Part B: Learning Plan

In this inquiry students will understand that:

• Symbols can represent ideas and convey information.
• Symbols can join people together and create a sense of belonging.
• Some symbols require action or specific behaviour.

Curricular Connections

Students will:

• Understand that countries, specifically Canada, use a variety of symbols to represent their country.

Essential Questions: Guiding Questions

• What are symbols and why do people respond to them?
  • What makes a symbol a symbol?
  • Why are symbols important? To groups?
  • Can symbols create feelings/emotion in people?

• Introduce a number of symbols to students and see if they know the word “symbol” or can identify it as a category to which all of these things belong.
  • Canada flag, Medicine Wheel, Provincial flag, Treaty flags.
  • Marketing symbols – Rider flag, Sparks, Beavers.
  • Safety and Information symbols – stop sign, traffic lights, (Red, yellow, green), H for hospital.
  • Spiritual symbols – eagle feather, braided sweetgrass, drums, cross.
  • Animal tracks, changing colours of leaves, animal coats.
• Alternately, present the word symbol and discuss its meaning with students and then have them generate a number of things they consider symbols.
  • Using the students’ examples of symbols begin to develop categories and group symbols.
  • Possible categories.
    • natural symbols – rabbits changing colour, geese migrating
    • man-made symbols – safety, information, nationalism/citizenship, belonging

• Present all visual symbols and have students group symbols into categories.
  • Categorizing activity where symbols fall within the circle and outside the circle.
  • Determine similarities between symbols, differences between symbols.
  • Possible categories:
    • natural symbols – rabbits changing colour, geese migrating
    • man-made symbols – safety, information, nationalism/citizenship
  • Surface reasoning as to why symbols were put into specific circle – connection to metacognition awareness.
  • Develop language around thinking i.e. “I put this inside the circle because…”
• Work with students to identify the category to which the symbols belong.
  • Symbols of nature, man-made symbols, safety symbols, national symbols.
• Surface feelings, thoughts, actions that symbols create in students.
  • Coordinate with senses – feel like, sound like, look like.
  • Develop understanding that some symbols engenderr certain levels of respect that leads to behaving differently around those symbols.

i.e. – Standing at attention when singing national anthem, or proper behaviour when an elder prays

• Begin with visual symbols and then move to auditory symbols such as jingles, songs, anthems.
• Do a walk around the school, community buildings, etc. and collect examples of symbols to add to students examples.
• Look for examples of symbols in books during read alouds or independent reading.

• Why are symbols important? to groups?
• What makes a symbol a symbol?/characteristics of a symbol?
• Why are symbols important to you? Explain the role symbols play in your life.

Have students demonstrate appropriate behaviours:

• Recognize and respond appropriately to national citizenship symbols/symbols such as, flags, Canadian, provincial flag, Métis flag, Treaty medal, Medicine Wheel, H – hospital.

• What symbol means something special to you? Draw a picture of it and tell what it is and why it is special.
• What symbol would you pick to represent the kind of person you are? Draw a picture of it. Tell why it is a good symbol to represent you.

Learning Plan

In this inquiry students will:

• Think about the way they use resources
• Think about ways to look after the environment
• Practice looking after their environment

Curricular Outcomes

Examine ways of managing tasks and resources in families and schools (RWK.1)

Understand different ways of sharing resources and responsibilities

• Develop and demonstrate stewardship of the environment in daily actions, in an effort to promote balance and harmony. (RWK.2)

Think about ways to look after the environment

Students will understand that they can take care of the world by taking care of their belongings/surroundings.

Essential Questions: Guiding Questions

• How do needs differ from wants?
  • Do we need everything we want?
• How can my community reduce waste?
• How can I care for my belongings/surroundings?
• How does my behaviour add to being a citizen?
  • How do I care for myself, others, the environment?

Vocabulary

• environment
• recycle
• reduce
• reuse
• community stewardship

• Present essential questions to students at the start of the exploration of study. This is what students will explore throughout the unit of study and it will also be the questions students will be required to answer in some fashion at the end of the unit of study.
  • Do we need everything we have? Do we need everything we want?
  • How can I reduce waste? (connect to student first, move to home, then community)
• Check – Know – What garbage and waste is? Recycle, Reduce, Reuse mean?
• Ask students to guess – how much garbage or waste they produce in a day? A week?
  • Surface students’ thinking or reasons as to why they made their guess
  • Come back to reasoning later to talk about the accuracy of their guesses and unpack their reasoning.
• If school currently has recycling and/or composting program, discuss with students what their understanding is of how the program works.
• Introduce concept of environmental stewardship – looking after the environment and the responsibility students have to try to protect and preserve the environment.
• Determine what the students know, understand, need to be able to do to master/answer the essential questions.
  • Create K-W-L chart for classroom.

• Exploring idea of Needs and Wants
  • Look around the classroom, in desk, in kindergarten bucket, anywhere there is a collection of items
  • What do we use in this room to… learn with? keep warm with? etc.
  • What is critical to: keeping us warm? learning? (begin to discriminate needs vs. wants)
  • How many of these things do we really need? How many could we do without?  Could we use something else instead?
  • Begin to classify items needed as to those that are new, reused, recycled
  • Chart/graph numbers of items in each category – Math connection counting – What do we use the most of? Do we recycle or throw out more things? 
• Exploring understanding of reducing waste
  • Check waste/garbage can – Have students look at the waste/garbage in the can at the end of the day. How many of these things are used only once?  Could we use something else instead?  Could we use parts of this waste garbage more than once?
  • Begin to classify items as to those that are new, reused, recycled
  • How many of those waste items are necessary – needs? How many are not necessary – wants or could we do without?
• Examining the things that are used in a day – needs
  • school needs – paper, electricity
  • personal needs – water, electricity
• Exploring understanding of existing recycling program
  • Discuss with students as to why they think the program is in place.
  • How does the program help the school? What would happen if the school didn’t have a recycling program?

• Needs vs. Wants.
  • Have students examine the things they use in a day only once and think of something else they could use instead that would be reused.
• Reducing the amount of waste.
  • Can the students reduce the amount of waste that they use in the classroom? Generate ideas for various items i.e., paper, waste from lunches, water, electricity
  • Set goals to reduce the amount of waste created by the classroom in a day – track progress
• School Recycling Program.
  • Have students find out how many classrooms take part in the school recycling program
  • How many homes recycle? Why do they choose to recycle?

Teachers can choose one question for the entire class to explore or can talk with students to have them choose the question for which they would like to provide an answer.

• How do needs differ from wants? / Do we need everything we want?
• How can my community reduce waste?
  • For preK students think of classroom only – How can my classroom reduce waste?
  • K students substitute following question –
    • How can I reduce waste?
    • How can my classroom reduce waste?
    • How can my family reduce waste?
  • How can I care for my belongings/surroundings?
  • What am I learning about being a citizen? What story does my behaviour tell about my citizenship?

Throughout these lessons, students have been exploring these questions. In groups or individually have them answer one of the questions above using the following methods:

• role play
• make posters
• Write a story/jingles/songs/poems

Ongoing indicators of learning

• Watch students and notice if they demonstrate environmentally responsible behaviours in the classroom and school (e.g., take only what is needed in order to provide for future needs, reduce consumption, practice water conservation, turn off lights when leaving a room, recycle, compost).
• Revisit K-W-L chart as classroom to see if questions and ‘want to knows’ were addressed.

• What do you do to take care of the environment? How do you know it is working?
• Why do people drop litter? How would you convince them to pick up their garbage?
• What am I learning about being a citizen?