Business, Economics & Culture

Grade four is currently engaging a six week, inquiry-unit titled, ‘Business, Economics & Culture.’ Our unit study has been extremely busy and fascinating thus far, and we would like to share a little bit about what we are doing. Before we discuss some of our learning activities, please read the ‘Central Inquiry Stream’ and ‘Connecting Inquiry Streams’ that underpin our inquiry unit in order to get an idea of how the described learning activities connect to and drive our inquiry.

Central Inquiry Stream

·        People use natural and synthetic materials to produce goods for cultural and economic reasons.

Connecting Inquiry Streams

·         Business and Economics

·         Culture

·         Textiles, dyes and cloth

Grade four has been engaging math concepts such as perimeter, area and volume as well as the requisite, arithmetic required for solving such problems. We will be engaging math in a stand-alone context during math class as well as connecting math learning to our inquiry units. Many of the ways we will be connecting math learning to our ‘inquiry units’ is via hands-on experiential projects and performance based assessments. These activities enable students to make meaningful connections with their everyday lives, and to engage and apply their learning of the various math concepts in creative ways.

We have been using the extremely popular computer-game, Minecraft. We have been building a Minecraft Museum out of Minecraft paper-cutouts that we call math-crafting; we have made many various Minecraft objects found within the computer game itself out of these paper cutouts with emphasis on the Creeper and the 1 cubic-meter, building block.

Math-crafting also requires each student to utilize a Math-Craft journal that Ms. Lan created. We use this journal as a way to transfer the tangible, hands-on experience of building the Minecraft Museum into blueprints and as a collection of various math problems as they relate to our Math-crafting projects. Applying abstract, math concepts to whole-life learning activities enables the students to develop a deep understanding of math skills, knowledge and understandings.

In addition to Math-Crafting, we have been enjoying learning and connecting the production of goods using both natural and synthetic materials. In order to provide the students with an inquiry-based, highly tactile, discovery-learning experience, we used flowers donated to grade four by the teachers after our NIS Wai Kru ceremony. We used these many different kinds of flowers to make dyes and to experiment with using them.