Planning the inquiry

1. What is our purpose?

Class/grade: Grade 5

Age group: 10-11 y/o

1a) To inquire into the following:

School: Domuschola International School

School code: 7800

transdisciplinary theme

Title:

An inquiry into the nature of the self; beliefs and values; personal, physical,
mental,social and spiritual health; human relationships including families,
friends, communities and cultures; rights and responsibilities; what it means
to be human.
Central idea

Who We Are

Teacher(s): Emilia, Bea, Brenn, Dean, Carmina

Date: August 4 - September 8, 2014
Proposed duration: 6 weeks over 48 hours

Changes that people experience at different stages of their lives affect their
evolving sense of self.
1b) Summative assessment task(s):

2. What do we want to learn?

What are the possible ways of assessing students understanding of the central
idea? What evidence, including student-initiated actions, will we look for?

What are the key concepts (form, function, causation, change, connection, perspective,
responsibility, reflection) to be emphasized within this inquiry?
Focus Key Concepts: Function, Change, Responsibility

Goal: To come up with a presentation about an issue that adolescents face, the
cause of this issue, what this issue tells about adolescents, and possible
solutions to this issue.

Factors that contribute to well-being during adolescence

Audience: Students, Teacher

Scenario: The Department of Education has scheduled a youth celebration with
the theme, Empowering the Youth. Because of this, your group was assigned to
do a presentation that would show an issue that adolescents face, the cause of

this issue, what this issue tells about adolescents and possible solutions to this

issue.

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What lines of inquiry will define the scope of the inquiry into the central idea?
Changes that happen as individuals grow

Role: Poets, Artists, Actors/Actresses

Product: role-play, poetry , poster or any modes for presentation

Related Concepts: Identity, Maturity, Well-being, System

How relationships contribute to our own self-concept

What teacher questions/provocations will drive these inquiries?
Why am I changing as I grow?
What are the different physical, social, emotional and intellectual changes that happen to
individuals as they grow?
Why do these changes happen over time?
How do the changes that we undergo affect us?
Why do we take care of our well-being?
How do we take care of ourselves?
What are the factors that contribute to our well-being during adolescence?
How do these factors affect our well-being during adolescence?

Planning the inquiry

3. How might we know what we have learned?

4. How best might we learn?

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?

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?

Students create an illustrated concept/mind map about what they know about the
Stages of Life.
What are the possible ways of assessing student learning in the context of the
lines of inquiry? What evidence will we look for?
Line of Inquiry

What will be assessed?

How will evidence be collected?

The physical, social,

Students understanding that
emotional and intellectual different changes occur in
changes that occur
every stages of our lives.
throughout life

Students select one stage of human

development and using doodling as a
product, they doodle the different changes
people experience in such a stage. They
are going to present their doodle in class.

Factors that contribute to Students understanding that

well-being during
adolescents can attain welladolescence
being if they consider the
factors that contribute to it.

Students select two factors that would

contribute to well-being during adolescence.
With these two factors, they try to act them
out in class depending on the method they
want to do it. As they act them out, they
explain how it could contribute to well being,
e.g. The factor is eating healthy food. With
this, the student may conduct a cooking
class in school on a certain healthy menu.

Students understanding that

self-concept is an internal
model which comprises selfassessments in which
relationships contribute to it.

Students identify the different relationships

that they have right now. They select their

top two favored relationship and then

explain they were able to contribute to their
self-concepts. Their products may be in a
form of any texts, posters or any other
methods that they deem suitable.

How relationships
contribute to our selfconcept.

#1- Stages of Human Development Pictures Gallery Walk (Zoom-in)

Students have a gallery walk with pictures showing the different stages of life (infant to old person). As they pass
through the pictures, they will look closely at the small bit of image that is revealed in each of the photos. They will
share and write what they know on each of them.
What do you see or notice?
What new things do you see?
What new things are you wondering about?
What lingering questions remain with you about this image?
#2 - Picture Analysis (Think-Puzzle-Explore)

Students will be provided with pictures of the circulatory system, respiratory system and the reproductive system.
What do you think you know about these photos?
What questions or puzzles do you have about these photos?
How might we explore the puzzles we have about these photos?

