The focus of our Inquiry at the moment is deepening our wonderings, formulating research questions and exploring the many forms of research. From our initial wonderings the children categorised them into three main categories which have become our three research groups: Nature, Body/Sport/Health, and Space/Technology.
The children put in their first and second preferences for the research group they would like to join based on their wonderings and interests. While it was impossible to give all children their first preference due to group sizes, the children all seem very happy with their project group.
Our research group workshops are currently focused around classifying the children's wonderings into:
- Research questions that are closed answer questions, there is a simple answer that can be found through research i.e. How many species of spider are there? Which planet in our solar system is the hottest?)
- Research questions that require us to read and learn new information, it is not just a simple answer but rather we may need to learn about systems, processes i.e. How does carbon dioxide hurt the earth? Why are some animals cannibals? How do glow worms glow?
- Research questions that are open, don't have a defined answer and you may need to develop your own opinion and justify it yourself. i.e. What will nature's future be like? Do animals understand people? Do animals have feelings?
After working through what we already know about our wonderings as a collective group, we plan on engaging in many experiences to develop our content knowledge based on our research questions, as well as be inspired to think broadly and deepen our wonderings to those questions that are open and that we can have our own opinions about. We hope to develop research techniques beyond the GOOGLE search. How can we use experiments, observations, surveys, interviews, etc. to develop our opinions and justify them? We will present our learning in creative ways depending on the direction that our Inquiry takes.
THE BIG IDEAS:
Big Understandings for the children:
“Some wonderings don’t need an answer, some wonderings are easy to find the answer to, some wonderings require us to think for ourselves and justify our own opinion”
“I can have my own opinion and give reasons why with some evidence”
“People can have different opinions to me”
TEACHER RESEARCH QUESTIONS
How do 7- 8
year olds learn about the world?
WHY do children of this age wonder about certain things?
How do we want them to learn about the world? (Thinking
processes)
- Research techniques
(bias, multiple sources of information, validating information)
- Questioning
strategies (interviews, debates)
- Justifying their own
opinions
- Critical thinking – thinking routines (Harvard)
- Differences in Opinion are not personal – it is ok to have a different opinion to those around you.
Our Writing Focus:
· Writing good research questions: open/closed
· Summarising key ideas from research
· Writing notes from text during research
Our Reading Focus:
· Identifying
sources of information to help us answer research questions
· Reading
a text and identifying key words
· Identifying
key information in a text to answer parts of a research question
· Using contents page, index, glossary to find information efficiently
Our Maths Focus:
· Part-Part-Whole model: which part of a problem is missing and what operation do we need to do to solve it?
· Writing number sentences to match worded stories (for equal groups, addition and subtraction and money)
· Place Value (renaming 10 ones for 1 ten, 10 tens for 1 hundred, 10 hundreds for 1 thousand)
Word Study/Spelling Focus:
Suffix: 'tion' and recapping suffixes 'ed' and 'er'
Onset and Rime
Practising our spelling words using different strategies (see spelling blog post).
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