Planning the inquiry

1. What is our purpose?

To inquire into the following:

transdisciplinary theme: An inquiry into rights and responsibilities in the

struggle to share finite resources with other people and with other living things;
communities and the relationships within and between them; access to equal
opportunities; peace and conflict resolution.
central idea: People can create positive change in our world.

Summative assessment task(s):

Class/grade: Lion Class Grade 3/4

School: NCIS

Age group: 8/9

School code:

Title: Sharing the Planet

PYP planner

Teacher(s): Lisa Page

Date: Feb 22nd-April 1st
Proposed duration: number of hours

over number of weeks 6

What are the possible ways of assessing students understanding of the central
idea? What evidence, including student-initiated actions, will we look for?
Goal: Your task is to spread awareness about a global problem that stands in the
way of achieving the Global Goals for Sustainable Development.
Role: You are an advocate for a cause and you want to spread the word and
educate others.
Audience: Your target audience will be the students, staff and parents of NCIS.

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?
Causation: The influences and events that cause someone to make a positive
change. Actions and events have consequences. (impact, sequences of events)

Situation: The Global Goals for Sustainable Development have been announced
and the goal is to complete them before 2030. The first step in achieving the goals is
making them famous and raising awareness about the problems faced by the world
today.

Change: Looking at local and global changes going on in the world. How are people
adapting, transforming How is positive change happening?

Product, performance and purpose: You will need to create a report about a
problem that occurs in the world today. Your report should help others understand
what the problem is, what is causing it, where the problem if affecting people and
finally, what people can do to help solve the problem. These reports will be shared
with the school community so that we can help make the goals famous, and we can
inspire others to make positive changes in their lives that will make a difference

What lines of inquiry will define the scope of the inquiry into the central idea?
Problems and challenges that occurs in our world. (causation/change)
Why some people choose to make a positive change. (causation)
How individuals and groups have created positive change. (form/change)

Standards and Criteria for Success:

-Write in the report style of writing (see literacy expectations)
-Provide an explanation for the problem or challenge. What is causing the problem?
-Explain where the problem is occurring and why this is the case. Why isnt it
happening in other parts of the world?
-Provide examples of the effects the problem is having. Because of _____, _____ is
happening

-Provide suggested actions people can do to help the problem or challenge

-List and explain what some charities are doing to taking action already.
International Baccalaureate Organization 2007

Form: Identify, describe and categorize different types of positive change. (structure,
similarities, differences)

What teacher questions/provocations will drive these inquiries?

Form: What are different ways that people can make positive changes? What does
positive change look like? What would the world be like without positive
change/without action?
Causation: What causes people choose to make positive changes? Why would
someone invest so much time in creating positive change?
Change: How have the efforts of individuals or groups changed the world in positive
ways? How could you create positive change?
Attitudes:
Empathy: Imagine themselves on others shoes and feel the need to act for change.
Enthusiasm: Willingness to put effort into the process of creating positive change.
Patience to see the positive change occur.

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?
Class discussion conducted like an interview (As we normally find out what is
happening in the world through the news!) to be recorded and re-visited at the
end of the unit for reflection.
Looking for: knowledge using examples to explain problems in the world,
positive change, why people choose to make change and how people can make
change. Get a good picture of their scope of knowledge from open discussion of
each line of inquiry.
Student to be given the 17 global goals. Each student receives one at a time,
and tries to record all the problems they can think of that stand in the way of
achieving the goal.
Looking for: knowledge of world problems, the reach of their understanding
(globally).
THEN together as a mock UN, we would pool our ideas together to get a more
complete picture.
What are the possible ways of assessing student learning in the context of the
lines of inquiry? What evidence will we look for?
Ability to give examples of different types of positive change and different
problems they fix. Individual research results. Noting student action and
commitment for their chosen projects. Using rubrics to mark writing and math
projects. Check continuum scope and sequence to update progress. Increased
use of topic related vocabulary.
5. What resources need to be gathered?
What people, places, audio-visual materials, related literature, music, art,
computer software, etc, will be available?
People: students and staff across the school to help out. Places: around the
school community, lots of audio viduals from The Worlds Largest Lesson,
videos from net about the goals or innovations, check out variety of books from
library on topics
How will the classroom environment, local environment, and/or the community
be used to facilitate the inquiry?
Classroom for planning and as headquarters. Local enviro/community will be
used to implement actions.
International Baccalaureate Organization 2007

