This unit of inquiry was implemented with children ages 3 to 4 with the objective of them understanding that living things have needs that must be respected. Within their inquiry, children wondered about the way that animal's needs were fulfilled during captivity, as a result of a visit to the zoo in which they reflected on the animal's living conditions. To further provoke reflections on the concept of captivity, I organized different learning engagements in which I hoped for them to build empathy towards animals in the zoo. We used role play and free play as a way to promote inquiry, reflection and questioning. The following video shows the play based activities that were carried out with this object in mind.
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This culminating event of the PYP is an exciting time for students, teachers and parents. This year was our school's third exhibition, and my first as the PYP coordinator and as a Year 6 teacher.
Having had participated in exhibition before at my prior school, Santiago College (Santiago, Chile), as a mentor and under the amazing guidance of @jessievas12, I had some experience and knowledge about what the exhibition is all about, and this was a great chance for me to continue developing these understandings and taking the risk and challenge of leading the year 6 teachers and students through it. The process was an amazing success and Exhibition Day was a wonderful moment. Because an image is worth a thousand words, and therefore a video should be worth even more, here is a video I created to share the process we followed and the outcomes we reached. Enjoy!
My Year 6 class has been using Educreations a lot to create their own content, share their learning and develop their understandings.
One of the ways we have been using it is to solve a big problem I was facing. Because I am the only teacher in class with the students (as I was very used to a co-teaching model!), it has been hard to do guided reading and impossible to have the minute to sit with each student one to one to work on reading with them. However, Educreations has helped solve this problem. As students are very used to using this App to demonstrate their understandings and communicate their ideas, I have now asked them to use it to read a loud, as if they were reading to me. Before starting, I have them reflect on their reading attitudes and skills using this rubric:
Then, I ask them to take whatever book they are reading, and find a quiet place around the hallway, to record themselves reading out loud, at least 3 pages of their book. I ask them to think aloud any connections they are making or questions they are having.
The result is this Educreations video, which I can later watch and use to assess student's progress using the same rubric: This is evidence from a summative assessment conducted to evaluate the childrens' new understandings as a prodduct of the Unit of Inquiry about materials and their properties, for the transdisciplinary theme "How the world works" from the Prymary Years Program. Children demonstrated their newly acquired knowledge on the following concepts:
Along with this, children showed their development of the following skills:
... and showed their understanding of the following lines of inquiry:
The assessment was a an open-ended task where students were asked to create a chair for a stuffed animal, "Mr. Bear". To do this, they had to choose among a set of materials: paper, rubber bands, clay, or lego blocks. Children worked collaboratively in groups of four, and had to organize themselves and make every decision to pursue the task. Children had to observe the materials they picked and use the knowledge they acquired throughout the unit to make decisions about the best way to build a chair for Mr. Bear. Because they knew that the materials to choose and the form to give them depended on the function that the final object would have, they also had to observe and analyze Mr. Bear. "Rubber bands are not so good, because rubber bands are rubber, they stretch, like this... so they are no good because they can't hold on. Plastic is good so - so, it is a little weak, but you can still do it (the chair), because it is not as elastic as the rubber bands". "Paper is soft and it falls. It's good because we use it witch scotch tape. Scotch helps make the chair more resistant, because Mr. Bear is heavy so it has to be resistant".
"Legos can be used to make houses, but toy houses, not real ones." "Legos are strong, I don't know why they are strong. They are strong plastic." "I think they have something hard inside them." "Mr. Bear can sit on this chair made of legos, because its hard, but a real person would fall, because people are more heavy". For a very long time I have been reflecting on the following question: How can I extend inquiry teaching and learning into other subject areas, outside of the teaching of science and social studies (out of the Program of Inquiry of the PYP)? Along with this, another reflection that I have had many times regards the teaching of mathematics, as for me this has been an ongoing challenge that I have eagerly been trying to surpass by continuing with my professional development. Because of this, one of my personal projects during the 2013 involved the creation of a Unit of Inquiry in mathematics. I had the opportunity of working with a math coach in Santiago College, and therefore took the advantage of the support given by her and the co-teacher I had at the time, with whom I shared many of these reflections. Together, we set out to create a Unit of Inquiry to teach students about the base ten number system. Among our main objectives, was our central idea or big understanding: Tens and ones are a way to represent numbers, that we can use to solve everyday problems. As for our outcomes of objetives, we were looking for students to...
