Room 4 Inquiry - Term 4

To begin I found it challegening to think of ways the children could explore the topic so we decided to use youtube to find videos of christmas parades. From these videos questions started to flow. I quickly found that the children had no idea or concept of what a float is or might be. We found different pictures using the image selection on google of different parts of parades. Using lots of discussion we classified each picture into groups and used language to describe characteristics of each group. From here we slowly formed a clearer picture of what a float is.We chose the group of pictures that we all agreed were floats and made a list of attributes:

1)used car, truck or trailer with wheels
2)ooked like it was floating
3)advertised something

Then we talked about things like saftey and rules for entering a parade. The children helped to create a design breif to use as a guide when we designed our floats.

1)Start from a flat trailer with wheels
2)Think about safety (eg how will kids stay on the float, banners covering wheels is this safe?)
3)School and Christmas themed
4)No Father Chirstmas

From here the children knew where they wanted to go and the ideas began to flow. After brainstorming in groups, sorting ideas and voting on the most popular theme each group had a concept they could work with and use to draw their designs.

The next challenge was getting their ideas off the paper and onto a model. The children struggled with scale and ideas on what sorts of things they could use to substitute for things like christmas trees, mountains etc...

We spent a lot of time discussing equipment, and materials. This required lots of critical thinking and creative solutions.

To present I let the groups go for it and quickly discovered that they were distracted and forgot about their original design. I then had to pull them back and work with each group to regain focus.

Because we spent so much time discussing what a float actually was to apply our knowledge there will be lots of discussion on the day of the parade to see how childrens ideas have changed.

Room 5 Inquiry Term 4 - Lois Fraser

Room 5 Inquiry Term 4
This Inquiry unit was somewhat of a challenge for new entrants and year one children as they were sure that a float was a toy they played with in the bath. So we had many discussions about Christmas Parades, some children could remember seeing one but most had never. We used library books and Googled the subject and eventually got to the idea that we were to decorate a truck with a theme of Christmas and our school. Wow the ideas that came out were great but then we had to narrow discussions down to those that were practical. This exercise was successful. From here I felt I had to take the lead. Our question was how can we decorate our float? We used those ideas that we sorted and shifted to vote on the best theme which was a Christmas cake. The children had to use critical thinking to come up with substitutes for real world things to put onto our model.Presenting was the next stage so each child had the opportunity to work with each other and myself to complete aspects of the model. We are looking forward to being part of the Christmas parade. They will apply their knowledge by differentiating between float entrants and others such as bands and people observing.

Room 3 Float on By

This unit created a lot of excitement amongst the children in the class. However, being technology based, I found a few challenges initially, in that the children had great ideas but the practicality of them working on the back of of truck, with very little assembly time, was a difficult concept for some of them to grasp. We began our explore and find ideas by using google to look for christmas float ideas and then just float ideas and what was it the School wanted as its theme. There were two major trains of thought in the end, first a Christmas scene, the other School based. This generated asking questions about how we would sell our school, and what were the most dominant aspects of Christmas. As some where confused as to where they wanted to go with these ideas 4 groups emerged. 2 out of both having Poroutawhao school and Christmas combined, 1 solely Christmas and 1 solely school.
The ideas from their individual concepts where then combined to come up with one group idea for which they would use as the blue print for their construction of the float on their tissue box. The children really enjoyed the making of the float athough there was difficulty with actual overall realitivity of size according to their design and fitting it on a tissue box.
I enjoyed firstly hearing the delegation of jobs within the groups, and then the discussions, sometimes needing to be resolved by my intervention but mostly their own strategies to create something that was agreeable to all members of the group.
The children were all very pleased with their group floats and saw positive aspects in all presentations. A successful unit for us in many ways.

Our Inquiry Model

The inquiry model that we have developed in conjunction with the ICT cluster is pictured to the left. We based our model on our highway theme, being situated on State Highway 1. It is an intersection and made in a circular shape as it is a process that requires both backwards and forwards movements. Most classes also use some sort of car system to visually car where each group/student is up to on their inquiry process.

Room 2 Term 4

to

This term's inquiry "Float On By" has been technology based. Although it took me awhile to get my own head around linking the technology process of designing a float for the local Christmas parade, the children in Room 2 got the idea a lot quicker! They were able to relate each step of the design process to our inquiry process and some of the reflecting they have done throughout the unit really blew me away. The have once again worked in groups for this inquiry and I still find that this is vital for them to achieve success in this at the moment. The discussions are so valuable as they work through the process together. It has been quite a quick unit, and I think this has been because we didn't spend as much time exploring the topic as we normally would as the children all had knowledge about floats and what was required to design one. We were able to still incorporate some thinking maps into the process, mainly used as a way to organise their ideas. They enjoyed using mywebspiriation for their initial brainstorm of ideas.
http://www.mywebspiration.com/view/219344a20c61
Having to keep a design portfolio has not been a challenge for the children as they have commented that it is just like how they normally track their inquiry process anyway. The clearfiles for each group have worked really well for this again. The children now expect that as standard practice and each task/stage is documented as they go along.

Overview

Over the last three years, Poroutawhao School has developed a localised curriculum as a part of our ICT cluster. These are some of the documents that have been created to support the building of this curriculum.

Poroutawhao Learning Highway

Our school curriculum is best represented in the Poroutawhao School Learning Highway design. This design encapsulates our local geography from which our school name of Poroutawhao, (the edge of the bush), is derived. It shows our students engaging in an eight year journey to develop attitudes, knowledge and skills to be lifelong learners. This is represented in the bus journey along the highway.

At the core of our curriculum are Literacy, Numeracy and Inquiry Skills which form the centre line of our highway in the design. These are supported by the integration of our local school values and the NZ Curriculum Key Competencies that sit at the side of the highway in our design.

Staff Sharing

All staff were presented with the challenge to implement a new ICT tool to enhance learning in their programmes as a direct result of being away at ULearn 09. Following is what each staff member shared:

Amber(Year 2/3) - implemented a regular use of the digital camera into the classroom. 3 children per week have the use of the camera to take photos of the weekly blend. They then present these on comic life.
Nicky (Year 3/4) - has implemented the use of the internet as a tool for research in her class programme, linked to her inquiry units. Children have been learning to safely search for images on the net and save these into their personal folders.


Amanda (Year 7/8) - has implemented the use of the tracking tool within her writing programme. Children type draft pieces of writing onto the computers and edit from there using the tracking tool. Amanda also completes her marking of them using this tool.



Kirstin (Year 4/5) - has begun to implement podcasting as a way of sharing ideas on her class blog. She uses Audacity to record the children and then uploads to a podomatic site, which is then able to embed the audio onto the blog.

www.room7poroutawhao.blogspot.com

Fiona (Year 6/7) - implemented another new tool to use on class blogsites: glogster. This provides another way for the children to express themselves creatively and share this with a wider audience. To start with, each student made a glogster stating their goals for this term.

www.room2loves2learn.blogspot.com


Lois (Year 0/1) - has implemented the use of word and paint for the students to share their stories. These have also be posted on their class blog.
www.pororoom5.blogspot.com