This week in 4L, we began with our weekly class meeting focused on what it means to have grit and resilience. As we head into the last weeks of school, we talked about how to remain motivated to finish strong. We watched this video:
...and then this one:
Finally, we reflected on what we thought the main messages of these two videos were, and talked about what we could learn from them. Our thoughts were:
We agreed to keep these inspirational messages up to remind ourselves of what we can do when we feel overwhelmed or tired.
In unit, we looked back at our economic activities from last week. When the students left on Friday, they left behind many little objects they had purchased from the auction-some of them already broken. This encouraged us to look at Line of Inquiry 3: Our responsibility as consumers and producers. We began with a conversation about what happens to all that 'stuff' we buy and discard - especially the little plastic 'stuff' some of us are so easily persuaded to buy because it's cheap and appealing. We watched a video to begin our investigation:
From what we heard in the first video, we decided we wanted to know more about the gyres, particularly the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, so we found this video:
Here was our thinking:
Next, we got into pairs or small groups and decided to dig a bit deeper into the issue in order to help us understand what we could do to make a change.
Sofija and Eva began to seek facts on how marine life is affected by our pollution
Benas began to investigate ways to reuse or recycle waste, while Yigit and Basel became curious about how plastic is even made
Krista and Sofia sought out answers to our questions about HOW we can properly sort and recycle waste in Lithuania
Steven finds an organisation that attends to the pollution in the Baltic Sea
Rojus and Nora discuss what they have found regarding what actually happens to human garbage
We shared some of the information and sites we found. We watched this video:
After the video, some big questions we had were:
What can we, as 10 year old kids, do now?
What can be done with the plastic that's already there?
What is the proper way to take care of electronic garbage?
We also noted the extra R in the slogan 'Reduce, Reuse, Recycle' which was 'REFUSE' plastic to begin with. This thought prompted us to think about what types of plastic we use the most. We investigated alternatives for water bottles, shopping bags and had many conversations about how we could take action.
Eva, Benas, Shourya and Migle discuss their thoughts on what we might need to find out
These small groups naturally migrated into one larger group with a larger goal
Veronika shares her ideas as Liza, Krista and Sofija listen
Basel and Yigit discuss their plans for action against plastic pollution
We broke off into discussion groups and we came up with some ideas (in blue).
Some of us quickly realised that to make any of this action come to fruition, we would need to be organised in our efforts. The orange part was our thinking about where we might begin:
Since our passion was growing away from our initial unit specifications, we agreed that those who have wrapped up Passion Projects could be the foundation of this group effort and would spend their Genius Hour time getting started. The rest of us would join as we finished current projects.
Sofia shares her shopping bag made from a recycled T-shirt
Sofia helps Aleksandras create his shopping bag
Benas and Migle research facts about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch that they think will persuade others to change their plastic habits
Basel and Yigit follow a DIY video to repurpose plastic by creating something new with it
Krista and Sofija explore how they could recycle some of the plastic they've collected into crafts to sell
Rojus and Antanas discuss a possible t-shirt drive so 4L could make reusable shopping bags to hand out in the community
We pursued these questions in our beginning research and activities. The students have begun to respond to these inquiries and have hung their findings for us all to use to move us forward in our effort to help minimise plastic pollution.
In language arts, we celebrated World Book Day all week! Some of us enjoyed dressing as our favourite book characters.
Krista, Shourya, Nora, Sofia and Basel show off their character day costumes
We also had the great privilege of hearing stories from around the world from various guest readers.
Yigit and Ms.Yasemin shared Turkish tales with us about a Singing Frog and a Boy Who Could Fly
Nora and Ms.Jelena shared the Frog Princess with us in Russian
Shourya and Ms.Pooja shared oral stories with us in Hindi about a Clever Monkey tricking a Crocodile and Two Geese and a very talkative Turtle!
We also took photos with our favourite books of the year. Can you guess who's who?
In writing, we began to publish our poetry. We discussed and decided that we'd create a class poetry anthology into which each of us would submit at least one poem. We also decided that we'd each make our own small poetry book with all of our own favourite poems.
In math this week, we prepared for our Unit 6 Assessment. We completed a rubric self-assessment and spent time practicing skills that we thought needed improvement. We took the assessment and demonstrated great grit and resilience as we tackled the Open Response! Finally, we took the opportunity to learn from our mistakes, as always, by inspecting and correcting our mistakes.
Grade 4L shares their background knowledge on fractions
We then worked on a bit of review breaking different pattern blocks into equal shares and putting fractions on number lines.
Rojus and Antanas think about how to divide a hexagon into 3 equal pieces
We had the opportunity to attend two different exhibitions this week at VIS. The first was a preview of the PYP Exhibition. Knowing that this will be what's in store for us next year, we were delighted to visit the exhibition to observe, learn and offer feedback to the grade 5 students.
We also got the chance to visit the MYP Personal Project Exhibition. We were surprised how much like our Passion Projects these were!
After visiting this exhibition, we took time to reflect by comparing/contrasting it to the PYP Exhibition and to share our thoughts on what we saw.
Both of these exhibitions offered us a lot of big learning that we could apply to our own Genius Hour Passion Projects. This led us into Friday inspired to work with passion!
Sofia shares her book "The Cats I Know (Some Are Quite Mysterious...)" she created on Zoombooks
Krista shares an interactive mat she made for her dog to search for her food so she wouldn't eat too quickly
Steven continues to explore domino towers and invites someone to come knock down his creation so he can video it
Eva sought advice and assistance from Sofia to create a book about the best places she's traveled on Zoombooks
Yelyzaveta draws fashion creations to add to her fashion website
Nora works with her photos to create a video of her "Help Homeless Cats" project process
Finally, we enjoyed a sunny day at the park with 4A. This week was all about catching up with friends who've been away on holiday, letting out our spring energy with plenty of running, discovering and caring for little creatures coming back to life as the weather warms, and climbing trees.
We look forward to another fabulous week together!
Hello, class 4L:). I've enjoyed reading this blog so very much:). The two first videos are just wonderful:).
ReplyDeleteBest regards, Rasa