Making a Difference (Lindsay and Renee's project)

Lindsay (6th grade) and I (5th grade) are working together on our Inquiry-based learning project. Under the umbrella of Making a Difference, we decided to take advantage of a unique opportunity. One of our teachers took a year sabbatical to work with different classrooms around the world. Here is a link to her blog. Her interest and objective is to help these students share stories about themselves with the rest of the world. Our students have been "following" her and listening to the stories of the young people she meets. We've also participated in two Skype sessions.

Using this video as a prompt, our students first responded in KWL fashion using Moodle Forums to two questions:

1) What did you learn from watching and listening to this video?

2) What questions were not answered in the video? What questions do you still have?

The video is narrated by a Cambodian HS student who, with his team, created a video about the dwindling number of wells and clean water in his village.

In addition, I had them answer a survey question: Does your family get their water from a well?

Lindsay and I will take their questions and after sorting and coming up with themes, we will create a Google Doc for different questions. Then the students will do research to answer the questions. Based on what they come up with, we'll move to the next step in deciding what action to take in order to make a different.

Lindsay has located a local professor who is a member of Engineers Without Borders. We're hoping to get him in to speak with our students.

That's what we're doing.