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?
Related concepts: Continuity and Change Through Time: Conflict, Innovation, Progress,
Revolution. Resources+Enviro: Conservation, Pollution, Poverty, Sustainability
Throughout: Daily newsflashes- time to read news online/summarize, add to trello
Week 1: Prior knowledge
UOI: Start with what the world problems are. Create main categories to make it easier to
classify and understand. Each student becomes a country and gets a global goal. They record
the problems that stand in the way of the goal. Local to global (target chart) Focus on local and
move towards global. What can we do to understand (experiments)
Lit: Creating a wall of fame for people who have created positive change in our world. Writing
short biographies that explain who they are, why they chose to make a positive change and
what change they have made. *Look at why did they want to create change.
Math: Revision and ISA test. Division strategies.
Week 2/3:
UOI: Focus on understanding each problem:
-How disease spreads (carriers, hand washing experiment, sharing fluids experiment)
-Make a contraption that could clean water. (bacteria, viruses, water cycle)
Start coming up with/researching ways to solve the problems (local and global)
*What actions can we implement? Start research and action planning.
Lit: week 2: publishing their week 1 work and choosing how and where to display it. Week 3:
summarizing. Using articles about current events, students practice summarizing by choosing
the most important details and main ideas.
Math: Division strategies links to fractions, stats about world problems in equivalent fractions.
Week 4:
UOI: Different ways of creating positive change: -Raising funds to buy materials, supplies etc.
that will create positive change. -Raising awareness about the problems to inspire change. Suggesting or giving people the tools to change. Continue to come up with ways to solve
problems related to the GGs. *implementing their action plans at school and starting an action
journal for things they can change at home.
Lit: Structure and features of a report. Identify, practice, learn. Observe examples. Shared
writing of report. *Journals to look at why people make positive change (case studies)
Math: Apply skills learned over operations unit to mixed word problems about student actions.
Week 5:
UOI: Move towards global. What can we do to effect change on a larger scale? Start to choose
a focus Global Goal they are interested in.
Lit: Write a report with a partner. Plan, draft, edit, publish. Then start planning for the
summative task report.
Math(2 weeks): Perimeter and area using spaces in the school community we want to clean up
during Eco Action Club. Use trundle wheel. Create scaled models of areas to clean up
Week 6:
UOI /Lit: Final summative week.
What opportunities will occur for transdisciplinary skills development and for the development
of the attributes of the learner profile?
Learner Profiles: Open minded: Respecting/understanding the values and traditions of other
communities in order to create a positive change that is appropriate/ conflicts and struggles of
others to tailor positive change to what is actually needed. Principled: Having a strong sense
of fairness, justice and respect for everyone so they can sense when positive change may be
needed. Take responsibility for their own actions and recognize ones that need changing.

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?

Students were very enthusiastic and committed to making changes in their own lives.
They identified that making changes is often a hard thing to do, however, little things
add up to create big change. One student had previously done an awareness poster
on water wastage that students remembered and referenced. In it, she had included
a statistic that said that if everyone in England and Wales shut off the tap when they
brushed their teeth, it would save 180 mega liters of water a day. While reading
books we had gotten from the library, students suggested many actions we could do
easily. More about this under student action.

Student were able to explain the positive change of a range of individuals after
looking into biographies of activists, and the people behind some of the charities they
were interested in.
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.
The assessment task could have been linked more to a goal and explaining a goal.
Students enjoyed having a focus, however their focus topics were still very broad
and some found it difficult to cover. More focus could have been made on the action
section of the report, with a better outline for expectations from that section, including
examples of people who have helped and the results. They chose charities and
wrote some simple actions, but this could have been more what the summative was
about, with the rest of the report as a build up to be done through literacy the
previous week.
What was the evidence that connections were made between the central idea and
the transdisciplinary theme?
Students were very adamant about getting others involved in their actions. From
raising awareness to asking for others to get involved, students wanted the school
community to be part of their positive change. They spoke about how countries need
to work together more in order to reach the 17 global goals in time. They used the
UN as a good example of this, where laws and legislation would be made and upheld
across many countries.
Access to equal opportunities was one of the global goals, therefore students
researched directly into the problems and the solutions that were being made.
We spoke some about peace and conflict but it was not as appropriate because of
their maturity and readiness for the subject. One topic we explored was refugee
rights and issues. We looked at an app made by the UNHCR that simulated what it
would be like to be a refugee and have to make hard decisions. Students spoke
about compassion as something that helped refugees survive, and linked this
somewhat to the conflicts around the world today. They were taken by the UNHCR
and the amount of positive change they are having on the lives of refugees in many
areas of their lives.
International Baccalaureate Organization 2007

What were the learning experiences that enabled students to:

develop an understanding of the concepts identified in What do we want to learn?

(causation/change): Students used books and resources found on the internet to research
some of the problems that are occurring and the causes behind them. Along with this,
students began to record solutions to help change these problems. Students created
goals for themselves to do every day to help change one of the problems and took these
goals home to track each day. Students participated in experiments and discussions that
helped them understand what it would be like to have unsanitary water, or be in a place
where germs spread quickly, causing to poor health and wellbeing. Students read About
Us pages from various charities to help them summarize what lead the individuals who
started the charities to make a change in the first place. Students also stated some of the
reasons they wanted to make change was that they felt empathetic for those suffering,
they wanted to make the place they lived a better place to be, and they were inspired by
other changes people made and wanted to do something as well.
(form/change): Students explored the Global Citizen site and placed different initiatives in
a venn diagram that showed which kind of change it was. They identified that the most
powerful types of change include all three kinds of change (awareness, fundraising and
action) Through research into solutions for problems, students wrote down HOW people
are creating change. Many times, they mentioned the effectiveness of teaching a man to
fish vs. giving a man fish.

demonstrate the learning and application of particular transdisciplinary skills?