We gave much importance to the fact that we wanted to students to apply their understandings and skills, as we did not want them to merely learn facts and procedures in math, but meaningfully understand how they can use these procedures and skills in real life. Because of this, we carefully selected the math standards and outcomes that we would be needing to help students develop their understandings, as well as the summative assessment activity through which they would demonstrate these. At the end of the unit we wanted the students to solve a real - world problem, using the skills and understandings developed. We decided to take advantage on a campaign the school was having to collect different things for a particular school in Haiti which had been terribly affected by an earthquake. We asked the students to collect different school supplies which we then had to sort and group before delivering them. Through this task, students had to use their understanding of number, quantity and the base ten system. You can view a detailed plan of this activity here: Math Unit of Inquiry Performance Task. The following are samples of the students work regarding this assessment: Throughout the unit, students had the opportunity to explore their prior knowledge about numbers, the base ten system, and how to apply these understandings to their real lives. We also had a variety of learning engagements in which students could reflect on the use of numbers greater than ten, practice math skills such as adding and subtracting numbers greater than ten, and apply this learning to different real - world situations. This unit of inquiry was not just an incredible learning opportunity for the students, it was also a big eye - opener for the co-teacher I was working with, the math coach, and me. We learned that it is posible to have units of inquiry outside of the Programme of Inquiry of the PYP, and that learning through inquiry, though it is true that it takes more time, is an excellent way for students to acquire important skills in every content area, gain deep understandings on different subjects, and most importantly, understand how they can use these in their real lives. This learning experience was inmersed in a Unit of Inquiry for the PYP's trandisciplinary theme "Who we Are" , and was created as a way to connect academic outcomes to the unit of inquiry. Students were ages 6 and 7. The learning goal was for children to explore different shapes as a way to begin working with geometry, and at the same time explore the concept of symbol as part of the unit's lines of inquiry regarding the way we create symbols to represent who we are. For this activity, the following inquiry cycle for teaching and learning was used:
Previously, children had brought in a homework assignment where they had to search for different symbols. Many of the children brought in flags of different countries, and they seemed very interested in these since they related them to soccer matches that had taken place the year before for the 2010 World Cup, so we decided to work with flags and their geometric shapes. Flags from different countries were provided so that children could discuss the symbols, their colors and shapes, around the idea that each symbol has been chosen to represent something particular to that country. These discussions were done using the think-pair-share strategy, where first each student thinks about these ideas in his or her own and at a signal, pairs with another student to share their thoughts. At a third signal, students take turns to share what they have concluded as a pair.
Students were invited to work with the pattern blocks, which they had used several times before, and were asked to create some of the flags that had been used in the discussion with the pattern blocks. During this exploration, children were encouraged to talk amongst themselves about the shapes involved in each flag, the colors, and what they thought these symbols meant.
For this part of the experience, the students were gathered in a group to share what they had done individually. The discussion involved the concept of symbol (why did the country choose that particular color? What do you think this color represents? Why did the country choose these shapes? what are they a symbol for?) and gemoetric concepts as well (What shapes did you use to recreate the flag? With what other shapes could you recreate it? How many of each did you need to use? In how many different ways could you create the same flag with different blocks?).
As a branching out experience, students had the opportunity to create their own flags,thinking about the symbols they would like to include (colors and shapes) and about the block shapes they would have to use to create their designs. This lesson was part of a Unit of Inquiry on materials, their properties and characterstics, for the transdisciplinary theme "How the world works". It was designed along the following inquiry model: Throughout the experience, children worked on the following lines of inquiry:
...and developed these transdisciplinary skills:
For this activity, children had to form groups and four. Each group was given a spoon made of different
materials: paper, cardboard, metal, plastic, and clay. The groups were also given a glass of water and were asked to take turns in drinking the water using the spoon. With notebooks in hand, children had to record what happened and their observation. They were encouraged to discuss their reactions and share their observation, as well as make different decisions about how to best complete the task with the materials they were given. Some of the conclusions that the students reached throughout the exploration and experimentation included:
After ample time was given for exploration, the whole group was gathered for a discussion guided by the lines of inquiry stated above and some of the following teacher questions:
Listen to the following audio recording to hear the student's conclusions: |