Inquiry Passion Projects

  Students in Gr. 4, 5 & 6 began presenting their passion projects this week. The focus for the past 5 weeks has been on creating an inquiry question on something they were curious about and/or passionate about learning.  To do this students were asked to delve into research in a variety of formats including books, the Internet, newspapers and personal interviews.  Students are presenting the question and answers to their peers in a format they choose (poster board, power point, web tools such as voice thread, wikis, prezi's etc.). 

        Coming up with a deep thinking inquiry question is difficult and takes practice, lots of discussion and in most cases a narrowing of the topic to create a deeper understanding of what the student wants to learn and how that learning may transform their thinking.  Below is a question/reflection from a Gr. 5 student.  

Question by Gr. 5 student
How can my new understanding of the German culture help me understand other countries and their cultures?

Reflection by Gr. 5 student

I think this project helped me understand different cultures because I learned that each and every country has a different way of life and we think its like an alien world but in reality their cultures aren’t that different from ours, of course they don’t eat the same food as us, or speak the same language as us but their still people, right? So really there culture isn't much different from ours, In Germany they go to school, they have the same jobs as us, and they celebrate most of the same holidays as us. So I learned that there are not a lot of differences between us and other cultures.