Creating, Connecting and Consolidating Our Learning So Far!

Our Grade 3/4 class spent our inquiry time this past week planning and creating a way to represent the learning that has been done in our "Under Our Feet" inquiry unit so far.  The students decided upon an interactive bulletin board to display both the knowledge we've acquired about rocks, minerals and soil in Saskatchewan as well the skills we've gained by working through the inquiry process.

Students worked cooperatively to break up the jobs that needed to get done and got to work!  A large map of Saskatchewan was drawn, and then painted to show the soil zones of Saskatchewan.  Students then decorated the map with symbols placed to show what and where the various minerals of Saskatchewan are located.  Samples of the rocks found in Saskatchewan were sketched and categorised.  Some students wrote and then used a digital recording program called "Audioboo" to record a summary of the learning we have done about the identity, location, and formation of rocks, minerals and soil in Saskatchewan.  Wordles were designed to highlight the vocabulary we have gained.

To showcase our progress in the inquiry process, students made a list of all of the skills we have developed through our inquiry work and then chose the top 5 to present on our bulletin board. 

Once we had everything assembled, we took one last step to share our learning by turning the audio recordings we created about our knowledge of rocks, minerals and soil into QR codes.  The QR codes could then be displayed on our bulletin board and accessed by our learning community.  A QR code is like a bar code that stores information and when scanned, connects the learning to a website, a video, an audio recording, etc.   This was a great way to use technology to help us share all of the knowledge and information we have gained along the way in our inquiry journey.

You can listen to our recordings here:

Using the school Ipads, students are able to scan the QR codes to listen to our recordings!  We hope our families and our school community members will also be able to learn about rocks, minerals and soil by using our interactive bulletin board display!

Teacher Reflection:

The act of putting together this bulletin board display started out in my mind as a way for the students to showcase some of our learning for 3-way conferences.  However, as we lead and watched the students take control of each step of the plan and the creation of what would become our interactive bulletin board, I soon realised that this was more than just a product.  As students worked to literally put the pieces together (soil zones, rock samples and mineral deposits on a common map) I heard and saw them making connections between the learning.  I realised at that point that we had moved into the "connect" and "create" phases of the inquiry process.  And what was just as exciting, was that the students noticed this too!  The construction of this interactive bulletin board was leading students to consolidate their learning! 

The students made audio recordings about their new knowledge of rocks, minerals and soil in Saskatchewan and thanks to the expertise of Tamzen in this area of technology that is completely foreign to me, the students were introduced to QR codes and how to make them and use them to "display" these recordings they made using "Audio Boo" an online digital recording program.  Having a learning partner with experience in technology has been an invaluable experience for both me and my students.  I have little knowledge in this area and being able to work with Tamzen has allowed me and my students to try new technology tools that we otherwise would not have even likely heard of.  Yet another perk of having a partner in this learning journey! 
~ Steph