Self-Management: Students had to be disciplined and manage their time in order to get
actions up and running in time for our new round of clubs. They make informed choices
about what would work and what we needed to work on in order of priority. Students
organized all actions on their own. They talked about safety, healthy lifestyle, and
analyzed student behaviours to target their actions so they would be successful.
Social Skills: Students worked together to create a bunch of actions they wanted to take
in the school. They had to plan and respect others in order to make group decisions and
be willing to take on different roles in groups week to week. They also accepted
responsibility of each action as they were student lead (including the club).
Communication: Students had to communicate with all school staff and students to get
them on board with our actions. They participated in a lot of viewing, listening, reading,
writing and speaking in order to acquire knowledge and make informed decisions.

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

Open-minded: looking into the different word problems or looking at pictures and stories
that explained different challenges the students didnt face themselves. Most student met
these experiences without judgment, but instead with empathy. Some students had to
stay open-minded to the actions of others, especially ones that were gross including
garbage picking and a worm compost bin. Principled: honest reflection on habits after
green quiz taken by each child. Empathy: through research, showing they cared about
issues and discussing ways to create change. Enthusiasm: for all their actions and
projects!

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.
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 does positive change look like? Why would someone invest so
much time in creating positive change? How could you create positive change?
These questions were most effective because the students could relate to them.
They could state what they had noticed in their own experiences and they opened
students up to logical reasoning and being rational about big issues.
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.
*I started to introduce articles as reading for their homework. The articles were about
positive changes or solutions that people are making. The students really enjoyed
these articles, and asked if they could have more. A few students came in early one
day and asked if they could use the computers to look up these articles. They had
seen our new Trello board, and asked if they could post ones they found interesting
about positive change on the board. Students began sharing and discussing articles
outside of class time.
*We went from reading about a compost program at a school, to having four plans of
action and talk of creating a club so the students could get others to join their quest
to make a positive change. Students suggested a plan to collect recycled objects to
create a Rube Goldberg machine at the end of the year with, they suggested picking
up litter around the school, creating a compost bin for food waste and creating
recycle bins that focused on collecting paper. After realizing this would be a lot of
extra work, they asked for permission to run a club and ask other to help. During the
club, students chose places to clean up, they made and checked on the
vermicompost bin, they collected and sorted paper from different classes around the
school and they used videos to help teach and learn more about the different actions
they were doing.
*One student came up with the idea to create a solar oven. She was tasked with
creating a design, and explanation and a list of materials to build it. On trello, she
collaborated with other students to collect links and choose a design. She explained
the choices to the class, and the students organized to bring in the materials needed.
The students constructed and used the oven to make a cookie as a treat for their
hard work!
*Students suggested planting plants later on when our compost is ready. They
wanted to plant food plants to cut down on costs of food and be more sustainable.
*One student expressed a desire to share our actions with the wider school
community. With my help, the students started a weekly blog where they updated
others on their progress and posted pictures for people to see.

International Baccalaureate Organization 2007

9. Teacher notes
This unit has been a blast! Students were enthusiastic about it from the start as
it gave them an opportunity to research injustice and DO something about it.
They have big hearts and were affected greatly by the problems and challenges
in the world. Their innovative minds came up with some great solutions, and
they absorbed all the information I threw at them. After introducing them to some
articles to read, students were asking for more and more. They got access
through our trello board to a list of great news sites for kids, and excitedly
shared new findings with each other in the morning, at UOI time and after school
on trello itself! They all felt very inspired and started suggesting different actions
they wanted to take. Over the course of an afternoon, we went from reading
about a compost program at a school, to having four plans of action and talk of
creating a club so the students could get others to join their quest to make a
positive change. This unit helped students think more in depth than just solving
solutions with a Band-Aid. The actions they chose were ones they believed to be
sustainable, and ones they could continue past our unit of inquiry. All students
were excited to be a part of spreading the word of the Global Goals, and one
even mentioned her dream that if all of the generations that are growing up now
can get on board with these goals, they wont know any different and they will be
able to make a huge change in the world.
Throughout the unit, students gave credit to each other for great ideas and
changed roles seamlessly to be able to accomplish them together. Most of the
students felt comfortable in all of the roles and did their best in every role to help
the team. Students became very independent, requesting to run a club on their
own, asking for assembly time to persuade others to help them in their mission
and carrying out duties and checks related to their plans.
As it was something the students were interested and invested in, they produced
some great writing that can now be shared with other classes as a way to help
spread awareness. Ive seen all of them grow and become more responsible
through the process.