Student Wonderings and Questions

This week students have been starting to ask questions about urban environments. At the start of each unit we spend time encouraging the students to start thinking about the unit, the big ideas and develop questions they would like to answer. As we have only just started the unit often these questions are in the form of wonderings.

We went for a walk around the school on Thursday and the students completed an "I see, I think, I wonder" activity. They were encouraged to think about the school, its settings, what they could see and hear around them and write down any wonderings they had.

On Friday we developed these wonderings further and started asking questions we would like to find the answers to over the unit.

We started by discussing the wonderings and developing deeper questions. We revisited the central idea and watched two videos to see what students in other schools have done to modify their environment.

After this we came up with student questions for the unit. 

Why are some urban environments’ poor and some rich?

What can we change in the school to make it healthier?

Can we add more plants to our environment?

Can we grow fruit and vegetables at school?

Can we compost our fruit and vegetable scraps?

Can we make a compost bin?

Can we reduce the amount of electricity we use?

Can you turn off all the electronics in our school for 1 hour?

Can we help the environment at school?

Why do people want new things?

Can we have more wildlife in our school?

Ways we can recycle old things and make them new?

Can we help our environment by planting a garden?

Can we add more recycling bins to our school?

How can we stop the bad environment?