Blog Archives

The Inquiry Cycle

10/29/2016

This week, we had fun inquiring about many things in our unit, How We Express Ourselves.

Applying the Inquiry Cycle to something fun and relevant...Our WINDIANS!!! We had fun learning about the history of baseball and celebrating our Cleveland Indians....and the CAVS home opener! What a fun day of investigating!

Ivy's on first!!!

This looks like a good team! Go CAVS!!! Go Indians!!!

Finding out about our second line of inquiry;
Causation; How do ideas and knowledge impact our creativity and our actions?

What are finite resources and how does sharing them help?

How do children in other parts of the world overcome the odds with limited resources? Taking a look at life in Uganda (Katwe).

“How can I use what I have to get what I don’t have?” Robert Kantende to his chess students

What limited resources are people dealing with around the world? How are others helping? (This knowledge is inspiring action from others)

What limited resources do we have in our class, school or community?
In our class, we used our creativity to come up with more seating, tables, and shelves for our books.

What can we do about it? (Knowledge of this impacts our creativity and our actions)

When you want to give a gift without spending any money, you can upcycle.

Being creative with game pieces for math games we made.

Inquiring about local leaders and systems around our city

Meeting Mayor Frank Jackson, City Council President, Kevin Kelley, and Global Cleveland President, Joe Cimperman

Touring City Hall

Touring Public Square
Finding out how LAND Studio used their knowledge and creativity to help make
Public Square a beautiful green space.

While Eloise's Grandma, Mrs. Kung was in town visiting from Philadelphia, she stopped by to give us a lesson on the voting process. Mrs. Kung is a poll worker and was able to help us understand all that goes into Election Day. We learned so much and walked away with a lot of appreciation for the Political Responsibility that people demonstrate when volunteering their time for Election Day. November 8th will be a long day for poll workers.

Did you know that in Philadelphia, they do not have early voting?

Reflecting on our week and completing homework from our new learning menu. We enjoyed all of the lessons that were taught by classmates this week.

Fall fun while going to see Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters at Playhouse Square!!

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What is the Action Cycle?

10/22/2016

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What is Action and how does it help our community?

I love her little note on the bottom left corner....We all have an Action Fairy inside of us. Let her out!!

The KNOW-CARE-DO MODEL
When you KNOW about something, and you CARE....you want to Do something about it

Student's shared what they felt the most important issue in the world was...

What are some ideas you have for solving a problem in the world?
What do you do with an idea?

Finding out about strikes and protests. Why do people take this action? What are the causes of strikes/protests?

Letters/cards for our custodian and cleaner, to celebrate National Custodian's Month

Word-Phrase-Sentence
Visible Thinking Strategy

Expressing ourselves with a little Square Dancing!

This is how Mariah expresses herself.
She's taking action and using her form of expression to cheer people up during a funeral.

Informational Writing....writing to teach

We thought about topics we know a lot about. We discussed with a friend what our book would be about.

We used our fingers to tell the subtopics of our book and then tried to say a little about each subtopic.

Next week, we will begin planning our book in our writing journal.

Sharing our ideas and knowledge during Student-Led Conferences

After weeks and weeks of not seeing any of our destination tickets being pulled...class council decided to do something about it. We know who has been living the Learner Profile and demonstrating the IB attitudes.
Once a week, they will choose a bucketfiller and award them one of their very creative certificates.

Ila Pohl is their first bucketfiller of the week!!

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How We Express Ourselves

10/13/2016

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Central Idea: Ideas and knowledge inspire creativity and action.

Lines of Inquiry:
(Function); The ways we share information
(Causation): How ideas and knowledge impact our creativity and our actions
(Perspective); The ways expression is influenced by culture and beliefs

Learning about cycles...beginning with the Inquiry Cycle

Provocation using a strategy from Making Thinking Visible with Art Routines

After a quick write to see what we already knew about the ways people share ideas and the different forms of expression...we wanted to know, Why should we share ideas?

So we self-organized into research teams and investigated this question.

While researching, one team created this visual of a cycle using the information they found on, Why we should share ideas. They called it. "The Idea Cycle." Nice to see students apply things they learned from other units to new unit...Transfer of Knowledge.

Sharing ideas with Tristan's Aunt...State Senator Sandra Williams. She shared some important information with us...straight from our Statehouse in Columbus. You learn a lot when you share ideas and knowledge.

Using our systems created in our last unit, Who We Are, to help us share ideas and knowledge with our classmates and school community.

Working on our classroom newspaper

Working with Class Council to organize our Service Project for October...Socktober!

Sharing our special talents on Ambassador Day! This is how Eloise likes to express herself.

Using our new plan and reflection sheet to help us Self-Manage and communicate our goals. Our reflection is a form of expression and let others know how we feel about our work and our choices.

Don't count the days, make the days count!!

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Finishing up our unit, Who We Are

10/2/2016

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Central Idea:

People use systems to promote expectations.

Applying some systems of our own to classroom. Jaelin and Miss Reece have a new system that is working well with staying focused and problem solving.

We are using a new planning and reflection sheet to help us with self managing and communicating.

We have leadership systems that will now help Mrs. Bechtel with not having to do so much on her own.

Class Council will meet once a week to plan events, discuss class action, and problem solve issues reported by their classmates.
Pet Vets will take care of Coco, our guinea pig and the maintenance of our plants.
Newspaper Club will take over writing the monthly class newspaper.

Writing narratives that make you feel...
Using the Writer's Workshop system

Finding inspiration with pictures

Editing our "sloppy copy" using our portable word walls, sticky notes, and iPads.

On to our 2nd and 3rd drafts...

Letting our friends check and offering feedback

6 weeks later....We have final copies!!

7 weeks later...we have published narratives on Kidblog! Check them out!

Multiplication Systems

More math games created by students. It was fun testing them out to see if their directions and rules made sense. Some had to rewrite or add more directions. But through it all we learned a lot of new multiplication "systems."

Ending our week with fun at the zoo!!

I LOVE this picture!!!!

Ila was a little nervous about this one! Meanwhile, Mariah was busy telling everyone she met, that Giraffes have the biggest hearts and to speak kindly:)
Gotta love CIS students.

Our zoo is awesome! We love the new tiger exhibit!!

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Meeting an Olympic Athlete and Investigating Leadership

10/2/2016

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Thinking about leadership...what character traits should leaders have? Which Learner Profile Attributes and Attitudes do we believe are the most important in leadership? We read many books to find similarities and differences. We also noticed that some leaders have had to overcome many obstacles in order to make a difference. They were committed, risk-takers because it meant that much to them.

Our class voted and Integrity/Respect were the attitudes we felt are the most important to show in leadership. We are going to have our school vote this week.

Women who had to overcome obstacles in order to make a difference. They were risk-takers.

Understanding our past helps us appreciate our lives today. It also shows us how being committed, risk-takers who stand for what is right can lead to positive changes in our community.