Month: October 2015

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Community

Pokrovsky Hills Community Walk:

In support our “How We Organize Ourselves” unit of inquiry, KZE students went on exploring the Pokrovsky Hills community next to our school with the questions of “What jobs do you see people do in a community?” and “What do we need in a community?”

After our trip, we did some reflection and shared what we had noticed. Then we sorted all the things we saw into different categories.   

Things:
Houses, mailboxes, garbage cans, decorations, cars, playground, trees, maps, leaves, gate, camera, and delivery truck.

Places:
Maintenance place, doctor’s office, daycare center, store, security guard office, and community center.

Jobs/services:
Delivery man, cleaners,teacher, and security guards.

We brainstormed and created a list of what is missing at the Pokrovsky Hills community and what we need in a community:
Mail man, mail truck, garbage truck, water truck, flower shop, pickup truck, bus station, hospital, zoo, taxi station, shoes store, clothes store, fish market, airport, helicopter station, decoration store, pet store, pond, university, Café, library, candy store, bakery, book store, toy store, fire station, and office building.

This list will help us when we plan our model community. Students are very excited about designing and creating our own model community.

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Who We Are

As we wrapped up our “Who We Are” unit of inquiry, students reflected on what they have learned these past several weeks.

Altai – ‘Even if we are different we can be friends. Alex is smaller than me but we are still friends.’
Alex – ‘There are always new children in the school – some are boys and some are girls.’
Tomasz – ‘People are all different.’
Amie – ‘People can live in different countries and different houses. We can be different.’
Ada – ‘I can be different and it’s ok.’
Safir – ‘Everyone is different – some people have long hair and some people have short hair.’
Julia – ‘It’s alright if we are different.’
Tim – ‘Not everyone is the same.’
Soeun – ‘I am different to Julia but I like her a lot.’
Alexandra – ‘Amie has black hair and I have blonde hair.’
Seok – ‘People are the same sometimes. We don’t like the same things sometimes.’
Veronika – ‘People are different because they have different moms and dads.’
Nick – ‘We all like to do different things.’
Gabi – ‘We can try new things.’

After reading the book “It Is OK to be Different” by Todd Parr, KZE students decided to make our own “It Is OK” book. They continued to demonstrate their deeper understanding of “similarities, differences, and acceptance.”

 

https://youtu.be/mor6UiZPayc?rel=0&showinfo=0

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Sink or Float???

Our experiment starts with Nick.

Nick had a Lego boat and a leaf in his “About Me Box.” When he shared with the class, he said: “I like this leaf because it is red and it can swim in the water. My Lego boat can swim too. They will move along and not break in the water.” This made us wondered: would they both swim if we put them into water? What about other stuff? Will they sink or float? Alex made a connection that he had done a similar experiment at home with his Lego boat that ‘both would float. Today we decided to see for ourselves what would happen.

Each student chose one item from the classroom to see if it would sink or float and we went outside with a big tub of water to do our experiment.

https://animoto.com/play/dx1wbqAeL4cSETHL00pM2Q

Mrs. Zurfluh: “What did you noticed?”

KZE noticed that “Some things float and some things sink.”
Mrs. Zurfluh: “Why do you think that happen?”

Altai: “Big things sink and small things float.”
Alex: “If that is true then why do boats float? They are very big.”
Nick: “Rocks will sink because they are small.”
Alex: “If things are big they have more weight and can stay up. When they are small they don’t have weight so sink.’
Altai, Safir and Alexandra agreed with this.
Gabi did not agree: “Some small things can float and some big things can sink. Heavy things sink.”
Alex does not agree: “Then why do boats not sink? They are very heavy!”
Tim: “Some big things have things inside that stop them sinking.”
Ada: “Things that float are made of special materials.”
Veronika: “Some are heavy and sink. Some are not heavy and float.
Julia: “Big things can float. Small things can sink.”
Amie: “Things that sink don’t have feet.”

Mrs. Zurfluh: “How can we find out?”

Alexandra: “We measure things to see if they will float or sink.”
Amie: “We can do more experiments.”
Alex: “I looked for information on why things float on my dad’s phone.”
Safir: “We can look on the computer.”
Altai: “We can watch TV.”
Tim: “Books. Sometimes people look at boats and then write what they find out.”

We posted our question “Why some things sink and some things float?” on our wonder wall. We are waiting to see if it will spark more inquiry in KZE.