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A new term, a new inquiry topic, and a whole bunch of new opportunities to use technology have presented themselves at Castlemaine North PS.
Our inquiry topic this term is “Who and what have shaped Australia’s identity?” Somehow, I stumbled on the ABC 3 series “My Place”, which consists of 13 episodes set 10 years apart, from 1888 all the way to 2008. Each episode has a story about a 10 year old child who has been shaped by the preceding 10 years’ history. As well as the DVDs, there are two fantastic websites that support the material – the first enables kids to explore the house in which each of the kids lives in, and the second contains loads of clips, links and curriculum-aligned activities for kids to do.
Our kids are in groups, with each group focussing on a different decade. Each decade has been given a blog – a departure from how we have been using blogs last term, where they were solely individual. This term, in addition to a student’s own blog, they can contribute to a group blog, to record their learning over the course of the inquiry. At the end of the term, we will have 13 blogs, all linked together, demonstrating our learning of each period of time and how these periods have shaped our own identity. As well as the blog, each group has their own private discussion forum to discuss their progress with each other and their teacher.
Right now, we are watching the episodes as a whole, one by one, and we are all doing activities together, so that students don’t end up isolated in one decade – we want students to be experts in one period of time, but with an overall sense of how that period fits into the bigger picture.
In addition to the use of My Place, we are thinking about our identity as Australians by Skyping with a school in Iowa, USA. A school has very kindly offered to answer some of our questions, which hopefully will be the start of a meaningful link outside the country.
Any schools out there wanting to be a part of any element of what we’re doing can contact me – we’d love to share our journey this term.
Our inquiry topic this term is “Who and what have shaped Australia’s identity?” Somehow, I stumbled on the ABC 3 series “My Place”, which consists of 13 episodes set 10 years apart, from 1888 all the way to 2008. Each episode has a story about a 10 year old child who has been shaped by the preceding 10 years’ history. As well as the DVDs, there are two fantastic websites that support the material – the first enables kids to explore the house in which each of the kids lives in, and the second contains loads of clips, links and curriculum-aligned activities for kids to do.
Our kids are in groups, with each group focussing on a different decade. Each decade has been given a blog – a departure from how we have been using blogs last term, where they were solely individual. This term, in addition to a student’s own blog, they can contribute to a group blog, to record their learning over the course of the inquiry. At the end of the term, we will have 13 blogs, all linked together, demonstrating our learning of each period of time and how these periods have shaped our own identity. As well as the blog, each group has their own private discussion forum to discuss their progress with each other and their teacher.
Right now, we are watching the episodes as a whole, one by one, and we are all doing activities together, so that students don’t end up isolated in one decade – we want students to be experts in one period of time, but with an overall sense of how that period fits into the bigger picture.
In addition to the use of My Place, we are thinking about our identity as Australians by Skyping with a school in Iowa, USA. A school has very kindly offered to answer some of our questions, which hopefully will be the start of a meaningful link outside the country.
Any schools out there wanting to be a part of any element of what we’re doing can contact me – we’d love to share our journey this term.
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