Our Current Inquiry: The Human Body!

Inquiry-based learning is a type of learning that takes place around a specific topic that is often student-generated. Within this type of learning, students ask questions, pose problems, and do research. As educators, we watch students during play to see what their interests are. If we notice an interest that multiple students have, we decide to learn more about that topic. From here, we plan centres, lessons, and activities around this topic.

Last year, we had two inquiry topics: volcanoes and the world. You can see all of the learning we did around those two topics under the tab "Our Current Inquiry" :)

It sometimes takes awhile to see what students are interested in, especially multiple students! However, we witnessed some of our friends taking an interest in something, and this is our story so far!

We decided to use this idea to investigate broken bones, and the human body in general. We wanted to know what the students knew already and what they wanted to learn. Here are some examples of what students knew:

"Our legs can move" - Maxwell

"Our arms can move" - Olivia

"We know that there's blood in everyone's body" - Vienna

"Skeletons will get up with muscles" - Stefan

"You have blood pipes in your body" - Grayson

"Everyone has a heart" - Alyssa

"Our heads can move" - Tania

"Our fingers can move" - Milorad

"Our hands can move" - Yousef

"Our toes can move" - Adem

"Everyone can move" - Janiyah

"Our eyes can move" - Ryder

"Some parts of our body can't move. Some parts don't have bones" - Lily

"Our bodies can stretch" - Marko

"Our hair can move" - Alessandra

"Our white blood cells help us move" - Anwen

This is what students had to say when we asked them what they wanted to learn more about:

"How many bones do we have in our body?" - Miss Pliura

"What does our skull do?" - Miss McKinlay

"How do I grow? "- Mrs. Rossi

"Why do we have bones?" - Vienna

"How do our knees and bones bend?" - Alyssa

"Why can our bones hit the floor?" - Yousef

"Why are our bones there?" - Ryder

"How do our eyes blink?" - Marko

"How come our legs move?" - Maxwell

"How do our bones break?" - Lily

"How does our head move?" - Janiyah

"Why are our bones inside our bodies?" - Stefan

"How can our fingers move?" - Milorad and Mohit

This gave us an idea of what students already know and where we can take our learning :)

Over the PA day, Miss McKinlay and I did some rearranging of our classroom to create our very own doctor's office to help foster this learning :) Here are some pictures!

We are so excited to do some more learning about this topic. Stay tuned! :)

Special Events: Monthly Tribes

Today we had our Tribes assembly! We are so proud of Ryder, Stefan, and Anwen for winning this month's responsibility awards! These friends always remember to bring their important bags and complete their 5 daily jobs. Way to go friends! Woohoo!

Special Events: Moustache Day!

Happy Moustache Day from Room 110!

                                   

 

General Happenings: Zoe's Birthday!

Friday was Zoe's birthday! We hope you had a great day, Zoe :)

Character Education: A Lesson on Kindness

Today we did a lesson on kindness, a very visual lesson! We did this lesson last year and it worked so well, we wanted to do it again. It seemed to really help the students understand what happens to others when we use hurtful words.

I had 2 apples in front of me: Apple #1 and Apple #2. I told students that we were going to use nice words to the first apple. We took turns passing the apple around in a circle, saying nice things to it like, "I love your color!", "I like you", and "You're a nice apple". We handled that apple very carefully. For the second apple, we took turns being mean to it, saying mean things like "I don't like you", and "You're ugly!".

Once we were done passing around both apples, we talked about what the apples looked like. They both looked the same on the outside- no noticeable changes yet (I may or may not have pre-bruised it;)). Then I took a knife and cut the apples in half. Apple #1, the one we were nice to, looked perfectly normal on the inside. When we cut Apple #2 in half, it was all brown, bruised, and squishy. This lead us to discuss that using mean words can make someone feel really bad on the inside, even if they don't show it on the outside. The idea behind this lesson is a bit abstract, in terms of relating it to how we feel, but I think students really understood what using mean words can do someone... or, some apple ;) We always have to think about what we're going to say before we say it, or we can make our friends really sad.

Special Events: Buster the Bus

Today, Buster the Bus came to visit us to teach us all about bus safety :) We love Buster!

Special Events! Guest Speaker!

A big thanks to Anwen and Grayson's grandma for coming in to read us a story :)

General Happenings: Stuart's Birthday!

We hope you had a great day, Stuart!!

Special Events: Popcorn Day!

On Friday we had popcorn day! We learned our very important popcorn words and the song that goes along with it! We made popcorn together and then sprinkled different seasoning on it. Then we each got to choose which kind we liked the best- we even graphed our results! We had lots of different popcorn word games set up throughout the classroom :) Here are some pictures from our celebration!

General Happenings: Mathematicians at Work!

I was able to capture some learning happening at the math table yesterday. Marko and Adem were working on the math challenge for this week which was "How many ways can you make 10?'. I was excited to see their thinking behind it as this is something we haven't taught yet. Watch to see how they bring their previous knowledge of numbers and composing numbers to this week's challenge using our ten frame (not five frame- whoops!) and our rekenrek (abacus).

Using a five frame is incredibly helpful for students. When either the top or bottom row is full, we know that there are automatically 5, which means we can start counting on from 6 (just like we know we will always have 5 fingers, so we don't need to count them!). When there are only 1 or 2 spaces empty, we can count backwards from 10. This activity brings so much learning to life, including ordinal counting (counting correctly from 1 to 10), subitizing (recognizing small quantities instantly), addition, subtraction... the list goes on!

Can your child make 10 in different ways? Does it always have to be with two groups of numbers?

General Happenings: Weekly Challenges!

This year we've done a bit of rearranging in our classroom. We've turned our Tinker Table into a "Finger Gym" and transformed our science table into a math table. Each table will have weekly challenges that students are encouraged to complete throughout the week.

The Finger Gym is where students will work on fine-motor skills (small muscle movements in hands/dexterity). Here is our challenge this week!

Students have different coloured straw-pieces that they can weave onto string along with some leaves and hole punchers :) 

Here are our previous Finger Gym challenges!

I'm especially excited to introduce our new math table! I felt as though our science table wasn't getting as much use as I had hoped, so I transformed it into a math table! Every Monday we will introduce a new challenge. This is a great way for me to see what students know and where we need to take our learning.

This week's challenge is pretty difficult. I'm excited to see where students take it.

There are 6 ways to compose the number 10 using 2 digits, but more if we use multiple digits!

Here are our previous challenges!

Special Events: Guest Speaker!

Today Anwen and Grayson's mom came in to read us all a story! We listened to "The Pigeon Needs a Bath". Thanks for joining us!

General Happenings: Picture Post!

Hello everyone!

I'm so glad to be able to post on the blog again :) Here are some pictures we've taken lately!