Down in the Garden / Inquiry model: The Integrating Socially Model of Inquiry / KLA(s): SOSE, Science, English, ICTs / Year level(s): Year 4, Term 3 / Duration of unit: 24 lessons (7-8 week unit)
Unit focus question:
Why should we setup more sustainable food production practices while conserving and protecting the environment?
- Identify curriculum
Ways of working / Knowledge and understanding
SOSE – END OF YEAR 5:
§ Plan investigations based on questions and inquiry models
§ Collect and organise information and evidence
§ Draw and justify conclusions based on evidence
§ Communicate descriptions, decisions and conclusions using text types selected to match audience and purpose.
§ Share opinions, identify possibilities and propose actions to respond to findings
§ Reflect on and identify personal actions and those of others to clarify values associated with social justice, the democratic process, sustainability and peace
§ Reflect on learning to identify new understandings and future applications. / SOSE ESSENTIAL LEARNINGS YEAR 5:
Place and space: Sustainability of local, natural, social and built environments can be influenced by positive and negative attitudes and behaviours.
SCIENCE ESSENTIAL LEARNINGS YEAR 5:
Life and living: Living things have relationships with other living things and their environment.
ENGLISH ESSENTIAL LEARNINGS YEAR 5:
Speaking and Listening – The purpose of speaking and listening includes advancing opinions, discussing, persuading others to a point of view, influencing transactions, and establishing and maintaining relationships.
WRITING AND DESIGNING: Writers and designers can adopt different roles, and make language choices appropriate to the audience.
ICT CROSS CURRICULAR PRIORITIES:
Students experiment with, select and use ICTs across key learning areas to collaborate and enhance communication in different contexts for an identified purpose and audience. They collaborate and communicate ideas, understandings, information and responses. Students also express a personal image and an identity in communication.
Links to QCT Professional Standards for Queensland Teachers
This inquiry based unit has a number of links to QCT Professional Standards although is designed to directly address professional standard three “Design and implement intellectually challenging learning experiences” QCT (2007). See the table below for a brief summary of links to other professional standards.
Professional standards
(overview) / Summarised description with examples
1) Engaging and flexible learning experiences / Teaching, learning and assessment strategies are designed to be developmentally appropriate and flexible. Engaging experiences include construction of the organic garden, group work, guest speaker, class excursion to organic strawberry farm, Technologies and ICT incorporation through students completing a WebQuest, internet research and the use of ICTs to communicate understandings.
2) Language, literacy and numeracy / Language promoted throughout the investigation and is incorporated through oral speaking, reading and writing, labelling, communicating and interacting with others in the school, wider school and community aspect. Computer literacy and scientific literacy is embedded through students researching, analysing, interpreting and evaluating based on facts. Student’s literacy skills are challenged as they are introduced to a new text type (a letter) within an authentic audience and purpose to persuade a point of view. Numeracy elements and problem solving are incorporated as students investigate volume and area through measuring, planning and constructing the garden. Students will also be working out a garden budget with pricing quotes from Bunnings Warehouse.
4) Valuing diversity / Inclusivity is supported within the lesson sequence as experiences reflect knowledge of students their families and communities and build on student strengths. A wide variety of learning styles are catered for including kinaesthetic, visual and auditory learners.
5) Constructive assessment and reporting on student learning / A balance of assessment is outlined including diagnostic assessment (KWL Chart), formative assessment including ongoing observations and anecdotal records and open ended summative assessment. Assessment expectations, criteria and learning goals are identified as a whole class to allow effective explicit constructive feedback to be given.
6) Supporting personal development and participation in society / This unit promotes social participation through activities such as group work tasks including WebQuest, research tasks, group specific roles and responsibilities when constructing the garden etc. Learning promotes active citizenship as students take a position on the issue of sustainable food production and seek to educate others and build their own class vegetable garden. Learning experiences including insight from guest speaker and excursion to an organic strawberry farm promotes partnerships with the community.