(continuation: please see attachment A)

What opportunities will occur for transdisciplinary skills development and for the
development of the attributes of the learner profile?
A. Transdisciplinary Skills
Thinking Skills: Analysis- Students will be able to analyze the different stages of life where they see the relationships of these stages and
find their unique characteristics.
Social Skills: Respecting Others - Students will be able to respect the fact that people undergo different stages in life and recognize that
not all people go through the same stages due to some factors.
Adapting variety of group roles - Students will be able to understand what behavior is appropriate in a given situation and act on them
accordingly especially that they are going through the puberty stage.
Communication Skills: Listening and Speaking - Students will be able to develop and improve on these skills as they discuss and share
about their researches and listen to the points of view of others.
Reading and Writing - Students improve their comprehension skills as they read a variety of resources for their research at the same time
taking down notes on what they have read.
Self-Management Skills: Healthy Lifestyle- Understanding the concept of personal well-being will lead the students to observe a healthy
lifestyle. Codes of Behavior- Learning the concepts of well-being and maturity will lead the students to know and apply appropriate rules.
Research Skills: Formulating Questions- Students will be able to develop more skills in formulating questions for their research.
Observing- Students will be able develop more strategies on how to observe details needed for research.
B- Learner Profile

Open-minded- Students will be able to develop this profile when they are able to know and understand that there are different
changes in peoples lives and these changes have effects on them.

Balanced- Students will be able to develop this profile when they learn and apply the different factors that will contribute to
their well-being.

5. What resources need to be gathered?

What people, places, audio-visual materials, related literature, music, art, computer software, etc, will be available?

PEOPLE AND PLACES

nutritionists
the school nurse
doctors
gym instructors
the school guidance counselor
psychologists
LITERATURE
Who Am I? (RAZ)
The Missing Piece
AUDIO-VISUAL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr7xxZPg2pI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRQC5ht23vU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRQC5ht23vU
How will the classroom environment, local environment, and/or the community be used to facilitate the inquiry?
Books, posters, charts and magazines about the unit will be displayed in the classroom. Field trips to the health centers, hospitals or salons will also be done.

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Reflecting on the inquiry

6. To what extent did we achieve our purpose?

7. To what extent did we include the elements of the PYP?

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.

What were the learning experiences that enabled students to:

The students were engaged to learn about the stages of life and who they are as a person.
These engagements were through group dynamics like collaboration and sharing of ideas to
come up with an output from the task given to them. Groups also reported or presented their
outputs to the class for evaluation and interaction with the other groups.
The relevance of the activities to the central idea were developed by presenting varied
articles and through videos that let them understand more about the stages of life and the
changes that each stage undergoes. With these activities, the students were able to give a
connection about the changes that they have undergone, and which they will soon be going
through. They were able to give connections too with the changes that they have observed
with their family members. This made them understand why their older siblings/relatives who
are in the adolescence stage are acting differently from them. It made them realize too that,
like their older siblings/relatives, they will all go through this big change in the adolescence
stage.
The unit per se is meaningful because the students were made aware of what changes they
will be experiencing very soon, especially that they are now in the puberty stage. By knowing
these changes and the issues that go with them, the students were able to inquire on the
different responsibilities and ways on how to deal with these issues which made them more
aware of their well-being.

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.

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

learn?
Function: The students had a hard time and hesitated at first to discuss the function of
the reproductive system. So, scaffolding was conducted through a video about puberty
and adolescence. It was through this video that the students were able to understand
that the function of reproduction has an impact on our body system
Change: The students were able to understand this concept when they inquired about
the different stages of life and the changes that a person experiences in each of these
stages.
Responsibility: The students were able to generalize that, as people grow, they get
more responsibilities in maintaining a healthy lifestyle to attain well-being.

demonstrate the learning and application of particular transdisciplinary skills?

