Oh, the places you’ll go
This term, our Year 4 students have been undertaking an inquiry-based project into places: local, national and international.
Ms McNerney and Ms Gordon’s students have been looking into how their perceptions of places have an impact on how they’re managed and cared for. After exploring some of the places that are important to them, they turned their attention to UNESCO World Heritage sites.
They pondered some of the following questions: Who or what is UNESCO? Who decides which places become World Heritage sites? What happens if a World Heritage Site is not looked after properly? Can it lose its status? What protections do these sorts of places need? Who and what do they need protecting from?
The students were then encouraged to get ‘crafty’. They were given the option to choose to work independently or individually to create a model and a digital research piece. They then drew up agreements and working contracts about managing their time and sharing resources.
Isabella said, “We needed to be self-managers because we needed to use our time wisely and plan out what we were going to do each day. This meant that we would not go off track and have less setbacks.”
Mia said, “We were open-minded to others’ ideas. Especially if one of our team was away, we needed to be respectful of their ideas and include them in the decision-making process. Using Google docs and other shared apps helped us with this.
Olivia said, “Sometimes we needed to be risk takers as we were unsure if some of our crafting ideas would work. When it worked, we felt proud of our efforts and achievements. When it didn’t, we had to think of how to find a way to fix it.”
Abigail said, “We were communicators and discussed our plans as a team. Our team had no passengers, we both worked together and took responsibility.”
At the end of the project, the girls then presented their final products and research to their peers in the Junior School, sharing their in-depth knowledge and understanding of their chosen topic.