7) Safe and supporting learning environment / Activities promote a positive and safe learning environment through behavioural communicating expectations, providing feedback throughout the unit and supporting positive attitudes towards learning, participation and achievement. Teaching sequence with according resources are flexible and will lead challenging and engaging experiences for students through inquiry process.
8) Positive and productive relationships with families and the community / Relationships with families and the community will be strengthened as families are invited into the learning environment to assist and support students construct the vegetable garden, assist with class excursion and connect as an audience in the garden proposal oral presentations. Community members and guest speakers provide expert resources for students and enrich students understandings as they inquire and investigate answers to the inquiry question.
This inquiry based investigation directly targets professional standard three defined as “Design and implement intellectually challenging learning experiences”. Teachers will be able to adopt this inquiry unit and sequence of sequence of intellectually challenging experiences to investigate a worthwhile topic (organic farming for sustainability). The values as outlined in Professional Standard three are promoted as teachers are encouraged and supported to promote creativity through open ended, student directed tasks with ICTs addressed. This real-world issue will provide opportunities for students to examine new concepts, discuss alternative viewpoints, formulate and construct new ideas to communicate and justify to others. The learning environment promoted within the unit as well as the lesson overviews sequenced allow for students to engage in substantive conversation as they express and exchange ideas, ask questions from each other through discussions and class brainstorming. Learning experiences will incorporate ICTs as students access information through WebQuests, research for information to mini-group investigations, communicate their understandings through Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint and hardware use such as printers and data projectors.
Teacher knowledge of central concepts, Integrating Socially Model of Inquiry and socio-cultural theory philosophies are linked to and outlined where appropriate. Links to teacher and student resources are provided to use within the unit to help students prepare and construct the organic vegetable garden found in the making connections phase. The garden construction phase has been trialled with year 4 students at Trinity Beach Primary School and has allowed for insight and practical considerations for teachers adopting the construction project. This information will support teachers with techniques and direction to maintain inquiry focus throughout the construction process and connections beyond the construction.
Professional standard three (Intellectually challenging learning experiences) is an area that all teachers can reflect on in order to support students in the changing nature of our current environment. This unit aims to address this standard by providing support for teachers through lesson sequence along with effective pedagogy and strategies to challenge and extend students understandings.
Theoretical links
This unit has been designed with the socio-cultural learning theory underpinning the learning sequence with philosophies including learning within a socio-cultural context, scaffolding and problem based learning. As stated by (Powers-Collins, 1994:5 in Killen, 2007) “constructivist approach treats learning as a social process whereby students acquire knowledge through interaction with their environment instead of merely relying on teacher’s lectures”. Social structures are an important component in students learning as a collaborative approach extends students understandings and can transform the students capacity to achieve. A collaborative social approach has been adopted throughout the activities which include group-based tasks such as research jigsaw task, group based WebQuest, planning and construction of the garden and whole class approaches taken within discussion. The learning community has also highlighted social links between parents, families and school maintenance staff as they contribute to the learning environment through organic garden construction. The wider community is also involved in the learning process as students venture to a local organic strawberry farm and engage with field experts. McInerney & McInerney (2002) state “Learning is thus a process through which we become one with the collective through carrying out personal activity in collaboration with other people”. Students will be constructing knowledge as they engage in active authentic learning tasks that reflect the real-world and investigate real-world issues in their surrounding environment. Meaningful learning is constructed when students are given “the psychological tools of their culture like language, mathematics, diagrams and approaches to problem solving and are then given the opportunity to use these tools” (Snowman & Biehler, 2000 in Killen 2007). These tools are addressed within the inquiry unit with teacher scaffolding leading to more increased student responsibility for learning.
