Tag: inquiry

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Inquiry into SDGs: Industry, Innovation, & Infrastructure

This is a series of provocations designed to provide resources for students to inquire into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. For more, click here. 

The Sustainable Development Goal #9 is intended to “build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization, and foster innovation.” The resources below are intended to help your students start thinking about what this might look like and how they can be involved!

Resource #1: Our Work by Global Goods Partners

Resource #2: Animanimals: Ant by Filmbilder

Resource #3: Enterprise Sustainability by Bruton STrobe Studios

Resource #4: If You Plant a Seed by Kadir Nelson

Resource #5: The Red Bicycle: An Extraordinary Story of One Ordinary Bicycle by Jude Isabella and Simone Shin

Provocation Questions: 

  • What is infrastructure? How does it impact the way a society functions?
  • What is industry? How does it impact the way a society functions?
  • What is innovation? How does it impact the way a society functions?
  • How does innovation help people come up with ideas for better infrastructure and industry?
  • How can responsible shopping choices help improve the industries in other countries?

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

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Inquiry into Feelings

Taking a break from my provocation series into the SDGs to write an inquiry into feelings. It was sparked by the first resource in this list, from the profound words of a second grader: “With friends, I don’t have to be happy.”

I think the best reason I can think of to stop and inquire into the nature of feelings is summed up by this quote from Brene Brown:

https://brenebrown.com/

How might an inquiry into the nature of feelings impact your students at any point in the school year? Use the resources below to find out!

Resource #1: Tweet from Hata Trbonja

Resource #2: Disney Pixar’s Inside Out trailer (also, this incredible scene when Sadness helps Riley make sense of memories that were once dominated by joy).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqlYqE6baWM

Resource #3: Feelings by Nate Milton

Resource #4: The Rabbit Listened by Cori Doerrfeld

Resource #5: We Found a Hat by Jon Klassen

Resource #6: The Heart & The Bottle by Oliver Jeffers

Provocation Questions: 

  • What are feelings?
  • Why do we need feelings?
  • What is the purpose of feelings? All of them?
  • How can it be helpful for us to identify how we are feeling?
  • What are different perspectives people have when experiencing each emotion?
  • What is our responsibility to honor our feelings?
  • What would life be like without any emotions?

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

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Inquiry Into SDG’s: Quality Education

This is a series of provocations designed to provide resources for students to inquire into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. For more, click here. 

The purpose for the SDG of Quality Education is to “Ensure inclusive & equitable education & promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.”

While this goal focuses largely on developing countries, rooting out educational disparities anywhere will aid in this effort. This week’s provocation is designed to get kids thinking about why disparities exist and how progress might be made.

Resource #1: The work of Matiullah Wesa (great article on GlobalCitizen, and his Twitter account is packed with documentation of their efforts).

Resource #2: If You Build It by OCP Media

https://vimeo.com/79902240

Resource #3: Cogs by AIME Mentoring

Resource #4: 7 Insane Ways Children Get to School via Global Citizen

Resource #5: Dreamers by Yuyi Morales

Provocation Questions: 

  • What does quality education mean?
  • What does it mean for a child to receive quality education?
  • How does educating children impact families? Communities? The world?
  • What is our responsibility to ensure everyone receives a quality education?
  • How does the idea of what makes an education quality change over time?

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

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Inquiry into SDGs: Partnerships for the Goals

This is a series of provocations designed to provide resources for students to inquire into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. For more, click here. 

Finally! I made a plan over a year ago that once I finished my series of provocations on each of the PYP essential elements (and then a brief series of provocations on learner identities), I would begin a series of provocations for each of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. At last that day has arrived. The SDG’s are part of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. We are working to be part of that plan by providing resources to help students think about their own contributions, both now and in the future.

Partnerships of the Goals is one of the SDG’s themselves. It:

“seeks to strengthen global partnerships to support and achieve the ambitious targets of the 2030 Agenda, bringing together national governments, the international community, civil society, the private sector and other actors.” (source)

Below are resources to help students inquire into what this goal means and how they might apply it themselves.

