Our focus in Grade 1 at Didyasarin International Preparatory School for the unit of inquiry is exploring how to make choices to sustain and maintain the Earth’s resources throughout the seasons.
The International Baccalaureate (IB) Profiles were chosen with thoughtfulness to bring an element of learning that incorporates different members of the
community and practicing different human skills and responsibilities.
Our students focused on the IB Profiles of thinking, knowledgeable and principled in this Unit of Inquiry.
As a class we began learning about thinking by asking questions about what the word “thinkers” means, what parts of our body we use and
students were able to share many ways we use our brain to think and be able to solve problems.
This discussion was a starting point to how our class can use the recycled materials collected and to share these resources to be reused in the school.
The students decided to share their materials with Nursery classes to build toys, share scrap paper with Grades 3 and 4 and give recycled materials to the Art and Maker Space room.
How can communities share items, food, clothing or toys?
“I think it’s important to share materials because it’s cool so we can make stuff with it.” – Tiger Grade 1, Unit of Inquiry Journal
Students created sensory bottles with the Nursery class using the water bottles we collected over the last couple of weeks. The grade 1 students decided what should be in the water bottles based on what students learn such as letters, colours, and shapes.
This unit of inquiry began with the students using their imagination to solve problems by creating recycling boxes.
The students are demonstrating being principled as they have taken responsibility for maintaining these recycling boxes by collecting materials, sorting, and counting from the primary classes.
Otherwise, these objects would be placed right into the garbage, which may result in creating unhealthy habitats.
They are learning how their actions have consequences that affect other living things and how to keep the habitats that we share healthy for our planet.
What choices can we make to be principled to help the environment?
In the Light Studio, we learned new vocabulary words based on unhealthy environments like pollution, deforestation, and overpopulation. Students spoke about what they thought the words meant based on the pictures.
Chanchao Grade 1,
Unit of Inquiry Journal
“Gross, garbage.” -Justin “Why do people cut the tree?” –Grace
“There are people not in the rainforest.” –Win-Win
“When animals eat it they die. Because when it is dirty.” –Program
Lastly, the knowledge that we learn in life can be from many different resources such as reading, writing, watching, speaking, exploring, asking and researching.
We are teaching the students that they can learn through various ways by providing them opportunities to practice and giving them choices.
The students wanted different resources to use in order to create these posters.
We discussed photos and videos, then they split into groups and used computers to look up books and other photos for colours and words.
They also were able to share their ideas and thoughts.
Our class is currently researching how different organizations in their community share resources through different seasons.