Thinking Skill: The students made an analysis of some of the facts that they have
gathered from their reading and that were written in their Cornell notes templates. They were
also came up with a good synthesis of all the information they gathered as evidenced by
their sorting-out engagements.
Communication Skill: The students were allowed to share their ideas from their discussion
in their group through output presentation and evaluation. They were also asked to give their
comments or addendums to what were presented. They also raised questions for
clarification. Comprehension skills were also developed here when they read a variety of
resources, at the same time taking down notes using the Cornell Notes template.

As to our assessments, while the formative assessment tasks given and tools
were geared toward knowing how we could help them understand the central idea,
it could have been better if the summative assessment given was performance
based. While it is true that our summative assessment gave us a clear picture of
the students understanding of the central idea, it could have been more clearer.

Social Skill: The interactions of the students through group activities how they display
their cooperation with their group mates, how they listen to others reports or ideas, how they
react to ideas that were new to them or shared by others, and the behavior they show every
time they had to work with groups were clear manifestations of their social skill.

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

Open-minded: The students were able to develop this profile because they were able to
understand the reasons why people act differently.

Evidence to show that the activities were connected or related to the central idea included
the construction of their concentric circles/squares to show their synthesis of the different
changes that people experience in the different stages of life, the factors that contribute to
the well-being of adolescents, and their responsibility in dealing with the issues that
adolescents undergo and how to attain well-being.

Balanced: The students were able to develop this profile because they learned the different
responsibilities and ways on how they could attain well-being with their age.

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

Reflecting on the inquiry

8. What student-initiated inquiries arose from the learning?

9. Teacher notes

Record a range of student-initiated inquiries and student questions and highlight

any that were incorporated into the teaching and learning.

Tasks accomplished by groups worked well with the students. Organizing their
ideas and taking down notes through the use of Cornell notes were effective in
organizing their ideas. The synthesis using different graphic organizers were also
effective in showing their learning.

How does the change that a person experience affect his/her life?
Why do changes happen as we grow older?
What is it that changes in us the most as we grow older?
How does our attitude change as we grow older and as we go through life?
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.
REFLECT- Most of the students reflections were all about them telling that they are able to
know more about themselves and because of these, they have developed and are developing
some strategies on how to resolve their personal issues thereby leading them to their wellbeing.
CHOOSE- With the help of the information they gathered from their research specially those
from the health and psychology sectors and during our field trips, helped us to be more
reflective of the things that we need to be doing in order to attain our well-being. They are
able to have this sense of sensitivity in choosing the things that they need to be doing in order
for them to be always healthy.
ACT- Since the students are already in their puberty stage, they have shown empathy with
each other like when at one time, one of the students experienced her first menstruation, the
students even the boys didnt show any untoward expressions or behaviour. One of the
students even volunteered to bring her to the clinic and the other volunteered to buy a
sanitary napkin from the bookstore.
As compared before, these students were not that confident but since we had this unit, there
is a showing how their level of confidence increased.
As to well-being, the students were observed talking about healthy stuff like they share how
they exercise, the music lessons that they are learning and the food that theyre eating. One
of the students, also shared how he talked to his dad to stop smoking.

International Baccalaureate Organization 2011

Though the sharing of ideas from their group discussions made the students able
to tackle some of the concepts of the second and third line of inquiry, the students
enthusiasm about learning more of the adolescence stage was suddenly stopped
since we had to finish everything for the summative assessment.
Maybe next time, proper time management should be considered.

Attachment A
Tuning in and preparation to find out:
What variety of activities will be used to:

engage all students in the topic? hook?

assess prior knowledge?
refine further planning?
lead into the finding out experiences?
Engagement and gathering prior knowledge, pre-assessment, questions for inquiry, goal setting. Sometimes students will require some immersion in the topic if little is known/ experienced.

Continuation:
#3- What Makes Me Happy?

