My Journey as an Inquiry teacher: November 2017

On our journey into the third Unit of Inquiry

Our third unit of inquiry began with the curious third graders inquiring into the trandisciplinary theme - How we organise ourselves through the central idea New digital media changes the way in which people access information and connect to each other.

Tuning in

We started our unit with a non-verbal morning. Students were asked to find ways to communicate with each other, other than spoken language.

They were given instructions using digital media - QR codes

The students task was to put together the pieces of puzzles that were randomly distributed amongst the groups.

Explaining what the word communication means to us

Trying to organise the different digital media

The next day the students watched the video and reflected on it through the I see I think I wonder strategy

Gallery walk through Chat stations

The students looked at the different picture provocations and shared their thoughts and views with their group members using their communication skills.

Chalk Talk

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Unfolding the Central idea
We unfolded the central idea adapting the growing definition thinking routine. We began by writing our own thoughts, then clubbed it with out partners then in fours and then finally as a class we came up with one central idea.

Finding Out

We began with a place mat activity where we wrote down what we thought about how, where and why is digital media used.

We used a 3 ringed Venn diagram to compare the different reasons we use digital media for.

We then took home an interview sheet where we asked our grandparents questions to more about their lives and means of doing things without digital media.

Using the data we got from the interviews we set out on finding out what

* How life was before digital media

* How life was when digital media was introduced

* How life is now

We researched to find out more.

We are using Powtoon to organise our information into an animated movie.

We looked at how we can use our emails to communicate faster with our teacher and friends.

We also looked at how to organise the drive by

*naming the files /folders correctly

* creating folders and sub folders

* creating google docs and sharing with our team members

Setting up our emails account

Literacy

We are learning about letter writing as a form of written communication. We learnt the way a letter is organised as per the audience of the letter

We started by reading the book - Flat Stanley and making our own Stanleys.

Stay tuned to see how we use digital media to connect with other around the world with our Stanley's.

We read the Postman's letters and identified the features of a formal/informal letter

We compared the two written forms of communication - Letter/Email using the PMI strategy

We wrote to our friends to share with them exciting things about our class

Math

We are learning the concept of multiplication

Our array city

Getting familiar with times tables through some games

Understanding how to multiply using expanded form

We went on to inquire into our next line of inquiry. We began by a simple provocation. We put 3 different sized balls - One was the earth, one was the sun, and one was the moon.

We were posed with 3 different questions

# Here we have 3 different sized balls. One is the earth, one is the sun, and one is the moon. Turn-and-talk with a friend. Which ball should be which? Why do you think that?

# If this ball is the moon and this ball is the earth, does either of them move? How do they move together? Turn-and-talk with a friend

#If this ball is the earth and this ball is the sun, does either of them move? How do they move together? Turn-and-talk with a friend.

We moved on to do a science based KWL chart which is called the KLEWS chart.

We started by tapping into what we already knew about patterns and what were the different objects we see in the sky.

We also wrote our wondering about patterns and solar system.

We took our wondering outside to observe the sun 3 times.

Each time we went outside,

we measured the sun’s distance from the horizon

we saw how the position of the sun affects our shadow length

To further understand why the sun sets and rises we worked on different centers.

Center 1 - Torch, globe will be placed and instructions. The students will read those instructions and follow what they say. They will explore the same and see what they understand from the experiment.

Center 2 - The students will enact the words of a song to understand the concept better.

Center 3 - The book - What makes day and night will be kept. The students read the book to understand the concept of day and night.

Post understanding the patterns of the sun we moved on to understanding the pattern of the moon. We started by observing the moon over a period of days. Post that we worked in centers again to discover the pattern of the moon.

We then looked into physically experiencing the movement of the Moon and Earth.

We also learnt about a few constellations found

Our completed KLEWS chart

Off we went to the Nehru Planetarium to learn more about the planets.

Weighing ourselves on different planets was very interesting. The planet show in the dome was so enticing and made us aware of the changes the solar system has gone through to reach the way it is now.