Planning the inquiry

1. What is our purpose?

To inquire into the following:

- Transdisciplinary theme: ● Sharing the Planet: Inquiry into rights and responsibilities in

the struggle to share finite resources with other people and with other living things; communities and the relationships within and between them; access to equal opportunities; peace and conflict resolution.

- Central idea : ● A society’s beliefs and values affects how it uses its resources

Summative assessment task(s):

What are the possible ways of assessing students’ understanding of the central idea? What evidence, including student-initiated actions, will we look for?

Introduce IB/Inquiry board and discuss theme and central idea. Discuss key concepts, related concepts, profile, attitudes and show the following picture. Ask “what do you see, think, wonder”

Choose image from Google:

Students will demonstrate an understanding of the Central Idea in one of the following ways:

Students will create a presentation to give to other classrooms about conserving resources / reducing waste.

● Presentation with a rubric for grading: CCSS Presentation Rubric ○ 4th grade students ask younger classroom, “What are

things that are wasted? Take information. ○ Give presentation on common waste reducing strategies.

■ Name some things that get wasted? ■ How do we reduce the waste? How do we know waste was

reduced? ■ In what ways have you adjusted to reduce this waste?

Class/grade: 4th Age group:

School: Semper School code: 060135

Title: Sharing the Planet

Teacher(s): Doerr, Giddings

Date: 1/9/19

Proposed duration: 30 hours over 6 weeks

2. What do we want to learn?

What are the key concepts (form, function, causation, change, connection, perspective, responsibility, reflection) to be emphasized within this inquiry?

Key Concepts: Responsibility and Function

Related Concepts: Environment and Supply/demand

Approaches to Learning: Self management skills

Profile: Balanced and principled

Attitudes: Cooperation and integrity

What lines of inquiry will define the scope of the inquiry into the central idea?

An inquiry into -

-The positive and negative impacts of resources on the environment and communities.

-How the Earth and Sun provide a variety of renewable and nonrenewable resources that are captured in a variety of ways (light, heat, sound, chemical, electrical…)

--How resources are not distributed evenly.

-The function of resources in different environments?

How are resources used and valued in other communities (countries)?

How can responsibility, or lack thereof, affect the environment?

What teacher questions/provocations will drive these inquiries?

● Follow up visit ○ 4th grade students ask younger classroom, “How have we

been reducing waste?” take responses and log on original note page.

● Independent reflection opinion essay ○ “My group was impactful because…”

What would change in our lives if we ran out of resources like water or medicine?

How do we depend on and use the resources provided by the Earth?

What is the global impact of capturing natural resources (including energy sources)?

3. How might we know what we have learned?

This column should be used in conjunction with “How best might we learn?” What are the possible ways of assessing students’ prior knowledge and skills? What evidence will we look for?

Thinking map ‘Ways People Conserve Resources”

● Examples of conservation ● Using conservation in context correctly ● Using resources correctly ● Identifying actual resources in real life.

What are the possible ways of assessing student learning in the context of the lines of inquiry? What evidence will we look for? (Pre, along the way, post)

Pre-assessment: class thinking with a KWL chart and wonder wall.

RAFT project; Role, Audience, Format, Topic.

Students will choose a continent or country and research how a society's beliefs and values affects how it uses its resources.

They will create their own research questions and their own rubric to be graded upon.

Groups will present their project so students can connect how resources are used the same and differently throughout the world.

4. How best might we learn?

What are the learning experiences suggested by the teacher and/or students to encourage the students to engage with the inquiries and address the driving questions?

Setting The Stage (Tune In):

Skype/Facetime with an expert www.nepris.com

Parent involvement--- transdisciplinary theme-sharing the planet. take home the theme and discuss with parent. what do you think this means? reflection on the back, bring back tomorrow for discussion. Cut apart activity-break apart the theme. T chart

● Introduction of presentation by guest speaker. Discuss with students that we have been studying energy and how it can be best used to avoid waste. Now we will talk about other resources that can be wasted.

○ Net zero classroom (Net Zero Classroom) ● Gallery walk

○ Picture of trash ○ Dumping of trash and recycling from our classrooms ○ Polar bear video- see, think, wonder for each station (combined

science and social studies) -https://act.sealegacy.org/s/face-of-climate-change

● Peer work idea generation ○ Take a poll of the classroom “What do we waste every day?” ○ How can we reduce our waste? ○ How can we measure it in this classroom? ○ How can you measure it at home?

Facilitating Student Inquiry

(Finding Out)

● website for research: A Student's Guide to Global Climate Change

● NREL field trip ● Dump out trash of classroom bin ● AOW’s (Newsela article

https://newsela.com/read/starving-polar-bear-climate/id/38852/ ) ● Videos ● Shel Silverstein poem “Sarah, Sylvia, Cynthia Stout” ● Graphs ● Simulation where we reduce the resources students can use.

○ No paper use? ○ No electricity?

■ No lights, pencil sharpeners, videos, digital clocks, cell phones, watches, etc

●

What opportunities will occur for transdisciplinary skills development and for the development of the attributes of the learner profile?

