New UOI: What Makes You Rock? (Includes the first 2 activities of the unit)

Date: Thursday 12 May 2016

Name of Activity: New UOI: What Makes You Rock?

Unit: What Makes You Rock?

Learner Profile: Thinker

Attitude: Curiosity

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We have a new UOI: What Makes You Rock? This UOI is all about the earth's surface and how and why it changes over time. We have been introduced to this UOI by having a bunch of pictures of the earth's surface on each table in the classroom. Then we got some orange sticky notes and started to write down some observations about the pictures. When time was up, our teacher told us to get green sticky notes and go back to the pictures and write on them what we wonder about the picture. The next day, we all got into pairs in our tables. Each pair had a rock that they had to observe. We also had to write notes about what we noticed. Me and my partner got a smooth, black rock. It was very thin and had some cracks in it. We thought that it may have come from a beach or a lake because it was very smooth and shiny. Also because we thought we couldn't find a rock that was dark greenish-black near hills or mountains and other places like that. So we assumed that it came from somewhere with a lot of water. Here are the notes me and my partner wrote:

• May be from somewhere close to the ocean/beach since it's kind of the color of seaweed
• It might have also come from a lake or something, due to the fact that it's flat and shiny. It's not really the kind of rock that is good for skipping across the water because it's very fragile and can break easily
• Sparkles different colors when you shine light on it
• Some small cracks in the rock
• It's very smooth
• It's very shiny. It looks like someone covered it with plastic or tape so that it is more protected and won't break too easily.

How these activities showed being a Thinker is because when you had to write what you wondered about the images, you had to think about what is a good question that is not completely obvious, and a bad question.

How this activity showed Curiosity is because if you look at a picture and then immediately say that nothing about the picture interests you, you won't be successful. Instead if you ask yourself: OK, what about this picture interests me? And if you can't find anything, just go to another picture. 

This was a very good way to introduce us to the new (and possibly last) Unit Of Inquiry. I am very curious to see what our final project for the unit is going to be!