Planning the inquiry

1. What is our purpose? To inquire into the following: transdisciplinary theme

Class/grade: School: SMMA Title:

Age group: 10 - 11 School code: 50082 PYP planner

How we organize ourselves: An inquiry into the interconnectedness of humanmade systems and communities; the structure and function of organizations; societal decision-making; economic activities and their impact on humankind and the environment. central idea Societies govern in many ways to create a decision making structure. Summative assessment task(s): What are the possible ways of assessing students understanding of the central idea? What evidence, including student-initiated actions will we look for?

Teacher(s): Phelisia Grindrod Date: Summer 2012 Proposed duration: number of hours 18 over number of weeks 6

2. What do we want to learn? What are the key concepts (form, function, causation, change, connection, perspective, responsibility, reflection) to be emphasized within this inquiry? Connection: How does our government system to compare to other countries? Responsibility: How do government decisions impact our lives? Perspective: How do people decide who they wanr as a leader? What lines of inquiry will define the scope of the inquiry into the central idea? Forms of government and how they are organised.
The rights and responsibilities of citizens in governments.

Your task is to design your own country with its own system of government. Construct your countrys constitution a set of rules that show how your country is governed. It should include a description of the way in which the government is organised as well as the powers that the government has. You have the choice of how to present this work. You might like to produce a poster, PowerPoint presentation, booklet, an advertisement promoting your country as a place to live, a written piece of work...its up to you to use your creativity. Children will help to establish the criteria of what to address in the task. Possibilities could include: 1. The system of government 2. Voting system 3. Basic laws 4. How are decisions made? 5. Does everyone have a say? 6. What are the top-10 rights that a citizen of your country has? 7. Whose rights are being promoted? 8. Whose rights are denied? 9. How would a citizen of your country feel? 10. How does your countrys governmental system compare to that of another country? In addition, you could briefly describe what some of these elements would be like in your society: wealth or money; health care; food; environment; education; children and families; homes; transport. Assessment tool: Children will develop success criteria
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What teacher questions/provocations will drive these inquiries? What does government mean? How does someone become a leader of their society? What does democracy mean? How do government decisions impact our lives? What can we do to change government decisions? Who are the decision-makers? What are the levels of government in this country? What different types of government systems exist? How does our governmental system in the UK compare to that of another country?

Planning the inquiry

3. How might we know what we have learned? This column should be used in conjunction with How best might we learn? What are the possible ways of assessing students prior knowledge and skills? What evidence will we look for? Understanding of central idea cut out words of central idea and ask children to put it back together. What do they understand by it? Use thinking tools to gather prior knowledge and refine understanding of central idea: Brainstorm, sort and organise who makes decisions in your home, school, city, country, the world. What is government? Create tree diagram to show their understanding of how the UK government is formed. What decisions are made by government? Who chooses the government? Is this the same in all countries? What are the possible ways of assessing student learning in the context of the lines of inquiry? What evidence will we look for? That different countries have different government structures. Children to be able to create tree diagrams to explain the structure of these. Understanding of how different government structures affect citizens through case studies. Discussions on protests why do people protest? What impact does this have? Relate to recent teacher strikes.

4. How best might we learn? What are the learning experiences suggested by the teacher and/or students to encourage the students to engage with the inquiries and address the driving questions?

Initial homework task children speak to parents about political party voted for and why. Children choose a type of government to research (democracy, monarchy, dictatorship) Find out about these and present to class. Whilst watching reports children complete table to show type of government and good and bad things about them. Speak to local MPs, Sharon Baker Spencer and members of school council; secondary members of school parliament. Youth summit simulation: Brainstorm issues within school. Create suggested action plan to present to school council. Use multimedia texts e.g. Espresso, YouTube clips etc. to discover key facts about our countrys government (structure, form, function, system). And those of other countries share findings in expert groups. Create questions for further exploration. Add new knowledge, questions and ideas for action to wondering wall; Homework task: Make connections between the way the school is organised (i.e. our schools governmental system),and local government structure. Simulated classroom experience: Children select the kind of governmental system they want to experience anarchy, democracy or dictatorship. Each class is set up for the different systems. Following their experience, children reflect on how it worked, what worked well, what went wrong. Case studies compare UK with other countries government systems - Research Spanish, Mexican and Bangladeshi government (additional languages = Spanish & Bengali) as well as USA, China, Mugabe, In the media: Identify and discuss newspaper articles relating to political issues, e.g. protests & protestors; voting systems, election campaigns, famous political figures and speeches, rioting, protests, human rights, education, poverty, wealth eetc. (London Mayor elections & Teacher strikes) Group role play: If I were Prime Minister What decisions would you make to actively promote human rights? What do some government leaders actively do to deny human rights? Model PYP action cycle: Brainstorm unfair issues; find ways to take action about this; reflect on why they chose this action, how they will carry it out and what value it will have. Repeat exercise individually on each of the concepts from the unit of inquiry.

5. What resources need to be gathered? What people, places, audio-visual materials, related literature, music, art, computer software, etc, will be available? Books, internet (Houses of Parliament website), Espresso/ YouTube clips, Local MPs, secondary Parliament members; Sharon Baker Spencer (School Council leader) How will the classroom environment, local environment, and/or the community be used to facilitate the inquiry? Display, visitors and easy access to sources.

What opportunities will occur for transdisciplinary skills development and for the development of the attributes of the learner profile?
Transdisciplinary skills: Thinking skills acquisition of knowledge, comprehension, synthesis; Social skills respectingothers; Communication skills reading, writing, presenting. Research skills: organizing data, presenting. Learner profile: Knowledgeable inquiry into government systems; understanding of a democracy; comparison with other systems. Open-minded understand and appreciate how different countries strive to achieve good government. Attitudes: Tolerance being sensitive and responsive to the decisions and responsibilities of others; Em-

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Reflecting on the inquiry

6. To what extent did we achieve our purpose? Assess the outcome of the inquiry by providing evidence of students understanding of the central idea. The reflections of all teachers involved in the planning and teaching of the inquiry should be included.

7. To what extent did we include the elements of the PYP? What were the learning experiences that enabled students to: develop an understanding of the concepts identified in What do we want to learn?

How you could improve on the assessment task(s) so that you would have a more accurate picture of each students understanding of the central idea.

demonstrate the learning and application of particular transdisciplinary skills?

What was the evidence that connections were made between the central idea and the transdisciplinary theme?

develop particular attributes of the learner profile and/or attitudes?

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Reflecting on the inquiry

8. What student-initiated inquiries arose from the learning? Record a range of student-initiated inquiries and student questions and highlight any that were incorporated into the teaching and learning.

9. Teacher notes

At this point teachers should go back to box 2 What do we want to learn? and highlight the teacher questions/provocations that were most effective in driving the inquiries.

What student-initiated actions arose from the learning? Record student-initiated actions taken by individuals or groups showing their ability to reflect, to choose and to act.

International Baccalaureate Organization 2007