Planning the inquiry

1. What is our purpose? Class/grade: Lion Class Grade 3/4 Age group: 8/9
To inquire into the following:
School: NCIS School code:
• transdisciplinary theme: An inquiry into orientation in place and time;
personal histories; homes and journeys; the discoveries, explorations and Title: Where We Are in Place and Time
migrations of humankind; the relationships between and the
PYP planner
interconnectedness of individuals and civilizations, from local and global Teacher(s): Lisa Page
perspectives.
• central idea: Exploration causes change to people and places. Date: 12/10/15- 13/11/15

Summative assessment task(s):
What are the possible ways of assessing students’ understanding of the central
idea? What evidence, including student-initiated actions, will we look for?
- Explorer journals
Historical fiction journal entries will be written on the explorer that they have
chosen.
They will write 2/3 journal entries on events they choose from a timeline. They
must include some facts to ensure it is historical fiction.
They can also include sketches of events, animals, plants…
One will be from the explorer’s perspective and the other form the perspective of
someone they met and had an impact on during their journey.
- Explorer interviews
Children should be able to answer the following:
-Why did you want to go exploring?
Proposed duration: number of hours over number of weeks
5 weeks
2. What do we want to learn?
What are the key concepts (form, function, causation, change, connection,
perspective, responsibility, reflection) to be emphasized within this inquiry?
Causation: exploration causes changes to relationships between groups of
people and economics. Actions have consequences.
Change: how the discoveries they made changed the world.
Perspective: looking at the exploration from both the side of the explorer but
also the side of the native people. How new discoveries give us a different
perspective of the world.
What lines of inquiry will define the scope of the inquiry into the central idea?
-The nature of exploration.
-The reasons for exploration.
-The ways that exploration brings change.

-Why are you famous? What teacher questions/provocations will drive these inquiries?
-How did the world look like 1915 years ago? What is different about it now?
-How have you changed the world? -Why would people want to explore other places?
-What were your interactions like with native people? What impact did you have -What kind of things could they find that would change their lives or the lives of
on them? others?
-If you went exploring, what kinds of discoveries would you be looking for?

Attitudes:
Curiosity: Curiosity to ask about exploration and discoveries. Curious to explore
the area around them and make their own new discoveries.
Empathy: Empathize with the natives who were effected by the explorers.