Scaffolding supports students learning as they construct new ideas and understandings with gradually decreasing support from adults within the learning process. Scaffolding is one of the supporting philosophies within the socio-cultural (social constructivism) theory and supports the belief that each student is working within a zone of proximal development and if supported can be extended beyond their level. Marsh (2004) states “Students may be able to do tasks at higher levels if they are given assistance to get them past the zone of proximal development” which further highlights the importance of scaffolding within intellectually challenging tasks. The unit provides multiple opportunities for teachers to scaffold students learning from the initial tuning-in stage through questioning and preparation formative and summative assessment pieces. Tasks within the unit are designed to be intellectually challenging therefore scaffolding is integral to students success in achieving the outcomes and developing critical thinking skills and problem solving skills. Through appropriate scaffolding through, students will move beyond their zone of proximal development to develop higher evaluative cognitive function.
Problem solving as a teaching strategy is a major focal point of this investigation as students investigate the following question why should we setup more sustainable food production practices while conserving and protecting the environment?. Killen (1998) suggests using this strategy when wanting students to gain a deep understanding of subject matter, intellectually challenge students, encourage students to take greater responsibility for their learning and create learning experiences that are varied and interesting. Students investigate a potential worldwide issue of food and resource sustainability and investigate the environmental issues surrounding current chemical reliant practices. Jacobsen, Eggen and Kauchak (2006) identify problem based learning as a strategy that helps students gain understandings in how to sole problems through hands on experiences. It is also suggested that this strategy has both long and short term goals which are also met within this unit. The short term goals of this unit include students able to critically analyse the inquiry question and respond creatively and educate others of their findings. Long term goals include students gaining more of an appreciation for our resources and taking initiative in their everyday lives to conserve resources and act as leaders for change.
Context for learning and Rationale
This inquiry based unit plan has been designed and developed for students in year four and follows the Essential Learnings framework and corresponding Scope and Sequence document. This unit has been designed and developed to address current environmental sustainability issues which may see this issue exacerbate over time. By teaching students to value environmental and economical sustainability through this investigation, students will be working towards becoming Eco-citizens in our community. As Eco-citizens students will “understand the complex relationship between people and environments and can make informed choices about the sustainable use of resources” Education Queensland (2008).
The unit is worthwhile and engages to students through utilising an inquiry hands on approach that will build upon students interests in vegetable gardening. This unit focuses on the environmental sustainability of growing organically and the supply of resource for future generations as they deal with environmental changes. Investigating alternative methods of food production is important for students as current changes to global population and climate change may see students directly or indirectly dealing with the negative environmental impacts and chronic food shortages. This unit aims to help students make sense of their prior knowledge and experiences and expand upon their appreciation of sustainable living practices. Students will also be investigating the relationships between living things and their environment and how our negative or positive actions and behaviours can impact our environment.
The ways of working in this unit follow the “integrating socially” model of inquiry which promotes higher order thinking and creativity through this inquiry framework which has been carefully selected and is best suited for this investigation. This model consists of seven key phases which encompass the Ways of Working outlined in the Essential Learnings by the end of year five. Students have shown a high level of interest in gardening and learning about our local environment through informal discussions and student-student conversations. This investigation leading to the construction of an organic vegetable garden fits into the wider whole school curriculum as and interests as sustainable practices is a key priority. In previous studies, students have begun working with Microsoft PowerPoint and investigating the letter writing genre. Oral language and group work are areas for further development which is targeted in this unit allowing students opportunities for practice and reflection. Writing and designing is also targeted as students construct a persuasive letter to apply for funding and provide a rationale for the class organic garden.
Student’s prior learning will allow further connections and engagement in the WOWs as students investigate their inquiry question. Students who may have limited to no prior knowledge will also be scaffolded through shared group experiences such as class excursion, guest speaker and the construction of a class organic vegetable garden. The organic concept has not previously been investigated in school studies although students may have prior knowledge from beyond the school context. Scientific theories and concepts of plant growth, reproduction and life cycle will be integrated within a correlating science unit Plants in Action to run alongside this investigation in the allocated two hour science session each week. Online WebQuests will also be introduced playing a key role in the finding out stage as students use ICTs as a medium for communication and learning to assist them answering their inquiry question.