Category: Unit of Inquiry

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Dramatic Play…

Restaurant

We are working at the restaurant. People come to eat. We made food for other people. Mrs. Zurfluh was one of the customers. We took orders from customers. We made our own menu so people can order food. Emerson was the cashier, Daisy and Lisa were the chefs, Michael and Max were the customers, and Kyle was the waiter…

https://animoto.com/play/aAbVXCyWLvH1NWedyx21wA

 

School
We are playing school. We took turn to be the teacher. We did some writing, drawing. We had PE lesson. We did pushups, jumping jacks, crab walks. We read some books. We learned how to draw a person. We did some counting. When Lizzy finished showing us how to draw a person on the board, we tried to draw a person by ourselves.

https://animoto.com/play/XDytkt25bnXtzckQoEiRBQ

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Unit of Inquiry – Community…

kaymbu-image-20141022-1306KZE students had a conversation about what we need when we go swimming.  This conversation led to more discussions about the concept of “Need”.  Students drew pictures of things they think they need.  Then we sorted the pictures into several categories.  We decided that some categories are important, but some we are not so sure about.  We will continue to find out…

Pokrovsky Hills Community Walk:

KZE 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?”.

 

https://animoto.com/play/W1mxUK0UdaJVVrYjCJE06Q

After our trip, we did some reflection.  We brainstormed and created this list of what we need in a community:

Places: house, doctor’s office, store, school,  office,  hospital, airport, zoo,  fitness center, aquarium, parking lot, and playground.

Jobs: security guard, plumber, cleaner, fire fighter, police,management people to help us, garbage collector, construction worker, and dentist.

Things: car, map,  tree, food, water, transportation, clothes,  sign, traffic light, road, and sidewalk.

This list will help us when we plan our model community.

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Sorting and Inquiry – How the World Works!

The KZE explorers had a busy week.

In Math, students had a chance to explore/play with many different kinds of buttons.  They needed to describe the buttons with words such as “red,” “little,” “2 holes,” “smooth,” etc.  They were asked to sort buttons into groups according to these terms. sorting This is a  foundational math skill that helps students to identify common attributes and begin to see different ways to match and sort objects.  In essence, it is a methodology for making sense of key mathematical understanding.

Similarly, during the introduction to our year long unit of  “How the World Works”, students were given a picture of people riding bicycles and another picture of a single bicycle wheel.  They used a visible thinking strategy titled “I See, I think, I wonder…” to describe what they observed.

Here are the highlight of our conversation:

  • “I see a wheel, it is a bicycle wheel”
  • “it is round, it is a circle”
  • “what did you notice about the circle?”cycle discussion
  • “it goes around and around and around”
  • “it is a cycle”
  • “what is a cycle?”
  • “a cycle can be a circle”
  • “a cycle can be a rectangle, or a triangle.  as long as it doesn’t end”
  • “it is repeating”
  • “can you think of anything that can be called a cycle?”
  • “the weather”
  • “recess”
  • “writing”
  • “the earth rotating”
  • “the class schedule”, “the day of the week”, “and the month of the year”

Through the conversation, students made a leap from our picture to a basic understanding of the concept of a cycle.  We were able to make connections to their daily experiences and, like in math, formed a core concept that will serve our ongoing theme of how things work.