Whenever we are researching a theme or topic, a good way of doing this is to follow an inquiry process model to help us to cover all areas of our investigation. This term we will be using the five stages of our school inquiry model to complete our inquiry around The Brain.
Stage 1: Exploring/ Defining/ Planning
Brainstorm what they know about the topic. Creating questions they would like to investigate.
Stage 2: Locating/ Selecting and Organising
Brainstorming different ways they can find the information to answer their questions. Which information will they select and use?
How will I record this information?
Stage 3: Processing/ Deciding and Judging
Researching and decide what information to use, key words.
How does this information support the inquiry?
Is my information easy to understand and suitable to the target audience?
Stage 4: Communicating/Presenting.
Students to plan and choose an effective way to present their inquiry learning.
Stage 5: Evaluation/Reflection
Reflective questioning- What went well? What could we do better? Where to next?
This week we have been working on developing the questions we want to investigate as part of our inquiry study on The Brain. We have learnt the difference between close ended questions which encourage a short sentence or single word answer compared to the type of questions we want to create which are open-ended questions which require a more in depth answer, more suitable for our inquiry.
Once students had practice with forming some questions on their own, it was now time for them to work collaboratively in their inquiry groups. The students were placed in mixed ability groups as they know that it's important that every student in our class is supported in their learning. We are also building upon our ability to be able to work well with everyone and anyone in our class and school.
Before they moved off we had a discussion on what they needed to do to make sure they worked well in their groups. Here are some of their ideas:
How can we work well in our groups?
-encourage everyone to participate
-take turns and listen carefully
-share ideas and add onto the ideas of others
-help each other to understand
-make sure everyone has a part to do
-speak politely
-take risks
Scribble Art
In the Visual Arts we worked with pastels and markers and created a piece of scribble art. We looked at the primary, secondary and complimentary colours inside the colour wheel and then we created different types of lines, went over them with a black marker and then coloured inside the lines with pastel. We focussed on looking at effective colour combinations and also art appreciation, in the fact that from our squiggly scribble lines we could actually create something that is quite beautiful.
