raise around 130.000 Yen for the victims of Some mining disaster.
Read for Oklahoma
During our unit on sharing the planet the kindergarten class realized that there are a lot of problems in the world, and they decided to do something about it. We talked about options and voted to do something to help kids. While we were searching through charities and looking at options, tornados devastated Oklahoma destroying schools in the process. While reading electronic books on Wegivebooks.org we saw that We Give Books was pledging to donate two new books to schools destroyed in the tornado for every $5.00 donated. We had found our cause! The kindergarten students got people to pledge money based upon how much they could read and we had a full day of reading on June 12th. The kindergarten class’s read for Oklahoma day was a success. Each student read more than 20 books on their own (185 altogether), and we earned well over our goal of 10000 yen. Due to our hard work we were able to donate 104 books to Oklahoma schools that were destroyed in the recent tornados. We are very proud of our accomplishment and proud that we were able to help other kids have access to books. Thank you for your help and support with this fundraiser!
Student Action for a Sustainable Future
On Wednesday, June 12th, there was a day of action at SIS in order to raise awareness about various global issues. In Grade 1, we raised awareness of the need to invest in sustainable resources. From 8:30 a.m. until 6:30 p.m. on that day, the students in Grade 1 tried to spend a day without using electricity. At school, we had classes outdoors, or used only the natural light that came in through the windows. We didn’t use air conditioners or computers. After school, the students tried not to watch TV or play video games. Instead, they did their homework or read a book using only natural light. For every hour that each child spent without electricity, sponsors agreed to pay a certain amount of yen. For example, if a sponsor pledged 10 yen per hour, and the student made it the full 10 hours without using electricity, the sponsor donated 100 yen. The students had a very successful day without electricity and were able to raise 10,540 yen for the Sierra Club’s International Climate Program.
A day of Silence for Those without a Voice
On Wednesday 12th June between 8:00 am and 6:00 pm, Grade 2/3 took part in a sponsored silence in order to raise money for the charity War Child. War Child is a charity based in the United Kingdom which works to help child soldiers and children affected by conflict around the world. The children decided on this course of action following our Sharing the Planet unit in which we studied human rights and looked at a number of global issues including child soldiers. Everybody in the class was greatly moved by the child soldier case studies that we looked at and were particularly impressed by the work of the singer Emmanuel Jal in raising awareness of this issue. As a class, we raised ¥35,000. I am so proud of the children for deciding on this action project and we hope that our day of action will make a difference.
Friends in Distant Lands
The Grade 4 class applied their philanthropic energy toward raising awareness for global issues. They created wikis to help raise awareness for Children’s Rights, Pollution, and Bullying. They were very excited to receive comments from people around the world.
Sponsored Silence
During our inquiry into the importance of balance within ecosystems, the Grade 5-6 students made flyers to raise awareness about an endangered species. To take further action to help the animals, the students did a sponsored silence on Wednesday 12th June to raise money for The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
Using their flyers to persuade people to part with their hard earned cash, the children spent two weeks prior to the event collecting as many sponsors as possible.
Then, on the 12th, from 8 am until 6 pm, the children tried not to speak in order to raise as much money as possible. It was a hard task (and some found it harder than others!) but altogether, the class raised over ¥26, 000 for a very good cause.