Our Journey Through the Inquiry Cycle

There has been so much amazing learning going on in KG-B that I haven't had time to post in a while! Let's take a look at some of the learning happening through our unit of inquiry. This is a lengthy post, but worthwhile reading to give you a sense of how everything is connected and has unfolded:

An inquiry into Sharing the Planet: Plants are Essential to Life on Earth.

We have been journeying through the inquiry cycle in an effort to better understand the central idea above, and as we have continued gaining more knowledge and developing more inquiries we have begun learning about and finding answers to our three lines of inquiry:

• What plants need to survive
• How plants are connected to other livings things in the environment
• Actions that impact the environment

TUNING IN

We began by tuning in to see what we already knew, or in some cases what we thought we knew, and what prior experience we already had in this area. We were thinkers as we were asked to respond to a few different questions/prompts:

Tell/show me what plants have, what plants need, and what plants can (do):

 

and

Tell me about these photos:

We also watched this video of a plant growing and did a visible thinking routine called 'See, Think, Wonder'. We were given no instructions or information beyond to say/draw what we saw, what we thought, and what we wondered. This helped us identify and share things we knew about, things we thought we already knew, and things we were wondering about. 

 

FINDING OUT

From here we entered the finding out phase of the inquiry cycle. The aforementioned engagements gave an idea about what information we already knew regarding our central idea and lines of inquiry, as well as confusions we might have and information we have yet to learn. 

We began finding out more by taking a field trip to the Gulele Botanic Gardens. We had an opportunity to hear from botanists as well as examine plants at every stage of life. 

(see more pictures of our adventure on Flickr)

Upon our return from the botanical gardens, we took some time to share and record our wonderings, which we then divided into "thin" and "thick" questions. These would be important later as we transitioned to the "sorting out" and "going further" phases.

We also found out more as we went on a scavenger hunt to find various plants on our school campus. We had to look closely and make careful observations like scientists.

We also performed some experiments by using the scientific process. Through these experiments we were trying to figure out what plants need to survive.

Experiment #1

Experiment #2

SORTING OUT

We took the results of our experiments, as well as the questions we formulated earlier, and began sorting out our understanding. We began by revisiting the central idea and really taking it apart:

Once we had a clearer understanding of the word essential and what life on earth means, we zoomed in on the line of inquiry how plants are connected to other living things. To look at this we did the visible thinking routine 'Generate, Sort, Connect, Elaborate'. 

Working in pairs, we generated as many responses as we could to answer the question, "What do plants give to living things?" Some ideas we came up with were food, air, chairs and medicine.

We then sorted our ideas based on how essential those things are to life on earth:

We came back together as a whole group to share our thoughts. We began connecting these things and started realizing that plants provide so many things that are essential to all life on earth, and as we continue in the next phase of the inquiry cycle - the "going further" phase, we will elaborate on our ideas.

GOING FURTHER

We have been going further as we have challenged our thinking formed new ideas and new inquiries. One of the thinking skills we have focused on in this unit of inquiry is research. One part of our research involved taking the questions we formulated earlier in the inquiry cycle and doing research to find answers. We worked with Ms. Martha during library to find materials to help us.

We know that we don't only answer questions for ourselves, but it's important to teach others as well. We recorded our findings in our Seesaw journals and printed off the QR codes so that we could scan them and learn from each other.

We have also been going further as we have added to our interactive wall as we develop new understandings:

 

We will continue going further as we more closely examine the line of inquiry actions that impact the environment.

We also went further today when we examined our seeds and engaged in a pretty deep conversation about what was happening and why we thought the way we did. Additionally, we identified further wonderings. We recorded our thoughts - again in Seesaw - and then spent time commenting on one of our videos. You can read through the whole string of conversation here:

As you can see, we have some confusions to clear up, but our learning has certainly grown...and this conversation also led us to further inquiry!!

MAKING CONCLUSIONS

We are beginning to move into this area of our inquiry and will be sure to update. This stage of the inquiry cycle involves reflecting and synthesizing our learning.

TAKING ACTION

We continually visit the "taking action" phase of the inquiry cycle, and one way that we have already begun taking action was to take our learning from our experiment mentioned above and do something about it. Some of us decided we wanted to give our seeds soil because we learned that they need it to grow. We took action today by doing just that:

We will keep you updated as we take more action, particularly in regard to our line of inquiry about how we can help the environment. Please stay tuned, and comment to share your thoughts!!