Sorting out:

Math: Graphing, multiplication of paper usage

Writing: Poem,

Reading: Articles on waste

Science: Renewable and non-renewable resources

Social Studies: Continent footprint on paper use, why do we choose to live where we live? Why migrate to CO?

Art:

Music: Colorado history songs

● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apkgmgKR9G8

● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAyom4zZUM4 AhsHSS

PE:

Discovering resources around the world-Atlas hunt

The Lorax book- compared themes with Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout--how do we have a caring environment?

Compared resources from Colorado and Michigan using DNR websites

and other websites-what did we notice/double bubble map

Colorado explorers- and resources used

Colorado history songs

Going Further:

RAFT/GRASPS activity. Student planned. Begins with wonder wall/inquiry. From here, we TAKE ACTION. Pick 7, place kids in groups based on their wonderings/inquiry. What topic do you want to teach others about: compost, global warming, reduce, reuse, energy, recycling. Create together.

Students create rubric to be graded/successful

Making Conclusions: After presentations, students will reflect on their rubric; did they answer their focus question? How did they meet the central idea?

Students will also engage in a discussion about what they learned about other countries and how their society values resources differently from their research.

5. What resources need to be gathered?

What people, places, audio-visual materials, related literature, music, art, computer software, etc, will be available?

Derek James- environmental engineer

Field Trip- ENREL

Print out pictures

Create rubric

How will the classroom environment, local environment, and/or the community to be used to facilitate the inquiry?

Discovering resources around the world-Atlas hunt

6. To what extent did we achieve our purpose?

Assess the outcome of the inquiry by providing evidence of students’ understanding of the central idea. The reflections of all teachers involved in the planning and teaching of the inquiry should be included.

The students understanding of our central idea, a society’s beliefs and values affects how it uses its resources, was effective. They were required to create a project that taught others how we could reduce waste and/or using resources more effectively.

How you could improve on the assessment task(s) so that you would have a more accurate picture of each student’s understanding of the central idea.

We need to start the unit by conducting a pretest on the topic of resources. Some students had trouble making the connection with a society’s beliefs and values to the resources they use.

What was the evidence that connections were made between the central idea and the transdisciplinary theme?

Projects seemed to focus more on the school community and their direct audience. In order to deepen their understanding and apply their understanding more globally, consideration can be made to expand their thinking outside of the local community.

7. To what extent did we include the elements of the PYP?

What were the learning experiences that enabled students to:

● develop an understanding of the concepts identified in “What do we want to learn?”

● demonstrate the learning and application of particular transdisciplinary skills? ● develop particular attributes of the learner profile and/or attitudes?

In each case, explain your selection.

Concepts:

● Polar bear video and see, think, wonder thinking routine ● Guest speaker on NetZero classroom ● NREL field trip ● Picture of trash using see, think, wonder thinking routine ● Dumping of trash and recycling from our classrooms to analyze our use of

resources

Transdisciplinary skills:

● Research skills- students researched how to inform their audience about renewable/nonrenewable resources and how to use resources more effectively.

● Communication skills-students shared with their audiences their findings and learnings about their taking action projects.

● Thinking skills- students developed an action plan to inform others about how to reduce waste/inform others about waste/renewable/nonrenewable resources.

Learner Profile and PYP Attitudes:

● Balanced and principled: Students demonstrated positive interactions and behaviors with guest speakers and on fieldrip. They worked to understand that resources are not distributed equally and is not balanced in our country.

● Cooperation and integrity: students worked together with teams to take action and create a plan to educate and teach others about ways to reduce/reuse/recycle as well as how the use or misuse of resources affects the environment.

8. What student-initiated inquiries arose from the learning?

Record a range of student-initiated inquiries and student questions and highlight any that were incorporated into the teaching and learning.

● How do we compost? ● Can we compost at school? ● I wonder why there is so much trash? ● I wonder why people litter? ● I wonder where all of this trash goes? ● I wonder what I can do to help?

At this point, teachers should go back to box 2 “What do we want to learn” and highlight the teacher questions/provocations that were most effective in driving the inquiries.

How are resources used and valued in other communities (countries)?

How can responsibility, or lack thereof, affect the environment?

What is the function of resources in different environments?

What student-initiated actions arose from the learning?

Record student-initiated actions taken by individuals or groups showing their ability to reflect, to choose and to act.

Flyers for recycling.

Videos and skits on how to compost.

What not to feed to animals.

Things you can/cannot recycle (lists and demos)

Why it’s important to unplug things not in use.

Survey and presentations to other classrooms

Social media group worked to create posts on energy usage and resources

Play demonstrating the importance of using our resources responsibly

Ways to save energy- games and incentives for doing so.

Wrote a book about what they learned

Experimental booth at school sock hop to educate and build awareness

9. Teacher notes

**Next year use SEMPER elementary energy usage to from Molly’s husband to see how schools use money. Then compare and contrast to the one from Meiklejohn.

Pictures don’t explain what is going on! Can’t remember what student’s presentations were about or on. Take notes!

Refer to district Bridge Doc.

© International Baccalaureate Organization 2011

Transdisciplinary Theme: Sharing the Planet Inquiry into rights and responsibilities in the struggle to share finite resources with other people and with other living things; communities and the relationship within and between them; access to equal opportunities; peace and conflict resolution.