Days 5-8 - 23rd-26th August 2011

Students' questions on  the key concepts relating to Machines, their impact on our lives and Transformation of energy were listed  and divided among groups . They now, individually identified the best possible  resources needed for their research and started locating information for their line of inquiry.They sorted out relevant information and  collated their findings in their groups.Before proceeding to plan for their presentation , they  shared their knowledge with their teacher and took guidance for going further.

Day 4 - 22nd August 2011

Students discussed their questions  with the whole class and came up with some more. They then moved on to the second step of the Big 6 inquiry cycle i.e. 'Information seeking strategies' and discussed different ways in which they can find information related to their questions. Students were divided into 5 groups and each group chose 3 questions to find the answers of.

Day 3 - 19th August 2011

Students revisited the transdiscipilinary themes and the key concepts through some interesting learning engagements. They were given sets of pictures related to each theme and they had to identify and write the correct theme under the pictures. For the key concepts, they were given the guiding questions and some pictures. They had to identify the correct key concepts and stick relevant pictures in the format given. Students added more questions to the question bank created on Day 2 to inquire into.

Day 2 - 18th August 2011

Students were introduced to the first step of the Big 6 inquiry cycle i.e the central idea, key concepts and the lines of inquiry of the unit through an interesting learning engagement. The students were divided into groups and were given the central idea in a jumbled up manner. Based on their understanding of the activities of day 1 about machines, they unscrambled the central idea into a meaningful sentence - 'Machines can transform energy and make our lives simpler'. They also unscrambled the lines of inquiry with the help of key concepts given ( Form, Function and Change) thereby strengthening their understanding of the key concepts. Students had a lot of questions related to the key concepts which they want to inquire and find answers to during the course of this unit.

Day 1- 16th August 2011

Grade 5 began inquiring into their first unit which falls under the trans-disciplinary theme       ' How the world works' by watching a video. This was followed by a discussion on the video and a task wherein students were divided into 6 groups and asked to brainstorm and write a word, a phrase or a problem related to machines. The students came up with a lot of words  like automatic, manual, mechanism, technology, easy, quick, fast and many more. They also thought of phrases like 'makes our work easy', 'does work quickly and fast'. Two groups also came up with problems related to a portion in the video and even suggested a solution. They, then, summed up the discussion by observing that

• Machines make our lives easy.
• They do work  quickly.
• There are different types of machines.
• Machines can be automatic as well as manual.

Students will be inquiring into this unit through the Big 6 Inquiry Cycle.