UDIS Year 5/6

Our unit of inquiry has been under the transdisciplinary theme 'Sharing the Planet'. The big and enduring understanding the students carry with them into the future is that we only have one planet, and so it needs to be shared carefully. The specific focus has been: Central idea:   Biodiversity relies on maintaining the interdependent balance of organisms within systems. During this unit we have considered how our actions as humans are disturbing the natural balance of nature. We each took care of a living creature or plant and based our inquiries on that. We looked into the ecosystem it lives in, how that it being disturbed, and what can he done to improve the situation. As we close, we are now publishing our learning in various ways, posters, e-books and slides. These are the products of our learning. As well as this, the process of our learning is also going to be shared with the teacher and classmates. Each of us has to talk through our research notes and ...

This week our inquiry has focussed on: How human interaction with the environment can affect the balance of systems We looked at some of the sad news relating to the environment here in Thailand. Wildlife is suffering because of human activity. Today, towards the end of the week,  we asked this important question: How is biodiversity connected with gardening?                We spent time reading good books about how to start a vegetable garden. No one among us really knows how to do it, and so today's research time was valuable. With our new knowledge we intend to start a vegetable garden. This might need to be at the start of term three so that our seedlings don't die during the Songkran break.

Scientific Inquiry What does a scientist do? This is the questions we have been considering this week. The answer is: observe, draw, measure, sort into groups, compare, design tests and, most of all, they ask questions about things that interest them .   This is what we have been doing this week. Each of us had a living thing that interested us and we did a lot of the things that a scientist would do. This personal inquiry time was very valuable and we all found a lot of pleasure in studying the living that interests us. As well as that, we have also been learning about how to plan a great story. We took time to plan the introduction carefully, so that the setting and characters are really well described. These are going to take a while to write because we want them to be the very best they can be before we publish them This weekend, students are asked to carry out a simple experiment at home, something relating to their little living thing. Please support by adding ...

International Week This week our inquiries were centered around a wonderful story, "The Great Kapok Tree.A story from the Amazon Rainforest." It is about someone who tried to cut down a kapok tree, but he became so tired that he fell into a deep sleep. As he slept, each of the animals came to whisper in his ear. One by one the explained a reason why the tree should not be cut down. Through the story, lots of questions arose and we answered them by reading further, particularly about the conditions in the rainforest. We learned about the amazing variety of useful things that come from trees. The highlight of the week was presenting our learning as a play. We took the facts we had learned and collaboratively turned it into a stage performance. The focus was the conflict between the native people of the Amazon Rainforest and the logging businesses. It was a pleasure to see the learning presented in this way . We are grateful to all of the families who ge...

This week we have been enjoying looking at the variety of life around us. Even in our gardens and the fields around our school we have found an interesting selection of living creatures and vegetation. This is the central ideas which we will be focusing on until our Songkran break: Biodiversity relies on maintaining the interdependent balance of organisms within systems.  We will be looking into biomes, imbalance of systems and the effect of human interaction on biodiversity. Students have begun to collect living things which interest them. They have been asked to choose something that they can handle, photograph and observe for a while.  It's good to see some of the careful drawing being created this week. Choices of things to study included:- medicinal herbs, crabs, frogs, birds and geckos. The questions  students are asking show that they are getting used to planning their own inquiries and not looking to the teacher to pose questions for them. Friday field ...