Medical Timeline

This week, we completed our fourth unit of the year with the central idea: 

Contributions from the past developed modern-day medicine.

As inquirers, we each picked several topics related to the history of medicine and applied our research skills to write summaries with visual representations. We also applied our thinking skills to consider the significance of various medical advancements and discoveries. 

Take a look at our very long timeline!

Below, you can also see our completed unit wall. 

We definitely explored many different topics!

Have a wonderful spring break, everyone!

 

The Reasons Humans Explore Space

 

Last week, our fourth unit of inquiry about the solar system, stars, and galaxies came to an end. 

We used our research skills to find out the reasons humans explore space and showcased our findings by creating one-pagers. 

Take a look at our creations below!

Our unit display space below also documents our learning throughout each unit. 

We tend to start around the edge of the display space and work toward the middle where we make connections to figure out the central idea. 

We are often able to get our versions quite close to the teacher-created one, as you might be able to see on the blue sticky notes. 

This skill of creating central ideas on our own will be very useful and important during our exhibition. 

Have a great weekend!

Factors, percent, new unit, OH MY!

 

This week, the Grade 6 mathematicians explored the concept of percent through the lens of form, function, and connection. 

The sticky notes with the stars represent their new learning. 

Check out the conversation in the video below!

The Grade 5 mathematicians continued their investigation into the concept of factoring, through the lens of form, function, connection, and reflection. 

The writing in blue represents their initial understanding and the orange represents how their thinking has changed. We have been practicing asking each other "What makes you say that?" to dig deep into ideas in our conversations.

You can see in the chart above how the mathematicians' understanding developed over time. 

This week, we also started our new unit with the transdisciplinary theme: Where we are in place and time. 

We are applying the framework of a visible thinking routine called Peel the Fruit as we consider the following questions throughout the unit:

• What do we see and notice?
• What do we wonder?
• What connections can we make?
• What's REALLY going on here?
• How can we consider different perspectives?
• What's the central idea?

As we looked at some photos, we posted our questions on our Wonder Wall. 

Some of the questions which came up were...

• Why are so many people together?
• Where do the people in the pictures go and what do they do?
• How is the problem of people needing to go to refugee camps growing or shrinking?
• What happens to people who get left behind during a migration?
• What will happen if our country is not safe?

Zoom into the photos on our Peel the Fruit unit wall. 

What do YOU wonder about?

Museum of the Ancients

This week, we held a Museum of the Ancients event for our parents, learners in other grades, and the rest of the school community. 

The purpose of this mini-exhibition was to share our learning from our unit with the central idea: The influence of past civilisations is reflected in modern-day societies.

During our independent inquiries, we each focused on an ancient civilisation of our choice. 

Our displays included...

• a collection of summaries about the civilisation
• an explanation of how a particular tool influenced the civilisation
• information on the connections between ancient tools and tools in modern society
• answers/creations related to self-created questions and tasks to go further in our inquiries
• artwork related to the civilisation

Buckle up for some serious learning!

Thank you everyone who supported us in our learning journey!

Book Club

Take a look at our fourth book club meeting!

Compared to our first meeting, we are becoming better at communicating effectively using the sentence stems as well as keeping the conversation going. 

This week's student-generated questions were the following: 

• If Jake hadn’t have blown up the tomb, what would have happened?

• Why was Jake’s mom the only one who had escaped from the evil cult?

To learn more about how the book clubs are run, please see the post from last week. 

Cheers!

Book Club / Generating Quality Questions and Tasks

This term, we started our weekly book clubs!

We have been learning about the importance of generating quality questions and tasks to help us learn. 

See the video below to find out about the different levels of questioning and thinking. 

 Here are some examples of the types of questions and tasks that can be generated at each level. 

In Grade 4, we are challenging ourselves to work with level 2 and 3 questions/task in our inquiries. 

Please note that questions around similar topics have been color-coded. 

During our book club, we had a discussion about the following student-generated questions as we read Jake Atlas and the Tomb of the Emerald Snake in connection to our inquiry into ancient civilisations: 

• Why doesn’t Pan like Mr. Kit?

• What would happen if the white-haired woman were part of the Cult of Osiris?

During the discussion, we try to be responsible and active communicators by using the sentence starters in the picture below as we reference the text. 

We keep track of the sentence starters we've used by moving them over to the left side.

Check out the video below to see our discussion in action!

Preparing for the Museum of the Ancients

Preparing for The Museum of the Ancients as we research about ancient civilisations and create artwork! 

Stay tuned for more information in the upcoming weeks!

First Week Back

This week, we started our third unit of inquiry. 

This unit has the following transdisciplinary theme: Where we are in place and time. 

As we tuned into the unit, we began exploring books, videos and other resources related to ancient civilisations. 

Below, Gabriel is using a headset which allows him to experience ancient cities through virtual reality!

The central idea will be revealed soon.

Right now, were are trying to figure out what it is as we make connections between ideas and concepts we notice through the learning engagements. 

Stay tuned to find out more about this exciting unit!

Homes and Change

In our last unit, we explored the different meanings of the word "home". 

Throughout our inquiry, we created "mobiles" to show our new learning. 

Each part of the mobile represents the many things that we feel is our home. 

For example, a house, city, country, the earth, or even the solar system are all things that we could call our home. 

As we kept learning, our mobiles kept getting longer and longer!

Since one of our key concepts was "change", at the end of our unit we showed what we would like our home to be like when we are all grown up!

People used their talents to show their learning in different ways!

Some of us made models...

Some of us made posters... 

or drawings...

...or computer programs like Minecraft!

Some of us showed in more than two ways, like making a model and...

...singing a lovely song!

We all used both our speaking and presenting skills to share our creations!

On the last day before winter break, we had to say good bye to our friend who moved back to Germany. 

We will miss you lots! Good luck at your new school Tatjana!