In Year 6 the students have an opportunity to demonstrate all of the learning skills they have accumulated over their primary years in their final unit-the exhibition! For the exhibition unit, the students work independently or in groups with mentors (teachers on staff) to collectively study a topic. Our class has investigated the topic of Immigration for our Sharing the Planet transdisciplinary theme.
Central Idea: When we move, we affect our world community. The students have been learning about the following sub-topics: population, government & economy, land & house prices, pollution, natural resources, language, crime and safety, jobs (creation/loss), and culture.
Here are some reflections from the students on this experience.Journal Entry3 (by Saif Khawaja - Natural Resources and Immigration)Today I worked with my mentor, like I said my mentor is Ms Michael so first we went to her office and sat down and talked about what we were doing, we said our unit is about immigration and she asked does anyone know what immigration is, we told her it’s like when you move to a new country or city that’s immigration, then she asked us about our lines of inquiry we told her that we should pick the main ones, like how does Natural Resources effect our world, so we decided to pick where does oil, gas, water come from, and how much oil, gas, water do we use and the final it think it was how does Natural Resources connect with immigration.
After that we went to the computer room and researched, we red some books and I searched on website called
www.gas.com/ I found info about gas, so I read that information and then wrote it in my own words, and Ms Carrie took a picture of us working, at the end we had a group meeting if we want to ask them question and if they want to remind us to do.
Journal Entry #2 (by Saja Gharabli - Culture and Immigration)Today is Tuesday and in the morning I was afraid because I didn’t get any Info for my immigration project, even I knew the name of my topic wrong, I thought it was third kids culture but it wasn’t like that. First thing I did when unit lesson started, I took my Exhibition notebook and I looked at my lines of inquiry and I was thinking of how can I find information that I can learn from it all things that fits in my Lines of inquiry. Then I started researching in books that I took from the Marylebone library, and they helped me a bit in finding some questions answers that it was in my head a week or more, then I did put small paper in each page of the book that I thought it may be helpful for my topic as I was told so, but then I thought that researching in the internet may be helpful too. After 5 minutes I went to the computer room for some research and sat on the chair in front of the computer I’m using. I went to GOOGLE website and I wrote third kids culture to research but then I knew it was third culture kids from researching, I found some information that shows what does third culture kids means and it went easy in my brain. And I understood that TCKs means when any child spend along time in other country leaving extended family or maybe whole family, and when this child travels more effects may happen in this child for example language, religion, region, accent, houses and family. The child will feel sad if his/her parents aren’t coming with him/her, and sometimes parents doesn’t come because they doesn’t have enough money to travel and have a house or because of some natural disasters may happen in the country that they’re afraid of and their child is going to this country like China or Burma.
I found that the hardest thing in this project is researching and finding info for our topics, and I felt scared that I might not find any good info I need for the topic I’m learning.
On the end of the school day I went to my mentor asking for help in finding the best way to research for 3rd culture kids effects, and I’m sure that I did the right thing in asking miss Courtney my mentor, because really I got fantastic info for my project and I didn’t think of that much of helpful information, miss Courtney give me third culture book for researching and I’m so interested in reading that book, and now I’ sure that reading books is the best way to research.
I have some ideas of answering my questions like interview the kids in the school and ask them what they feel when 3rd culture kids happen to them, then we talked about how we can get the best information and learn from our last project in unit in the primary school.
