Friday, November 21, 2014

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:



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.

jies.jp




Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)