Day 15: Primary Source Info, Preparing to Inquire, Presentation Ideas and Padlets

Primary Source Information:

We want as much primary source information as possible. We are not after a Chinese whispers, internet driven, copy and paste assignment. Discussions and encouragements have been around the pursuit of talking to people who experiencing the issues or are experts in the fields covered. 

Preparing to Inquire:

With newly established Lines of Inquiry, it is time to allocate/align questions to those lines as well as the key concepts being covered. Once this has been achieved, a brainstorm takes place to come up with primary sources that will help us find, locate and answer our questions. (Who can we speak to, where can we visit.)

Presentation Ideas:

• Video (documentaries, animations, zoom recordings, Ted Talk style, adverts, news reports, interviews, virtual tours, Plays, etc.)
• Audio (interviews, music)
• Diagrams (graphs, info graphs, technical drawings, labelled diagrams, cross-sections, before and after, etc.)
• Pictures (photos, artworks, provocations)
• Surveys
• Quizzes (Kahoot)
• Links
• PDF printouts
• Stories (picture books)
• Journals, Diaries
• What else can you think of?

Below is a Ted Talk example that we watched in class that also shows and ins-ire’s what is possible if you are passionate about an issue and your willing to make an effort to see change.

Padlets:

We looked at Padlets and Website design as a way of colllating and presenting our inquiries. Students all seemed pretty keen to use a Padlet as the chosen format for this role. it will be interesting to see what other formats they include within their Padlet to demonstrate their findings.

Catching Up With Mentors

Regular meetings with mentors is a big part of the exhibition process. Having an extra pair of eyes and ideas is great for bouncing ideas back and forward. 

Each group has met with their respective mentors and have begun developing a working relationship which should benefit their learning journey.

Day 12-14 Questions, questions, questions and Central Ideas and Lines of Inquiry

Using the Lotus Diagram, many questions have and are still being asked that link directly with the IB Key Concepts. 

We then reflect on these questions to see if they fit within the Sharing the Planet Theme and also look for any concepts that have a recurring theme (these are often the questions that lead to successful inquiry).

Following this, a conference is had with a teacher to help students turn questions into a Central Idea and Lines of Inquiry. Here is a draft version for the group above:

Then it’s time to organise the questioning with the Lines of Inquiry and let the inquiring begin.

Day 11: Goal Setting and Getting in Touch with Mentors

This session was a chance to look at our own growth and development by setting ourselves 2 goals. One goal was to be linked to the Learner Profile Attributes and the other to the IB Approaches to Learning. These goals were based on areas of improvement as highlighted by our previous self reflecting. 

We also looked at the way we communicate by looking into writing emails. The idea was to contact our mentors and introduce ourselves to them. This was a way to not only make a positive start to the mentor/mentee relationship but also a way to practice composing a formal email. This could come in handy when contacting people or organisations as part of our researching and search for primary information.

Day 10: Understanding Key Concepts and Asking Questions

IB Key Concepts help us guide our inquiries. Today we have looked into understanding the Key Concepts and where our initial questions fit in. To do this we went through an example of an issue, ‘graffiti’, and brainstormed some questions around it.

We then tried to match the questions to the Key Concepts. What we discovered was that some questions can align with more than one Key Concept and questions can be interpreted differently depending how they are written. As a group we certainly seemed to get the hang of it.

We also started to discuss the notion of having related concepts. From the above brainstorm, we noticed that a common thread in amongst some of the questions was ‘impacts’. ‘Impacts’ could be used as a related concept.

The next task was to sort out existing questions onto a Lotus Grid that organises the Key Concepts. 

Once we have organised our existing questions, it is time to brainstorm more and begin to use some critical thinking skills and deciding whether the questions posed fit with the theme of Sharing the Planet.

Day 9: Groups and Questions

Big Day...

Groups are sorted and ready to get going. Before jumping in to some work, it was important to brainstorm and discuss what is the most important aspect to consider when working in groups. The result was there is not one important thing but many key factors. Here is the discussion notes:

The key aspects of working in groups...

Listening to others

Including everyone

Pulling your weight

Cooperating

Respect opinions

Compromise

Openly communicate

Positive attitude towards your group

and importantly,

Respect people’s efforts

Now it was time to work in our groups to share and ask questions about the chosen issue. This year there are nine issues being inquired into and 10 groups working on these. Here is the results from our initial questioning...

🏅A gold star effort from the Senior Unit today. That’s a great start with questions!

Day 8: Self Learning Reflection and Goal Setting

A big part of IB and Exhibition is reflecting and understanding ourselves as learners. To help us with this, we are also set the challenge of setting two goals in areas we can improve or areas of focus (one Learner Profile Attribute goal, one Approaches to Learning goal).

We start this process by reflecting on the Learner Profile Attributes and ranking them in order of personal strength. (We didn’t include reflection in this task as we will be working on regular reflection throughout the exhibit.)

We then looked at the Approaches to Learning and highlighted a skill within each area that we could improve upon.

The next step is to use this self reflection information to set our two goals. We will also need to reflect on and note examples of the different Learner Profile attributes and Approaches to Learning skills As we continue our Exhibition journey.