Knowledge is boundless, and the world is a classroom. IB PYP is committed to creating real situations to support children's learning and stimulate their enthusiasm for self-inquiry in order to achieve the best learning results.
In this unit, with a strong enthusiasm for inquiry, the children launched a six-week exploration journey around the trans-disciplinary theme of "How the world works".G1-G6 students respectively explored the laws of nature, light and sound, the cycle of life, matter, force and space.In March, students ushered in the first inquiry unit of this semester's exhibition. Through the exhibition, they demonstrated their understanding of the central idea of the unit, the knowledge they gained, the skills they improved, and the learner profiles they achieved through unit inquiry learning.
Now let's witness the wonderful learning display of the children!
In Grade 1, the focus of this unit is " Natural Laws ", and the children have a series of learning and inquiry around the basic premise of the unit, "People discover dynamic natural rules via comprehending nature".
Beginning with the first line of inquiry, "Common Natural Phenomena," children investigate a variety of common natural phenomena that surround us, such as seasons, natural sounds, thunderstorms, lightning, rainbows, and individual gravity phenomena. In the second inquiry line, "The Laws of Nature," the children described the related natural laws by investigating the reasons behind numerous natural phenomena, such as rainbow formation conditions, sound transmission components, seasonal change characteristics and causes, and so on. It is also recognized that volcanoes require specific conditions to erupt, and the number of active volcanoes in the planet is significantly fewer than the number of extinct volcanoes. In the final line of inquiry, "people's use of natural laws," children learn that great scientists, such as Edison and other scientists who finally transformed our world's first light bulb after countless failures, will create inventions that are beneficial to mankind through the study and use of various natural laws.
At this online final display, the children also transformed into little scientists, doing experiments on natural phenomena ranging from non-Newtonian fluids to milk rainbows, elastic eggs, and so on.
The topic of Light and Sound falls under the theme of “How the World Works”. The ubiquitous light and sound in life provide the most intuitive and authentic materials for children's inquiry activities. Through getting exposed to light and sound in life, the children were inspired to ask many questions about light and sound.
Based on a series of questions raised by themselves, the children explored a lot about the nature of light and sound, as well as the principles of people using the nature of light and sound to create inventions. For example, they learned that light travels in straight lines through experiments on light. They understood the working principle of the camera through experiment of pin hole imaging. Through shadow activities, they knew the traditional Chinese culture -- shadow play.
Through the experiment of "broken spoon", they found the refraction of light. By playing various Musical Instruments, They learned that sound is vibration; They felt the sound wave by making string telephone; They distinguished between three primary colors of light and the three primary colors of pigment... Through this topic of inquiry learning, the children's research skills have been fully developed.
In UOI exhibition, the students displayed their achievements of interdisciplinary integration learning. After they played and sang a song together, they demonstrated many experiments on light and sound to teach others about the nature of light and sound, and also introduced their DIY handmade and inventions. The children's communication skills were further promoted.
Central idea:All living things go through a process of change.
How does a small seed grow into a big tree? How does a caterpillar become a butterfly? How does a tadpole become a frog?In order to answer these questions,the inquirers of G3 had UOI lessons about life cycle.Children raised silkworms and planted beans in the classroom and made daily observation records. We learned that all living things go through the process of birth, growth, reproduction and death with observation and investigation.And children also asked some questions about life.Like why do all living things die? Where will the dead things go?In order to help students get better understanding about the natural laws of life, we invited a psychology teacher to have a life education class.
From this lesson students knew how to protect their personal lives, to enjoy life.Children also found that some seeds did not germinate, some plants stopped growing, and some silkworms did not change into moths.So we made a conclusion that the life cycle also faces a series of threats.We hope children enable to use the knowledge and skills they have learned to solve real-life problems.There are also many plants and animals in our campus. In order to help the plants and animals in our campus grow healthily and build a green campus ecosystem.At the exhibition, children presented their investigations through activities such as introducing the life cycle poster, drawing environmental poster, launching environmental initiatives, and making insect houses and birdhouses.
