International Inquirers: Goods and Services, Needs and Wants

In PE we wrapped up our cooperative games unit with three groups of students each creating their own cooperative game.

As their first game, Roller Freeze Tag was more of a competitive game than a cooperative one, Leon, Kazuaki, Anna, Sarang and Moe had to rethink their game and came up with a modified version of the Cross the River game that we played early on in the year.

Haruki, Luke, Linke and Mizuki came up with a game that I will call Scooter Ball Tag. Each team had a member on a scooter who could tag members of the other teams. To help protect the players from being tagged each team had a ball that they could pass to each other and would act as a barrier to protect that player from being tagged. The cooperative element was that teams needed to pass the ball to their teammates before they got tagged.

Finally, the third team of Soichiro, Ella, Lingyi, Kaito and Pauline came up with the game Train Race. For this race, each team boarded a train - 4 roller trolleys connected or tied together and were given 2 juggling pins. Teams had to use the juggling pins to help them row their train across the playground.

This week we began inquiring into our second unit of the year under the transdisciplinary theme 'How We Organize Ourselves.' On Monday, students started off by writing lists of everything that they had used that morning. We watched a short video about Goods and Services and then sorted some of the items into goods if they were things that they buy and could touch or services if they were things that they pay someone else to do for them.

We also went over the difference between needs and wants by imagining a scenario where they have been chosen to set up a new colony on another planet. Since cargo space was limited on the spacecraft groups of 2 or 3 students were initially given a list of 45 items and told that they had to choose 16 to bring with them. Interestingly, the first item that one group chose was a cellphone! They were told that the new planet had a good atmosphere with air to breathe, gravity similar to Earth and no aliens. They also had a 6 week supply of food and water to eat once they arrived and could expect to be on the planet for several months to a year. They were also told to make sure that they brought things that would help them survive. Once each group decided on their 16 items, they were told that unfortunately, the spaceship was a bit smaller than expected so they would only be able to bring 8 items. This forced the groups to renegotiate the items that they had and prioritize which they would bring. There was a lot of great reasoning and discussions within the groups. Different groups also had different ways of deciding on what they would bring. For example, one group with 3 members decided that it would be fair for each member to choose 5 things that they wanted to bring and then decided on the 16th item together as a group. Another group chose items one by one as each member would explain the reason to the group and then the group would either agree or disagree. Once each group had its 8 items, they were informed that it would still be too much so the new allowance was for only 4 items, so the groups had to narrow down and pick only the 4 most important items. Which should be those that cover our most basic survival needs - but this is not what happened. So the head of the mission Captain Brabant had to make one more decision as commander - to decide on which of the groups to send based on which had chosen the most items necessary for survival. In the end, Leon, Ella and Mizuki's group was selected as they had chosen - a full set of clothes to keep them warm and safe, an extra supply of water and water purification tablets to use for drinking and washing, some baby chicks that would provide them with eggs and more baby chicks in the future to eat, and tree saplings to provide them with oxygen. In the ensuing discussion, we reviewed our basic needs - air, water, food, shelter (and clothes). It was decided that the spacecraft could be our shelter and that it has very hi-tech toilets! (Yes, someone really was concerned about what kind of toilets they would have access to on the new planet!)

In language, we are starting to wrap up our unit on informational writing and spent some time inquiring into how authors write strong introductions. Students examined some mentor texts to find out how professional writers create good introductions. Leon pointed out that they make it entertaining or exciting. Moe noticed that they sometimes tell a mini-story to bring us into the setting. Linke revealed that some ask the reader questions. While others pointed out that some use dialogue or quotations, or introduce how the book is organized. We also learned that it is difficult to write an introduction when you start writing a book because you don't know what the book is really about. That's why we're doing it now as the students begin to create their final draft of their books on the Storyjumper webpage because now their books are almost complete and they have a better understanding of what the whole book is really about. Hopefully, they will finish the final edit of their books next week. Otherwise, they will have some homework over the fall break!

Halloween Party - Friday, October 22nd

Next Friday, we will celebrate Halloween at DSKI. Students are encouraged to dress up and will have the chance to win prizes for the Spookiest costume and most creative costume! We are also competing with the other classes for the best door decoration. Today we held a mini-door decoration planning competition within our class to help us decide on how we want our doors to look! We had 4 amazing designs and in the end we decided to use all 4!! Two on the outside of the doors (the two that had the most votes will be on the outside of the doors facing the hallway) and two on the inside of the doors! We will continue decorating on Monday. Students are encouraged to bring materials or things they have made at home over the weekend in to decorate on Monday.