The story The Missing Piece is shown and discussed to elicit the students concept of happiness or satisfaction. Students discuss prompts through Think-PairShare. They are also given prompts to respond to and make personal connections to develop self-awareness;
- Was there a time you felt there a was missing piece in your life (unhappy, incomplete, unsatisfied)?
- What are those missing pieces in your life?
- How will those missing pieces impact or affect your life as a person? or What do you think will be the impact if you dont find the missing pieces?
Students come up with a graphic organizer to document their responses. This graphic organizer will be used to compare their complete self with their current self

The Sinking Boat Game: Students are asked to write on a piece of paper 10 things that are so important to them and will make them happy (can be material things,
people, dream, etc.). They then board a ship with these things. As they move on, the are asked to throw one paper at a time (like throwing away or giving up
something) so that the boat wouldnt sink. This will result in deciding which is really more important to each one of them. W hen theyre left with just one thing, well
further discuss concepts, issues and questions about this engagement and how is this related to their lives.
Students are given a prompt What makes you happy?. They will write their ideas on post-its and paste them on a graphic organizer (individual). The concepts and
connections theyve made from the previous activities will be very effective here.

#4- Who Am I? (Self-Portrait)

Students draw a poster of themselves. The left half of it should show how they perceive themselves. The other half of it should show who they are as a son/daughter, a
classmate, a friend, a teammate, a chat mate, etc.

Finding Out

Sorting Out

Experiences to assist students to gather new information about the topic

Experiences and texts that add to the knowledge base. Emphasis on gathering first-hand data in a
range of ways (usually shared experiences)

Data collection

LOI#1 Changes that happen as individuals grow

Students are grouped according to the different aspects of changes physical,

emotional, social, intellectual. Based on their assigned group, they inquire into the
different changes that happen in the different stages of life infancy, early
childhood, school age, adolescence, etc.

Gauging, organizing or representing new information

Activities to assist students to process and work with the information and ideas they have gathered about the
topic (including exploring values)
Organizing, analyzing and communicating the information gathered using a range of vehicles (e.g through
Maths, Arts, English, Drama, Music or IT)

Using doodle art as a means, student doodle the different physical, social,
emotional, intellectual changes that people experience in their lives.

They interview parents, siblings, aunts, cousins and schoolmates

to learn firsthand from them the different changes that they
experienced in certain stages.
o They watch video clips related to the stages of life.
o They use the Internet to research for more information related to
these changes in the different stages of life.
Students measure their weights, heights and compute their BMIs. They
discuss the importance of knowing their BMIs and find out further the
normal BMIs should people have in the different stages of life.

LOI#2 Factors that contribute to well-being during adolescence

Students review the changes that happen in adolescence stage. They

identify the different issues accompanying these changes. With these
issues they look at how they address these issues in order for them to
attain well-being. They also look at other ways on how adolescents attain
well-being.
o They interview the guidance counselor of the school, a
psychologist, doctor and nutritionist.
o They go for a field trip to the Ateneo Youth Center to interview
college students about their different issues and their coping
mechanisms.
o They go for a field trip to a sports club.
Students perform different physical exercises/activities. They then find
out the effects of these exercises on their well-being.

Using a video maker application, students present how they could attain wellbeing.

LOI #3 How relationships contribute to our own self-concept

Students analyze the different changes, issues and well-being that
adolescents have, and look at how these contribute to their self-concepts. They
then proceed to find-out also how their relationships could contribute to their selfconcepts. This is part of their interview with the people above.
Students explore how different preference of music show who they are.

Students write their autobiography highlighting on their self-identity.

Going Further
Activities to challenge and extend
Raising new questions, extending experiences, challenging assumptions. May be individually negotiated.

Students conduct an individual and independent research about the questions that arose during the finding-out phase.
Drawing conclusions
Raising new questions, extending experiences, challenging assumptions. May be individually negotiated. Students draw conclusions of what they have learnt. This is an
important time to evaluate the success of the unit and the needs and achievements of individuals. This is where students put it all together.

Students come up with a generalization chart incorporating some of the concepts learned in class.

Reflecting and Taking Action

To reflect on what has been learnt and process of learning. It is important that students be given opportunities to act upon what they have learnt. Actions are things that students can themselves and from which
they can see results.

Students will help in the promotion of a healthy lifestyle by making sure to bring healthy foods for snacks and lunch and to avoid buying junk foods.
Fitness Advice: Students write an advice in response to a letter from a person who has an unhealthy lifestyle. The advice should help the letter sender make the
right choices concerning a health/well-being issue.