Resource #1: Further Up Yonder by Giacomo Sardelli (I recommend using subtitles)

Resource #2: Amazonia Security Agenda by Moth

Resource #3: Flying Rhinos by Green Renaissance

Resource #4: Where Do We Go From Here? by RSA

Resource #5: A Declaration of Interdependence by Tiffany Shlain & Let It Ripple Film Studio

Resource #6: Be Kind by Pat Zietlow Miller

Provocation Questions:

  • What is a partnership like?
  • Why do good partnerships matter? For ourselves? For our communities? For our world?
  • What is our responsibility to work together?
  • What are the different perspectives on partnerships, and how do they sometimes create barriers in our ability to make partnerships?
  • What is the connection between global citizenship and partnerships for the SDGs?

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

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Inquiry Into Being a Reader

In between larger series of my PYP essential elements provocations and soon-to-begin SDGs provocations, I’m doing a short series on learner identities. Last week was an inquiry into what it means to be a writer. This week is on what it means to be a reader!

Resource #1:  Reading Interest Inventories

There’s an abundance of reading interest inventories, but they all share the same goal: to help students learn and ponder more about themselves as readers. A definite must for this provocation! Explore a few below:

Resource #2: KidLit Childrens’ Books by Caroline Burgess animation

Resource #3: Night Reading by Brian Rea

Resource #4: Authors talking about themselves as readers (from my post, 18 Best Videos to Get to Know Children’s Authors/Illustrators)

Resource #5: Picture Books

Provocation Questions:

  • What does it mean to be a reader?
  • How does being a reader compare with the act of reading?
  • What is our responsibility to read? (for ourselves? for the world?)
  • How does reading shape our communities?
  • What are the different ways we read?
  • What are the perspectives on reading? Why are there different perspectives on reading?

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

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Inquiry Into Being a Writer

Now that I’ve finished my PYP essential elements provocations, I plan to begin the next series of inquiry-based provocations on the SDG’s (UN’s Sustainable Development Goals by 2030).

But first, I’d like to pause and do a couple of inquiries into more general learning identities. We all hope our students will move from “doing” math, writing, reading, or science” to seeing themselves as mathematicians, writers, readers, or scientists. Amidst the many curriculum-mandated tasks associated with those subjects, however, it can be difficult to hold on to this sense of identity.

This week’s provocation is meant to help students inquire into what it means to be a writer.

Resource #1: My recent post, “18 Best Videos to Get to Know Children’s Authors/Illustrators.” I had so much fun putting this compilation together with my kids. Almost a month later, my kids are still referring to specific videos in our house, recalling some funny thing Oliver Jeffers did or requesting a re-watch. Each of the videos offer a unique lens for what it means to be a picture book-maker, but below are a couple I would especially recommend in this context:

Resource #2: J.K. Rowling’s handwritten notes!

How J.K. Rowling Plotted Harry Potter with a Hand-Drawn Spreadsheet

Resource #3: How to Build a Fictional World Ted Talk by Kate Messner

Resource #4: Picture Books

Provocation Questions:

  • What does it mean to be a writer?
  • Why do people write?
  • How does our identity as writers change over time?
  • What is our responsibility to write? (for ourselves? For the world?)
  • What are the different perspectives on what makes a writer?
  • How does being a writer connect to being an author?
  • What is the connection between voice and writing?

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto

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Inquiry into Attitudes: Respect

This is part of a series of inquiry-based provocations for essential elements of the PYP and the Learner Profile. For more, click here.

Respect. It seems to be a character trait frequently invoked when describing another generation (usually not in a very complimentary light). But as with all these provocations, how often do we give our students the opportunity to construct meaning for such traits for themselves?

This week’s provocation is meant to help students investigate the attitude of respect for themselves.

Resource #1: Respect Mother Nature by Jon Rawlinson

Resource #2: Day & Night by Pixar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q864EalnLvs

Resource #3: For the Birds by Pixar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T63MCogI4sM

Resource #4: Celebrating Mr. Rogers by GoogleDoodles via The Kid Should See This

Resource #5: A Boy & A Jaguar by Alan Rabinowitz & Catia Chien

 

Resource #6: Don’t Touch My Hair by Sharee Miller

Provocation Questions:

  • What is the role of noticing and appreciating differences when it comes to respect?
  • How does respect impact relationships with friends and family? Strangers?
  • What is our responsibility to respect our environment?
  • How is kindness similar to respect? How is it different?

featured image: DeathToTheStockPhoto