© International Baccalaureate Organization 2007

Planning the inquiry
3. How might we know what we have learned?
This column should be used in conjunction with “How best might we learn?”
What are the possible ways of assessing students’ prior knowledge and skills?
What evidence will we look for?
Tuning in:
Students listen to the accounts of an explorer read aloud. Pause every once in a
while for students to predict what will happen/what will be discovered. Also
present them with maps/pictures and artifacts as the story goes along.
Preparing to find out:
Ask them to place exploration events of a time line to get a sense of their
knowledge of chronological events/discoveries.
Ask questions related to the key concepts to gage what they know and what
they want to find out.
What are the possible ways of assessing student learning in the context of the
lines of inquiry? What evidence will we look for?
Week 1: From input on trello, gage their base understanding of what exploration
means and when it took place. Scale of 1-5, 5 being expert and 1 being no prior
knowledge.
Week 2: Observational notes on social skill and ability to work in a group to be
successful in a journey simulation.
Week 5: Rubric for summative task
5. What resources need to be gathered?
What people, places, audio-visual materials, related literature, music, art,
computer software, etc, will be available?
http://bigthink.com/videos/bill-nye-why-we-explore
http://theageofdiscovery.wikispaces.com/
How will the classroom environment, local environment, and/or the community
be used to facilitate the inquiry?
Books on explorers, maps of journeys, trip to Hangzhou…
© International Baccalaureate Organization 2007
4. How best might we learn?
What are the learning experiences suggested by the teacher and/or students to encourage the students to
engage with the inquiries and address the driving questions?
Week 1: Prior knowledge/ Nature and reasons for exploring
UOI: Unpack central idea and lines of inquiry to create a brainstorm. What questions do we have and what key
concepts are they linked to? Look into the nature of exploring. Chn choose quotes that best represent what
they feel is the nature of exploration and give examples of how this is true (trello). Dig deeper into the reasons
for exploring.
Lit: Creating and describing an imaginary world where exploration will take place.
Work on description through adjectives and noun phrases, as well as adverbs.
Math: Layout of the imaginary world on grid paper, placing key geographical landmarks, environmental areas,
vegetation belts… Identifying things on a map when given coordinates /giving coordinates for things on their
maps. Giving a range of coordinates for an area that an object covers. Battleship!
Week 2:
UOI: Our own explorations!
Lit: Creating characters and main plot points to write their adventure mystery which will take place in their
imaginary world. (plan)
Math: Describe position of a point on a grid by giving coordinates (corners of buildings, intersection/corner
of…) Plot points on a grid and draw sides to complete given shape.
Week 3:
UOI: Create explorers trading cards (place on a timeline to give chn an idea of when certain things were
discovered) Lots of sharing of books and resources about specific explorers. Research exploration happening
today. What can we explore in the future?
Lit: Draft and publish their adventure mystery story.
Math: Use maps from previous weeks to lead an explorer (other student) through a path by creating directions
for them to follow.
Week 4:
UOI: Discoveries made by explorers. Look at a variety of discoveries (ones that changed the earth and ones
that are just curious) How have they changes our lives? (talk about real impacts like scientific discoveries,
finding new land, economic trade routes…, but also entertainment impacts e.g. cabinet of curiosities…) In
partners choose a continent and find out who first explored there and what things were discovered. Then
report on how those have changed the world.
Lit: Historical fiction written as an explorer’s journal. Based on real discoveries and journeys of an explorer, but
written as a journal to express inner feelings and details that may or may not have been true. Writing in first
person.
Math: describe movements between positions on a grid as coordinates (translation)
Week 5:Summative task week. Create rubric together so criteria is clear. Students have 4 days to research
and prepare their accounts of their journeys, the explanation of their most important discovery, their costumes
and any other models/pictures/videos they chose to include.
Lit: draft and publish two journal entries: one from the perspective of the explorer they have chosen to
research and the other from someone they met and had an impact on during their exploration.
Math: assess how previous weeks have gone and plan accordingly
What opportunities will occur for transdisciplinary skills development and for the development of the attributes
of the learner profile?
-Chinese class: silk road and the journey to the west
Self Management Skills
Social Skills: Students will practice making group decisions. They will learn to cooperate and respect the
decisions of other while accepting responsibility for their own actions and responses towards others.
Profiles:
Inquirer: Linked to curiosity, asking questions about the explorations they are interested in.
Thinker: Think about how they can research and find out about different perspectives. Use these to solve
problems in real life explorations. Make ethical decisions/ recognize if the decisions of the explorers were
ethical or not.
Reflecting on the inquiry
6. To what extent did we achieve our purpose?
Assess the outcome of the inquiry by providing evidence of students’
understanding of the central idea. The reflections of all teachers involved in the
planning and teaching of the inquiry should be included.
-using the word colonies on their own
-describe how explorers wanted to expand their countries
-all have some idea about impacts on native people (mostly language and trade)
How you could improve on the assessment task(s) so that you would have a
more accurate picture of each student’s understanding of the central idea.
The assessment task changed with the student’s interests. They were much
more interested in writing journals from the perspectives of explorers. To take
the place of the native perspective journal, students came up with a list of ways
they thought that exploring would effect native people. Then we stared by
looking into the ways they had already thought of and I presented them with
some extra perspectives.
Then we came up with a list of questions we would want to ask explorers. Each
student researched and came up with answers in the first person. Then we
acted as interviewers while each student stood at the front of the room and
answered as If they were the explorer. They were more interested in
researching the answers to the questions instead of taking on the complete
personalities (dress, attitudes…) of the explorer.
What was the evidence that connections were made between the central idea
and the transdisciplinary theme?
Links were made when discussing and mapping out journeys that explorers took.
Students identified key discoveries of specific explorers on their trading cards and
exchanged information. They also demonstrated their understanding through our
brainstorm on the final line of inquiry, when they named discoveries first before
explaining how they impacted the world.
The entire unit explored the idea of explorations, and migrations of human kind were
touched on when we discussed searching for land for colonies. Some students also
showed their understanding through their historical fiction journals if the explorer they
chose was one who started new colonies.
All students reflected on what they thought was the impact of explorers on natives
before exploring the impacts. Those who were not ESL also answered a question
about how they (as an explorer role playing) interacted with natives.
© International Baccalaureate Organization 2007
7. To what extent did we include the elements of the PYP?
What were the learning experiences that enabled students to:
• develop an understanding of the concepts identified in “What do we want to learn?
Causation: Students looked at different aspects such as weapons, languages, housing…
from the explorer side and the native side. They then had to infer what the effects on each
side would be. Students also practiced being spice traders using an online game. They had
to make decisions in order to make profit for their countries.
http://www.learner.org/interactives/renaissance/spicetrade/
Change: We discussed how discoveries by explorers changed the world. Most students
were very clear on the results of discoveries. This was not an area they were very interested
in. They were more interested in individual explorers and the history of their lives. Because
they had the general knowledge, we left this line of inquiry somewhat unexplored.
Perspective: See explorer/native impacts above.
Students discussed many times how people discovering new land changed how people saw
the world. They talked about how explorers like Christopher Columbus inspired others to go
west to Asia and discover more of America. While discussing the sparse accounts we have
from native perspectives due to the oral nature of their history, students made connections
to the oral histories they recoded during our Who we are unit. Most students realized that
without recording histories orally or in writing, perspectives can disappear.
• demonstrate the learning and application of particular transdisciplinary skills?
Social skills:
With regards to respecting others, students have begun to give more meaningful feedback
through our trello board. They have begun to ask question about content instead of
commenting on length or spelling so that they weren’t hurting people but helping them to
extend their thinking.
During our exploration simulation, all students worked together to come up with a list of crew
jobs and nominated each other for jobs by recognizing each other’s strengths.
Self management skills:
Organization: students had to do a lot of planning, especially for their stories and their
historical fiction journals. This not only helped them collect facts, but also sped up the
process once they sat down to write their draft as they already had the key components.
Some students also showed a great use of time management during our trading card inquiry
and one suggested that those who finished
• develop particular attributes of the learner profile and/or attitudes?
Inquirer: Linked to curiosity, asking questions about the explorations they are interested in.
Thinker: Think about how they can research and find out about different perspectives. Use these to solve
problems in real life explorations. Make ethical decisions/ recognize if the decisions of the explorers were
ethical or not.
Curiosity: Curiosity to ask about exploration and discoveries. Curious to explore the area
around them and make their own new discoveries.
Empathy: Empathize with the natives who were effected by the explorers.
Reflecting on the inquiry

