Growing independence

Independent Inquiry is an activity we do in the 'Uniters' class every Thursday. During this time, students are free to manage their own time and direct their own inquiries. Of course, they still have responsibilities to complete ongoing assignments and inquiry tasks, so it's an excellent opportunity to practice time management and reflecting on priorities.

Sule drew a meaningful graphic to remind herself to be balanced.

During the Peace Crane Project, one of our partner schools in South Africa was under a postal strike. They couldn't mail their peace cranes to us! Finally, the strike was resolved and the cranes arrived this week.

Seeing the students lackluster efforts during marathon a few weeks ago, I decided to set a goal that each one of us would run or 'fast walk' twenty five laps around the track every week. We have a goal sheet in the classroom. Thus far, we've run 384, but we're behind schedule!

Today, since we didn't have marathon due to Pika Pika Keyakki, all of the grade 5/6 students were completing their laps during recess. Miray's extra challenge was to bring a little friend along with her!

The class is digging deeper and deeper into 'points of view and how they change'. Suheda started a brilliant project of building a periscope to explore the scientific aspects of changing perspective.

Next week will be devoted almost entirely to inquiry as we begin exploring 'the links between world events' and 'how we record history'.

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Going divergent

As our new unit of inquiry heats up, we begin new lines of inquiry. This week, on Wednesday, we starting inquiring into 'Points of view and how they change'. One fun and engaging way to explore this idea is by practicing divergent thinking through a series of challenges. My favorite is the candle problem.

Students were presented with a cardboard box containing a candle and several thumbtacks. Their instructions are to 'attach the candle to a corkboard so that it won't drip wax on the floor when lit'. To deduce the solution, one must think divergently, or see the problem in a different way.

How would you solve it?

Next, we played with circles. We all tested our imaginations by thinking of many different illustrations that could be made with a page full of circles.

I'm curious to see how each student applies their understanding of these exercises in metacognition, or thinking about how they think.

On Friday, we enjoyed modelling factorization of numbers.

Many mathematics curricula teach tricks for solving problems, but the PYP emphasizes conceptual understanding through modeling, making, testing, and other hands-on inquiry approaches.

We also finished reading The Fault in Our Stars and wrote our final reflections on the class blog. You can read all of our reflections for the Global Read Aloud by clicking this link: kidblog.org/JIESGrade562014-15/tag/gra14.

We have also been more active on our class Twitter account. Here are some recent tweets:

Please help Bushra with her #inquiry into 'blue #food'! http://t.co/q55Bb2oGIC
— 'Uniters' JIES Gr5/6 (@JIESgrade6) November 21, 2014

'How do you make yogurt?' pic.twitter.com/77oadpOEHi
— 'Uniters' JIES Gr5/6 (@JIESgrade6) November 20, 2014

Harajuku style! pic.twitter.com/FgaPTsap2s
— 'Uniters' JIES Gr5/6 (@JIESgrade6) November 20, 2014

If you use Twitter, please follow us at twitter.com/jiesgrade6. We would love to interact with you!

I look forward to the remainder of the term as we continue pursuing our inquiries more deeply and prepare for the second Celebration of Learning, the Winter Performance.

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Finishing the project

Grade 5 and 6 students have been making the pamphlet of the city/country they want to introduce.

They enjoyed getting more and more information about the city and made a nice pamphlet.

Some of them are still on the way, so I hope they can complete them soon!

We also read "Hyakunen go no furusato o mamoru" and "I-ha to-bu  no yume" during the class.

These are about personal histories.

I will introduce them more biography next week!

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Stories connect us to the past

This week, the Uniters Grade 5/6 class began to focus on stories, specifically, personal histories. During our weekly trip to the Harajuku public library, I introduced them to the English language biography and reference section. Of course, there are many ways in which people share their stories, and our inquiries in the next several weeks will explore many of them.

The students were particularly interested in Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes as a unique perspective on the history of the world in the last two hundred years.

On Parent's Day, we were excited to reunite with Julia, who took a spelling pretest with us. This week was the start of a period of serious academic practice. Each class has a separate mathematics plan to focus on basic skills that will develop their numeracy and help them toward their best achievement on the International Schools Assessment in February.

I have also been impressed by general improvement in writing. All of the students are including more specific details and organizing their ideas in more fluent and understandable ways.

On Friday, the sixth grade class from Jinsho invited us to help them to interview foreign visitors in Japan. They are inquiring into attitudes and ideas about Japan around the world and our multilingual students were happy to help them.

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Feeling connected and building independence

While it was a fun and important learning experience to create and send peace cranes, it is somehow more fun to receive them! Recently, large packages arrived from Arizona and Hawaii packed with origami cranes.

The students are busy creating beautiful posters to remember this inspiring project.

We also connected with other sixth graders by using Skype. Several weeks ago, Japanese language students at the Mid Pacific Institute asked us our complaints about living in Tokyo. This week, they presented their design ideas to try to solve our problems.

Their ideas included litter cleaning robot dogs and indoor aquaponic gardens!

This week, the Uniters have also been reflecting on their previous inquiry. Each student has an Inquiry Task Organizer which they use to document their learning. This is an important tool to learn data and self management skills that will be critical for their Exhibition.

I look forward to sharing and discussing them with parents on Monday! Below are my slides for the Coffee Time presentation. I look forward to seeing you there!

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