May the Force be With You

 No, unfortunately our new unit is not about Star Wars, but it is about the forces that are all around us. This week, we began our 4th unit of inquiry under the trans-disciplinary theme How the World Works. Our central idea is: Forces and materials can be used to help us. The three lines of inquiry that we will be looking into are: What forces are, how forces work, and how we use forces to make things work.

We began the unit during PE class on Monday as the students used different types of locomotion to move around the playground in a game of Follow the Leader. 

We also had some fun playing flag tag.

We also experienced forces first hand as we played with the roller boards and had some races across the playground. 

Back in class, the students helped to sort out the central idea and lines of inquiry.

Once sorted out, we tried to define the unknown words - forces and materials and then did some work on discovering what they are and found out that forces are either a push or a pull.

Next, the students worked together with a partner (or in a group of 3) to create a poster that defined and clearly shows the meaning of some of our key words so far.

We ended the week playing a board game to review different examples of pushes or pulls.

In math, we have been learning about symmetry and patterning and the students created their own symmetrical images with geometric shapes. 

We were also happy to have two new classmates join our class this week, Semyon and Itsugo. Welcome to DSKI!