My Family - Individual Inquiry

Very exciting today to have our new TV set up and working. Such a fantastic tool for the classroom.

Today we learned about how to use a graphic organiser called a KWL sheet, that helps us to lay out what we Know, what we Want to find out and what we have Learned.

The class sheet that we worked on together is here below.  We brainstormed what we know, and some of us had time to have our questions recorded.

For homework,  (and this can take as long as it takes to find answers), each child will have a blank KWL sheet in their homework book.
In this they record what they know about their families already, and choose 2 or 3 questions to find out some more.  In our discussion today, we can see some people have already been talking to family members and have exciting information to share.  Interesting to see that links to the World Wars have been made by a couple of people - this information will make Anzac Day even more special for them. I do not expect the children to do all the writing on this sheet. If you would like to have an electronic copy of what will be in the homework book I am more than happy to send this to you.  I will send this home in homework books tomorrow as I guess some people will be making the most of the long weekend and will be hanging out with their wider family.  There is no expectation to do homework at the weekend!!!!!  Just would be a nuisance if you have the relatives to talk to at the weekend and I sent this home on Tuesday.

We are a very multicultural class as I see with the What I Know column on the class sheet. I will be excited to encourage each child with links to other cultures to share this at the Cultural Assembly this year.  I think this will be in term 3 when we come together to celebrate all the cultures in our school.

Looking forward to some exciting discoveries about our families.  I just received a special sheet about my grandfather that has been included in a book in Green Island, Dunedin. The exact information about his participation in WW1 is here.  It was not a subject that was okay to talk about at home when I was a child, so it is special to have the facts.  He died when he was 59 (had been wounded) and I was only 11 months old.