Children reinforced their ATL through different inquiry activities and learned the meaning of the life cycle and learned to appreciate life, love life and respect life during this UOI.
We are in a colorful world, and children are exposed to a variety of matters every day. The grade four students embarked on an interesting and fulfilling "matters" exploration journey. In the thematic study, children classify matters and understand the three forms of matters: gases, liquids and solids. At the same time, it is incredible to understand that the coal formation process is so complicated and long!
We understand the changes in the properties of matter through various experiments. For example, starch turns blue when it encounters iodine; white vinegar and baking soda are mixed to produce carbon dioxide gas, which passes the burning matches into the bottle, and the matches are extinguished. Purple cabbage with white vinegar to change color, etc. Through experiments, children realize that matters may undergo chemical changes under conditions such as stirring and heating. Matters changes may bring beauty to our home, such as cloth tie-dying, the development of new drugs, but also bring harm, such as excessive use of oil. Students understand that it will cause car emissions. We need to find a new and more environmentally friendly matters to use, such as natural gas.
At the exhibition, students popularize the formation and role of ores and fossils by displaying specimens of ores and fossils. Children understand the function and use of ores and learn to protect mineral resources on the earth; know the composition of perfume through smelling and identification counters; learn the physical changes in matters through stirring through homemade drinks; and observe the burning of candles from solids to liquids through cooking tea in the stove.
The G5 students focus on the theme of "force" and take "science" as the core discipline to explore from three aspects: various invisible forces; The relationship between force and motion; People's use of force. Focusing on the integration of knowledge in science, English, mathematics and other disciplines, students will explore various invisible but real forces in life, such as gravity, friction, air resistance, electrostatic force, etc., and understand the relationship between force and motion, for instance, how force changes the state of motion of objects, and then further explore the practical application of various forces in life, for example, the streamlined structure of automobile and aircraft head. In the exhibition, the students selected several groups of forces that they were interested in by exploring what they had learned, produced exquisite posters and carried out corresponding experimental demonstrations.
During the demonstration, students need to prepare and complete the experiment by themselves, which not only deepens their understanding of relevant principles, but also improves their learning interest and practical ability to a certain extent; In addition, the posters and experiments were introduced in English or bilingual, which strengthened the students' English output and helped improve their oral expression ability.
The universe is full of mystery. Grade 6 students embark on an exploration of the mysteries of space in this unit. The students asked a lot of questions about space: Is there other life in the universe? Are there other planets suitable for us? Can we travel to space in the future? What is the panorama of space? How do the black holes form? Why Pluto was banished from the Solar System...
Students with questions, collected all kinds of information to find the answer. They also made a model of the solar system using hand-made clay based on the size of the planets, their distance from each other, and their features to get a clearer and more intuitive understanding of the exact positions of the planets. To study the phases of the moon, students observed the positions of the sun, moon and earth. They took the white part of Oreo cookies as the part that was illuminated by the sun and the black part as the part that was not illuminated. They ate the changes of the moon and explored the causes of the waxing and waning of the moon. Students used the timeline to sort out the history of space exploration in different countries. By making water rocket experiment, explore rocket structure and launching principle......
In the exhibition, some students made rocket models, explained the launching principle of rockets and studied flight trajectories . Some show the Tiangong classroom experiment, distinguish the experiment on the ground and the Tiangong environment experiment; Another group showed the future of space city. If the earth's resources are exhausted and human beings move into space, what kind of living environment will we have in space? Students combined science and technology, life, transportation to open the imagination......
Einstein said: "Science is endless, it is an eternal mystery."We have always believed that every child has innate curiosity and desire to explore, and the inquiry course is to exercise children's skills, cultivate children's spirit of inquiry, help children understand the world, but also hope that every child can keep the curiosity of the unknown world and explore enthusiasm, become a diligent thinking, active exploration, well-balanced development of lifelong learners.