Earthquake

photos that provoked rich class discussion



It is easy to say that KGG this year does a wonderful job of taking a unit of inquiry to their own personal level. The activity started as an inquiry lead by the question:

• What do we need to think about when building a shelter?

It began as students were challenged to build a town using blocks and other materials on two tables. Students worked together carefully to design buildings in groups of four. When they were finished the teacher shook the two tables in a way that simulated an earthquake. Naturally, buildings that were well equipped continued to stand, while others were leveled. Students were then challenged to build again to anticipate another earthquake.

Here were a couple results:



"My shelter breaked from the earthquake. Ellis helped me. His did not break."-Minhaz



"My building broke for the earthquake. It (the building) was long and tall. Tahsin and Amber helped to make it short."-Saif




"The top fell because it was big. I made it shorter and I made a base. I'll use less things to make the next shelter."-Rehnuma


Not only was this a great opportunity for the students to be reflective, it also was a time for students show action and further develop interests. Students began checking earthquake books out of the library to learn more. They also practiced "School Earthquake Drills" on their own. In order to facilitate this excitement, I gathered books and photos that generated deep and meaningful discussion. Through their own interest, they became familiar with terms such as fault line and plates. They also came to the conclusion that a shelter must be flexible in order to endure an earthquake. In order to consolidate and extend this inquiry, please discuss it with your child, find adequate books or use the following websites:

Earthquakes for Kids

Kids Questions on Earthquakes

Essentials of Geology Animations

Exploring Local Materials

Part of our unit of inquiry, "Where we are in place and time', is an inquiry into local building materials and their properties. We brought local building materials into the class for an in depth exploration. Student activities were guided by the question:

• How do people change the strength and look of materials to make a shelter?

ISD Early Years on Wikispaces!

one way that the Early Years explores literacy

Click here to see a presentation that I created as part of a primary ISD literacy staff meeting. You may have seen it on the i-station in the early years well. The presentation shows how the early years classes (Playgroup-Kindergarten) explore literacy. The eight principles of learning literacy were taken from the book 'Word Matters' by Gay Su Pinnell and Irene C. Fountas. I was able to post it on line thanks to Wikispaces and their initiative to dedicate server space to educators.

Habitat for KG

Flooded in Bangladesh
a photo from Proma and Bisma's presentation

Our new unit of inquiry.

Organizing Theme: Where We Are In Place and Time
Central Idea: Shelters depend on where people live.
An Inquiry Into:

• How weather affects the types of shelters people build
• Local building materials and their properties
• How local people have found ways to make materials around them into shelters

In light of our new unit, I tried to think of ways to get experts into our classroom to initiate interest. I decided to recruit secondary students who devoted their time to Habitat for Humanity to share their insight and experience. It seemed like an ideal way to seamlessly blend the secondary and primary schools into one smooth community.

Six students volunteered to help, and we decided that they would work in pairs for three presentations.

This week, the KG students greatly anticipated the two expert guests. Bisma and Proma, the secondary students, worked hard to create an interactive computer game that guided the students through the beginning steps of building a house. They also explained Habitat for Humanity and why they helped build houses for people. The KG students were able to do some teaching themselves, as they explained the building materials that they had in their classroom.

the Diamonds teach us what they know about Water

The KG students were challenged to show what they knew about water in their own creative way. In small groups, the students were to take on the role of water droplets and tell their story in order to demonstrate understanding. The task watched their creativity and knowledge flourish, as the students flowed in different directions to reach the same goal.


Team Starshot decided to take on the role of the 'tears' of their teacher. Using digital photography and drawing they illustrated individual paths of where the tears travelled. One tear fell into the ground where it eventually was pumped up as drinking water. Another tear travelled to a seed to sprout as a plant and ended up in the flower. The group worked together to bind the book and presented it to the class.










Team Square created a puppet show. They designed the background in four different stages and created water drop puppets. The droplets started out in a mango which was consumed by a person. The droplets went from the stomach to the head when the person started to sweat. The sun then took the droplets to the sky to form clouds and then rain. The rain formed mud which sunk underground. It went to the pipes then into the shower.










Team Pizza decided to create a book called 'The Water Cycle' using drawing and writing. The story of their water drops started out in a rainbow. The sun came out and the drops went higher into the sky. They fell down as rain, and they went to a pipe to be cleaned another pipe sent the dirt one way, and the water went to the tap.













Team Rainbow decided to create a dramatization to tell their story of water. Once they wrote the script, they decided who would play the snowflake, the water droplet, the sun and the cloud. They each worked carefully on their costume, and they presented their play to the class. The water started out as a snowflake, but when it fell into a river, it melted and became a droplet. The droplet went down a waterfall, and then the sun came up. The droplet was heated and turned to vapor. It went up to the sky to help form a cloud.