Global Connections - Description of a Guided Inquiry Design collaborative unit of work with Year 5 students, class teacher and teacher librarian.

1. Global Connections
A Guided Inquiry Design unit of work
Mrs Catherine Havenaar
& Mrs Alinda Sheerman
with Year 5

3. Key Focus
What impact does Australia have on the
world stage through our global
connections?
Contributing Questions:
• In what different arenas does Australia
contribute to the world?
• What are our responsibilities in making
sure all people are treated with respect

4. Planning
Teaching team met to plan:
• Programme of work following the GID steps :
http://guidedinquiryoz.edublogs.org/practice-2/primary-
guided-inquiry-units/
• Assessment for learning, in learning and of learning
• Group work and sharing of knowledge enables the whole
class to gain understanding of the whole topic area.
• Technology and learning platform: Edmodo
• Specific Differentiation needed: ‘text to speech’ for one
student

5. Step 1 OPEN
OPEN: Create a powerful ‘open’
that invites students to engage
in the inquiry topic.

6. OPEN: Prior knowledge of global organisations that
the students recognised.
• Activity 1: Complete pre-test to determine knowledge
levels about Australia’s connection to other countries.
Provide students with a question and answer sheet that
they will complete as they move around 10 stations. Each
station has a visual prompt relating to a different idea of
global connection. Students have four minutes at each
station and identify the prompt they know least about.
• Other Activities: Watch “Global Connections” video on
ClickView; Read book – “Around the world by lunch”;
CDRom “The Global Village” – oral activities

7. Learning Scenario - Students
Learning scenario
You have seen an overview of a couple of health issues as an introductory session.
You will now investigate, through Guided Inquiry, a health issue and relate it to an individual or group of
people.
Select a person or group of people affected with a health issue
Pose an inquiry question
Form an Inquiry Circle with others who have similar questions/issues and discuss your initial findings.
Conduct research and write a report to answer your question:
Describe the issue, factors, strategies and actions that could promote a healthy change and finally write a
conclusion covering:
What health promotion approaches have been used previously in relation to your inquiry area.
How successful have these approaches been?
Do you think the principles of social justice been considered in previous health promotion strategies?
Explain why/ why not
In writing your report remember the SEXY acronym
S= State your argument
E= Explain your point
X= eXample to demonstrate
Y= whY
Share this conclusion with your Inquiry Circle
You will finally share your report findings on “The Hot Seat” relating your issue and
health program to the Ottowa Charter and encourage questions which you will
endeavour to answer.

8. Step 2 Immerse
IMMERSE: Students build their
background knowledge by immersion in
the content. Students reflect on the
content and select a topic for further
investigation.

9. Immerse
• Students discussed Article 25 of poster of The
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and
recapped the importance of Australia’s role in
providing aid and humanitarian support.
• Students then selected an organisation and drew its
logo with a description of its elements and meaning.
• Links to all the organisations selected were put onto
a Diigo sites and used from the class Edmodo
learning platform. Students also enjoyed sharing
sites they found.

12. Step 3 Explore
EXPLORE: Students browse and scan
through a wide range and variety of
resources to explore interesting ideas
around their selected topic. “Go broad”

13. Explore
Students determined,
according to their own
interest, an organisation to
research and read widely
from Diigo links, books
and subscriptions such as
online encyclopaedias and
Skwirk and videos from
organisation.
Scaffolds were provided
for recording information
and the questions they
raised about that
organisation.

15. Step 4 Identify
IDENTIFY: Students develop an inquiry
question or questions and form a focus for
their research. The question or questions will
frame the rest of the inquiry.

16. Identify
• Students wrote a research question (with
help from the teaching team) to focus their
exploration and then four contributing
questions which were placed into a jigsaw
scaffold and a mind map.

19. Step 5 Gather
GATHER: collect detailed information
from a variety of information sources –
“Go deep”

20. Gather
• Answers were gathered in their books and
throughout students were assisted with
aspects of information literacy by the teacher
librarian – everything from determining best
sources of information to writing a
Bibliography.

22. Step 6 Create
CREATE: Organise their gathered
information to create their product

23. Now for the real fun!
Students created an organisation of their own based on the tenets
of the one they had been researching. They had to create a name,
logo, slogan, aims, goals and a script for a one minute infomercial
which featured the student introducing their agency. Because they
had selected an organisation originally based on their own interest
we had organisations created for everything from wildlife
conservation to soccer. This also integrated their Visual Arts and
Writing programs: http://guidedinquiryoz.edublogs.org/practice-2/primary-guided-
inquiry-units/)

24. Getting right
into the
‘Third Space’!

25. Logos of created Organisations

28. Set an example!
Catherine and I had a discussion
about how she could be involved
in a fun way to model their tasks.
It was decided that she should be
the overarching organisation with
which the students all had to
register their created
organisations! After a lot of
thought and laughter we came up
with OREO: Office of the Registry
of Earth’s Organisations. A logo
was created and Catherine made
her own infomercial as an
example for the students.
See it here:
https://vimeo.com/192400121

29. Step 7 Share
SHARE: “Tell the story”

30. OREO Summit
A Summit was organised to which all
parents, the Head of Primary and the
Principal were invited…
In groups of five the student’s
infomercials were played. Each group
then entered to sit around the OREO
table dressed for their role in their
organisation. Parents had been given
prepared questions to ask and the
students in a very professional
manner, stood and answered for their
organisation.
Morning tea was served to all and of
course there was a distinct Oreo
theme!

39. Step 8 Evaluate
Students (and teacher team) reflect on
their content learning and the progress
through the inquiry process.

40. Evaluate
Teaching Team:
• Catherine and I discussed at length what went well and what
needed fixing. I interviewed her and her responses have been
recorded here:
• Student achievements: https://vimeo.com/128838865
• Student Engagement: https://vimeo.com/128838303
• Integration and evaluation: https://vimeo.com/128837052
• Teacher Librarian Collaboration: https://vimeo.com/128837051
• Integration and ‘Thinking’ Questions:
https://vimeo.com/128837050

41. Evaluate: Students
Class Activity based on de Bono’s thinking hats
With a ‘bomb’ App for
a timer, students
rotated in groups to
sheets of cardboard
and wrote evaluative
comments according
to the colour of the
cardboard.

42. De Bono’s Hats

49. Evaluate: Parents:
• The Year 5 parents were amazed by the
enthusiasm of their children throughout this
whole unit of work and after the “Summit” a few
contacted the school with comments about the
enthusiastic learning of the students
• The number of parents who came to the Summit
and morning tea indicated their support that was
evident throughout.
• The following emails were received from
parents:

52. Share Again – Widely!
• Last year I was invited to speak at the NSW annual
conference of the Teacher Librarian Professional
Learning Community. The topic I had to speak on was TL
– changing pedagogy to increase student engagement
and learning.
• I decided that I should invite along Catherine and also a
student with his parents. I gave them half the time and we
all spoke about our learning experience on this unit.
• Needless to say, a number of teacher librarians were
enthused to learn more and use Guided Inquiry Design
collaboratively taught with the assistance of the teacher
librarian certainly to engage students and increase their
learning.

55. After ‘Saying and Doing’ these students will certainly
remember about the purpose and goals of Global
Organisations for a long time to come!