Miss M's Learning Space

For our inquiry unit plan, we chose to cover grade 6, strand A: Communities in Canada, Past and Present by asking the question:  What does it mean to be Canadian?  To say the least; it's a daunting question.  Summary Our inquiry cycle will be delivered in a loop; we will start with a similar assessment task to the one we finish with. Our assessment tasks require students to answer complex questions about Canadian identity. By the end of the unit, students will be expected to synthesise everything they’ve learned in the unit to answer similar questions to the ones from the beginning of the unit. Each lesson will be addressing a topic that is asked in the final assessment.  Each lesson addresses one of the following aspects of Canadian identity:  immigration,  physical geography,  canadian identity through art,  multiculturalism,  legalities of immigration,  perspectives of immigration,  inclusivity in educati...

http://goo.gl/ookMfI What is genius hour ? Genius hour is a time that students can use to investigate a question they are curious about. It has to be a question that Google can't answer though! It's almost like a personal inquiry project. For my genius hour project  that I completed during the fall, I chose to explore lactose-free cooking. Specifically, I wanted to see if it's possible to make lactose-free mac n'cheese that is just as good as the real stuff. Why you might ask? Well, unfortunately, I am severely lactose-intolerant. It causes me intense, chronic back and gestational pain, so I've had to cut it out completely. :( I've tried to make dairy-free pizza before and, although it didn't taste the same, it was still delicious! My goal for this question was to see if I could combine a series of dairy-free mac n'cheese recipes in order to make the  ultimate  version. Check out how successful I was here !

During my placement, my associate and I attempted an inquiry project that completely failed. The intention was for students to do research on a person they found inspiring, and then share the biography with the class. Then, each student would try to find connections between their inspiring person and other people’s. For example, one person did research on Malala Yousafzi who was heavily influenced by Gandhi, and someone else in the class was researching Gandhi so they would (in theory) discuss why they think Gandhi had an impact or how Gandhi had an impact. However, it was exceptionally challenging to facilitate. Each student was working at a different pace, and several would make statements like ‘no one has ever inspired me’. In addition, several would look up a few facts and then be done for the day and play on their devices (which was hard to police considering the general chaos in the room). As a result, I never felt like I could facilitate all the unique learning challenges, whet...