8. What student-initiated inquiries arose from the learning? 9. Teacher notes

Record a range of student-initiated inquiries and student questions and highlight any
that were incorporated into the teaching and learning.
Students really enjoyed the history aspect of this unit. They were actively
One student asked if we could map out journeys of explorers on our world map using seeking out more information about explorers and were very eager to shape it
string of different colours. Each student chose an explorer they were interested in with other students. Many conversations that took place consisted of students
and mapped their journey. We then discussed similarities and differences due to making comparisons or connections between explorers they have become
time, place and influences. experts on and others they had learned about through another student. They
Student reflections: really enjoyed sharing their trading cards and hearing each other’s interviews.
‘
While peer assessing each other’s journals against the rubric for the summative
One student asked: “ Are there still explorers today?”
task, students expressed an interest in reading each other’s journals, and
Other students showed interest as well. We created a trello board to answer the
question. Here are some of the results: suggested that they become a part of our book corner. This also lead to a
request for their published imaginary world stories to be put in the book corner.
In maths, students decided to make maps of the school using their new knowledge of Students showed great pride in their work as they shared it with others,
coordinates. They mapped out two floors on graph paper. Then for our assembly, especially when an ESL student shared their work with a native English speaker
they created a jeopardy game with questions about what room was at (__,__) or they who provided them with compliments and expressed interest in something they
put different sticky notes on the map and asked for the coordinates etc. They showed created.
the school how to use coordinates and then played the jeopardy game with them.
ESL students especially started to show a commitment to understanding the
At this point teachers should go back to box 2 “What do we want to learn?” and language of the unit of inquiry. In a reflection, one student wrote that they really
highlight the teacher questions/provocations that were most effective in driving the
enjoyed this unit because when she learned the right vocabulary, she was able
inquiries.
to speak more confidently about the explorers and understand more of the
What student-initiated actions arose from the learning? discussions between other classmates.
Record student-initiated actions taken by individuals or groups showing their ability to We weren’t able to get much into specific discoveries as students were more
reflect, to choose and to act. interested in learning about the journeys and people who explored. I suggest
Two students chose historical fiction books from the library based on explorers. that the focus be on how it changes the land, the native people, the relationships
Another chose a graphic novel that dealt with Vikings as her chosen explorer (Leif between countries.
Erikson) was a Viking and she was interested in the subject matter.
Students also wanted to place their trading cards in order so we made a timeline for
this purpose.
Our inquiry was extended during our unit reflection time, as one student reminded us
of a suggestion she had. She wanted to map out the explorer journeys on our world
map using string. Students all jumped on board and each chose an explorer they
were familiar with. They researched their route, cut their string and stuck it onto the
map. Two students then decided to make a legend for the map. Once it was finished,
a rich discussion took place about the similarities and differences of the journeys, the
influences some explorers had on others and the reasons for certain routes.
ESL students used the explorer simulation day as a starting point to guide us around
the school using language they had acquired from the UOI and our math unit on
directions.

© International Baccalaureate Organization 2007